2012

Galleries and Shows / Photo Gear / Plants — No Comments
10
May 12

Random Updates

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On Saturday in the afternoon (between 2 and 4pm for sure, and probably a little longer) I’ll be at Tix on the Square if you’d like to stop by. I’ll try to bring more cufflinks too (just have to package them up)!

The Daffodil now has my first extra large square pendants which have been requested by a lot of people! I just dropped them off yesterday.

Today I’m going to pick up my new Olympus OM-D! I’m super excited about this camera. It looks like it will have really good image quality, and because it’s light and weather-sealed it should allow me get to more places and take more interesting photos. I’ll report back once I get a feel for it, but I think it will be good. Now I just have to save up for a couple more lenses. Speaking of which, anyone interested in a Panasonic 14-140 or a Canon 50 f3.5 macro? I’ve used both of them very little, and they’re in great condition.

The photo above was taken at Beaverhill Lake with a Canon 5d and 300 f4, at f4 and 1/400 of a second.

Curtis Round liked this post
Wildlife — 6 Comments
27
Apr 12

Long-Eared Owl

OK, this is much of an art photo, but I just saw my first long-eared owl (Asio otus)! Here it is in all it’s camouflage-ness. There were actually a pair of them, but this is the only one I got a photo of. I could have stalked them and maybe got more photos, but especially in spring when birds are breeding I prefer to leave them alone to do their thing.

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Taken with a Canon 5d, 300mm, f5.6 at 1/160 of a second.

Forest / Galleries and Shows — No Comments
26
Apr 12

Art at Fresh Cafe

autumn-variety-show

I’ve now got some photos up for sale at Fresh Cafe & Espresso Bar, a new coffee shop on 116 Street just south of Jasper (10038 – 116 Street). Go check them out and enjoy a coffee and amazing snacks and sandwiches.

You still have almost a week to see “Water”, my exhibit at the Stanley Milner Library. I’m really happy with it, and hope you all get to see it! If you don’t get a chance to go see the prints, you can see a poor substitute here: http://joelkoop.com/pwater.php

Photo taken with a Canon 5d, 150mm macro, at f2.8, 1.6 seconds. (This isn’t one of the photos up at Fresh, but it’s one I wanted to share at some point. You’ll have to go to Fresh to find out for yourself.)

Business / Galleries and Shows — No Comments
18
Apr 12

Gallery at Milner on Saturday

I will be at the Stanley Milner Library this Saturday the 21st, from 2:00 to 4:00pm. I’d love to see you all there. Everything there is for sale (both on the walls and in the display cases), but has to stay up until the end of the month. Looking forward to it!

Composition / Design / Photo of the Day / Plants — 3 Comments
14
Apr 12

Drawing in Space

In my design studies at university, we had a fascinating sculpture assignment called “Drawing in Space”. We used strips and small blocks of wood to create a sculpture with interesting lines when viewed from any angle. Both the lines and the negative space they defined were equally important. I really enjoyed framing spaces and cutting into volumes of space, and that is something that I don’t get to do quite as much with photography. But when opportunities present themselves, as they did this last week, I get lost in the creating. I’m not sure how long I spent in this particular treasure trove of grass curls. The shallow depth of field I’ve used here really adds to both the ethereal-ness and the depth of the photo, letting you almost feel the space around the grass.

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All taken with my 5d, 150mm macro, f6.3, 1/200 – 1/640 of a second.
Taken on the Beaver Pond Trail in Elk Island National Park.

If you’re still reading and interested, I’ll just write a quick note about composition. In the last two photos I’ve done something that is generally disapproved of in standard compositions – there is a strong line running vertically through the frame (even directly in the middle of the frame! the horror). In these cases I think it works as an unusual visual device to emphasize the depth of the photo. If the grass curls did not wrap around the vertical line it would not work.

Forest / Winter — No Comments
4
Apr 12

Birch Trees In a Spring Snow Storm

I got the chance to head out to Chickakoo Lake a couple weeks ago during a big spring snow storm. There was very little snow around at the beginning of the day, but by the end it was a few inches thick (I think Environment Canada said 10cm). This made for wonderful photo conditions and horrible driving conditions.

Birch (Paper birch around here — Betula papyrifera) trees always catch my attention. They can be so colorful or almost pure white, but they always have great contrast — light trunks and dark branches. They’re a lot less common than poplars around Edmonton, and often a forest will have a birch tree or two in it, but mainly consists of more common trees. At Chickakoo Lake the situation is almost turned around. There are still a lot of poplars around, but the birch trees outnumber them.

birch-trees-covered-in-snow
Galleries and Shows — 1 Comment
2
Apr 12

Stanley Milner Library Gallery Show

I now have a 14 prints up at the Stanley Milner Library. It’s a solo show and all the photos are in the main foyer between Second Cup and the Library. They will be up for the whole month of April, so I hope you all get a chance to check them out! I just finished hanging them all and I’m pretty happy with how they turned out!

More photos will be coming soon, but April is turning out to be really busy for me, so forgive me if the posts here are a little sparse.

