A different perspective

Daffodil

Sometimes a new angle can create an interesting photo.

Wide angle photography

While in Banff I attempted to take some wide angle shots using composition suggestions that I picked up in a book entitled 'John Shaw's Nature Photography Field Guide'. John Shaw's books are great, they have a clear style without being too technical, and his photos are amazing. His book 'John Shaw's Landscape Photography' will also explain how to take this kind of shot.

This shot requires some planning and setup. First of all, you need a tripod. Because I had the Chickadee with me, and we were traveling, I didn't bring mine with me, which ruined some of my other attempts. The reason you need a tripod is because you must set your aperture as high as it will go, which will result in your shutter speed being too slow to hold your camera in your hand. These shots were taken at F-22. This gives you a great depth of field. In the above photo, that means the rock and the mountain will both be in focus.

Next, you set your lens to the widest angle it will go. I used my 18-70 mm zoom lens and set it at 18 mm.

The next part is the time consuming, body contorting, tripod adjusting act of composing the photo. You need to choose something interesting to place in the foreground. In the above picture I chose a boulder. You will need to get very very close to this subject. I was probably less than 6 inches away from the boulder. Then you work on getting an angle that includes your subject and the background in the distance.

Now you're ready to take the picture. Your shutter speed will probably be slow because the aperature is so small, hence the need for the tripod.

If you're interested in learning how to take this shot, read John Shaw's books, he explains this much better than I did. (His photos are also much better than mine).

The Many Faces of Mount Rundle

I'm back! I've just returned from a two week vacation in Banff National Park. For obvious reasons, I did not want to announce my departure online. I was able to get in a post or two while I was away, although I didn't have access to my photo software and wasn't able to upload photos until the end of my trip when I posted the sneak preview.

The sneak preview photo was a bank of spruce trees growing on a mountainside in Kootenay National Park. I took a drive up the mountain pass from Banff into Kootenay one morning after a fresh snowfall. It was spectacular.

While in Banff I managed to take a whopping 900 images. Banff was so amazing I felt like I could wave my camera wildly around my head while pressing the shutter and I'd have a ton of great photos.

This is Mount Rundle. It is located next to the town of Banff. It took me several days to get over my sense of disorientation and start to figure out which mountain was which. They looked different depending on what side of the mountain you were on and even what time of day it was and whether or not they were covered with clouds.

I became particularly fond of Mount Rundle. On the western side (see the above photo) it was gently sloping and covered with trees.

View of the western side of Mount Rundle from the top of Sulphur Mountain.

In the Bow Valley, near the town of Banff is an area of marsh land called the Vermillion Lakes. Mount Rundle is on the left, and Sulphur Mountain is on the right.

And on the eastern side, it was a face of steep cliffs, striped with layers and layers of sedimentary rock, lifted and exposed for all to see. The Bow River can be seen as the frozen white patches in the foreground.

Mount Rundle (left) is separated from Tunnel Mountain (right) by a U-shaped valley carved by a glacier.

This is a view of the peak from our hotel room early one morning.

Sneak preview

I have lots of fantastic photos that I will start posting next week. Here's a sneak preview of things to come. In my world it is still winter. I am going to miss it when it's gone.

Goldfinches in spring

American Goldfinch Carduelis tristis

Today I was looking at my backyard birds and I noticed that the goldfinches were changing their winter plumage for their spring and summer look. In the winter their feathers are a drab yellow-green colour, as you can see on the back of this goldfinch in the picture. In the summer they are a bright yellow, and you can see these feathers starting to appear near the bird's face. On the top of its head the black cap feathers are just starting to appear. Soon this goldfinch will have a black cap that is as dark as the black on its wings. Here's a picture of a goldfinch in their full summer plumage. Note that the female and the juvenile do not have the bright yellow and black colouring of the males.

This picture is not as sharp as I would like. I did not use a flash (I think it would have scared the bird away), and I didn't get out my tripod. The shutter speed was just a little too slow to take a hand held photo. When I take a photo I always try to get the shutter speed up to at least 1/90th of a second, otherwise the picture usually turns out a bit blurry from camera shake. I think this one was around 1/50th of a second.

House finch Carpodacus mexicanus

My husband built me this new bird feeder this weekend. He was so pleased when the birds finally started visiting it. One day I'll do a post on the different types of bird feeders that I have in my yard.

