Category: Photography

Before I had all of your most excellent suggestions on how to carry on finding interesting pictures every(!) single(!) day(!) I was relying on some of the Flickr groups I’ve joined for inspiration. One of them is the monthly scavenger hunt, where they give you 20 clues or categories and you have the month to find suitable pictures. You can take a new picture for every category or, if you’re a little bit lazy like me, mine your archives for padding in a few choice places. I played last month, too, but only got 16 out of the 20 categories done before I ran out of month. But last night I took the final picture to round out my first complete monthly scavenger hunt!

(You’ve seen most of these already, I know, but the only ‘prize’ I get is the satisfaction of gloating that I finished, so I’m milking it for all it’s worth! If you click the mosaic, the image on Flickr has a list of the categories and a clickable link to the images everyone else used for that category, too — if you’re curious! And Roz, I had to laugh — I had the picture of the wrought-iron fence around Parliament Hill in the camera already when you made your suggestion. Great minds!)

This one from last Friday was for the scavenger hunt clue “one in a million.” Tristan won one of those “guess the number of jellybeans” contests at our local comic book store at a Webkinz Extravaganza day, winning not only the jar full of jellybeans but a Webkinz gift pack as well. I figured the image worked well on a couple of ways for the theme, both in the sheer number of jelly beans (anyone want to hazzard a guess?) and in the odds of Tristan winning. The colour balance on the picture is off, but I think that’s largely because I have to calibrate our monitor.

You saw most of my pictures from the Gloucester Fair already, but I like this one so much that I’ll include it here again!

(Funny how I took two dozen photos at the fair and had a hard time choosing just a few because I liked them all so much, and other days this week I took a hundred or more pictures in a day only to have not a single one worthy of the project. Dammit, I have to choose a less fickle hobby one of these days!)

I called this one, “Yeah mommy, as a matter of fact I AM about to eat this rock” but Beloved things I should have called it “My kung fu is better than your kung fu!” I like it because you can see the devil in his eyes. This child will be the one that snaps my will like a twig.

I’ve been reading Byran Peterson’s book People in Focus, which talks a lot about the psychology of approaching and interacting with strangers for photography. Feeling emboldened, I approached this lovely woman this morning at about 7:15 as she was readying her ByWard Market stand for the day and asked her if I could take her picture.

“Oh, just a minute,” she said as she hustled behind the stall, “and I’ll get some more water in my watering can.” Isn’t she lovely? She made my morning. The only problem is that I was so flustered by the time it came to actually taking the photo, I didn’t catch the shade/sun line running right through the middle of the picture and the background was so ugly I had to fudge the depth of field in Photoshop to blur it out a bit. Oh well, at least she was sweet about it, and I do love the result.

This is one of those times that a lovely new flower in the garden saved my project at the end of a long day. After more than 100 photos that I didn’t like, I snapped one of this new iris that had just bloomed in my front yard and called it “good enough.” You can totally see why Georgia O’Keefe eroticized flowers in this, though, can’t you?

I finally caved and bought myself an infrared remote for my D40, because I had been thinking about taking this image for so long and couldn’t think of a better way to do it. It won’t be long before these moments are gone and I wanted to capture the peaceful serenity of rocking Lucas to sleep at nap time.

I think I actually like this one better, though! The shot above is closer to what I’d originally planned for the shot, but this test shot I did to check the focus and the composition caught an unexpectedly sweet moment of its own.

The other mothers standing at the fence waiting for the bell to ring were giving me odd looks as I stood taking pictures of the umbrella being spun on my fingertips, letting the rain spatter on my bare head, but I was intrigued by the play of colour in this. Not the greatest shot in the world, but some days just cry for “good enough.”

I really wish I could find some sort of coherent narrative or even common thread in these pictures or what I’m drawn to, but I can’t. I have a magpie’s eye for bright and shiny things, and that’s about the only consistency I can see. But this week’s images to tell the story of this place in my life reasonably well, for whatever that’s worth.

I’m beginning to think this whole Project 365 thing was a tad too ambitious. How’s about we settle for a Project 183 and call it a day? Not that I’m not enjoying it, but there have been days lately when I looked forward to taking another picture about as much as I look forward to picking up the dog poop in the back yard. It’s been that kind of week.

Funny, too, because I took and posted what turned out to be my most favourited, most commented-upon, and most “interesting” photo ever last Saturday. It took about two minutes to set up (that’s about $3 of black matte fabric from WalMart draped over two shoeboxes in the background) and four or five test shots before I got this one – one of my easiest set-ups ever!



