Category: Photo of the Day

I had an idea setting out this week, that I would take nothing but black and white photos for a week, thus teaching myself to better see the type of images that best work in black and white. Ha! Perhaps I should not have chosen the MOST COLOURFUL week of the year to do that? Not only did I not take a week of black and white photos, I failed to take a single black and white image. Oh well, there’s always the deep dark heart of winter for that, right?

Because damn, it was a colourful week! Is it just me or are the fall colours both earlier and more vivid than usual? I was wondering if the drought this summer wouldn’t somehow lead to a lesser fall display but it seems to be just the opposite. See?

I took that one with my new favourite iPhone app, Pro HDR. I’ve tried to take a few actual HDR photos and I never like how they turn out. (HDR stands for high dynamic range, and the proper technique is to take several shots of the same scene and then blend them together so you can get the detail of the shadow parts of the image while preserving the colour in the brightest part of the photo. It’s frequently done badly and makes your images have weird glows and odd colours if you overcook them.) I like the results with the Pro HDR app, though, which takes two images and blends them together for you. I find the results quite natural looking.

The blending of the two images can have unintended results. I was trying to take a picture of a lovely sunset the other day with the Pro HDR app from the side of the road when a car inconveniently drove through just as the second shutter click was going off. I was a little annoyed until I saw the final result — the car was actually perfectly placed in the double exposure to give it this cool ghost-car effect. Happy fluke!

The Byward Market is pretty colourful right about now, too! (I know, I know, I take at a couple of sets like this every year. I can’t help myself. The colours are as delicious as the veggies!!)

I am fascinated by rural mailboxes and I find myself always on the lookout for interesting ones. I loved the fall vine climbing up this one!

Remember this summer when I rented a wide-angle lens for a week? I loved the results and have been coveting one of my own ever since. Through another happy fluke, one became available to me for a very affordable price this week, and since I’m going to need a wide angle lens to properly take in the world’s! largest! cruiseship! in a few weeks, it seemed like the Universe wanted me to have it. Expect to see a lot more ultra-wide angle shots in the next little while.

My late-blooming sunflower continues to thrive. I figure if she has the tenacity to bloom in October, the least I can do is make pretty pictures of her!

And last but definitely not least… this week we also managed a quick trip to a new (for us) apple orchard, Osgoode’s Log Cabin Orchard. It was late on Saturday afternoon before we got organized enough to go, and the light was a little flat for pictures. (Yes, a trip to the orchard is 60% about the photos and 40% about the apples for me.) The boys had dressed themselves and were not in what I’d consider photo friendly outfits. I’d pretty much decided this trip would be pretty much all about the apples and the adventure. And yet, the pictures were lovely. Different than previous apple picking adventures, but really lovely in their own way. See?

I’ve got a lot to be thankful for, and I’m wishing the same bounty of love and beautiful colours for your family’s Thanksgiving weekend!

This week’s photographs are brought to you by the letter F!

Lucas was having fun on his bike when I managed to get him to hold still for just a minute so I could get in front of him. F is for fun!

And he was definitely having fun with this cut-out on the lawn of Watson’s Mill last weekend. (I swear, I have no idea where the pose came from, but I nearly fell over laughing at him! For a four-year-old boy, he’s got a good grasp on what mothering should look like!) F is for Funny:

I keep trying to shoot more black and white photographs, but I keep getting seduced by the colours of autumn. I liked how this one turned out, even if they’re being a little less than cooperative with the faces. F is for Fence and Faces.

Speaking of the colours of autumn, F is for Farm Fence:

F is definitely for Fog. Shhhh, I may have been a little late for work last Monday when I got downtown and saw that rich, thick fog had completely enveloped the Parliament Buildings. You get the most magical light just when the fog is breaking up – that’s the rising sun throwing fire on to the windows of the East Block on Parliament Hill. What an incredibly beautiful morning it was!

Did I mention F is for Fall? (See, I just can’t stay away from the colour!)

F is for, ummmmmm, feet trodding on ancient roots? No, eh? How about F is for friends? F is for fiendishly cute?

