Project something-something-something...

As should be painfully obvious, I am really not able to keep up the Project 365 pace these days. I enjoy shooting every time I get my camera out, and I'm learning each time, but there are just too many demands on my time right now.

There is just not enough time in the day to allot an hour or more to shooting, editing, and posting a picture with two young kids in the house, a job, and a wife who works from home in the evenings. I'm proud of what I've accomplished so far, but at this point I'm prepared to admit that I can't keep it up for the remaining 180 or so days.

So, my point (finally). I will shoot, edit and post as frequently as time allows and as inspiration permits. I will continue this blog, and I will continue to try and support my business. I will continue to enjoy photography as often as I can, but I am no longer going to frame my goals as a photographer with an arbitrary requirement to shoot daily.

I appreciate everyone who reads this blog, and I'll continue to document my learning journey for as long as anyone cares to follow along.

Thanks.

Mercurial...

Today, I combined my love of flower shots, water shots and inverted trickery. Day 188's shot:



In this shot, a blue background is placed behind my acrylic tank and lit with a speedlite off to the side, and a softbox is overhead of the tank. The flower if held down into the water, and air bubbles are blown up from below it. Invert the shot in post processing, and you get what looks like mercury drops on the flower.

I've seen this technique used before, and my shot is not up to to par of a lot of the other ones I've seen. My bubbles are too big, and I think my setup is a bit amateur compared to the others, but it was a fun shot to do!

Fort Whyte Again!

Okay, okay I know that I've done this before, but my daughter loves Fort Whyte, and it's always a great place to go for a photowalk. So, day 186 is more pictures from Fort Whyte Alive!

The day we went, however, was a scorcher. We saw very few critters, and even the ducks and geese were hanging out in the shade. We saw two mallards actually sheltering under a bench, and they didn't move even with us within three feet away or so.

So here is what I managed to get for keepers. From critters:



To birds:



To blooms:





To bugs:







I just wished I got that last one when the Dragonfly was heading towards me. The silhouette is nice, and I did get a Dragonfly in flight (which is *NOT EASY*) but it could have been so much better!

All taken at f/4, ISO 100, aperture priority on the 70-200 with the 1.4x extender. That in-flight shot was a nice, crisp 1/2500th shutter speed, the others varied on lighting, from 1/125th to 1/1600th. I find I use aperture priority 90% of the time in natural light now, that might change if I get a chance to shoot some outdoor sports this year, but for now it's the most natural method of exposure for me.

One sharp lens...

Day 185's picture was made possible by a mishap with a glass, some hot water, and a cold sink.

First off, here is the picture:



How sharp is my EF-S 60mm Macro? THAT sharp.

The glass, when filled with hot water and placed on the cold sink split nearly perfectly up the middle. It was just too crazy a thing not to use in a shot somehow, and this is what I came up with. I was originally going to mock it up as a fake Canon advert, but I decided that co-opting the Canon logo for this might not exactly endear me to them. As it is I still think it's a fun shot.

In hindsight my lighting could have been a bit harsher on the background and it could have been a bit more even, but for three speedlights and a cardboard box with a sheet of glass from a picture from on it, I'll take it :)

Rainbow Toes

Day 184 was a day of much happiness around the house. Apparently, my daughter had never really realized that people could paint their finger and toenails. When she figured this out, she *flipped out*.

I promised her a picture so here it is:



Taken on the front lawn at ISO 200, f/7.1, 1/100th shutter. Tough shot since the lawn needs to be mowed, and this was one of those shots where the idea works, but the image isn't what I envisioned. Shooting it again wasn't really an option, I was lucky enough to get her standing still long enough to shoot this one!

I have a lot of shots like this lately, and it is what it is. Inspiration has not come easily as of late.

More fun guys!

Today I had a chance to shoot the same thing as yesterday, sort of. Day 183 and I'm shooting more fungi:



Now I'm going to be honest here: I had *no idea* what to do with this shot. I mean a pan of sizzling sautéed mushrooms is a fine thing (or so my wife says, I can't stand them) but photographically it's limited. I played with crops, angles, and a few other things, but really there was only so much I could do with it. This is best I managed.

ISO 100, f/7.1, 1/6th of a second shutter handheld. Thank god for IS!

Apologies...

Sorry that my posting has been rather erratic lately, lots going on, life gets busy, etc...