I’d had the idea in my head for a while, but it turned out way better than I’d expected. Turns out everybody else on Flickr thought so, too — it was Explored about eight hours after I posted it! It wasn’t even a difficult shot to catch — I just used a smaller aperture to slow down the shutter a bit and clicked the shutter exactly when my helpful volunteer pushed over the first domino (Tristan and Simon took turns launching the dominoes. Family fun on a rainy Saturday!) The only thing I did in Photoshop was even out the black background a bit. Neat effect, eh?

This shot wasn’t even for my 365 but for the monthly scavenger hunt. I knew when I saw the category “yellow submarine” I wanted to do something with a submarine sandwich, but even when I was heading out to Subway to pick up dinner for the family, I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I figured maybe something really simple like a yellow filter. When the girl behind the counter was making Beloved’s sub and the mustard cap came off the bottle, I only hesitated for a second before asking if I could take a picture before she cleaned off the excess mustard!



Conveniently, she was a photography student studying at Algonquin, and also on Flickr, and more than amenable to my odd photo request. And THAT’s why I carry my camera *everywhere*. And yes, this is the same Subway where I encountered Jan Harder. I walked out of that Subway with dinner for five, my MSH shot for a difficult category, Jan Harder’s business card and a bit of a receipt with Sonja’s Flickr account scrawled on it. Funny day!

The rest of this week’s photos are not nearly so interesting!

Notre Dame Basillica, because I loved the sunlight on the silver spires:

Lilacs in my favourite vase/pitcher, because both the pitcher and the lilacs make me happy:

Fruits and veggies in the ByWard Market, also for the monthly scavenger hunt, in the category “the colour of taste”:

This scaly dude was part of a Ray’s Reptiles exhibit outside the Museum of Civilization on free day. Check it out, you can see his tongue as he’s about to maw down on that plantain weed!

Also from the Museum of Civilization, for the monthly scavenger hunt category “colour outside the lines”:

Lillies of the Valley, for the monthly scavenger hunt “May Day”, because in France the tradition is to give bundles of them on May 1. (My neighbour planted these in our common garden. I’m still not sure I’m happy with them because they’re a pestilence, but at least they’re a pretty pestilence that smells good.)

From last Friday, the first day the Rideau Canal was open to boaters. This is the last series of locks before the Canal dumps into the Ottawa River. I think it’s cool that they still operate the locks by hand — I’m disappointed that in this shot the Parks Canada guy got kind of washed out and lost in the detail. Will have to get in for a close-up before the end of the summer!

We were at the Museum of Civilization on Monday, poking around out behind it where it backs onto the Ottawa River. I knew Beloved had the boys, so I didn’t have to keep too close an eye on them as I looked for interesting things to shoot, but they lost track of me. Beloved later recounted this conversation.

“Where’s your mother?” Beloved asked the boys.

“Oh, you know,” Tristan replied with a bit of a sigh. “Probably taking pictures.” Apparently I’m not the only one who finds the whole 365 thing a little wearying at times!

Ooo, I’m very excited! Lots of new stuff to share with you today, not least of which is the new blog design. (Click through if you’re reading in a feed reader and tell me what you think!)

Remember how excited I was when one of my pictures got the nod from Flickr’s capricious “Explore” function? Well, apparently Flickr (and a few friends) also liked my Primary Entrance picture from last week, because it made it into Explore as well! I’m pleased, because it’s one of my favourite shots so far.

And then later in the week, I got a Flickr-mail from Scmaps telling me that two of my photos had been “shortlisted” to be included in their downloadable map/travel guide of Ottawa. No remuneration, but I get the photo credit, and since it’s a couple of photos I like but don’t feel particularly proprietary over, I was happy to oblidge. I’ll let you know if they make the final cut. The photos were of the Peace Tower and of the Heart and Crown.

Yay for meaningless and random praise!

This week, I seem to be on a theme of raindrops and reflections. This is by far my favourite picture this week, taken yesterday from the stairwell of the building where I work, in between the 6th and 7th floor and looking down on Sussex Street.

It was taken through a dirty window, though, and even with my fancy new polarizing filter it was still a little murky so I added some texture in photoshop and that’s where the raindrop effect came in. Here, for comparison, is the original photograph straight out of the camera:

Rain was definitely a theme this week!

