A little bit of this, a little bit of that.. - December 9, 2020

After dropping Jen off, I hummed and hawed about taking photos (this seems to be a common occurrence.. but I will say, deciding to go and take photos always works out, whereas deciding to "just dive home and sit on my ass" does not work out photographically.. but my ass does get a good sitting on.

So I parked and started walking over towards the peace bridge.. I brought my tripod along just for kicks.. and also because it was still a little bit dark out.. the tripod might come in handy for longer shutter speeds.

As I got towards the Peace bridge it started to snow a little bit.. you can't see it below but it exists in other photos that I took. The shot below was after waiting a while for something to happen once I decided on the composition.. indeed, I had set the 20s delay and walked into the frame myself so there would be a human element to the shot.. fortunately the bikers showed up and I don't have to post a "selfie".

I explored the bridge looking for new and innovative photos to take.. 

East - April 6, 2020

I didn't go out yesterday and with time running out today I found myself packing up my camera and heading out to try and find some light. A quick glance at the sky and it looked like downtown might be in shade but there was some open sky towards the north west. I didn't really want to head downtown again so I decided to drive just east of the city and see if I could find something to shoot, perhaps a sky/reflection photo or some trees.

At first I was regretting my decision because the first part of the drive was just past flat fields and the ponds were all still frozen over. The sun seemed to be heading down fast adding to the pressure to find something. I continued further north and made this photo out the car window at the first thing that was sticking up off the ground.

solar power

I find that when I'm out looking for photos that there is often a mental barrier to the process of finding a composition until I take a first photo. It's almost like I need to shoot something/anything before my brain turns on and I start to focus on the task at hand.

Winter Sun - January 15, 2012

First real cold snap this winter came in over night. Temperature was -17c with a windchill of around -30c. 

When I peeked outside I noticed a halo around the sun and I figured I would try to catch it. I didn`t have a lot of time so my goal was to drive east and look for some trees to help in the composition. I ended up at the same place as the morning of October 8th when I was out looking for a sunrise. The sun was low enough that I could position it behind the line of trees. There is a pretty interesting pattern in the dirt with the snow on it. I like how this turned out although I wish the halo was a bit more pronounced.

After a few shots, my fingers started to get a bit chilled so I packed up and came home.

Thanks for looking.
Brad

Lake Minnewanka - January 7, 2012

We`d gone up to Banff for a few days while the kids were off school for Christmas break. We stayed at the Douglas Fir resort. The kids really like the Douglas Fir because they have a swimming pool with some fun water slides. When we weren't swimming, we were skiing :-) Conor and I skied at Sunshine on Thursday then Lake Louise on Friday.

Photographically speaking, I didn`t take many pictures on the trip. I`d have loved to have had my camera on the slopes as the scenery is incredible but I`m sure I would have spent more time taking pictures then skiing so I`m glad I left my camera in the car and didn`t tempt myself. I had a hard enough time keeping up with Conor. I get nervous skiing with Conor because he's always pushing to go bigger and better. Sometimes I feel like Nemo's Dad trying to reign him in. In the end we had a great time.

I tried to make pictures twice. The first time was a short stop across from the Banff Springs Hotel.

The second shot was taken after I drove out towards Lake Minnewanka.

Frost - January 1, 2012

Happy New Year!

Stepping out onto the deck this morning I saw frost on the trees and a bit of fog in the air. I was excited and thought that the fields east of the city might be covered in frost. So I grabbed my bag, ran out of the house and started driving. It seemed that the fog was just skirting the east side of the city and the further out I went the thicker it became. There is a stand of trees in a field not far from the house that I've shot before I thought this would be a good place to start.

I parked near the field and walked in towards the small stand of trees looking for an angle to shoot from. Facing north the sky was quite flat and I was hoping to include the sun and get some nice light. Circling the trees to look from the other side there wasn't much frost on the trees. I guess the frost had come in with the wind and only collected on the south facing side. So, with the direction set I started shooting. The first set of photos were from further out and had a lot of field and sky in them. I kept moving in closer to the trees taking shots as I went. I like this view because it's close enough to see details in the branches and I really like how the circles on the ground surround the trees.