After he built the feeder he became more interested in the birds and squirrels in our yard. Unfortunately, he is starting to become involved in the Squirrel Wars. It is a slippery slope to madness.

Spring flowers

Crocus

My yard is still half covered with snow, but I have spring flowers! This crocus is growing in a sheltered, sunny spot next to the house. The warmth of the sun reflecting off the brick melts the snow first in this corner of the yard. This tiny patch is always the first to bloom.

I hung a piece of black velvet behind the crocus to achieve the smooth black background. I used my macro lens and laid down on the half frozen ground to take the shot. I had to wait until the flower was in the shade to avoid shadows and bright highlights.

Snow drops, Galanthus nivalus

The snowdrops are in a more exposed area. The snow melted just this week, and there they were, already grown and ready to flower. The white background is the snow still surrounding the plants.

When the last of the snow finally melts (which doesn't look like it will be soon according to the weather forecast) it will feel like a long winter has abruptly ended and spring is in full swing.

Sunny or Overcast?

An excellent photograph depends very much on the quality of light. You can take a great photo whether it is sunny or overcast, what will be different is what you choose as your subject.

Eiffel Tower, Paris, May 2006

Bright sunny days are great for photos that have the sky as the background. Days like these are great for photographing buildings, trees, landscapes. Think big. If there are some interesting clouds in the sky, even better. Photograph the clouds, include them in your composition. If you happen to be at the Eiffel Tower and it is overcast, you can still take the picture to prove you were there, but chances are it won't be the one you send out with your next Christmas card.

Bright days are not very good for taking pictures of flowers or anything else that you want to capture a lot of detail. The bright sun washes out the colours and will make your photo too harsh. Sometimes shadows can be distracting as well. The shadow of the truck does not add anything to this picture. Notice the fresh snow in the background, this picture was taken this afternoon in my backyard. Spring is on its way around here, but it hasn't quite arrived yet.


Cloudy and overcast days provide you with even lighting. On overcast days the sky is dull, grey and boring, so don't put it in your picture. Think small. It is a good day for close ups (bring your tripod). Notice the difference in the colours of the truck. I moved the truck two feet to the left so it was in the shade.

Taking portraits of people is worth its own separate blog post. However, in general it is a good idea to keep people's faces out of the bright sun. I'll write more on that later.

Knowing the weather helps me choose what equipment I should bring when I'm heading out. If it's sunny, I'll want a wide angle lens. On overcast days I'll bring my telephoto lens and my tripod. If it's raining (or still snowing!) I'll bring a large ziploc bag to put my camera in.

Snowflakes

The right kind of snow was falling today so I tried again to photograph snowflakes. The snowflakes are not as sharp as I would like, but I think this might be the best I can do with the equipment I have.

I used a piece of dark blue velvet as the background. I set my camera on a tripod and used my macro lens. It was cloudy, and the dark background with the large lens meant there was not alot of light for the picture, so my shutter speed was long, about 1/6 sec.

On my last attempt to photograph snowflakes Steph left me a comment mentioning Wilson Bentley. I have his book on order from the library but it hasn't arrived yet. I'm looking forward to reading about his techniques. He used a microscope to take his pictures. There's a book for children about him that I am also trying to get from the library.

Snow face

My middle child

I like taking pictures of my kids when they are crying. Somehow, it represents our day to day life a little more accurately than all those happy, smiling pictures.

This is my middle child. This year he has discovered that snow is tasty. At the beginning of the winter I did not mind letting him eat the snow in our backyard. It was fresh and fluffy. I foolishly let him feast to his heart's content. Now, when we are out and about, he does not listen to my pleas to stop eating the dirty, salty mounds at the edges of parking lots. Hindsight is 20/20.

On my last post womannorth asked about the difference between jpeg versus raw images. I have been shooting using a digital SLR, which gives me the option of saving my images in the camera as jpeg files or raw files. The only reason I have been shooting in raw recently is that I can easily adjust the exposure of my image on the computer using photoshop. I talked about how pictures of snow can be underexposed here.

I also have a very good digital point and shoot. I looked through my manual and it does not shoot raw files, only jpeg. Look in your manual under 'image quality' or 'compression' to see what options are available on your camera.