F is for finished! 🙂

I downloaded some new textures this week and I’ve been having fun with them. Some textures are very subtle, but these ones are a little more obvious. What do you think of the texture use? Do you like the enhancement or do you think it takes away from the image? I try not to fall into the trap of using textures to apologize for an otherwise poorly taken shot, but do admit to using them to add oomph to a shot I find less than compelling.

I love Watson’s Mill in any light, but I may have nearly done it to death, so I thought the texture would add a little variety. There was already a lot of green and gold in this shot as the fall colours start to come up, so I desaturated it a bit more to even them up with the tones in the texture.

I used a texture from the same pack on these black-eyed susans. I’m still a little on the fence about how this came out. I tinkered with it for quite a while and then reverted to an earlier version. Oh the time I spend in Photoshop!

I used a bit of linen texture on this one to mask a tiny bit of motion blur. (In other words, what I just said I try not to do!)

Speaking of motion – I like this shot of Lucas in motion on the swing because it’s a bit of a different angle, but I absolutely adore the ee cummings quote I found to go along with it: “I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.”

Speaking of motion redux, we’ve been doing a lot of this lately. Zoom!

No sky and no motion, just an idea for a still life I’d been noodling since it’s back-to-school season.

And last but not least, yet another collage of fair pictures. Oh how we love our fairs! This one features an afternoon of fun with Granny at the Richmond Fair last Sunday. The theme of the day was definitely squirt gun races – that’s Granny taking aim in the upper right, but it was Simon in the bottom frame who stole the day by winning against a full table not once but twice, earning his choice of any prize. We’re now calling him Old MacSimon Had a Farm!

I loved Justin’s comment on Flickr – “That’s the smile of a man proud of his accomplishments.” Indeed!

Light can make the difference between an ordinary photo and an extraordinary one. The irony is that, especially with natural light, light is fickle and transient. A cloud can obscure light (and sunlight filtered through the very edge of a cloud can be truly magical) and light changes as the sun moves through the sky. I’ve walked by the same scene or object a dozen times and then one day the light will be hitting it just right and suddenly I have to stop and take a picture – like with this classic car. (Okay, truth be told, it was the shiny bits that got me to stop walking and take a good look, but the light made me stay and take a few pictures while I was there.) I love the play of the light on the chrome and the deep shadows and even the way the leaves dapple the light on the hood.

As I was tying to get a good picture of these crab-apples, the light kept coming in and out from behind a cloud. When the sun hit the apples, it seemed to have an almost fairy-tale like vibe to it, but when the sun was behind the cloud it was flat and boring — just some fallen apples. I like the glow from this one, but I wish I’d taken the time to close down my aperture just a bit more to get more of the apples in focus, maybe to about half way toward the tree trunk.

I’d had the idea for this shot in my head for a while and one day during dinner I noticed how the setting sun was hitting the tree and treehouse. Tristan was happy to help me out with this one! I like how the light makes a sort of natural vignette that almost looks like softbox lighting.

Sometimes, it’s about the lack of light! This was me caught in the parking lot of the grocery store last week during a downpour, trying to decide how badly I needed to get into the store to do the weekly shopping. It was such a flat, dreary day that this quick snap taken for the purposes of whining about the rain on Facebook was the only photo I took all day. But it does have a certain abstract je-ne-sais-quoi, right? 😉

This one wasn’t about the light, but I was conscious of it when I put the elements of this one together on the way to Lucas’s first (sniff) day of school this week. I wanted the bus in the background for the school vibe, but the sun was bright and contrasty and his face would have been full of messy shadows, so I pulled him forward just enough to put him in the shade of a conveniently-placed telephone pole.

And this wasn’t about the light at all, but how could I resist posing my menfolk at the crest of the hill at Mooney’s Bay? We are definitely coming back here for more photos!

Alternate shot – I had a hard time choosing between these two for the photo of the day:

And some shots are not about the light at all, but just about catching those sweet moments that you know will be gone in a blink. I blogged about this one earlier in the week.

Ironic post-script to the bike story? Simon’s bike is in the repair shop. Shortly after I wrote the blog post, the gears jammed up again and the chain wouldn’t stay on. Oh well, we’ll get him up and rolling before the snow flies – I hope!

Autumn light is warm and flattering. You should get out and chase some light of your own! 🙂

And suddenly it was September. Even though summer is still with us for another couple of weeks, it’s hard not to see the beginning of September as the end of summer. We had a pretty good time celebrating the end of summer this week!