(I’m fond of the title of this one: “Another day, another dam(p) flower…”)

This was my Mother’s Day photo. Isn’t she lovely? This picture hardly does her justice, but you can see the beauty of her smile and her warmth quite clearly!

I had a bit of a reflections theme going on this week, too. I love reflections! In this one, I was originally just trying to capture the flowers in the bistro window and the reflections were a bit of a nuissance — there was a garbage truck idling behind me! Then I moved around the corner and realized I could capture this beautiful old heritage building in the reflection and actually incorporate it into the photo. Anybody from work recognize that building? 🙂

And this one! I was driving to work down alongside the Rideau Canal when this stunning image caught my eye. If you know Colonel By, you know there’s nowhere to stop, so I doubled back through Carleton and hiked up a bit of a hill so I could come back and take this photo of the Fair Jeanne in the morning stillness. Turns out she’s a tall ship and has sailed more than 150,000 nautical miles! They use her as a training ship now. It’s not every day you see a tall ship moored at the lock stations on the Canal!

And, last but not least, this one I took for the monthly scavenger hunt theme of “message in a bottle.” We had these pretty yellow carnations, and I thought the boys would like the effect that the blue water would have on this one. Part centerpiece, part botany lesson — in a Frank’s Red Hot bottle!

All in all, a good week in pictures!

It’s been a crazy week, and I feel like I’ve been neglecting the poor blog lately. Blog makes a good argument for being the favourite child over Project 365 because it is not demanding and simply waits for me to be finished gallavanting and come back to lavish love and attention on it, while Project 365 relentlessly demands my attention every single day.

But the 365 has been rewarding me with some beautiful images this week, which makes me a little bit less resentful of the time I didn’t get to spend, um, ironing or emptying the dishwasher or picking up dirty socks.

Come to think of it, sometimes the blog AND the 365 are the golden children, and it’s the actual children who are cramping my style!

I’ve been enjoying having a discussion theme around the 365 posts lately, but as you can see I’m a little scattered today, and frankly still really really short on time, so let’s just move on to looking at the pretty pictures, shall we? Rational thought and reasoned discussion may or may not return next week.

I loved this picture of Tristan for several reasons, not least of which it was the first time I’d seen him spend any length of time curled up reading a book all by himself. Be still my heart! He read the whole book that afternoon, and I could practically feel his world expanding.

I’m getting pretty good at photographing stuff, but am still intimidated by portraits. This one was a candid shot (I’d been turned around, photographing the trilliums in this little copse of trees when I turned around to see him with a piece of bark most of the way into his mouth, and that cheeky grin is a result of me playfully scolding him “ah ah ah!” as I pointed the camera at him) that turned out to be a pretty nice little portrait. He should be just a little bit less centred to give more room on the right side of the frame, but the darn kids never sit still long enough for me to get through my entire composition checklist in my head before I snap!

I’d walked past this triplex on St Patrick Street in Lowertown a handful of times and always loved the multi-coloured doors. I called it “primary entrance” and really wish the guy in the first apartment had a better aesthetic sense and had painted his door navy or royal blue instead of that bluegrass slate colour!

This was an idea for the monthly scavenger hunt. The clue was “out of roundness.” Get it? “Out of” in roundness? The crystal ball is from a gift my parents gave me for my birthday last summer, and it hangs in our back window. (My very first 365 picture features it, in fact!) I’d taken it down to play with the light, and noticed the magnification effect. The book idea and the scavenger hunt clue kind of coalesced from there.

This was yesterday’s picture. Yesterday was not my finest day. An all-day meeting off site (so no computer access! ack!!) followed by a very long evening with all three boys because Beloved was working late. I snapped this in the backyard, in between dinner and packing the boys’ lunches for school and cleaning the kitchen floor not once, not twice, but three times as the dog and the boys tracked mud in from the back yard. The year we moved in to this house, the baby crab apple tree the previous owners had planted died. Three years later I noticed that it was re-growing — about three feet over from the original tree and less than six inches from the back fence. I haven’t had the heart to cut it down — partly because of it’s stubborn will to survive and partly because it’s simply magnificent in the spring when covered with blossoms, but I’m afraid it’s going to take the fence out as it grows. Anyway, all that to say, I’m not totally satisfied with this picture and would have liked more time to play with it but at least I can look at it and say that my “hurry up and take a damn picture and post something so you’ll have a picture for today” pictures are a lot better than they were a couple of months ago!

(That’s a lot of stress for a couple of pretty pink blossoms, isn’t it? It’s been that kind of week!)