When I shoot jpeg files, I almost always select the setting for the highest image quality (which is also the largest image size). It will say 'fine' or 'superfine' or 'large' or something along those lines. You never know when you will get a great shot that you might want to print and enlarge. The drawback is that the larger files take up more room, and fewer images will fit on your card. The only time I would reduce the image quality would be in a situation where I was running out of room on my card and I was nowhere near a computer to download them. Even so, I would probably go through my full card and delete some images that I knew weren't good before I would switch to smaller files. If I was running into this problem often, I would seriously think about purchasing a card with more memory.

This picture was taken on February 13th, 2008. I didn't have a chance to get out with my camera today.

February brings the rain

Rain on window

February brings the rain,

Thaws the frozen lake again.

From A Calendar by Sara Coleridge (1802-1852)

Our local groundhog predicted an early spring two weeks ago, and we have seen nothing but snow ever since. February does not usually bring rain around here unless it's of the dangerous freezing rain variety. The frozen lake will just have to wait until March.

I've been turning most of my images into black and white this week. Colour really didn't add anything to them. There's something about black and white that I really enjoy. I've been shooting in raw so I can adjust the exposure later. In photoshop I've been turning them to b&w by adjusting the saturation. If I was shooting in jpeg I would convert it to greyscale under the image menu.

Winter shadows

Shadows of branches on snow

There are a few nice things about winter photography. One is that the white snow creates clean, uncluttered images. In other seasons there is always something in the background that distracts the viewer from what you are really trying to show in your picture.

The other nice thing about snow is that it reflects lots of light. I'm constantly fiddling with my camera to find a balance where the shutter speed is high enough that I don't have to worry about camera shake blurring my image (around 1/90 of a second) and that also gives me the depth of field that I'm after.

Happy Valentines Day

A rose from my sweetheart

Happy Valentine's Day! My sweetheart actually gave me roses on Monday, and we ended up celebrating Valentine's Day on Sunday. He tried to get a different type of flower (he knows I'm partial to blue irises), but the florist only had roses and a few scraggly carnations as they were gearing up for the Big Day.

Part of me appreciates the sentiment of Valentine's Day, but the other part of me is annoyed by the commercialized, guilt-laden message that we must express our feelings on this particular day by buying something. Next year, we will celebrate Valentine's Day on January 23rd. Everything will be reasonable priced and all the restaurants will not be overbooked. While we're at it, maybe we'll move around some other holidays too. April fool's! (celebrated this year on February 14th).

The photo of the rose is taken against my ubiquitous blue wall. I used my macro lens (it hasn't gotten much use and I am still figuring it out) which was set on a tripod. The focal length was set at F22 to get the whole rose in focus. When shooting closeups the depth of field is very shallow and it can be difficult to get your entire subject in focus. Once that was all set up I set the self-timer to avoid any camera shake because the shutter speed was about 2 seconds long.

Reflections on glasses

My eldest child

This is my eldest child, he's 5 1/2 years old. I'll come up with an online name for him later. In August this year we discovered he needed glasses. This particular pair is the fourth we've had so far. The first pair was lost and then found after they had been run over by a car. Pairs 2 and 3 suffered serious warping and lenses falling out. They are always filthy. We're hoping pair #4 will last a little longer.

It didn't take long before we became so used to seeing him wearing his glasses that he looked odd without them on. So, taking pictures of him, I like him to be wearing them. The problem with glasses in photos is the reflections that you see in the above picture. In other pictures I tried to remove the reflections with photoshop, but it did not work well and looked unnatural.

Today I was experimenting with my polarizing lens to see if that would help. There were still some small reflections due to the fact that light was coming at his glasses from more than one direction (the window and a reflector I was using). However, they were minimal and I was able to remove them using photoshop with some success (look closely at the bottom of the left lens).

My blue wall is in the background. The lighting has made it a completely different shade today.

Bottlebrush grass

Bottlebrush grass

Today I tried to photograph snowflakes. By the time I had figured out how I might do this, the light fluffy snow had changed to formless ice crystals. Then, I attempted to take a picture of the way water droplets were forming on the branches in my backyard (without leaving the comfort of my home). The results were not satisfying.

So, here is a photo of Bottlebrush grass. It grew in my garden this summer, and in the fall I cut it and placed it in a vase, where it sits on my mantel above the fireplace. My livingroom walls are dark blue and they make a good, clean background. In order to get all the grass in focus I put my camera on a tripod and took the picture at F22. The light came from my bay window.