Don’t believe summer is over yet? Try telling Mother Nature! (I love how this came out with the brush stroke textures – thinking this one needs some wall space somewhere!)

I love to quote Mark Twain on golf, about how it’s the ruin of an otherwise lovely afternoon’s walk, but I can’t say I have the same disinterest in putt putt. I’ve always loved it, but it’s only now that all three boys are old enough to actually play. We went to MiniGolf Gardens on Merivale on a sunny Saturday afternoon, which meant it was crazy busy – but even then we played two full rounds of 18 holes and found it a great way to spend an afternoon.

Another great way to spend an afternoon is to head up to Kelly’s Landing on River Road and get ice cream cones to enjoy while you sit by the Rideau and covet other people’s boats.

When you’re on a bit of an obsessive mission to wring every last bit of enjoyment out of summer, a stop at the park is in order as well.

And then, it was the first day of school. Grade 5, Grade 3, and Junior Kindergarten — I can’t believe all three boys are officially in school now. I like how someone commented on this picture on Flickr that all three boys were smiling, but in three very different ways.

They tolerate the posed pictures, but the outtakes are always my favourites. 🙂

Last year was the summer of Uno on the porch, but this year our game of choice was Yahtzee. Many happy hours were spent rolling the dice this summer. (Shhhh, don’t tell the boys they were working on their math skills the whole time!)

This is the sky over Manotick as the sun rose on Friday morning, pretty much exactly how it looked – no filters, no post-processing. The colours were amazing!

As much as I adore summer, I have to admit that there’s a wee tiny part of me that’s relieved about the return to routine that September brings. What do you think? Are you happy to be back to routine, or would you stay in summer mode forever if you could? Or is there no big change from August into September for you?

Wait, what? It’s September already? How the heck did that happen?

This past week was a bit of a disappointment in some ways. I’d booked the week off ages ago, way back in the spring, knowing we had no child care and that Beloved would be back at work. I figured the boys and I could have a week to do all the fun stuff we never got around to doing for the rest of summer, and blow out the last week of summer together in style. Then the flu mowed us down like dandelions. The boys were each sick for a day or two and I, who haven’t had so much as a cold in more than a year, was knocked completely on my ass for a couple of days. So while we still had fun, it didn’t quite live up to the week I’d been planning. (Then again, does it ever?)

When you’re really feeling out of it, there’s always the old typewriter to pull out an interesting picture or two. No need to leave the bed for this one!

By Sunday I was up enough for a walk into the village for ice cream, with a stop at the wonderful Dickinson House museum. This beaver pelt hat is pretty much the reason Canada exists.

On Monday, I fulfilled a longstanding promise (and a coupon!) by finally trekking out to Funhaven with the boys. I was very, very impressed, not just with the facilities and the prices, but also with the self-serve frozen-yogurt bar, the Deal or No Deal game (addictive!), and the fact that they not only let me bring my coffee (that I was clutching in a rather talismanic manner) but commented on it and absolved me of my guilt in trying to smuggle it in. Loved Funhaven, we’ll be back soon!

On Tuesday, we drove down a little south of Kemptville to another new adventure, a visit at Saunders Country Critters Zoo. You might remember hearing about them when their wallaby escaped a few years ago during a storm. I have mixed feelings about roadside zoos like this one. On the one hand, the boys love seeing the animals, and watching the owner/keeper interact with the animals at feeding time, it’s clear they’re well loved and cared for. On the other hand, well, animals aren’t meant to be penned up like this. We did have a great time – it’s a mellow little place, perfect for a wander on a quiet summer morning.

Wednesday was reserved for dental appointments. Be happy that I left the picture-taking to the dental hygienist. But oy, there is nothing like three hygiene appointments (and six follow-up appointments for various bits of work) to make you drop to your knees and thank god for your health insurance plans. And also, butterflies!

Oops! This was on the itinerary for the week, but we never did get around to it. But I found this photo in my phone from last week. That counts, right? Ceremonial Guard, marching past the Chateau Laurier on their way to the changing of the guard on Parliament Hill.

