Category: Photography

My favourite group on Flickr (365 Community) has a rotating optional theme. This week, I happened to have been tagged to choose the theme. With no hidden agenda whatsover in thinking about our trip to Niagara Falls, I chose the theme “water play”. I managed a few variations on the theme this week!

Before we even left for Niagara Falls, we spent a sunny Sunday morning at the local splash pad. Lucas absolutely loved it!

You’ve seen some of these already in my Niagara Falls recap post, but what the heck. This is Tristan admiring the view when we first arrived in Niagara Falls.

And this is my ultimate Canada Day shot, from the Maid of the Mist. (From a technical perspective, Beloved pointed out that the bit of deck rail in the lower left, the bit of darkness in the upper left and the dark side of the gorge on the right form a nice compositional triangle around the central subjects in the image. Oh, the things you learn from an artist!)

The other theme of the week was road-tripping. I like how crisp Lucas is in comparison to the motion blur outside the window behind him. (Not to mention the inherent cute factor of him playing with his dollar-store drawing thingee. He loves those things!)

This one was on the trip home. I had my 50mm fixed lens on, and had to lean way forward in my seat to properly frame Tristan in this one. (He’s drawing a Pokémon card, and his hair is still wet from the water park at Great Wolf Lodge.)

Seems like I took these last pictures about a hundred years ago! This was taken on my last day before vacation. It’s the US Embassy in Ottawa, and I was trying to contrast the bright mirrored modernity of it with the beauty of the old “tax castle” beside it. I used B&W for this one to try to convey the starkness and unwelcomingness of this building and I liked how the lines on the Embassy pointed to the tax castle, too. It’s an okay image, but I’m still not sure I’m fond of it — it wouldn’t turn out like I was picturing it no matter what I did to it!

Finally, when all else fails, you can find a pretty flower to photograph. I planted this clematis three or four years ago and it promptly withered and died. To my surprise, it came up this summer absolutely covered in buds — I actually thought it was a weed at first. He’s the Little Clematis That Could!

Edited to add: I almost forgot! This week was the end of the month, so I’ve got my monthy mosaic done for June. There were some colourful shots this month!!

I think I might have taken nearly a thousand pictures this week. There have been days during my 365 project that I didn’t even feel like picking up the camera — this week did not contain any of those days! Everywhere I turned there was beautiful warm light, cute kids and interesting photo opportunities. Every week should be this easy!

For instance, last Friday we had our annual staff picnic, but instead of the traditional picnic we went on a boat cruise on the Ottawa River. I *could* post the pictures I took of my colleagues doing a mid-afternoon conga line (!) but instead, I’ll share this relatively unique perspective of the Chateau Laurier and the Rideau Canal locks (the bit that looks like giant concrete steps) where they dump into the Ottawa River. Doesn’t it look like something out of a fairy tale?

The Chateau Laurier pictures was actually my alternate shot of the day. This dock lead down to the Gatineau River, near where the cruise was docked, and I liked the contrasting purple and yellow (complimentary colours really make a photo pop) and the shapes in the shadows.

Does anything say summertime better than after-dinner popsicles on the porch swing? (Yep, we collected an extra for this picture. She matches my set nicely, don’t you think? Sadly, her folks won’t let me keep her. I think that if I could guarantee she’d turn out just like this, I could easily convince Beloved to have a fourth child!)

I spent more than half an hour on Sunday morning, watching the gorgeous warm light bathe Lucas as he played contentedly with these Bob the Builder toys. I took at least 60 shots, trying to capture the quiet peacefulness of the moment, and ended up having a hard time choosing just a couple of favourites.

I liked this one because of the way Lucas’s profile is in shadow but bright yellow Scoop is fully lit, and the way you can see Lucas’s profile so cleanly against the wall behind him.

I liked these two because the little hands could have belonged to any of my three boys. I love to see those chubby fingers at play!