I've pretty much accepted that my Project 365 is going to be 365 pictures in about 450 days, but I am still frustrated on the days I can't shoot. My advice to others starting this sort of project is not to underestimate the amount of time that you will really end up investing in this day after day. I love the hobby but it's a slog to get through it!

Here there be dragons!

Today was a family trip back to Dorothy Lake, which I last visited in September of last year. Last time I was shooting landscapes, but today I was hunting dragons!

Where there are mosquitos, there are dragonflies, and that's what I ended up shooting on day 181. Here are my favourites of the day, all shot with the 70-200 and 1.4x extender:







The majority of the trip involved splashing around with a four year old in the lake however, so I'm exhausted!

Kersplash! Pre-and-post...

I didn't have a lot of time to shoot today, but my daughter was splashing in her pool in the back yard when I got home and I took some pictures just for the family. This turned into a good opportunity though, a chance to practice some post-processing and evaluate my technique. Tada! Day 180 post!

First off, here is the shot I kept straight out of camera:



As you can gather, if this is the best shot that I took, the rest were not very good :) She doesn't like getting water on her face, so her expression was always equally demented in the other shots.

Anyhow, post-processing was:

- Straighten
- Crop
- Fix white balance
- Sharpen
- Curves

Here is the result:



The curves adjustment is from an action set that I liked from DeviantArt, but dialed in to my own preference, and normally toned down to about 30% opacity. It just looks right to me this way.

So, this is the process I go through, more or less, for all my shots. The curves adjustment is not always applied, but this is the natural light set that I prefer for portraits.

Thanks again for reading, your comments are always welcome!

Master of his domain!

Looking for Macros on day 179, and in the backyard I went hunting about the various spiderwebs.

I thought I would find something a little bit bigger, but all my arachnid pals were hiding... except one.



This guy is *tiny*, like half the width of my fingernail. Getting a shot in focus was a challenge, because even at f/6.3 the slight breeze would take it in and out of focus. This is the best of about two dozen clicks of the shutter. This was also taken at ISO 400 so there is a bit of noise, the higher ISO was required to bring up the shutter speed due to the aforementioned breeze.

Even though he (she?) was small, he just strikes me as a bad-ass. You can tell he totally owns his little stalk of Catmint.

Blue balls...

Today, another lesson has been learned. The lesson is:

If you liked your last crystal shot, and you bought some geodes at the Museum and thought that they would be interesting to shoot, don't bother. They will look like crap. Geodes are supposed to be hollow and colourful, but no, they will be solid and all white and boring. Damn.

So that explains yesterday's lack of photo.

Today, I decided to work with something similar with coloured glass. While I was shooting around and trying different compositions, I noticed something interesting when one of my flashes didn't fire. I stumbled into a neat effect, and it made today's shot:



Ah, suggestive post titles that really are only marginally related to the content of the post.

This effect was acheived with a flash laying flush on the paper with the glass balls. The light shining through them gives this cool like refraction pattern, and it reminds me of a natural gas burner. I took a bunch of these shots until I found one that looked just right, like little blue flames. Let's just say that this trick is more consistent at making little blue flames than my furnace is.

This took surprisingly little light, one LP160 at 1/64th power, and the 580EX II bounced off the ceiling for a little bit of fill and to trigger the slave on the LumoPro. That was enough light to shoot at f/9, 1/250th shutter and ISO 100. I suppose having the speedlite two or three inches away really helped as well!

It's a swing thing!

It's day 177, and I had an idea for a shot, but opportunity gave me a chance to reshoot something from earlier this year.

I did a shot of the kids on the swingset back in april. I was using some different post processing techniques, and I was still shooting with the XSi. When my kids were out back today, it seemed like a good chance to reshoot and see what I could do:



A few notes that I think made a difference in this shot. The post processing style I'm using now is much gentler to the skin tones, and the composition seems better to me. I've done a better job of framing her face, although I still have a busier background than I would have liked. In this case, you don't have a ton of options, there is going to be part of the swingset in the frame somewhere!

A better shot to my eye, and her expression is as cute as all get out in it. :)

I'm alive!

I've been busy the last few days, and my camera has been lonely in my backpack. We finally got out today, so this is day 176.

We took the kids to the Manitoba Museum today, and I was planning on taking some shots of the Nonsuch. The lighting in the gallery is really horrible though, bad enough that I'd need a tripod and I didn't have one with me.

