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Days 59-65
Somehow after last weekend shooting 5 nice shots in 3 days, I managed to only take one picture this week. On Thursday I went into our Orbitor office for a short session on our new trouble ticketing system, and I used the opportunity to corner a co-worker.
I have a bit of uneven exposure on the left side of this photo, and I am not sure why.
Day 58
Jen & Giles came over to watch the Oscars with us on Sunday night. I didn’t really get a great portrait of them, but here is a fun one of them goofing for the camera:
Days 51-57
I am doing some catching up today. I am posting photos from 2 and 3 days ago. I still have to develop film from yesterday, and lastly I haven’t shot anything yet today.
So here is Saturday’s photo. I went out with my friend Craig and we shot some more waterfalls in the Hamilton area.
Tews Falls, Icicles, 57a/365
And another from the same day:
Tews Falls, base
And on my birthday I went took the day off work, as is my tradition, and amongst other things that day took a few photos around the area. The best is probably this one:
Barber Mill
There were a couple more that day that turned out ok:
Tree
Days 44-50
Day 50: I went out again to the stub of 2nd line road, where I had already been on day 36. This time I explored around the area for a while, and found some nice details.
The first image is the remnants of an old cup and saucer found out back of one of the old homesteads.
Cup and Saucer, 50a/365
And the second I could not resist, it is layer upon layer of ice formed as the water has been draining away.
Ice on Ice, 50b/365
Now don’t complain I posted two photos for one day here. I was extremely busy this week, I went for a few days with very few hours of sleep, as we worked through a network jeopardy situation in repeated maintenance windows each night for most of the week. With all this going on, I did not have the time to shoot during the week, and when I saw two great opportunities today, I was not going to pass them up just because there is only supposed to be one photo a day. It is my photo blog, my personal photography exercise, and if I want to shoot and post multiple photos in one day, then I say I can do so.
Day 49: Saturday marked Callum’s 11 month birthday, so as usual he gets a day to be the subject of the PoTD. In this case I used my handmade wide angle camera with my 90mm lens. I pre-focused to 3 feet, but Callum was very interested in the camera, and scooted up to me so quickly that he ended up in front of the focus area, and is thus a little blurry.
Callum – 11 Monts old, 49/365
Days 37-43
As you may recall back when I started this project I said I would not actually take a picture every day, and I would certainly not develop my film every day. Well, here was have a week of photography, all in one post as it has been a very busy work week.
Day 43: Today we had some friends over for dinner, and has now become the custom after dinner we had a quick sitting for a portrait. Even with the flash being almost inline with the camera I still should have used a reflector for some fill on the left, and it would have been better to have them another foot in front of the background.
Mother/Daughter, 43/365
Day 42: While I was making dinner yesterday I had Callum in the kitchen with me, in his high chair. He started out interested in the activity around the stove, but a few minutes later he started to head bob, and them fell asleep.
Callum nods off, 42/365
Day38: Gemma & Declan are taking skating lessons, and we are only allowed to take pictures on two occasions. Apparently due to the complete misrepresentation of Canada’s Privacy laws the instructors believe it is a violation of said privacy laws to take pictures of your own children learning sports in a public place.
This last Monday was one of the two occasions on which the privacy laws magically no longer apply . So I snapped a few photos with my DSLR, and then setup my big Bender 4×5 in the middle of the stands, and fired off 4 sheets. The exposure times were quite long, as the light in an Arena is not actually very bright, so as you can see we have a lot of motion blur. If I do this again I will consider pushing my film to iso 1600.
Gemma is the third from the right.
Gemma Skating, 38/365
Day 37: This is a repeat of one of the shots that on a previous occasion came out completely blank. This is a focal plane shutter capable of exposure from 1/10th of a second all the way up to 1/1000th of a second. I cut this out of an old 3.5×4.5 Speedgraphic. I am going to mount it into a lens board adapter to be a shutter for barrel lenses on my Deardorff.
Shutter 37/365
Day 36
I headed out at the crack of dawn this morning to get a quick shot on the edge of Brampton of a lost road.
I was looking through pictures taken around Brampton that are posted on flickr, using the explore places function. And I came across this picture:
by Lone Primate.
It is a short portion of 2nd Line, which once upon a time was a significant road. But today this tiny bit is no longer connected to any road, and is only accessible by foot on a hiking trail. I find it fascinating to find abandoned spaces in the middle of all the urban sprawl.
After spending close to an hour last night exploring the associated set of photos on Flickr, I had decided this road would be what I was going to shoot next. I knew it would be buried under snow, but I had to get out there to see it for myself. I’ll be returning again to explore further, and think I’ll shoot in this area a few times as the seasons pass over the coming year.
