Category: Photo of the Day

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!!

Holy cats, it’s been more than six weeks since I posted an update about my thousand picture project! Don’t worry, I haven’t stopped taking pictures — far from it! While I haven’t quite kept up the 365 project pace of one photo every single day, I’ve still been carrying my camera with me and truly loving the act of taking pictures.

See, here’s what six weeks’ worth of Thousand Picture Project looks like:

1. 447:1000 Wake up lilacs! (TtV), 2. 446:1000 Bleeding hearts TtV, 3. 445:1000 Tulip sunshine TtV, 4. 444:1000 NRC shiny ball TtV, 5. 443:1000 April is Fickle, 6. 442:1000 Tulip macro abstract, 7. 441:1000 Tulips to the sky, 8. 440:1000 At the firestation TtV, 9. 439:1000 Hello spring TtV, 10. 438:1000 Book club, 11. 437:1000 Calypso tour – Pirate’s Aquaplay TtV, 12. 436:1000 Puzzle bokeh, 13. 435:1000 A little daff action, 14. Boots on the beach, 15. 434:1000 Hello rock!, 16. 432:1000 Splash TtV, 17. 431:1000 Toddlers on the beach, 18. 430:1000 (Almost) Happy Bench Monday TtV, 19. 429:1000 Spring at the park TtV, 20. 428:1000 Tristan at the Farm, 21. 427:1000 TtV Daff, 22. 426:1000 Baby Everitt (1 of 10), 23. 425:1000 Happy Easter!, 24. 424:1000 After the sidewalk paint, 25. 423:1000 Newborn toes!, 26. 422:1000 Katie TtV, 27. 421:1000 Just ducky, 28. 420:1000 Mancala TtV, 29. 419:1000 Daddy kiss, 30. 418:1000 Lucas on the loose

You’ve already seen a lot of these already, my Calypso Park pictures and my amazing day at the lake with Angela and my first family portrait shoot with the adorable baby Everitt. Here’s a few more of my favourites from the last month or so.

He’s two now, and soon I won’t be able to take these kinds of pictures of his adorable toddler parts. It makes me nostalgic for something that I haven’t even lost yet…

I love the light in this one, and how they’re staring right into each other’s eyes. (At least he’s finally learned to kiss with his mouth shut.)(I’ll let you figure out which “he” I mean.)

I love this one a little bit because of the picture itself, but mostly because it makes me laugh when I remember that night. I’d found the puzzle in a closet and figured he was about the right age for it. I had no idea he’d become instantly obsessed with it. For more than an hour (and may I remind you, an hour in toddler time = three years in grown-up time!) we worked our way through the alphabet over and over again. “Where does the A go?” he would ask in the most adorable little singsong voice. And then he’d answer himself, without pausing for breath, “I don’t know! Oh, right there!” Then he’d show me the next letter and I’d tell him it was a K and he’d repeat, “Where does the K go? I don’t know! Oh, right there!” For AN HOUR. Way too cute for words or pictures!

And then the flowers started blooming and I was delighted. I love love love how these tulips came out. I made the sky that vaguely turquoise colour with a Photoshop action called Urban Acid that I use sometimes in my TtV stuff. The colours really work well together, don’t they?

This is the same day, but with a close-up filter on my lens. (One of the things I love about the Thousand Picture Project, as opposed to the 365 Project, is that I can take five good pictures on one day and then dole them out as the picture of the day for most of a week. Yes, I’m aware that they are capricious and arcane rules that nobody cares about except me. But I’m okay with that.)

And, I have been having a LOT of fun with TtV lately. All the gorgeous flowers I “discovered” last year during my 365 project are now equally engaging through the viewfinder of my trusty old Duaflex. See?

Okay, so that bottom right one is not really a flower. It’s the giant sphere sculpture on the National Research Council campus on Montreal Road. Doesn’t it look like an alien spacepod or something?

