Category: Photography

I couldn’t believe I had four pages of unposted pictures to sort through since my last Thousand Pictures update just over a week ago, but then I realized I had all the Calypso pictures in there PLUS all the pictures from the photo shoot with Finola. Still, in the snap-happy groove I’ve been in lately, it’s amazing how many shots I’m going through.

Truth be told, I’m considering just calling it a year and starting a new 365 project. I mean, I’m taking just about a picture every day anyway, and some weeks I’m taking a couple dozen. We’ll see! Anyway, here’s what I’ve been doing since the last Thousand Pictures post.

One morning I woke up to this really dense, dreamy fog and I had to stop and take some pictures on my way in to work. I really love both of these images, for totally different reasons. This first one is the yellow line down the middle of the road, up close and personal! Cuz really, if you’re going to stand in the road with your camera during the morning rush, a day with practically zero visibility is the most logical day to choose, right?

I changed the colour cast in this one to give it that bluish tint, and I think it really works with this image.

This was a lovely moment that I stumbled upon and raced out of to get my camera. That soft light behind them seems to add to the serenity of an already peaceful scene.

From no colour to too much colour — this is a longer exposure of the pinwheel in my garden, set spinning by my helper Simon. I set the aperture at f16 to slow down the light a bit, so I could set the aperture to 1/25 to catch the motion blur.

And, back to desaturated again! Just waking up from naptime… just one of those moments I wanted to keep, because in just a few minutes he’ll be sleeping in a big-boy bed, no more soothers or cribs…

We were at the boys’ annual school BBQ, and Lucas was fascinated by the visiting fire trucks and this police motorcycle. I figure it’s just a matter of years before he has a motorcycle of his own. He rolls like that. And I loved the composition of this one.

I’ve been trying to keep up with the jump shots, but holy hell it’s hard to get the timing right! I won’t even tell you how many shots I took this night trying to get air under my feet and Lucas’s feet at the same time. I had to give up for fear my dear old garden bench would collapse!

I can always rely on the boys for great jumping shots, though!

This is more Flickr-inspired fun, my first contribution to the group Story People. The quote that goes with this image says “this is the moon dark as a bird wing & softer, he said & at that moment I knew only the joy of my child”.

We went out to the flea market at the Rideau Carleton Raceway one Sunday and it was, well, meh. But, driving the back roads back to Barrhaven we came across this bucolic scene and my menfolk were patient enough to stop the car so I could capture a few images.

Lucas had the sense to watch from a safe and dry distance as his brothers goofed in the bloody cold refreshing spray of the “waterpillar” toy from Granny.

I haven’t forgotten my TtV gear this week — I managed to get this collage the other morning on my way out to work. I couldn’t decide if I liked the cross processing effect (the slightly more yellow/green toned ones) or not, so I made a collage of some of each.

I’m not the only one who loves the daisies that grow in my garden. Isn’t he perfectly lovely?

I love this shot, one of those rare and perfectly serendipitous captures when everything comes together. I was out with my photography class on Friday night, supposedly shooting landscapes at Hogsback Falls. I was, to be honest, a little bored with the whole landscape thing when I looked up on the rocks above me and saw this woman sitting against a tree, reading and enjoying the last minutes of golden light before the sun set.

I had my tripod set up, and so the image is far sharper than my usual hand-held shots. I absolutely love how the fence and the tree intersect right where she is sitting, and the bit of diagonal to the fence line, and that delicious golden light. And, most of all, that HAT — perfection!

After I’d taken a few shots and knew I had my keeper, I scrambled up the rocks a bit to say hi and let her know I’d taken her picture, and gave her one of my little moo cards with my blog and contact info on it, and told her that if the picture turned out as nice as I thought it might, she could have a copy if she wanted one. She was very sweet, and thanked me. So that’s also #5 in my very lack-a-daisical hundred strangers project, too!

Last year, I discovered the June is for Jumping group on Flickr late in the month, but so enjoyed looking at everyone’s shots (really, click through, they’re quite impressive!) that I looked forward all year to this year’s edition. I was full to the brim with enthusiasm as I headed into the backyard on the evening of June 1st to start contributing what I thought would be the first in a month’s worth of clever, well-composed and perfectly executed shots.