Fog, fences and sunrise, because even though I’ve wandered from the theme of summer fun, they are irresistible to me and my camera.

Not the quite the week I’d planned, but looking back it was a pretty good week anyway, if you look past the coughing and the kleenex. I can’t believe school starts back this week – this was an amazing summer but yeesh, it sure flew by quickly.

So how was YOUR summer?

And the theme in this week’s pictures shall be, “Oh look over there! Something colourful!” *snap*

When I took a photo course earlier this summer, I mentioned that I spent most of the time with my 50 mm f1.4 lens on my camera. I adore that lens! The instructor said a simple way to push your creative limits is to change up your perspective by using a different lens for a while, so this week I carried around my beast of a 35-70mm f2.8 lens on my camera instead. The 50mm weights 229 grams (about 8 oz) and the 35-70 mm weighs literally three times that at 660-odd grams. In fact, the lens weighs almost as much as the camera! All that to say, um, I’m not sure what I was trying to say after I googled all the camera and lens specs. Maybe that my left side is now stronger because that’s where I carry my camera? Or that my door frames now have larger divots from when I bump into them with the camera (you’d cringe if you saw how often I did that.) Um, no, it was that I did in fact find it useful to change up my perspective a little bit, despite the sore left arm.

But first, an iPhone picture – this one has no special filters or post-processing. The clouds really did look just like this over a farm out in the rural south as I looped my way out to Stittsville the back way on the weekend.

I came across this guy playing with his nuts on a stump and loved how he was perfectly silhouetted against the sun on the river behind him – and that he was nice enough to freeze in terror just long enough for me to snap a shot!

Now that summer is creeping into fall, the morning fog is often thick between Manotick and the airport, where I found this cow noshing on some wildflowers.

I was driving to work past the Rideau Canoe Club one morning and the colourful kayaks caught my eye from Hogs Back Road, so I pulled in and started poking around with my camera. Oooo, colourful! (Beloved and I want to get a canoe one of these days. Any advice for finding a good one that’s big enough for a family of five but would still be maneuverable by one early riser with a camera?)

I walked by this downtown, got about fifteen feet down the sidewalk and went back for the picture. I mean, I know I ate a lot in Mexico last week, but don’t you think this is a little personal?

I bought this adorable little bottle and wire basket set for less than $10 at my new favourite antiques and reproductions store, Gendron’s Antiques in Stittsville. OMG, how have I driven past this a hundred times on Carp Rd and never noticed the giant red barn? I also bought a barn star for my porch and made a wish list about as long as my arm. The yellow flowers are from my garden, about the only thing that survived the drought.

This is by far my favourite photo of the week. We went to the scaled-down SuperEx at the Rideau Carleton Raceway last weekend, and mid-morning on a Saturday you can see how busy it wasn’t.

It cost us $16 for the boys to win a $5 Pokemon stuffie, but getting this photo was worth every penny… and seeing the big boys happily let Lucas keep the stuffie, and Lucas sleeping with the darn thing every night this week, makes it just about perfect.

We interrupt this series of post filled with pictures from Mexico to bring you — a post filled with pictures from Mexico.

Since I took about 500 pictures this week (literally! Thank goodness we’re not shooting film anymore!), and since everything about the resort was all-inclusive and ridiculously decadent, about my toughest decision every day was which photo was going to make the cut as the photo of the day. It’s a rough life, I tell ya.

The week actually started in Ottawa, although that now seems like a hundred years ago. Is it just me or are we being overrun by Queen Anne’s Lace flowers this year? They’re the dandelions of August, but they’re really quite lovely, especially on the shores of the St Lawrence river.

Phew, managed to squeeze in one picture of at least one of the kids this week. 😉

And then, suddenly, I was in Mexico! This is a little fishing village called Puerto Morales. The lighthouse in the foreground was damaged by a hurricane in 1967 and has been leaning like that ever since. You can see the new(er) lighthouse they built to replace it in the background.

Each morning I was in the Mayan Riviera, I woke up before the sun was up and stalked the sunrise on the beach with my camera. There was rarely anyone else on the beach, and it was blessedly cooler first thing in the morning (only 40C with the humidex, instead of the 45C and higher it would feel like later in the day. (I loved the weather forecast for the week I was there: daily highs of 32C with 100% humidity, nightly lows of 30C with 100% humidity.) Anyway, of the 500 pictures I took, probably more than half were a variation of the sun rising out of the Caribbean Sea.