First day of Summer. June 21, 2011

I can't believe the first day of summer is here already. I've been trying to get out with the camera this spring and take more pictures. Some of the problems I'm having with processing and posting are all mental.. I love taking pictures. I don't necessarily love key wording and making up the titles to the pics.. that's why your reading things like "stand" as the title.

It's a stand of trees in the field.

Deep hey ?

What really drew me out tonight was the clouds. They were amazing, and with the sun going down, I had to get out in case the sun was going to catch them and light up the sky. So I drove just east of the city towards 100th street where I regularly look for hawks and owls. I haven't seen owls here for ever but I do keep looking for them.

I parked the car and walked across the field after putting on my big rubber boots. I didn't know if the field would be wet and muddy or not. It wasn't really wet but when heading back to the car I did find a stand of water that I tried to walk through. Not far in I decided that the water would eventually be deeper than my boot was tall so I backtracked and went back across the field the way I`d come.

For this photo, I walked around these trees at least ten times brushing off mosquitoes and taking various pics - trying to find an interesting composition. I really like how this shot turned out. I hope you do too.

Click here to see some more photos from today.


Thanks for looking.
Brad.

--

I know ( as of today ) that I have a lot of catching up to do to match my blog posting with the number of photos that I've posted over at my smugmug site.. last post here was April 1st. A lot has happened since then. My goal will be to go and backfill those posts so I can tell you what happened and bring some context to the photos that have been uploaded.

In the field - March 9th, 2011

I had a few minutes and the sun was setting so I parked the car and made my way into the field. I liked how the trees looked against the sky which had some nice clouds rolling through. I used the tilt-shift lens to throw some of the frame out of focus.

I hope you like it.

Thanks for looking,
brad

Chinook - March 8th, 2011

Driving home from work.. the sun entered the gap between the upper clouds of the Chinook arch and the lower bank of clouds. By the time I was at this location, parked, over the barbed wire fence, gear out, composition chosen, camera settings tweaked, the sun was down. I had missed it by a few minutes, but this is what I was able to get before the colours started to fade..

Thanks for looking.

brad

Cold again - March 1st 2011

It's cold again.

I had an urge to make a picture so I walked down near the river looking for something interesting after wolfing down my lunch.. for the most part it wasn't interesting. Cold, grey, blah, flat, featureless white on white. I walked closer to the rivers edge where there was a small ribbon of open water. Steam rising up into the cold air. I could hear the chunks of ice bumping into the frozen edges as the water raced past. The steam might have been interesting, the sun was in the wrong spot I couldn`t get any reflections to bring out the texture of the water.

I kept walking, ears starting to burn, hands tucked into my jacket sleave, the skin on my face feeling heavy and numb. Then I came across this tree. At first I noticed all the holes in it from where the birds pecked away to get at the bugs. I took a few shots looking for some composition. Then I noticed the huge branch lying on the ground, I took a few more. I thought I had it, my fingers were stiff from the cold, it was difficult to work the controls.

I was walking away, trying to look through the moisture on the LCD in the bright light. Trying to see what I captured, see if I got anything. I didn't think that I had. I wanted to tilt the lens and make parts of the image out of focus, put emphasis on the tree, but for some reason I didn't do that. I went back and took a few more pictures, trying again. Fingers starting to go numb from holding the camera in the cold. I wanted to get it, so I'd shoot, review the shot - the tree's to high in the frame, adjust the composition, another shot, tweaking the focus this time. Couldn't feel my fingertips anymore. Think I got it. fingers hurt now.. time to go. I head back to the car, trotting along the frozen bike path.

Later, processing the image, I like it. Trying to come up with a name. I looked up synonyms for separate, broken and apart.. Disjoined is what I came up with. The branch is disjoined from the tree.