Speaking of through-the-viewfinder, last week I scored an old Starflex camera and I can’t wait to start taking pictures with it. I have to wait, though, because it had an exposed roll of film in it (!!) when I bought it, and I’ve handed it over to a friend with a film lab in his basement to see if it can be processed. How cool is that? I’ll let you know if anything — develops. (har har har, I slay me — I’m here all week, try the veal!)

You might have noticed I haven’t been putting up a weekly post with my pictures lately. That’s because I’ve gotten a little lazy with the picture-every-day concept. (As you might also have noticed, I’ve gotten a little lazy with the blog-post-every-day concept, too. I wish I could tell you it’s because my house is now sparkling clean, or that I’ve been diverted by something else equally engaging, but no. I’ve just been a slacker.)

But I am feeling all fired up and excited about photography again, in the lull that has followed the end of the 365 project. Guess what I’ll be doing for 11 weeks this spring-into-summer? I’ve registered for a course called “Beyond the Basics” with SPAO (the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa.) How awesome is that? I am beyond excited, and get a little giddy each time I think about it!

Here’s a bit of the precis:

Areas of study will include: mastering camera controls, using light evocatively, understanding composition, controlling colour, file management, digital darkroom manipulation, and inkjet printing procedures.

Gallery visits, discussions and lectures will inform you of the history of photography and create an awareness of the many genres of contemporary photography. Students will be encouraged to pursue a personal mode of expression such as portraiture, landscape, architecture, still life, etc. and build a portfolio of images. Assignment work will be evaluated on a one-to-one basis providing feedback on technical skills and aesthetic vision.

It’s been a looong time since I’ve taken a photography course. Maybe a decade or so ago, I took an Intro to SLR or something type course through Algonquin. Here’s how long ago it was: I didn’t even own a digital camera yet, and we had to submit all our assignments on slides. Seems positively chisel-and-tablet from today’s perspective!!

Over the course of the last year or so, I think I’ve read at least 20 books on photography, not to mention the various online resources I’ve perused. What I’ve really yearned for, though, was that one-on-one critical evaluation and feedback. And the best part is that the course is Friday nights through May, June and July — is there any better time to be hanging out down in the Market with my camera? Seriously, I am giddy!!

Okay, and back to the present, here’s what I’ve been seeing lately.

You already saw the Star Wars post, but seriously, how often do you get to take your kids’ portrait with Darth Maul? I thought it bared repeating.

(Shhh, don’t tell, but it’s a fake TtV. It was actually a crummy shot — drives me crazy that after all this time with a camera, I can still freeze up at key moments! — and I’d thought that a little TtV treatment would enhance the inherent geek factor. It works, I think!)

You’ve also seen this one from the NAC’s Mysterioso show, but I am so pleased with the movement captured in Maestro Everly’s hands that I’ll risk repeating myself with this one, too!

This is my nephew, Noah, up for a visit for Tristan’s birthday. Isn’t he adorable?

And speaking of adorable, here’s Lucas playing coy during our sugar bush adventure during the March Break:

And speaking of sugar bushes, a mosaic from our trip to the Log Farm. Maple syrup – from tree to taffy!

I really love how this picture of Snowball, my friends’ cat, turned out. I called “You vex me, human with camera. Or, you would vex me if I could muster enough energy to care.” I think that about sums it up!

This is one of those random finds where I was delighted to have my camera with me to capture. This guy must really love Volvos. And yes, as a matter of fact I did take this picture entirely so I could give it a punny title. Because, as I said, ‘He’s primarily a Volvo driver.’ Primarily, get it? Red, yellow, blue? Primary colours? I slay me.

I took this picture of the butt ends of the crayons because everyone is always showcasing the pointy ends of the crayons, while the butt ends are just as colourful and they’re nice and round, too. Help stop the repression, give equal admiration to the crayon butts!