Speaking of pretty, stay tuned for some big changes around here in the next little while. I’m not sure exactly when I’ll get around to the big reveal, but here’s a hint. Very, very exciting!!

I’m glad I didn’t quit my photo-a-day project last week, and I’m kinda sorry I whined at you with all my artistic angst. *embarrassed shrug* The thing about the blog is that I write whatever is in my head (if you hadn’t noticed) and if I’ve just stubbed my toe and spilled my coffee and my underwear are riding up a little bit too high, I suspect I come across as a little whiney. But I feel much better today.

This was a great week, though. I got some good photos, I had a lot of fun taking them, I discovered an awesome new shortcut (more on that in a minute) and I hit some fun milestones. On Wednesday, for example, I made it to Day 100 and marked the occassion with this picture:

(Some other dude kept trying to steal the Day 100 limelight on Wednesday, but we know who had the larger world impact during the last 100 days, don’t we?)

It’s been beautiful to be out of the house lately, and nature has given me no shortage of subjects this week. I got down low underneath these dried out weeds and shot at the moody clouds of the sunset because I thought they looked like some sort of funky prehistoric tree, but one of the commenters on Flickr said they look like Dr Seuss trees and I like that even better.

The tulips are on their way, but the daffodils are in full bloom. These guys in my garden practically begged me to take their picture on a rainy day:

And this guy lives in a bed beside the Canal. (Is there anything more lovely than a huge bed of wild daffodils? Exquisite! Plus, lying on your belly in the sun taking pictures of pretty flowers is an excellent way to spend a lunch hour! I highly recommend it!)

Katie and I had both had a long day when I snapped this portrait of her. The tolerant but oh-so-mildly annoyed look on her face? After three kids loving her within an inch of her life, I think it’s her most common facial expression these days.

We’d gone to the annual Lion’s Club pancake breakfast at the fire station on Saturday morning when I saw this giant shelf full of fire hoses around the back of the station and I was utterly fascinated by them. The little sign says “Hoses to be repaired” but why so many? How do they repair them? If these are the broken-down ones, how many good ones do they have? And I just liked the pretty colours, too.

Yesterday, I knew I’d be driving to work instead of taking the bus and going right past Hogsback Falls. Last time I was there in the blazing daylight, I couldn’t play with the longer exposure that would give the water that silky, ethereal look, but at a half an hour past dawn, the light was still low enough to get it, so I stopped for a while to play on my way to work. (Anybody want to spring for a neutral density filter for me? Anybody?) In truth, it’s not a bad way to start the day, and I was still at my desk by 7:15.

Here’s the mosaic for the month of April. It’s fun to see all the new stuff I tried this month!

1. 101:365 Falling water, 2. 100:365 Day 100!, 3. 99:365 Katie, 4. 98:365 Bee’s-eye view of daffodil (1 of 2), 5. 97:365 Feeling daffy, 6. 96:365 Hoser, 7. 95:365 Weedy, 8. 94:365 Flower vendors in the Market, 9. 93:365 Musical bokeh, 10. 92:365 Baby blankets, 11. 91:365 Bitter!, 12. 90:365 Hogsback Falls, 13. 89:365 Gears, 14. 88:365 Suburban sunrise, 15. 87:365 Pizza night, 16. 86:365 First wildflowers (1 of 3), 17. 85:365 Tristan in motion, 18. 84:365 Brothers, 19. 83:365 Mischief in the pantry, 20. 82:365 Easter candy, 21. 81:365 Colouring eggs for Easter, 22. 80:365 Selfie in granite, 23. 79:365 Orthodox, 24. 78:365 Winter’s last blast?, 25. 77:365 Beach in a bottle, 26. 76:365 Empty cradle, 27. 75:365 Rainy bokeh, 28. 74:365 Spring sun, 29. 73:365 Starbucks revisited, 30. 72:365 Just dropping by

Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a huge hat tip slobbery wet smooch of affection to longtime commenter Mrs Gryphon, who sent me the link to Pioneer Woman’s sets of free Photoshop actions (here’s one and two.) Ironically, I’d just discovered the Pioneer Woman website (funny, with gorgeous photography and great tips) but hadn’t made it to the PS action sets yet. If you know how to use actions, these provide instant and extremely satisfying photo pick-me-ups with just a few clicks, and they’re really fun to play with. I used them in the long shot of the daffodils, for instance, and in the portrait of Katie.