Abstract / Composition — No Comments
21
Mar 12

Visual Design in Abstract Nature Photography

In some ways this is very similar to my previous post. (You may need to click on the photo to see the entire photo more easily) This photo was taken very close to where the last one was on Abraham Lake. They are both abstract photos of nature using very strong design principles. They both play with positive and negative space, but instead of being very organic, this is very angular. The composition is almost entirely based on the rule of thirds — the dark line in the ice is about 1/3rd of the way down and protrudes about 2/3rds of the way into the photo. The ice in the photo covers about 1/3rd of the area, and the snow covers the other 2/3rds. This visual weighting based on the rule of thirds generally works very well, even if the dark and light areas of a photo are not seperated by a straight line (although here they are clearly seperated by a horizontal line). So, while the rule of thirds is almost over-popularized, it is still effective for creating interesting and new compositions.

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Abstract / Composition / Water — No Comments
14
Mar 12

Abstract Geometric Nature Photography

Finally starting to make my way through photos from the last few trips. This is from Abraham Lake, which has been extensively photographed by many Alberta landscape photographers. It’s easy to come up with the standard compositions here, but it’s also easy to come up with new stuff. There’s just so much variety in the ice, water and rocks. These are methane bubbles from decomposing organic matter. The bubbles form in the ice as the water freezes layer by layer.

In a shot like this, composition is everything. It has to balance the visual weight of light and dark. The three smaller bubbles on the left have to balance with the two larger bubbles on the right. The negative space and positive space both have to be interesting — here the textures in the ice and bubbles add visual interest. And because it’s nature and you can never control it completely, there will always be random elements to deal with. In this picture, the shadow of something deeper lies near the top of the frame. I like the visual reminder that in photography, art is created between the artist and the subject: you never have complete control.

methane-bubbles-in-abraham-lake-ice
Landscape / Photo Gear / Prairie — 2 Comments
9
Feb 12

Panasonic G1X Impressions

The Panasonic G1X is a great little camera. I got to use it for a short trip to Dinosaur Provincial Park a few weeks ago. I used it with the Olympus 12mm f2.0 prime, the old Panasonic 14-42mm kit lens, and Panasonic’s 100-300 telephoto lens. Carrying this kit was a welcome change from carrying around a Canon 5d with 4 fairly heavy lenses. I found the Panasonic very comfortable to use, and all the controls were well thought out. Not quite perfect, but no camera is. I was very curious to see if the image quality of this 4/3 sensor could get anywhere close to the 5d (a 7 year old full-frame digital slr).

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Panasonic G1X with 14-42 lens
14mm, f9, 1/400 of a second

Remarkably, to me, it was close (it should be noted that I only shot raw photos, not JPGs). There is definitely a different characteristic look between a full-frame and a 4/3rds sensor, but that is not necessarily bad, just different. You get greater depth of field with the Panasonic, which I think accounts for much of this look. Dynamic range was surprisingly good from this little sensor — it didn’t seem to blow out highlights any quicker than my 5d. High iso pictures also looked better than I expected, and the grain, when it did show up, had a fairly pleasing quality to it.

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12mm, f4.5, 1/40 of a second

Autofocus was a mixed bag. It is very fast, and I really enjoyed the touch screen to select autofocus points. The problem was that the autofocus areas are actually quite large, and you can’t tell what the camera is focusing on in that square. I did try the pinpoint autofocus mode, but it didn’t work that well for me. It could be that with further investigation and custom settings I could get this to work better.

Color was one of my biggest problems. Part of it is just getting used to the color response of a new camera — every camera is different, and this means that you have to process the colors differently. But the G1X didn’t seem to have the color depth I am used to from my 5d. It was actually quite similar to the Rebel XSi I had for a few months — I had trouble getting the color and color transitions to look the way I want. This meant desaturating some photos to get the colors to look good to my eye. I’m sure I could get more comfortable with this over time, but I’m also sure the colors are not quite as good as I’m used to. And I didn’t even get to try it with greens. Greens are my biggest problem color – trying to get greens to look natural to me can take many tries, even with the best cameras I’ve tried.

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252mm, f6.3 1/500 of a second

My other complaint — and this really is the big one — is with the 100-300 lens. It is a sharp lens. It is a beautiful lens. The problem is stability with this long of a lens. WHY COULDN’T THEY PUT A COLLAR AND TRIPOD MOUNT ON IT???? This would fix everything. Putting a quick release plate on this camera works pretty well, but it is a small camera. The plate only has a small surface area that touches the camera, and this introduces some degree of instability. Add a relatively large lens like the 100-300 on the front and the tripod is now doing almost nothing. So this lens works fine for shooting at fast shutter speeds with bright light, but otherwise is useless. All because of the omission of a tripod mount.

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275mm, f6.3, 1/4000 of a second

Small cameras have always been tempting to me. I don’t like carrying a lot of weight while I’m out hiking around, but image quality is most important to me, and at this point my old 5d is still a bit better. And new full-frame cameras (with even better quality sensors) are likely where I’ll be going once I can afford something new. But I do really like the trend towards small, light, fairly high-end cameras. I’m very curious to try out the Sony NEX-7, as this should be significantly better image quality and has an intriguing control layout.

So, is the G1X a good camera? Definitely. Is it a great camera? Possibly. Can it replace a full-frame camera for professional use? Not really, although I suppose that is obvious. Micro 4/3 is the most mature compact system at this point, with lots of good lens selection. But Sony’s NEX system has great cameras just waiting for lenses. And Fuji’s X-Pro1 looks fascinating. Things are changing fast.

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