Snake Mittens

Sunday, March 8, 2009

Night time blur

On Friday night I met up with my friend Dan at the Legislative grounds in downtown Edmonton. Dan recently got himself a fancy new camera and was eager to get out and put it to work.

Before Dan showed up, I had a few minutes to start shooting with my new Tokina 11-16mm wide angle. I am looking forward to working more with this lens - I think it's going to be serious fun! Upon reviewing some of my test shots, I noticed that I was being followed by an alien! (See the shadow on the column on the left) I knew I shouldn't have left my tin foil helmet at home!

Dan and I originally had the goal of getting some specific shots of the trains, unfortunately, Edmonton Transportation didn't think to check with us before they changed the LRT schedules. By the time we realized this, we had already stood on a very windy and exposed hillside for 40 minutes and were eager to get to Tim Hortons for a hot chocolate.

Not wanting the evening to be a total loss, we hopped the guard rail on the High Level bridge and got some cool (I think) shots of merging vehicles using slow shutter speeds. We didn't end up doing to much adjusting of our camera's as our extremities were no longer functioning properly. We will definitely be going back to re-shoot this spot on a warmer evening.

Birthday at the Zoo

On February 28 I had the pleasure of attending my niece's (Anna's) Birthday at the Valley Zoo. Good times were had by all and I had the unexpected pleasure of "partying" with my photography instructor, Hope.

Although most folks go to the zoo to see the animals, the little un's seemed more interested in the "giant" stairs that are in some of the animal viewing areas. I think the zoo's new marketing slogan should be "Valley Zoo, you'll come for the animals, but you'll stay for the stairs".

Gift opening is always a fun sight to behold. By the 3rd gift, it had become a "team" effort and all the kids were happy to lend Anna a hand with the presents.

Shooting the animals was fun. The sea lion and long tailed porcupine were docile and stayed still for some decent shots. I tried taking pictures of the monkeys, but most didn't turn out that well - a good lesson in fast shutter speeds and blur!

I tried having a staring contest with this monkey - little dude didn't blink once!

Sunday, March 1, 2009

Changing Focal Point

These photos are a completion of an earlier DLS exercise. The goal of the exercise was to get different, distinct focal points along a straight edge. My first attempts failed miserably. I was thinking I needed to adjust my aperture and other settings to get the appropriate shot. Turns out all I needed to do was change my auto focus settings. Good example to remind myself to "keep it simple" - the answer may not always be as complicated as I think it is. You can definitely see the 3 different knobs I was focusing on.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Cat Fashion Show

Yes, you read the title right.

I gotta be honest, I had this event really built up in my mind. I pictured a long white runway where the cats would strut their stuff and do a little turn on the catwalk, yeah on the catwalk, do a little turn on the catwalk. There'd be some Kylie Minogue playing in the background, some strobe lights, maybe some glitter, a unicorn....I guess I'll have to plan next year's event.

As some of you may know, I have a prize winning Siamese cat. My beloved Chocolate Gloves was selected to appear in the show. Unfortunately, she only wears Versace and as they weren't being represented, she decided not to appear.

Anyways here are some memories from the show.

DLS Exercise 1

My first exercise consists of 3 tasks. The first task was to put 5 items 3-4" apart and adjust my aperture to get used to the different depths of field. All photo's were shot using my Nikon D300 equipped with a Nikon VR 18-200mm F/3.5-5.6G lens.

I quite liked this exercise, it really highlights the differences in aperture settings. Once I got to around F/11 or so, I started to notice camera blur if I wasn't careful. I didn't want to have to adjust my ISO setting, so I used the table top and the back of my hand to steady the camera. The pictures to the left are taken at F/3.5, F/11, and F/22. I'll upload them in that order, but there's no telling how they'll display.

Task 2 involved selecting a straight edge item (fence, etc) and taking 3 pictures with distinctly different focal points. I tried this using a wall with 3 different doors in it. And....my pictures suck. I don't see any differences between them. I need to keep working on this task.

Task 3 was to gather items and make a "still life" pictures. We were to adjust camera settings for proper exposure. Unfortunately, the resulting pictures were less than stellar. Another one to keep working on...

Sometimes I find myself trying to be to creative with what I'm taking pictures of. This causes unneeded stress and then I panic and end up killing the picture bunnies by petting them to hard (George? Can I pet da bunnies George?). What I've come to realize is that (for now at least) creativity doesn't really matter. What I need to do is just keep clicking away. If I pay attention to the technical side, my photo's will get better and that will eventually free up my creative juices and then watch out baby! cause I'll have creative juices all over my photo's!

Monday, January 19, 2009

Edmonton Motorcycle show continued...

Not sure how I get more than 1 photo in blog post without the formatting going all screwy. Here are some more photo's from the show.

Edmonton Motorcycle Show

This past weekend I had the pleasure of attending the Edmonton Motorcycle show. I am contemplating getting a bike this summer and this has been my first real chance to "test sit" and compare bikes. Plus since I'm taking a photography course, this would be a good chance to practice shooting.

It was an interesting experience...turns out I was more interested in the bikes than I was in taking pictures. I made the mistake of only bringing my fixed 50mm lens. I really could have used a shorter lens because every time I set up for a shot, some yahoo would wander into the frame and I ended up with a ton of pictures of middle aged men's butts (and for the record, that's not my preferred subject to shoot).

I was able to get some quick photo's of some of the more interesting paint jobs and I got a bit of practice with my Aperture setting, so not a total loss.