This photo was taken late in the evening on our way back from Grasslands National Park a while back. The thick fog softened everything and let the windbreak fade away into nothing. This look reminds me a bit some lomo or holga photos I’ve seen, but I really like that you can see a lot of the detail here, while still retaining that soft dreamy feeling. Although I suppose a big orange light leak would change the photo quite a bit.
Some animals don’t require much of a telephoto lens. The chickadees at Elk Island (and almost everywhere else too) are a lot of fun to photograph, and are quite brave. They will come very close, even sit on you (briefly) if you stay perfectly still or if they think you have food. They’re also very acrobatic in the air, so it’s fun to try to catch them in flight.
This was taken with my slow-focusing and not very telephoto 150mm macro.
I’ve enjoyed posting a lot of photos lately, but I’m starting to think the quality is suffering. The nature of every-day posting is that it removes the process of carefully thinking about the photo, the mental processing.
I will continue to post photos, but on a more leisurely schedule. I hope this will make the experience of coming here better for everyone!
One last daily photo—this is from a couple months ago in Cooking Lake Recreation Area.
For the next couple of days I’ll be finding some new photos in the mountains. I’m pretty excited – I got some new crampons with a MEC giftcard I got from Uncle Jack for Christmas, so I should be coming back with ice photos of one sort or another. I’ve never used crampons before, and I don’t have an ice axe, so don’t expect anything too extreme, but I’m slowly expanding the places I can get to and photograph.
I’ve scheduled this to post automatically for today, and another for tomorrow, so for those of you who look forward to your daily fix – never fear.
Frost on spruce branches by Cave and Basin in Banff.
Taken at Panther Falls about a month ago as the sun was coming up. For the curious, there were no color alterations done to this photo – just boosted the shadows a bit and took down the highlights to even out the exposure. This is a good example of different white balances in one photo. It can be a huge problem when photographing people, or it can look really awesome to get some complimentary colours in nature photos from an otherwise pretty colourless scene.
Some people feel really strongly about this, so here it is – this is photo art (as opposed to a photograph). I don’t normally do a lot of processing on my photos (except in previously mentioned dust nightmares). This one felt like it needed a little more to take it a little further from reality. Because really who wants to look at slimy seaweed? So I played with the colors a bit. Honestly this is still less processing than you see in any fashion shoot, magazine cover, etc.
My goal (and the goal of most artists) is to create beauty, not to use any one process, be it film, photoshop, or paint.
Taken on China Beach, Vancouver Island last summer.
And the original. Hopefully this doesn’t ruin the above for everyone.
Composition and inspiration are, in my opinion, the core of art photography. Working part time in a camera store, it is easy to get caught up in technical details and gear wankery. Which is important, but art gets left behind because it is harder to talk about, and doesn’t put money in company’s pockets. But I’d like to talk about composition.
I’m posting two photos today. They were taken just a few minutes apart and they have similar lighting, similar composition, similar subject. In both I used the classic triangle composition (this is something I’m only half conscious of when I’m taking photos) – one with positive space (seems to come forward), one with negative (seems to recede). In a triangle composition there’s a broad base at the bottom coming to a point at the top of the frame.
The top photo was taken first, and when I downloaded the photos it was also the first to jump out at me. I really liked it. Over the last few weeks, my opinion has been shifting. I’ve gained some distance from the memory of taking these photos, and now I’m thinking the second is better. It has a clearer composition with the high contrast edges of the rock and the log, and it has contrast between two sides of the triangle – the log gives a curvy organic line to contrast with the sharp jagged line of the rocks. Both lead the eye to a focal point – the leaf and the stump in the water on the first one, and the log at the top in the second.
In the end I’m sure it’s subjective. Some people will like one better, and some people the other. But it’s fascinating to me, in something as abstract as a nature photo, how much of a consensus there can be on good or bad photos.