I didn’t take this picture this week. In fact, I took it back in August, and I didn’t even like it enough to post it to Flickr. But I found it this week, and I really liked the light and the green-ness of it. Maybe it’s because I’m pining for summer? Regardless, I gave it a poke or two in Photoshop and decided it needed its own day in the sun, so to speak.

And finally, a little through-the-viewfinder love to finish off the post. I wonder if I’ll be able to work TtV into any of my assignments at SPAO this summer? I love how the colours pop, and I got down low and close to his feet to give it the vaguely distorted perspective. It turned out great, but I can now see that it’s time to clean the Duaflex, all I can see is the dirt! (There was some debate on Flickr as to whether I should in fact remove the dust or not. Many said nay, but I find it a little too distracting.)

Regardless of the dust, how much cuter could he possibly be with his red cap and blue jeans and sheepskin jacket? Damn, my toddler is cooler by half than I’ll ever be!

So I have to admit, I haven’t exactly been taking pictures every day. Some days I take a dozen pictures, and some sad days, I don’t even touch my camera at all. (Well, that’s not quite true. I still lug the poor thing around with me everywhere I go, I just don’t always remember to stick it to my face as obsessively as I did all through last year.)

Aside from birthday parties, here’s some of the other ways beauty crept into my life in the last couple of weeks.

Discovering the toddler’s secret lair under the kitchen table was a treat, for instance.

And speaking of treats, we had a family dinner at a friend’s place recently, where she endeared the kids to her forever with a make-yer-own-cupcake dessert. I’m surprised the boys didn’t pack their bags to go live with her on the spot!

Beauty hides in the oddest places. I found the light falling on these dirty towels irresistible!

After that I entered what will now be known for all time as Dani’s Late Winter Tulip Period. (Yanno, like Picasso’s Blue Period?) I got a bouquet of tulips to welcome my folks home from a trip and filched a few, then got a surprising amount of photographic mileage out of them in the subsequent week. Who knew tulips were so versatile?

You’ve got yer tulips with a texture overlay here:

You’ve got yer through-the-viewfinder tulips here…

… and here:

And then you’ve got yer straight-up-with-a-side-of-overexposure here:

If you were paying attention, you might have noticed an earlier version of this shot a few weeks back in TtV format. I particularly like this one because I finally managed to get the white background exposed well enough that it more or less disappears into the background.

Sometimes, the simple shots become your favourites. I like this one because it tells a whole story, and invites you to ask a little bit more too.

The weather around here has been uncannily beautiful lately, and we’ve been taking every opportunity to play outside where we can enjoy it. This is what springtime looks like in suburban Ottawa:

It’s been a lovely couple of weeks!

The big boys are at an age where they can really enjoy the Olympic Fever that’s sweeping the nation. They had a whole week-long build up at school last week, and we’ve been watching events throughout the week. In fact, one of my prouder moments as a parent was last Tuesday morning. I was just on my way out the door to work at 7:00 am when I realized they were watching the rebroadcast of Alexandre Bilodeau’s gold medal podium ceremony. I explained that they had to stand for the national anthem (Beloved teases me that I insist on this!) and choked up when they began to sing it out loud. It was a great little moment.

All that to say, this is what Olympic fever looks like at our house:

(I swear, I did *not* dress him in that outfit. That was entirely his own doing. No, really!)

Beyond the Olympics, we’ve had remarkably pleasant winter conditions around here. Sunlight and shadow on snow is a surprisingly hard combination to manage, though.

This one was a near-miss. I’m having issues with the colour levels on my laptop (it’s on my to-do list) and I thought that’s what made this one look a little less than crisp in focus. Turns out it was just out of focus! Oh well. (The point, btw, was mardi gras beads for Mardi Gras. And no, I’m not telling you how I ‘earned’ these!)

And finally this week, did you know raspberries come in yellow, too? This colour filled me with longing for spring and summer far more than an ordinary pint of red raspberries might have!

