Project 365 - Day 66 - Lighthouse

Went down to Oakville harbour again today to get a shot of the lighthouse with some geese or seagulls in the picture.  It was a grey day, with little cloud detail.  The lighthouse did pop against the grey sky though. 

This time there were no birds on the walkway leading up to the lighthouse, so I was able to get a "clean" shot of the house.  I did, however, have to dodge the odd goose turd (they are the size of a small dog).  I sometimes don't watch where I am going as I am trying to see things like a camera - and that's when I step in something ewwy...  Good thing there is still a little bit of snow on the ground.

Today's shot was taken just around dusk.  There was not a lot of sunset colour, the sun is actually setting off to the right of this shot, about 45 deg off.  This is almost due south.  I desaturated the blue to bring the sky down to grey and cropped in post.

Here's today's shot...

Project 365 - Day 65 - mmm ... beer...

TorontoFC has a new beer sponsor and they brought out a limited collection bottle, or can, actually a bottle shaped can ... whatever.  The front of the bottle-can is a soccer ball with the TFC logo in the centre, and a bunch of fans under neath.  Today's shot is a shot of three can-bottles lined up so everyone can see the actual logo.  It's not perfect, but it works pretty well.

I used a flash with a bounce card to light the underside of the crowns.

I cropped out the UPCs on the sides of the bottles and adjusted the white balance to bringt out the whites.  And that's all for post processing...

Project 365 - Day 64 - Oakville at night

I had the photographer's version of writer's block today.  Nothing was working out, nothing inspired me.  So I took a drive to one of my recent locations, down at Oakville harbour.  It totally paid off.

The sky over the lake and over the northern part of Oakville was very cool.  As soon as I got out of the van I could hear my friends the geese calling to me.  When I walked around the corner, I saw them - and let me tell you I have never seen that many geese in one spot at one time.  But I told them "I'm not here to shoot you guys today".  They seemed relieved ... I wonder why.

It was incredibly windy and cold.  I had to use a very slow shutter to allow enough light in.  Because of the wind, there was considerable camera shake even with the tripod.  So I braced myself against the tripod and tried not to move for the shutter duration.  That was tough.  But it worked out.

You'll notice the geese in the foreground are blurry.  This is because they don't follow orders - I asked them to stay still.  :-)  The water was very wavy as well - you can see ripples on one part of the open water where there are no geese.

Enough about that, here's the shot:

This is my Sigma 11-16 lens at 16mm.  f/22, ISO800 and 20 second shutter.  I love the way the clear night sky is actually blue...I reduced the saturation a bit (yes, reduced) as the sky was too blue and detracted from the shot.

I will definitely keep coming back here - especially when it is warmer ... ;-)

Project 365 - Day 63 - I'm keeping an eye on the internet

Okay, so I went ahead and attempted the self-eye-portrait again.  It was pretty successful.  I turned my 24-70 into a macro lens with the extension tubes.  It's a better piece of glass, so it allowed a better shot than my 60mm.  I had it out to 70mm and used a tripod and remote release cable to trip the shutter.  I think I went through about 50 shots on manual focus before I got a couple of reasonably good ones.  I was using an off camera flash as well.  It was tough, but I got it..

Here's the shot...

Obviously, I changed it to black and white.  The flash lit some stuff on the table in front of me, so you can see that in the bottom of the eye. 

Project 365 - Day 62 - Splashpad...

It's funny what you fail to notice when you are busy shooting.  I was sitting on top of this hill at Lakeside park in Mississauga.  It wasn't a hill as much as it was a man made mound with setps leading up from a splashpad.  This mound had an observation deck on the top of it, where you could use those long range binocular thingies that you usually see on top of a tall monument somewhere - where you have to pay to see things way off in the distance.  Well this mound afforded me with a good place to shoot birds as they were flying by.

At one point, I was looking down at my camera checking the settings on the menu.  I noticed a black circle under my feet.  The circle was filled with holes, and kind of looked like a shower head - but upside down.  It was then that I noticed I was standing on a splashpad jet.  Then I noticed the other jets around the actual splashpad. 

In my defence it is March, and there are no screaming wet kids to give the secret away ... :-)

So today's picture is a shot of the actuator for this splashpad.  This is a button that a kid will press for the water to shoot up from the ground.  Something tells me that I won't be up here shooting in the summer months ... ;-)

 

24-70mm lens at 60mm.  f/5.0 at 1/1000 sec shutter.  ISO is 400.  Good depth of field blurring out the mount and giving it some dimension.

Project 365 - Day 61 - Panning bird shot!

Went out again this morning, this time to Lakeside park in Mississauga.  More geese to shoot as they flew across the lake and in front of the camera.  I have this technique pretty well down now.

This shot is at ISO400 and f/5.0  Shutter is 1/1000s, so it pretty much freezes the wing action.  Got a nice shot of 5 birds as they flew across the top of the tree line.

I had to bump up the blue to bring out the sky - it was pretty dull today.

Going out tomorrow am to see if I can't get a nice clear sky for some sunrise shots - we'll see... :-)

Here's today's shot.

Project 365 - Day 60 - The eye of the beholder

Today's shot was inspired by my friend Rafal Kiermacz - and I didn't even know it.  :-)

Rafal is also doing a project 365 where he posts a picture a day.  You can find his blog here.  I encourage you to read it, he's a very good photographer.  Yesterday, Day 59, he posted a picture of an eye.  Now, I had just spent the evening shooting my own eye, trying to get the depth of field down so you could see enough of the eye, and was reasonably successful.  Do you know how difficult it is to shoot your own eye when you have to keep checking to make sure the focus is good, and hold a light shining into your eye?  It's a pain in the butt.  But like I said, I was reasonably happy with one of the shots I had, so I went to the computer to see it on the big screen.

That's when I saw his post from yesterday.  (Insert awww sound here). So back to the drawing board - so to speak.

What I came up with was a different eye altogether.  It is the opening of the lens called the aperture.  This opening acts like the pupil in the eye, opening to let enough light in for the camera to make a good image.  This is where the term "open up" and "close down" come in.  A small number in the aperture (for instance f/2.8) means that the blades are basically wide open.  A larger number, F/22, means that the blades are closed down more.

Hopefully that didn't bore you and you're still with me ... :-)  Before I lose any more readers, here's the shot:

This is my 60mm lens with 2 extension tubes (36mm and 22mm) looking down on my 24-70mm lens.  The 24-70mm lens has an apeture of about f22 or so I would think.  I have my LED flashlight shining on an angle, and that's creating the green ring of lights.