This was, I kid you not, the best of the 20 shots I took.

Best by quite a margin, I might add. You might think me brave to post such a ridiculous shot of myself; you only say that without having seen the other 19 exponentially more ludicrous shots for comparison. Out of focus shots, shots of me standing flat-footed with a look of consternation on my face thrusting the remote toward the camera in a distinct “is this thing on?” sort of gesture, shots that prove that perhaps June Jumping is a game best left to women who are less than 40 or have borne less than three children. Really, you should THANK me for not posting them. Trust me.

I remain undeterred, though. And besides, the bar is low for considerable improvement to my jump shots through the next month!

As you can see, I’m taking a lot of inspiration from groups and themes on Flickr lately. I blame Angela! This is my second “Bench Monday” shot, and I’m quite pleased with it. I like how the bench and the fence in the back intersect at my sparkly shoes. Okay, fair enough, I just love my sparkly shoes.

And speaking of things I love, things at the park, and TtV pictures, how adorable is this? We were playing pop-up peekaboo, and both of us were laughing. I called it “Golden Boy” because of that delicious evening light, and because he is truly worth his toddling menace weight in gold.

These next pix are a little less frivolous. (But perhaps a little less, um, interesting??) At my Friday photography class, we were discussing the elements of composition, and then had to go out onto Dalhousie Street and shoot several examples of each element.

The elements in question are: line, shape or form, texture, colour, value and space. Line is one-dimensional; shape and form are three-dimensional. Texture and colour speak for themselves. Value is the amount of light or darkness. Space can be positive (the amount of space taken up by things) or negative.

Here’s four of the shots I particularly liked and the elements I thought they represented.

1. Space, colour and form:

2. Colour, shape, texture and line:

3. Line, value, colour, shape and space:

4. Colour, texture, shape and space:

I’m not sure how on-track I was for the assignment in the interpretation of the various elements. I’ll tell you after tonight’s class!

This one really belongs above, from a thematic perspective, but I wanted to end with a strong picture and this is another one of my faves for this week. It’s another theme-inspired picture, this one for Positively Ottawa’s Lyrical Thursdays: photos inspired by music or lyrics.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. And in the 1970s, when IBM Selectric Typewriters were the latest technological toy, it was this kind of machine that I envisioned pecking out my Great Canadian Novel.

Inspired by The Beatles: Paperback Writer.

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

It’s the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn’t understand.
The son (The Sun) is working for the Daily Mail,
It’s a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I’ll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Actually, I just love it when word and pictures so perfectly intersect. THAT’s my happy place!

Edited to add: Apparently my brother felt the Jumping shot lacked a caption so he sent me this. All these years later, he’s still a pain in the ass.

You know how creativity ebbs and flows? Lately, I seem to be all gummed up. I’m really enjoying taking pictures, and I always enjoy writing. Well, almost always! But my head seems far more full of ideas and images than I am capable of turning into prose or pictures. I have creativity constipation! Anybody got any Muselax?

Anyway, despite that, when I look back on the pictures I’ve taken this week, I’m pretty happy with them. On Friday night for my photography class, we were supposed to do an in-class theory session but the light was just so spectacular that we went on another walkabout around Nepean Point. I’m starting to get comfortable shooting in manual now, and even prefer some of the straight-out-of-the-camera shots better than the ones I play with in Photoshop.

The timing was perfect to capture this silhouette of Jacques Cartier, his astrolab, and a few of his friends.

We were rewarded with this view from the Point, just at the foot of the statue above:

Then I turned around, and the flaming sunset had set the windows of the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings ablaze. (How lucky are we to have this stuff in our city?)

We walked back down the Point and onto the road where the Alexandra Bridge meets St Patrick. Did you know there’s a little lookout down there? In all the time I’ve spend wandering around that part of Ottawa, I had no idea it was there. And look how the Alexandra Bridge points right into the setting sun! (This one messes with my sense of geography. In summer, the sun sets due west, but Gatineau is north of Ottawa. Hmmmm….)

And this is what I mean about straight out of the camera versus post-processing. I tweaked this one because my exposure was a bit off (damn manual exposure is a lot of work!) and although I really like the composition, I think I overtweaked the contrast a bit.