In the end, I liked this one the best, I think because you can see the whole of Scoop and because I moved a bit to eliminate the distraction of the door frame that’s in the picture above.

For the next image, it’s the story as much as the photo that makes it the picture of the day for me.

It was hot and sunny, just the kind of day I like best, but I was overheated and cranky and really not feeling well as I finished a long 10 or 15 block loop on my lunch hour. I’d snapped a few pictures, but nothing was really capturing my eye and I wasn’t even enjoying the walk much. I went to turn down a street that would lead directly back to my office, one I’d trod a hundred times before, when I realized if I stayed on straight I’d walk down a block I’d never been down before.

Shortcut or new ground? I debated for a minute, thinking it unlikely I’d see anything worth photographing on such an uninteresting stretch, then decided to walk the new stretch anyway.

Half way down, I came across this young lady sitting at a table selling lemonade and busking with her ukulele, raising funds for a trip to Scotland. I was completely and utterly charmed by the combination lemonade stand-ukulele show. The picture is not terrific — the money jar blocks the head of the uke — but I was a little distracted by chatting with her as I composed the shot. She was so sweet and the idea so charming that I couldn’t *not* have this as my picture of the day! (I passed on the lemonade, but I did give her a few bucks toward her trip.) It’s also #3 in my 100strangers.com project.

On Tuesday, I had a lunch date with the inimitable Andrea, and rather than sit on a patio to enjoy the sunshine and a cold beverage, we ate a quick Budawich on a park bench and wandered the Market with our cameras on a little photo safari. It was so nice to have some company on one of my lunch-time wanders! I didn’t get many pictures in, but great conversation with a good friend is a balm for the soul, isn’t it? I did find these fuscia blooms dangling out of a basket to be particularly photographable, though.

I’ve learned that flowers are an excellent choice for an easy photo. They stand still, they’re bright and colourful, and I just can’t resist them! I particularly liked these daisies. I have a soft spot for daisies – I wore them in my hair when Beloved and I got married, and they featured predominately in the wildflower bouquet that I carried and the centrepieces on the picnic tables at our reception.

The problem with never relinquishing the camera is that you end up with photographs of everybody and everything *except* you. When I started my 365 project, one of my self-imposed rules was a self-portrait every month. I don’t think I’ve managed more than a few so far, but yesterday I caught sight of myself in this reflective window in the Market and thought the bright busyness behind me would make a neat selfie.

These are my favourite photos of the week. We had an old fashioned ice cream truck rumbling around the neighbourhood this week, complete with tinkling music and soft-serve ice cream cones. I haven’t seen one of these since I was a kid in the 1970s. (I remember the one that used to come through our neighbourhood would moo like a cow, and our dog would tremble and hide under the furniture every time it went by!)

I love this picture because of Beloved’s smile (and the way that Lucas looks like he’s going to eat the cone in one giant bite!) but I’m not overly fond of the highlights on Lucas’s face. The contrast is too strong, I think.

I love this one the best. I coloured it with a light sepia because I think it’s such a classic photo. (My favourite bit is how Lucas is holding onto Beloved’s fingers!)

I do love them so – and I think this photo captures that. I think of the many ways that Project 365 has inspired me and improved my mad photographic skillz, this is the one I most appreciate: that I can capture not just an image, but the mood or moment in its entirety that caused me to pick up the camera in the first place. Well, at least some of the time!

Holy crap, I’ve been doing this picture-a-day thing every. single. day for 150 days and I haven’t missed one yet. Who’d’ve guessed it?

The nice thing about Project 365 in the summer time is that just about anywhere you point your camera there are lovely colours and light just begging to be photographed. Like these pansies:

Even on a rainy day, peonies are pretty:

I’m particularly pleased with the peony because it was the big fat raindrops that caught my attention in the first place, but they didn’t come through in the image straight out of the camera. But I’ve learned enough about Photoshop in the past few months to know that if I sharpened the heck out of it, those raindrops would pop out, just like they did to the naked eye.

