Flashback: Elora

It's fitting that my next installment of images from the archives is from the Elora Gorge in 2005. Sadly, I was still shooting JPGs back then (instead of the digital-darkroom-friendly RAW files), and on top of that, I wasn't very good. Or rather, I was consistently poor. I have two shots of interest from the hike we took 4 years ago, and the remaining shots are from later in April of 2005. This post represents almost 5% of my photos from April 2005, so that's not a bad ratio. Hopefully we see that increase to 10% over time.


A simple cropped snapshot, near the entrance to the Conservation Area.


My wife (girlfriend at the time) creating curtains for our apartment. Look how keen we were back then! ;)

These next two photos have been posted before. Meet Orange and Orange II. Which versions do you prefer?

Bad food + good company = photographic adventure!

After canceling numerous times due to pre-wedding activities (sounds much nicer than "freaking out before the wedding"), I finally fulfilled my promise to go on another photoroam with my good friend Richard. We decided to trek into the previously unexplored Monarch Woods Park near my house. No monarchs were spotted, but we did catch some of that evening sun, which always makes shots interesting.

I've been experimenting with some backlighting lately.




Afterwards I had Richard over to my house for dinner that I had prepared in the slow cooker. Unfortunately this was the first time trying this recipe, and I overcooked the chicken, and the sauce ended up congealing in the pan. Fortunately my awesome wife Carolyn fixed up a new sauce to mask the chicken (which at this point had a very leathery appearance). Serendipitously, the congealed sauce made for an excellent super-macro subject.

With Richard snapping away at some flowers, I conjoined my 70-210mm and 50mm lenses into an überlens. With this much magnification at your disposal, you can really see another world.



I took a little artistic license with this photo: I applied the "watercolour" effect in Photoshop Elements. I normally don't like resorting to such blatent manipulation... but I do like the effect.


Thanks to Richard for giving me some sagely advice about flash photography. I promise our next venture will include a more appetizing meal!

Lost in the Wilderness

Another lonely day in California, but the weather was magnificent and my camera batteries were charged, so there was nothing standing between me and adventure. I had received some advice about what I should do today, but after doing some research this morning, and with some prompting from Richard, I decided to go see some big trees. If there's one thing they know how to do out here, it's big trees.


Some of the smaller big trees I saw. This photo was HDR-modified for your enjoyment. Do not adjust your monitor.

I speculated that Big Basin Redwoods State Park would provide a high-probability of seeing big trees, so at 10am I headed west, through the Santa Cruz mountains, towards my destiny. The twists and turns through the dense forest of the Santa Cruz mountains were most enjoyable, although I think 45mph is a bit fast for some of those turns.


Here is my car in Big Basin Redwoods State Park. The car itself leaves much to be desired, but I'm starting to like the colour.


I headed out on the Sequoia trail towards Sempervirens Falls. "Sempervirens" means always green.


I learned that this was the first state park in California, formally created in 1902.


Here is a long-ish exposure of the falls. I actually had to brighten it a bit in post-processing. At the falls lookout, I only had to take pictures for two groups. I hate P&S cameras... they feel so clumsy.


After the falls I headed back towards the park headquarters via another trail. I came across this little guy (and many of his skittish friends) on a rocky clearing.


I simply loved the texture on the trees; I made this photo black & white to emphasize this quality.


In case you didn't believe me, here is a gang of redwoods. (HDR)


This was a funny tree that I've seen before but I don't know the name of. The bark appears to just peel off, leaving behind this smooth, flesh-coloured trunk.


And of course, the flower shot.

I'm an idiot, but that's okay

I went to San Francisco today. I packed up my awesome Slingshot camera bag (thanks Carolyn!) with all my gear: D70, 18-200 lens, macro lens, 50mm lens, tripod, circular polarizer, ND-grad filter, extra memory card, micro-fibre cloth, GPS, card reader, battery charger, water bottle, apple, granola bars. It was heavy, but I was all set for a day of shooting.

I got to San Fransisco around 11:30, and I parked at the de Young museum in Golden Gate Park. I was planning on spending much of the day there, and I was happy to finally get out of the car (see this post).

After about 15 minutes of walking about, taking pictures of random statues of Beethoven and Verdi, I found myself at the Japanese Tea Garden. I paid my $4 to enter and proceeded to photograph the serene surrounds when I noticed the battery symbol flashing on my camera. Uh oh. Well, it's a good thing I learned my lesson long ago and bought a spare battery, right?

Right.

Wrong. Thanks to new US Department of Transportation regulations, I couldn't pack my spare battery in my carry-on luggage. Of course I had forgotten this fact, so my battery remained safely packed away in my suitcase back in the hotel. Great.

I still had my battery charger in the car, but of course the other thing I forgot to pack was the car adapter. Even still, I had just paid $4 so I didn't want to leave. I had no choice but to grin and bear it.

As it happens, batteries have a remarkable ability to retain some residual charge - enough charge to focus and flip the shutter. I couldn't actually see the photos I was taken, so for the next 1.5 hours I was doing it "old school". And I really mean old school, because as in the days when they had to replace the photographic plates after each shot, I had to wait about a minute or so for the battery to recharge. In the digital age, this is very frustrating!

But, remarkably, I did manage to get some good shots. In fact, many turned out much sharper than they usually do, so perhaps I haven't been taking enough setup time for my shots. I've posted a few shots below; all but one are unprocessed because I don't have my image processing softare on this laptop. I will post final versions on flickr when I come home.


