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!

Changing Focal Point