The theme for this week’s pictures was definitely colour. Maybe I’m pining for spring, but everywhere I looked this week I saw colours begging to be photographed. Like these kiddie bowls from Ikea. In 365 days of being desperate for something, anything to photograph, during which I used these bowls every single day, it never once occurred to me to photograph them. Guess that’s as good as a justification for the Thousand Picture Project as any, right?

(Amy, I posted this one just for you, so you could continue to covet my “vintage” circa 2002 and no-longer-available round Ikea bowls! *wink*)

These are Lucas’s favourite toy right now. I love how you can see which colours he prefers by how worn the tips are!

I was on a bit of a crayon and colouring kick, as you can see in this triptych.

Speaking of Lucas, you’ve seen this one already but he’s so adorable it merits reposting, no?

And further speaking of Lucas, here’s the a montage of his birthday shots from this week.

I really like this last shot. I’d bought the old-fashioned beaters at a flea market this summer, thinking they’d make an excellent prop for the dry days in the 365 project. I pulled them out a handful of times, but none of the shots seemed to work.

Last Sunday morning, I was baking a cake for Lucas’s birthday and the light from my north-facing kitchen was really delicious. I’d been using electric beaters, but suddenly this shot appeared in my head so I set it up. It turned out almost exactly as I planned, with the warm tones of the wood and the soft light, the fuzziness of the beaters contrasting the sharpness in the glass measuring cup.

The picture turned out much better than the cake, in fact. My first try at from-scratch cream cheese icing (first time I’d ever made icing not from a can, in fact!) turned out rather meh. Turns out I’m a better photographer than a baker.

I think I can live with that.

Now that I’m officially done the 365 project, I don’t carry my camera quite so obsessively as I did before. And yet, I still feel the need to take a picture most days, so the subject matter this week is largely skewed to the close at home.

That’s why you get pictures like this one of Tristan, using the brand new tablet and animation program he got for Christmas. He took to it like a fish to water, and when I commented my amazement on the Flickr picture, a friend said, “Well, of course he’s not afraid of computers and technology. It’s everywhere in his world. You’re not afraid of the refrigerator, are you?” Fave analogy of the year!

Did I mention Lucas loves Sesame Street?

Of course, since it was his birthday, this week’s pictures focus on Simon in particular:

This is my favourite picture of the week, maybe of the month. I saw the light and how it was falling on them and had to move quickly, as I knew they wouldn’t be still for long. I just missed backing up far enough to catch the book at the bottom of the frame, but that’s okay, this one is still close enough to perfect for me.

This is why taking pictures makes me happy! (Coming up with titles for these posts? Not so much!)

Welcome to the first official post of the Thousand Picture Project! Since the vast majority of you said you like these posts, and since I like doing them, and since I don’t have anything else for today (and just maybe because I’m thumbing my nose at the few of you who said you didn’t like them!), why not?

And, let’s be honest: one of the reasons I wanted to do this post today is so I could brag about this picture. Remember on Tuesday how it was crazy warm, about 15C above the normal temps for January? That was the day I had my interview on All in a Day, and on the way home the heavy clouds that had been crowding the sky all day parted and we had this beautiful sunset. A perfect end to a lovely day.

Then a couple of days later, I got an e-mail from — wait for it! — Ian Black of the CBC, saying “sorry I missed you at the studio the other day, next time say hi.” *blush* And then he went on to say he’d noticed this picture and could he have my permission to use it on the evening weathercast on the CBC news!!!! He used it on last night’s broadcast, and when Simon heard him introduce the photo and give me credit, he yelled at the TV “Hey, that’s my MOM’s name!!!” Talk about positive reinforcement!

It’s funny, but even though I’m still taking a picture every day, I’m feeling a whole lot more relaxed about the whole thing. For instance, I’ve taken three days’ worth of pictures to follow this hyacinth as it blooms. I don’t think I would have dedicated three days in the same week to a single subject before.