This is how the next one came to be:

Tristan: "Hey Mom! Wanna see me jump off the top of the monkey bars?"

Me, visions of the waiting room at the children’s hospital in my head: "No!"

Tristan: "Why not?"

Me: "Because it’s dangerous and I don’t want you to hurt yourself."

Tristan: "Awwwwwww!"

Me, remembering that there is a June is for Jumping group on Flickr and that I still don’t have a picture for today, "Actually, you know what? Just let me go get my camera…."

(Speaking of mad photoshopping skillz, I accidentally left the ISO way too high and overexposed the shot, but I loved the expression on Tristan’s face so much that I wanted to find a way to make the image work so I processed the heck out of it. I used one of the Pioneer Woman’s actions – I think it was ‘vintage’ – but it was too harsh, so I dialed the opacity down to 50%, and I really like how it came out.)

And this one? Well, what can I say, I just love those toes!

This is from the same afternoon. It’s not an official 365 shot, but it’s a moment worth admiring, no? I love it when I sneak up and find them being adorable.

Speaking of adorable… I like this picture for the look of intense concentration on Simon’s face, and because of the story behind what he’s doing. Simon is one of only two boys invited to a Princess party this weekend, and he’s been asked to dress as Prince Charming. (I know. Couldn’t you just die of the sweetness?) The closest we could come was a tiara and a Darth Vader cape (don’t ask me why in a house with three boys we had a tiara) and Beloved put his foot down and said no son of his was going to a party wearing a tiara. (Sheesh!) So yesterday, Beloved came home with a crown-making-kit. Simon enjoyed making his own so much that he decided to make and decorate a crown for the birthday girl as well. So sweet! Five is a lovely age.

Project 365 is about memorializing a year in pictures in addition to improving my photographic eye (and mad photoshopping skillz!) and this picture simply captures the official first day of summer: the first day it was nice enough to swim in our friends’ pool. (Friends with pool = favourite friends!) It’s called Lukey’s Boat!

Darn, I was doing so well with the segues, but I got nothing for this one. They’ve started this cool new service in Ottawa where you can rent a bike from one of four downtown locations and return your rental to any of the other stations. How awesome is that? I haven’t tried it out yet, simply because it’s either been pouring rain or I’ve forgotten to bring my helmet, but there’s a station right by my office. From a technical perspective, I like this photo because of the repeating pattern, because of the way the top and side borders have almost exactly the same amount of space, because of the way it fills the frame, and because the bit of repeating red really seems to pop against the otherwise neutral colours.

Last but not least, and also without a workable segue, this is my favourite picture of the week. I like the textures, the chipped paint and the worn wood, and how they contrast against the softness of the fingers. I think the strong diagonal lines draw your eyes right through the frame, but the little fingers stop you dead. (Edited to add: oh, and I just realized that this picture made it into Flickr’s fickle “Explore”, too. Yay!)

It’s actually the bar of an emergency exit door in a restaurant, where Lukey was wandering out his twitchies while Beloved and the big boys waited for the bill. Lesson? Always, always have your camera handy!

I’ve been swallowing photography books whole lately. Conveniently, Beloved will be teaching digital photography and already teaches Photoshop at a local college, so we have a steady stream of current textbook samples coming into the house. One of the first really great books I read was by Photoshop guru Scott Kelby. His Digital Book of Photography and Digital Book of Photography 2 are great books filled with simple instructions on how to get your camera to do what you want it to do, and gives explicit directions on how to get the shot you want in a range of photographic situations: portraits, landscape photography, sports shots, weddings, etc. Full of explicit “set your camera like this, ensure you do A, B and C, and click” type of advice.