Hooray for finding the fun again!!

In the 95 days that I’ve been working on my 365 project (to take and post a photo every day) there were a few days near the beginning where I almost forgot, but for the most part, I haven’t come close to missing any days or thinking about throwing in the towel. Until this week. This week, I almost quit.

Mind you, I was tired and cranky and feeling overwhelmed in general, and I might have been considering throwing in the towel on a LOT of things that particular night, but the 365 was the one I was most frustrated with. Much like blogging, the damn project has taken on a life of its own, and much like the kids, demands way too much of my attention.

When I started out, I was simply taking pictures and uploading them. The picture-finding was the stressful part; once I had one, or sometimes a couple, that I liked I’d simply upload them directly to Flickr and into a few groups and I was done. Very occasionally I’d do a little crop, or a little adjustment after the fact, but rarely.

Then in March I discovered post production, and every photo was hauled in to Photoshop for adjusting of levels and curves and brightness and exposure. I started reading a couple of Scott Kelby books and figured out how to paint with light and use textures for layers and was blown away by how much fun I could have manipulating a photo. Then in early April I started shooting in RAW, and I was taking dozens, sometimes even hundreds of photos each day — all of which had to be reviewed and sorted, and then a couple of them selected for more labourious adjustments in Photoshop.

It was too much.

For one thing, I just don’t have that kind of time every single day. For another thing, I was getting extremely frustrated with every shot. I was suddenly aware of what my photos *could* look like, if only I could pry open Photoshop’s inscrutable tools and force it to do my bidding. But of course, I simply don’t have time to stop and learn how to do it properly. What I’d been doing — skimming through Kelby’s books and plucking out the occasional tutorial — works to a certain extent, but not when you’re trying to find the time between hauling your pre-toddler off the bookshelves he’s just scaled and empting the dishwasher and feeding the dog and, well, you know.

The other main reason I was getting frustrated is because I have made friends with some supremely talented people on Flickr and quite honestly, found my own work suffering by comparison. Beloved kindly pointed out that most of them are, in fact, professional photographers (and some very very talented amateurs!) and I am, at best, a dilettante. At least last time, when I was feeling anxious about getting my pictures in Explore, I could step back and see how ridiculous it was to be pining for esoteric bragging rights conferred by some random set of online intergers. This is more fundamental — the central question of whether my pictures are “good enough” and how to make them better. How to make them better without neglecting everything else that’s important in my life, that is.

Sigh. It’s been a lifelong motif for me: I’ve decided I want to do something, and now I want to be very good at it. Right now. Immediately. Why is it taking so long? Oh, and I must be good every single time, too. And I wonder where Tristan gets his perfectionist anxieties from?

So in the end, I didn’t quit. I’ve scaled back where I can, though. I’m back to shooting in jpeg for everyday, and I’ll switch to RAW on days when I know I’ll have more time to play. I’m trying to limit the post-processing and stick with whatever comes SOOC – straight out of the camera – wherever possible. And mostly, I’m trying to get out of my head and stop being so hard on myself.

This is the picture I took the day after I decided to quit and then not to quit. It’s a picture I’d been toying with in my head for a while, and frankly, I think it’s great. Nothing like success to buttress a faltering ego. It’s another try at shaped bokeh – the little music notes are actually just white LED Christmas lights in the background, and they have that shape because I’m holding a card with a music note cut out of it over my lens.

(Of course, it made me a little twitchy that this one didn’t garner enough attention to possibly be recognized by Explore, because I think it’s actually better than the one that did make Explore, but I was mostly able to repress that line of thinking and just enjoy the fact that I took a pretty picture.)

This next one was for the monthly scavenger hunt. The expression is priceless, but the colour is really messed up. Our laptop is set too bright, and all the manipulating I’ve been doing with the RAW images looks great on the laptop but looks awkward on other screens. Another reason to get back to basics, I guess.

(After that first face, by the way, he loved the lemon. No babies were harmed in the shooting of this picture!)

Here’s the rest of this week’s photos — kind of uninspiring, IMHO, but there’s always next week.

(We were at Hogsback Falls on Sunday afternoon and there were two maniacs KAYAKING down the falls, from the bridge right over the main drop. And I thought Project 365 was a harrowing hobby!)

So it seems like every week I have some new issue I’m sorting out with regard to this project. Are you guys at all interested in these philosophical ruminations on my motivations, or should I just put up the pictures and get out of the way, and keep my nouvelle-artiste angst to myself?