On the last full day we were in Mexico, we went on a tour of the Mayan ruins at Tulum. I’ll write a full blog post about it later, because it was truly one of my favourite parts of the trip. This 3000 year old temple perches on top of a limestone cliff overlooking the crashing waves of the azure Caribbean sea. It is absolutely breathtaking. This photo made the cut as “photo of the day” because I took it with my iPhone and I hadn’t gotten around to uploading any of the Nikon pictures by the end of the day.

And then, just like that, four days were past and it was done. I took this one on my last morning on the beach, because I was feeling silly. It totally sums up the week, though!

Can you believe that after landing in Ottawa at 11 pm on Thursday, I was at my desk for 7 am on Friday? Talk about culture shock! I had eaten so! much! food! during the week that I thought a walk at lunch time might be a good idea. I was actually wondering whether I’d even bother trying to find a new picture for Friday or would just use one of the travel photos when I crossed the Corktown Bridge over the Rideau Canal and thought a shot down the Canal toward downtown would make a nice, quick photo. As I was leaning on the rail, I noticed first one, then a handful, then dozen and dozens of padlocks. I was so curious that I googled it on the spot, and found out locks on bridges is a “thing” now. They’re called Lover’s Locks:

“The tradition wherein lovers fasten a padlock to a bridge or other permanent structure and then dispose of the key, representing an everlasting commitment, is believed to have originated in China. But the practice gained renown in Rome in recent years after Italian novelist Federico Moccia wrote in his 2006 book I Need You about a couple attaching a lock to the third lamp post of Milvian Bridge. The “love locks” have become a common sight on bridges, fences, and poles in cities across Europe, North America and Asia — and now they are here in Ottawa, as well.”

How sweet is that?

There is endless beauty to be captured on white sandy beaches beside azure seas, but there is a different kind of beauty right here at home. 🙂

The nice thing about taking three full weeks of vacation, more or less, is that you manage to work through your mental lists of all the things you have to do AND most of the things you want to do and by the time the third week is puttering to an end, you actually find yourself with some idle time on your hands. I think this week’s photos reflect that — a lot of these were just me playing with the camera and having fun.

I wanted to practice using my flash but none of the kids were in the mood to play model, so I made myself a still life instead, then decided it needed a little extra seasoning with some layers of texture. I like the vintage vibe, except for the Ikea flowers (and now that I think of it, that’s an Ikea tin watering can as well!) Let’s call it big box vintage!

I was also using the flash at one point with these cherries, but I didn’t like the effect. I brought them outside onto the porch and liked the natural light version much better. Baby steps, right? Also enhanced with a bit of texture.

My only portraits this week were of Shauna’s gorgeous family. I don’t know why I’m so lucky in that all of my portrait clients are such sweet, fun people, but the streak continues. I liked so many of the photos from this family portrait session that I couldn’t choose just one for the photo of the day, so I made a storyboard instead. Are they not adorable? And so playful and fun!

Willie was not having fun. Willie was trying to nap in a warm corner of my room. I had other ideas.

I headed back to work for a few days this week, and was compensated for the early-morning wake-ups by some amazing foggy mornings during my commute. Here’s three shots taken over two mornings. (Heh, can you believe the middle one was taken through the open passenger window as I waited at the Timmy’s drive-through in Manotick? I’m telling you, there is nowhere that I am not looking around for interesting pictures, even at 6 am waiting for my first coffee!)

I’ll leave you with this sunny shot.

Does anything say “happy summer” like yellow flowers peeking through a white picket fence on a summer day? Speaking of sunny, stay tuned for what I hope is a week full of sunny shots from the Mayan Riviera. Two days and counting!! 🙂

I like to think I’m pretty comfortable with my camera by now. I know my aperture from my exposure compensation. I know how to take a decent picture of the cat and a flower and a child running full tilt away from the camera. The one thing that continues to intimidate and elude me, however, is how to properly use my flash.