Once I’d read every other book on digital photography techniques I could get from Beloved or the library, I moved on to some of Bryan F. Peterson’s books. I was a little surprised at how, um, outdated they were — OMG, soooo 1998 — but you know what? The techniques of photography that I’m now most concerned about are rather timeless, and it doesn’t matter if you’re shooting film or pixels. In particular, his People in Focus was great for thinking about the psychology of taking portraits, both of people you know and people you don’t. I’m still waiting for my turn in the library queue for his highly recommended Learning to See Creatively: Design, Color & Composition in Photography. I’ve also discovered and highly recommend the books of John Hedgecoe. His photography is a little, um, odd sometimes, but I’ve learned a lot about shape and texture and space from his books.

By chance, I stumbled upon a recommendation for Freeman Patterson’s books, and now I have a new photographic idol. And he’s Canadian! I’m about half way through his Photography and the Art of Seeing — an ancient mid-1970s edition from the library. It’s the first photography book I’ve read that doesn’t contain a single reference to the aperture and shutter speed used to achieve each image — instead, it’s like a workshop on how see led by your philosophical and tragically verbose favourite uncle. In googling it just now, I stumbled across his website, and am *so* ordering my own updated copy personalized and signed by the author.

As I’m reading Patterson’s book, I find myself wandering around and seeing the shapes of things — it’s very distracting! Did you know there are primary shapes just like there are primary colours? Circles, squares and triangles. And — finally, to the point — you can see the influence of my new infatuation with the shapes of things in this week’s pictures.

These eggs, for instance. See how the oval shape of the egg is repeated in each egg and in the bowl? I really liked the tones in this picture too. (Another lesson this week: if you’re shooting something with a lot of white, your camera’s light meter will be tricked into trying to underexpose the image. You have to use your exposure compensation to overexpose a bit over what the camera is trying to record.)

And these canisters, found inside Watson’s Mill in Manotick, where Lucas and I took refuge from the pouring rain when I was looking for something, anything to shoot one day while coming back from an extended nap drive. See how the circle pattern is repeated in each canister, in the way they’re grouped and in the cutting board they’re standing on?

The repetition of the shoes, and of the colours in them, and in the deck rails underneath is a little more subtle in this shot. I loved how the early-morning light fell on the shoes, left up to dry after a day of messy fun with the new sand and water table. This picture makes me very happy for some reason — it captures something about the bliss of my family life in this tiny point in time.

Speaking of the sand and water table, here’s the shot from the day before. (I know you’ve seen it already, but isn’t it precious enough to show off twice?) They played together for hours with that thing. Who knew?

This fellow was busking in the Market when I was out wandering on my lunch hour one day this week. I was fascinated by the intricate design on his accordion and by his jaunty little hat, and even the pattern on his shirt. I dropped a loonie into his case to say thanks for letting me snap a few portrait shots of him, but wasn’t brave enough to actually say anything. He did favour me with a nice smile, though!

These pretty flowers aren’t flowers at all, they’re weeds growing against a fence in a parking lot! See how the flowers are circular, and the four of them together make a semi-circle, and the bits of swirly stems in the blurred background echo that curve? That’s what I was going for, anyway!

Some things just cry out to be photographed. I was driving down Gladstone near Booth when I did a double-take while passing this house. Is this not the yellowest house you have ever seen? Luckily, I had enough time to double back and stop to take a couple of snaps of this outrageously yellow house. I have no idea why someone would do this, but I kind of like it! (We once painted our tiny Glebe attic apartment’s living room with this exact shade of yellow. We called it “homicidal yellow.”) The sign on the wall says the building is slated to be torn down, and an application has been received to build seven (!) townhouses in its place. Sigh.

From homicidal yellow to righteous red — I’m on a primary colour streak! (apparently, I’m going to have to find something in deepest blue to photograph today!) This is what fresh, local strawberries are supposed to look like, not those anemic things they truck in from California.

And, as I said above, some things just beg to be photographed. I had a chest x-ray done yesterday for the double-pneumonia that will not quit. How often do you get to take a photograph (of the photograph) of your own lungs?