And man, does my house ever smell terrific right now!

On the other end of nature’s spectrum, this was the view from my office window yesterday afternoon during one of those snow squalls. I used the bricks to frame the picture, but also to give a little perspective as to exactly how blustery it was.

And finally, a picture that is more or less responsible for me deciding to continue on with a daily picture project. I’d had the idea of taking a picture of jacks in my head way back in the beginning of the project, but the boys didn’t actually have any. We got some in a loot bag from a birthday party early in January, but they disappeared before I could include them in my 365. The box reappeared in the days between the end of the 365 and the decision to continue with the daily pictures, and I was happy to finally get the picture I’d (more or less) had in my head all along.

I really enjoyed taking these pictures. I’m glad I decided to continue!

So are you getting tired of the 365 posts yet? I’m pretty sure this will be the last one. Well, kind of.

First, I wanted to share with you the very exciting (for me!) news that I’ll be on All in a Day on CBC Radio One tomorrow afternoon, talking to Alan Neal about the end of the 365 project. You might remember I was on the show back in July with former host Adrian Harewood, when I hit the half way point. On Wednesday, the last day of the project, I was driving around town listening to CBC (as always!) and thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder if it would seem needy of me if I pinged my friends at CBC and said, “So, just by the way, I’m done that 365 project…” but promptly forgot all about it. Until, that is, I opened my e-mail the next morning and there they were, wondering if I wanted to come back and chat about the big finale. So of course I said yes!

I’ll be on tomorrow afternoon, right after the 3:30 news. That also happens to be, I know from my CBC Radio addiction, just after Alan checks in with Ian Black on the weather. Dare I hope to meet both Alan, to whom I’ve been listening since back in the Ottawa Noon days, AND Ian Black? Squeeee!

Ahem, anyway, beyond my schoolgirl crushes on a good number of CBC Radio and TV personalities, I have more news. Well, sort of news.

It took about three days for me to really start missing the daily picture routine. It wasn’t so bad the first day, although Beloved did raise his eyebrows at me when I grabbed the camera on the way out the door on Thursday morning. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “It’s habit, I’d feel naked if I didn’t have it with me.” But in the evenings, between the end of dinner and the beginning of the bedtime routine, I’ve truly felt lost. That was my picture time, where I sorted and processed and posted the picture of the day most days, and that’s when I most keenly missed the project. Go figure.

Not only that, but everything I look at lately seems to be begging to be photographed. The light is coming back, and it’s making the most mundane things seem enticing. I can’t help myself.

So I’m not exactly embarking upon another 365. I figure I’ll call it (because a project needs a name, if for no other reason than I need a place to keep it on the blog!) The Thousand Picture Project. There’s 365 days in a year, so there’s 1095 days in three years. It should take me about three years of daily pix to get to the thousand mark, give or take — and I’m already a third of the way there! If I don’t take a picture every day, that’s okay, and if I take 17 pictures in one day, that gives me more than two weeks of fodder. I think it will work out. I need the project part for inspiration and a reason to haul around my camera, but I’m free of the need to stress over finding a picture — a good picture — on days when there simply is not one to be found.

Best of both worlds, I think. Now, what about you? The 365 blog posts get very few comments, but so many of you have said you’re interested in the process behind the pictures and my commentary on them. Shall I continue with the weekly picture blog posts?

Thanks, always, for your input! (I remember back when I started blogging, the prevalent idealistic advice was to blog as if nobody was listening, and that blogging in a manner which was cognizant of what the readers wanted was seen to be pandering. I think those days are long gone! The Thousand Picture Project, like it’s big brother the 365 Project, are entirely for my own satisfaction — but it’s a pleasure and a delight to be able to share them with you!)

Don’t forget to tune in to CBC Radio tomorrow after the 3:30 news — cuz hey, nothing strokes your ego more than knowing your photography is ideal for radio!! 😉