The flash is one of the first accessories we bought to use with my D40, way back in 2009. I think I used it about four times and gave up when it made everything look like a deer caught in headlights. I took a workshop at Henry’s and realized I was supposed to take it off camera, but that my camera wasn’t properly equipped to take advantage of that functionality, so I lost interest again. When I upgraded to the D7000 last year, I figured I’d solved the problem and pulled out the flash again, and even bought myself an umbrella kit. And my flash pictures? Still sucked. I started researching and reading, internalizing concepts like guide numbers and the inverse square law and balancing ambient light.

I ran into a bit of a circular dilemma. Books and magazines and blogposts are good for some theory, but you really just gotta get out there and take the pictures. But when I looked at the pictures, they sucked and I was discouraged. So I started looking around at photographers I admired here in Ottawa, wondering if I could approach someone to do some mentoring, or maybe just sit down with me for a day and walk me through the basics. And that’s when I stumbled across a workshop at Harry Nowell’s studio for on-location portrait lighting. Eureka! This was EXACTLY what I wanted. I was so excited I tried to register on the spot – and found out it had just sold out. I was so disappointed, and equally delighted when a few weeks later Harry said they’d be offering a second workshop in the summer. I’ve been patiently waiting ever since.

The workshop was three days this week, and the instructor was Ottawa photojournalist and wedding photographer Blair Gable. If you ever get the chance to work with Blair, as a client or as a student, do it. He’s a good teacher, probably one of the best I’ve had in various photo classes over the years. But more compelling for me, he specializes in exactly what I love most about photography – people and storytelling. We spent a couple of hours in the class looking at some of his work for Reuters and Macleans, and discussing both how and why he chose to light them they way he did. And then we had to (gasp!) get out of our chairs and actually take some pictures.

This was the first time I worked with a professional model, and it was a lovely change of pace to be photographing someone who was not actively trying to resist me. And I didn’t have to bribe her with Oreos or video games, either. On the other hand, knowing she had probably posed for more than a few photographers who didn’t forget key steps like actually turning on the flash was more than a little intimidating, as was working while being watched by three classmates and the teacher. (Funny, by fluke the class comprised all female students – I’ve never been in a photo class or workshop with just women before!) This is the most successful of a few shots I took during the class. The flash is behind her, providing what was supposed to be gentle rim lighting to separate her from the background but I kind of overcooked it a bit.

Learning how to balance the ambient light and the flash was one of the major goals I had for the class, so I could make photos like this one I took the next day in during our most excellent Wakefield adventure.

While I got the exposure right (and Simon is awfully cute) I think the overall composition worked better in this one, which is why I ultimately chose it as the photo of the day.

I’ve been thinking about this shot ever since I attended the Joe McNally workshop (also on the use of flashes) a month ago. My dad has such character in his face, with the fur and the lines, and I wanted to use a flash to bring that out in an interesting way. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it looks. My sweet dad sat through probably 50, maybe closer to 100 shots as I moved the flash around, tried shooting through and reflecting out of an umbrella, rolled paper into snoots and even tried diffusing with a piece of tissue. I could not for the life of me get the shot I wanted, and he was so patient with me the whole time. There’s something to be said for still being Daddy’s Girl well into your forties. 🙂

In addition to being a week of fascinating lessons and flash photography, it was the last of three weeks of vacation for me (well, for now. More on that later.) So we did some fun stuff like visiting the splash pad in Barrhaven to chill out.

And we made another little day trip (how grateful am I that my boys are good in the car) down to Morrisburg to check out what turned out to be a very boring antique show and a very interesting St Lawrence River shoreline.

A sunflower, because I simply can’t resist them.

And last but certainly not least, a fun shot from a funny family porch portrait session this week. On one of the hottest days in 2011 I chased this little guy around a park for portraits, and this year it was blessedly cooler when he and his family came out to the porch for photos. He really wasn’t much more interested in standing still for the camera now than he was a year ago, though!

(He’s chasing the bubbles that you can just make out over his head. There is something about this posture that I absolutely adore. Three year olds are my muse and my nemesis in equal photographic measure!)

Now I just have to commit to learning to use my flash with the same ease and comfort with which I use natural light. If you see Willie squinting and twitching a lot in the next little while, you’ll know it has less to do with Lucas chasing him all over the house and more to do with being glareblinded by me. 🙂