And finally, an out-take from earlier in the week. I was trying to take the egg picture above, and was trying the eggs in various combinations of bowls, when Lucas crawled up onto the table to see what was so interesting. Lookit those fat crocodile tears running down his cheeks, just after I’d scolded him with a firm, “No!” I call this one “The egg thief.”

And that’s why doing a 365 project is especially challenging for a busy mother of three: you try to take a picture of eggs, and end up with a picture of eggs being taken!

We tend to leave our laptop open on top of our TV console in the evenings, and half the time I’m as drawn to the slide show of the “pictures” file as I am to whatever drivel is on TV. (Tangent: June TV? Painful suckage.)

The one really nice thing I can say about the Windows Vista operating system is that it makes a really lovely set of random slide shows. It doesn’t just display the pictures, but wraps them up in fancy transitions, adds backgrounds and frames, varies how the images are displayed, and even displays them occasionally in black and white. Looking at some of my favourite images in black and white, together with a couple of books I’ve read on getting more out of black and white digital photography, encouraged me to try some monochromatic images this week. It was supposed to be a week-long theme, in fact, but my attention span is simply not that long.

Last Friday was rainy and dreary (again) and I went out into the drizzle at lunch time trying to see how the rain changed the “look” of things I look at every day. I ended up wandering down to the Notre Dame Cathedral and took a couple of pictures inside that I didn’t end up liking very much. But when I came out of the cathedral and noticed how the Parliament Buildings lined up under Maman’s legs, I knew it would make a neat composition. Unfortunately, despite my best stink-eye I couldn’t get the gaggle of school-group tourists to move out of my frame, so I had to cut Maman off at the knees. (Maman is one of my favourite Ottawa attractions, a 30 foot tall bronze spider who lives in the courtyard of the National Gallery.)

I liked this picture of Tristan blowing bubbles (I never would have guessed that my ‘big boys’ at five and seven would still love bubbles as much as they do!) but I didn’t like the big planter in the corner of the image. When I ran one of the Pioneer Woman actions that turned the photo into sepia tones, though, it really seemed to minimize the mostly brown planter into the brown fence behind it, while giving the image a nice classic and timeless look that I thought complimented the subject.

I blogged about this image the other day, but I love it so much I thought I’d include it again. This is the fourth of my images that have made it into Flickr’s Explore.

On the days I drive downtown, I drive right past this dairy farm. I’ve actually taken dozens of pictures of it — I’m fascinated by it. I love the fact that we get to drive past cows and horses whenever we go from the city to our house! I’d love to live on a farm some day, if it weren’t so much work!

There are lots of ways to play with an ordinary photo to make it more interesting. I’m learning to embrace them! False tilt-shifting is a way of processing the image so it looks like a miniature or toy-model version. It didn’t quite work out on this image of the Alexandria Bridge and the Museum of Civilization as well as I’d seen on some other images, but it still perks up a rather ordinary photo. To get the effect, I just ran the photo through on this website. To get the full effect, click through and view it large and up-close!

And when one picture of pretty flowers is just okay, a mosaic of them is somehow more than the sum of the parts. These are all from my garden, and some of them may be weeds, but at least they’re pretty weeds. The one in the top left corner is a bleeding heart, and the white ones are on a shrubbery near my front door. The others are just purty.

Last but far from least: Lukey in black and white. If you’re looking for some really great light for baby portraits, consider shooting in the car seat! Your subject is immobilized, the light is bright but diffuse, and you have baby’s undivided attention. In this case, you can plainly see Baby is far from impressed in having my 50mm lens half a foot from his nose. Again. But the b&w really favours that creamy smoothness of his skin — don’t you just want to touch it? And I should have stopped down my aperture just a bit because my plane of focus was so small (I’d been shooting flowers up close) that while his left eye is perfectly in focus, his right eye is blurry. A smaller aperture would have given me a larger area in focus. Oh well!

And if you look closely, you can even see me reflected in his eyes!