You know what else is fantastic about late-spring-into-early-summer in Ottawa? The return of flea market season!!! Yay! On Sunday we trekked out to the Antrim flea market to poke around. There was a guy selling a table full of absolutely gorgeous old Yashica twin-lens cameras, which must have been somebody’s collection. He was selling them for $25 each, and at first I thought I could use them for through-the-viewfinder work, but the viewfinders were pretty foggy. I hemmed and hawed for a bit, wanting one just for the sake of having one, Beloved ribbing me the whole time that we truly do not need to add to our vintage camera collection. I stepped away to chase the boys for a bit, and when I went back someone had snapped up the whole collection, probably a dozen or more cameras.

The stinger? I looked online when we got home, and they sell for $75 to $200. Oy! Foregone beauty AND foregone profit. Damn!!

But, at least I got this… it’s the brilliant midday sun shining through a set of sherry / wine glasses onto a white table cloth. I love the refractions!

And the colours of this paintbox were irresistible, too.

The boys were playing with bubbles at my folks’ place on the weekend, and I didn’t realize until after I’d posted this shot to Flickr that you can see a little me reflected in the bubbles. Fun!

This last shot is not very strong from a compositional or technical standpoint. And yet, it’s my favourite picture of the week. Why? Because it makes me smile every time I look at it. I came down the stairs on my way to work and found all three boys scratching Katie’s belly. You can see by the expression on her face how she felt about that! And miraculously, they kept being cute long enough for me to grab my camera and take this snapshot. Not a perfect picture by any stretch of the imagination, but a perfect moment for sure.

And! Happy birthday to my sweet Katie dog, who turned 11 years old this week.

I don’t know what I love more about the month of May — the soft scent of flowers perfuming the air, or the return of the gorgeous, soft light of late afternoon and early evenings.

Like this:

It’s a sweet subject, but the way the light falls on them really makes this picture, in my humble opinion. It’s one of my new favourites. I’m learning that the quality of light becomes much more obvious in a B&W photo than in a colour one. Less distractions maybe?

This one uses light in a different way. (Is it me, or is there a crazy amount of dandelions this year?) After trying all summer last year, this is the first time I’ve actually managed to successfully take a dandelion portrait — they’re not as easy as they look!

I took this one the day I was making up some new banners for the blog. I’d wanted a banner that worked in the old and new cameras and couldn’t quite make it work, but I thought this was a fun shot nonetheless. I call it “The old guard versus the young whippersnapper.” 🙂

Tristan’s homework required him to go on a nature walk and record the animals he encountered, so I took the boys down to Black’s Rapids after dinner. It’s hard to look for animals when you’re concentrating on making sure the toddler doesn’t go for a swim! The geese enjoyed the stale bread we brought, including a cute little yellow gosling you can just barely see in the grouping to the back right.

(Also challenging? Deciding whether to go for the photo opportunity or save the kids from the hissing, hungry goose!)

Have I mentioned how much I love lilacs?

Love them!

A lot!

Know what else I love? Through-the-viewfinder shots of fun fairs!

Like this!

This one is my fave of the series, I think.

And here’s a few shots I took during and for my new photography class at the School of Photographic Arts, Ottawa. The first night, we did a little walkabout in the Market, and had to shoot in manual mode (eek!) and then not do any post-processing. (Double-eek!!) He told us to take a non-touristy shot of Maman, the 10m bronze spider sculpture outside the National Gallery. I like the dark, gothic look and the bird silhouette on this one, but if I could have I would have brightened it up just a smidgen.

And this was our weekly assignment: shoot tulips in a new way. I gave it that sense of motion by setting my aperture to the smallest possible opening (f22) to make for a longer exposure, and then zoomed my lens out gently during the exposure.

In the end, it was okay, but I like this “traditional” take on tulips more. Not bad for straight-out-of-the-camera (sooc), eh?

Speaking of lessons, one day I will learn that when shooting with my lens wide open (in this case, f1.8) one of the eyes will be out of focus (not to mention the tip of his nose!) unless they’re both on the same plane. Oh well. He’s still pretty cute!

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know yet!!