A Blue Jay that happened to hop up very close to me. If my battery had been charged I would have snapped 20-30 shots of this guy, but I only managed five in the few moments he was around. I'm really happy with how sharp this image came out. I also performed some HDR (or DRI) on this photo to lighten some of the shadows without blowing out the background.


I'm not sure what this is, but I liked the white against the red.


A shot of a tree with pagoda in the background.


A gorgeous Japanese maple, shot from below.


An iris.

I'm glad that a bunch of photos came out nicely, because the rest of the day was a bust. The battery totally gave out by the end of my stay in the garden, so no more pictures were going to happen until I got another battery. I walked around the park some more, and up Haight St. (supposedly quite famous? I saw lots of tattoo parlours and hippie shops... no camera stores though). I then went back to the car, hoping that my trust GPS would take me to a camera store. What luck, there were several camera stores to try! However, I forgot that the GPS takes pleasure in my failures. For the first camera store the GPS led me directly to a residential area where there was no sign of even a convenience store. The second location was much more promising but alas GPS tricked me again. Fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice, shame on me. I wasn't about to be fooled a third time, so I decided I should just go back to the hotel.

Ok, so I was fooled a third time too. I thought I'd try another store supposedly in Palo Alto on University Ave. University Ave sounded promising. Not surprisingly, the Ritz Camera store was not there (I'm beginning to suspect that it's not a real camera chain at all); however, I did find a Wolf Camera store that the GPS didn't know about. Take that little machine! But, it turns out that Wolf Camera sucks. They didn't have my battery. They didn't have the lens I was interested in either (but he could order it... well, so can anyone with an internet connection). Every time I visit the US I gain appreciation for Henry's back home.

Enough complaining. My time in Golden Gate Park was refreshing and memorable. I'm glad I went. I wish I had been able to take some photographs of the Golden Gate Bridge, particularly at sunset, but I suspect I will return one day. Not tomorrow though, as I am through with big cities. Tomorrow is a hiking and relaxation day. And my battery is charging as we speak.

One man's misfortune...

... is another man's fortune. As sad as I am for Richard having to get his camera serviced by Nikon, it did afford me the opportunity to borrow his 50mm lens and flash. I didn't utilize them as much as I should have, but I did play around a bit. Here are some of the results. Not that great when I view them on the monitor, but if you shrink them to 3x3cm they look fine. :)


This shot is taken with the 50mm lens. Cats - when they aren't sleeping - are very tricky subjects, because the refuse to sit still long enough to properly focus (let alone trying to set up the perfect composition). This was the best of a series of photos of Jack looking away.


Another shot with the 50mm. Jack got bored very quickly.


Actually just shot with my regular lens, but I had to throw it in. Jack is loving the chin rub.


This is a macro shot, aided with Richard's SB-600 flash. It's amazing what a difference the flash makes for macro photography. You can crank up the shutter speed to get a sharp image (I was too lazy to set up the tripod), and still have a small aperture to a decent depth-of-field. It is much less frustrating.

Alas, Richard's camera has been fixed and is likely in his hands right now, so I must say goodbye to the equipment that he generously lent to me. Goodbye 50mm lens. Goodbye wireless flash. I'll miss you.

Learning how to flash

I'm sure you were expecting to see some photos and prose regarding my recent trip to Germany. You'll have to wait. All of my photos from Bonn were deleted (by Windows itself, thank you very much), so I'm currently in the process of recovering them.

In the meantime, I had the opportunity this weekend to learn how to flash... or rather, I visited my good friend Richard, and he opened the secret door to the forbidden world of flash photography.

Having recently visited my friends in Germany - one of which is a wonderful studio photographer - I got a little bit inspired to take off my 'outdoor/landscape/nature photographer' hat, and try on something new. I checked out the well-known Strobist blog to get an idea of what flash photography is all about... and I realized that what I don't know about it could fill a warehouse (or a blog about flash-photography).

Richard has been doing more than a little dabbling in studio photography, and I have been impressed with his results, so I was hoping to get a tutorial. I borrowed a flash (SB-600) from Ryan and Richard and I set up shop.

It's incredible to think how much altering the lighting on a subject can change a photo so dramatically. Studio photography is very meticulous work, requiring careful study of the results to determine what should be tweaked (light intensity?, aperture?, angles?, diffusers?, more lights?, less lights?, etc...) to get the shot you want. On the other hand, it opens up a whole realm of creative possibilities, allowing you to simply experiment.

Here is a sample of a series of shots I took of some lillies that Richard bought (uhm, for his wife, right Richard?). I won't explain what I changed between each shot (like I remember!), but the session was a struggle between getting a nice bright shot, while emphasizing the form and depth, and still retaining detail in highlights and shadows.



I think the end result is pretty good, at least for a first-timer.



It was wonderful being able to utilize my macro lens properly - with still subject, sturdy tripod, and good lighting. A pop-up flash doesn't quite cut it for a macro image with 'pop'. I think - one of these beautiful days - that I will invest in my own flash so that I can continue to push my creative boundaries... or, perhaps Ryan won't notice that he's missing his :P

Thanks to Richard for the help, and for a fun (albeit short) photo session.

Tales of Tobermory - Part 4

Flowers, flowers, and more flowers! (And maybe a butterfly).


Some Castilleja (commonly known as Indian Paintbrush)... I think. This was on our hike in Singing Sands Provincial Park.


A pitcher plant. It eats bugs. And if you're not careful, it'll eat you too. Don't fall for it's innocent demeanor.


An orange lily. There were many of these scattered throughout the region. Very lovely.


Some sort of fern. With shadow.


One day...


Viceroy butterfly in some sort of plant. Can anyone identify it? The butterflies just loved it.