Later in the day, I tried to make a shot of the downtown skyline. This time I had gloves on, but I had to poke my fingers out to work the controls and they got pretty cold again. I think I've got to figure out a way to get circulation into my hands so they don't get so cold. Perhaps it's a sign of getting old. I'm not old though.

I wanted this image to make you feel how cold it was but I'm not sure if it does. Maybe it's because the colours are too saturated. Perhaps cold shouldn't be so vibrant and colourful.

There was another view that I thought would be interesting, but there was a fence in the way and some other obstacles that I couldn't overcome so I'll have to remember to try it out next time.

Thanks for looking.
brad

Elbow River - February 25th 2011

I didn't have much time before I had to be back in town.

I drove out to the Bragg Creek area to see if I could make an image or two. It felt like it'd been so long since I'd held my camera in my hands. In my mind I wanted to find some water, the falls, the river, anything. I parked the car at the gate by Elbow falls and set the timer on my phone to go off after 30 minutes. This would give me time to get back to the car so I could leave. I had, at most, an hour to find an image.

I put on my snow pants and boots and headed over towards Beaver Flats. The sun was out, the sky was a brilliant shade of blue. Shocking white snow from a recent snowfall. Cool crisp air. It was beautiful. I walked down by the river and composed some shots - being careful not to make foot prints in the scene. I like how this one turned out.

After a bit I walked a further down and found a blanket of snow covering the rocks along the riverbank.. like moguls on the ski hill. I was quite low to the ground, and trying to compose on the tripod.. sometimes it gets a little dicey being all hunched over like that. I'd knocked the camera and it caused the lens to tilt the focus plane. I decided to work with it, and like the effect here.

Then the phone beeped at me, I reset the timer for another 15 minutes.

I walked over to the beaver pond and got pretty excited at the idea of the mountain and the calm open water. I wanted to take a panoramic image of the scene - three shots merged into one to show a wider than normal view. I like how sharp I was able to get the image. However, I'm not too happy with the composition - or the view. It feels too.. normal, and kind of boring. I think I got caught up in trying to get the focus and the panorama shot that I didn't pay enough attention to the rest of the details that could have made this a really great image.

What do you think about this picture..

All of a sudden, it was time to go. I packed up and made it back to the car with about four minutes to spare on my self imposed deadline. I was drove back into town in about 45 minutes. The quick escape was good, for a while I felt refreshed.

Thanks for looking.

brad.

Elbow Falls - Feb 10th, 2011

Really fast trip out to Elbow falls to get this image. Drive there, take the picture, drive home. ok I took two or three pictures.. maybe 5.. yeah, I`m sure I didn`t take more than 25 shots. But they were quick shots.

I'd picked up a filter which is essentially a piece of black glass that you put in front of the lens. I was anxious to try it out. When you put it on the camera you need to add 10 stops to let the same amount of light through. One use for it is to do what I've done here - make the water all smooth and glassy. The exposure without the filter was at 1/250th of a second. With the filter the exposure became 6 seconds.

What I wasn`t expecting was that the colour balance would go all blue like this.

Overall, I like it and the effect. I`m looking forward to using the filter for making some creative images once all this ice melts off and we get lots of water flowing. I suspect with all the snow we've had this winter that the creeks and streams will flow nicely this spring.

Thanks for looking.

brad

Rainbows - August 2nd 2010

Hi, it's been a while since I've posted.. not that I've stopped taking pictures, but just neglecting this process a bit. This blog is suppose to complement the pictures that I put up on my smugmug site. The idea was that I'd write something about a picture so you, the reader, can better connect with the photo, or at least have some background around the pictures. Every picture has a story and that story should be told.

So here I am posting an entry and linking a photo. The photo today is a rainbow. I knew it was raining - hard - cause I'd gone around and tried to hook up all the drain pipes on the house so that the water wouldn't collect around the foundation and I got pretty wet doing so. The reason that the drain pipes were all disconnected is "kids". That's all I'm going to say about that.