Having said that, there are quite a few fun little things to see there, and I found a shot I liked elsewhere:



There is a gallery that is set up like a city street from the 20s complete with a pharmacy. The cabinets are packed with a variety of these tonics, bottles, pills and other narcotic quackery, which are just wonderful examples of the graphic design of the era. I took a few shot, and just ended up liking this one after a little sharpening.

It's not much, but after the disappointing shots of the ship, I was happy to come away with something I liked.

I've got a sweet Wrasse!

Well on day 175 I got to cross off another shot from my 'shots to get' list. I managed to get a good shot in my reef aquarium, and it's of my newest and most colourful fish, the Mystery Wrasse:



As usual, my daughter named him. His name is Mr. Fins. Glub glub.

Crystal Clear

I've been setting up this shot for three weeks, and decided to shoot it tonight. Day 174 is all about crystals!



I've been growing these from a kit for about three weeks now. They are horribly delicate so getting them into the lightbox was a challenge. Thank you to my wife and her delicate lady fingers!

These crystals are pretty much pure white, so I gelled up three lights for this, red to the left, blue to the right and green above, all diffused through the lightbox, all firing at 1/8th power. The camera was shooting at ISO 200, f/9, 1/200th shutter.

Not much else to add, not great photography but fun photography! Wheeeee!

Unfurling...

Sorry to go back and reshoot something from yesterday, but that poppy pod was starting to bloom today. I'm not likely to get another chance to shoot this this year, so I had to do it!

To try and change it up a bit, however, I used a sheet of turquoise construction to create a backdrop for it and add some complementary colour to the shot:



I also stopped down the aperture to f/7.1 (I think) to give a little more depth of field. I think it's a much stronger shot than yesterdays as a result!

Growth in the Garden

I saw a few things in the garden on the way home today, so I went for a wander with my Macro lens to see what I could see for day 171.

Here are two lessons I learned:

1. Wind makes shooting macros of flowers pointlessly hard.
2. No matter how hard you try, the Dragonfly knows you are looking at it, and will fly away if you come within five thousand feet of it.

Having said that I got a few shots I liked, and I'm posting two that are both themed around growth.

First, a Poppy Pod from the front garden. This will likely bloom in the next day or two so you have a limited time to shoot them:



Second, the same Blackberry bush from this shot has started to lose it blooms and grow berries. I took a different angle and opened the lens wide to get a shallow DOF shot of the last full bloom and some of the new berries:



Sadly, the bloom blew out in the shot, so the very slight purple tone was lost in the shot. Damn auto-exposure!

Faking it...

So for day 170, I was trying a different technique, where you intentionally use the wrong white balance setting in post-processing.

First the shot, and then the explanation:



This is just a macro of a bamboo leaf with water drops, but the key is lighting and processing. The background is lit with two speedlites, with a red gel to camera left and a yellow gel to camera light. A third speedlite is on the camera with the Lumiquest SB3 softbox to light the leaf.

In post processing, you swap the white balance to 'fluorescent' which tones everything blue, and you get the tones you see here. The 'bluing' also makes the leaf and drops pop. I like it!

You could accomplish the same thing just by shooting with a standard white balance and toning the picture manually, but this gives you a sense of experimentation since you don't know exactly how it will turn out. When I started this 365, I *never* would have shot like this, I used to feel like you had to have everything figured out, and it had to look *right* somehow. Now, part of the fun is shooting something and seeing what happens later.

I don't think I have to tell you which style of shooting I'm preferring!

Come here often?

Day 169, and it's a busy night. Another shot idea I had fell through, so I'll have to satisfy myself with a backyard shot:



Since we've stopped feeding larger seed in our feeders, our steady stream of grackles has given way to finches and sparrows galore. Much prettier, quieter, and cleaner birds, so it's a good trade.

I'll try to manage a more interesting shot tomorrow!

Green tea, too!

I had a shot in mind for a few days that I finally got to shoot tonight. Day 168 is a redux on my earlier 'Green Tea' shot.

Here is my new shot:



There is trickery in this shot too, but not digital. This is shot upside down, with the stream of 'tea' shooting upward into the cup. The cup pushes the stream out to the edge and that gives you the 'crown' of drops.

This needed a fair bit of light to clear the backdrop and freeze the action so there is a little more blowout in the drops than I would have liked, but the lead section of drops is nice and crisp, so I think the effect worked. This was list with two LP160s on the background (on high and one low) and the 580EX2 on-camera to light the front at about 1/16th power. This lighting allowed me to shoot at f/7.1, ISO 100 and 1/200th shutter.