You know how some days you take 50 (erm, who am I kidding, two HUNDRED and fifty) shots, and you get about three keepers? Yesterday wasn’t one of those days. I knew it would be sunny and a good day to enjoy the fall colours, so I brought my little TtV contraption with me to work and went on a little walkabout. It took me three HOURS to sort, edit and process them, but in the end I still had more than 30 pictures I liked. Even in squishing some of them into collages, I still posted five pictures of the day yesterday. Photo overload!
(You just know that I’m going to be scrambling for even one decent image today. I think that’s why next year, I might do a 7*52 instead of a 365. Seven new pictures each week, instead of a new picture each day. We’ll see!)
This is the week I discovered the TtV collage, because if one through-the-viewfinder shot is good, two dozen of them is exquisitely good! Here’s my first one, taken last Friday in Ottawa’s Byward Market.
Then on the weekend, I went back to taking pictures with just one camera. We went for a little wander on the hiking trail at the Chapman Mills Conservation Area along the Rideau River on Saturday, and Lucas stopped to inspect every rock, leaf and flower along the way.
I had a hard time deciding between the traditional version, above, and this one. Sometimes, I find selective colouring actually detracts from a photo, but I liked the subtleness of the purple here. What do you think?
This may be one of the three best portrait pictures I have ever taken — and it’s not even my kid! This is Aiden, son of my dear friends and friend of my sons. Isn’t he going to break about a million hearts some day with those clear blue eyes?
I can feel the winter coming, with its monochromatic tones and faltering sunlight, so I think I’m on some kind of subconscious mission to squeeze every last bit of colour out of what Mother Nature offers right now. Like this crazy crab apple tree growing in our backyard.
I tried to make this one work as a TtV shot, too, but I liked the straight shot better. I spent the better part of one lunch hour poking around in the wet leaves under a pair of giant oaks in the park across from my office one day, looking for acorns… something I never would have done before the 365 project. As I said on Flickr, I think the 365 is making me a better person. It’s definitely giving me dirty pockets.
See that grainy quality? It’s called “noise”. That’s what happens when you leave your ISO on 1600 by mistake. And you can see it in this pinwheel shot taken the next day, too. It can add character to a shot, but I’m copping to this one as a lucky mistake!
All of the following pictures were taken yesterday. And if you think I should have worked harder to cull the flock, you haven’t seen the heap I almost posted but didn’t! I cancelled my bus pass thinking I’d be changing jobs sooner than this, and so was driving to work along Colonel By when I realized that I absolutely *had* to stop and take some pictures of the fall colours reflecting in the Rideau Canal. Another thing I never would have done before the 365! See?
And this one! (And, by the way? There are not nearly enough parking spots on Colonel By!)
I took about 30 pictures, both TtV and straight on with the Nikon. You’d think that would last me for the day, but on my coffee break I wandered past the Chateau Laurier and snapped a couple of TtV shots, because I think the dreamy retro fisheye effect makes the Chateau look even more like a fairy tale castle. (I like the one in the top left the best.)
And then, because it was still sunny and clear and blue, and the forecast is calling for rain followed by six months of winter, I went for a walk along the Canal at lunch time, too. (If nothing else, I’m at least getting my exercise with this damn photography habit!)
I took at least eleventy-hundred pictures, most of which I looked at later on the computer and said, “Wow! I really like that one!” and realized I had to start lumping them together into collages. This one is called “Perspectives on the Rideau Canal”.
And finally (if you made it this far, you’re a trooper!) here is my favourite collection and perhaps my favourite among faves in a week of fortuitous photography.
I don’t usually get a lot of comments on the 365 posts, and I can never tell if it’s because you’re yawning waiting for me to get over the pictures already, or if it’s because the nature of the posts don’t engage commentary like some of the other things I write about. Having said that, I’d really like your (non-obsessed) opinion on the TtV collages — are they too much? Do you think I should edit harder and just choose a single fave or two to post, or do you think they have a more-than-the-sum-of-the-parts synergy to them? And do you think I’ve finally lost it, using a word like synergy? Yeah, you can skip that last question…