Days 33-35
Today at lunch I popped over to Gage park and shot some skaters going by. I’ll have to try this one again.
Skaters, 35/365
Yesterday I played with another veg picture. I think the stock pot I used for background worked really well on this one. I used continuous lighting so that I could clearly see the final composition, and not be guessing as to highlight locations etc.
Tomatoes, 34/365
Two days ago I shot a couple sheets of my new(old) focal plane shutter from an old Speed graphic 3.5×4.5 which is soon going to be my shutter to use with barrel lenses on my Deardorf. But once again I have two blank sheets. I’m perplexed as to what I did wrong. It is frustrating to fail, but especially so when there is no learning from the experience. Since I don’t know what went wrong I cannot learn to not do it again.
Days 31,32
OK for Day 32 we have a result that was about the process, the image itself is pretty dull.
So the result here is a scan.
It is a scan of a print.
The print is a contact print.
It is an 8×10 contact print.
Which means it comes from a massive 8×10 negative.
And the negative was exposed in a homemade pinhole camera.
The image is the birch tree in my front yard, I thought the wide angle view of the pinhole camea would make it look majestic or something. I was wrong.
8×10, pinhole, contact, 32/365
And for Day 31, well I’m not going to bother scanning it, both sheets I shot came out completely blank. So Day 31 more black.
“It’s like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black.”
-Nigel Tufnel, “This is Spinal Tap”
Day 30
Overall not a good day for photography.
It was only a couple degrees below zero, and the sun was out. I decided to take the kids to the zoo, and figured that I’d get in a photo there somewhere as well. Declan didn’t want to come, but that was OK, since Mommy wanted to stay home as well.
I was going to put Callum up in a backpack so he would have a good view of the animals at the zoo, and we wouldn’t have trouble moving through the pavillions, which are often tricky with a stroller. With Callum on my back, a diaper bag on one side, my large format gear on the other side, and my tripod in hand, it was quite a load.
Now, you know when it is cold out that you won’t see too many animals outside, but there are still many advantages to winter visits to the zoo. I’ve gone to the zoo during the winter many times in the past, and always enjoyed it. There aren’t any crowds, there aren’t any lines, and nobody is in your way when you are trying to see the animals.
But this time wow, not only were there almost no animals outside, the pavilions we went into weren’t that great either. Half the Africa Pavilion was closed, and you had to double back to get out. And in the Americas pavilion it stunk of paint, and Gemma couldn’t stand it.
At the end of the day we headed to the “Tundra Trek” section, as we figured there must be something there outside. But when we got there the disappointment continued. Maybe the Arctic wolves were out, but we couldn’t find them. The Polar bears were certainly absent from the open portion of their enclosure.
At the end of the day we had been walking around the zoo for 2 1/2 hours, and I never once saw anything that caused me to want to set up my camera. I could have taken a picture of the cheetahs, but it didn’t look like much of a photo, and I really figured something better would present itself later.
In the end it was a pleasant hike, but when you add up the costs it wasn’t worth the trip this time.
Gas $15
407 Tolls $15
Zoo Admission $36
Lunch $17
———-
Total $83
Oh, and the photo of the day, it isn’t from the zoo. After I got home I figured I’d just try something silly with some of Declan’s toys. This photo was supposed to be backlit by flash, with everything in silhouette, looking dark and mysterious. But alas I cannot go more than a couple days without making significant bone headed mistakes. So the mistake this time: the camera lens was still set on time exposure mode, when instead it should have been set to 1/60 of a second. So what we ended up with here is the room light revealing the whole scene, and the presence of the flash isn’t even noticeable.
Sentinel, 30/365
Day 29
Today I hooked up with my long time buddy Craig Gross, and we headed out to the Dundas Valley Conservation area to photograph some waterfalls. Craig was shooting with his brand new Sony α850, and I had the Bender. I had brought my Minolta 7D, but decided to leave it in the car.
We went to both Tiffany Falls, which were frozen, and Sherman Falls, which had water flowing. At Tiffany quite a few ice climbers were gathered around, and taking turns trying the ascent. I moved back down the creek bed and took this picture with my 150mm at f16 1/15s.
Ice Climbers, 29/365
Another lesson to remember, when using Post-it notes to mark your holders with which film is in which holder, please remember to remove the Post-it before inserting the holder in the camera. Having a Post-it note inside of your camera is not conducive to capturing a good image.
Post-it note
At Sherman Falls I tried my B+W ND3 (1000 times) filter to shoot a long exposure of the falls. I think it turned out OK. Using this filter my exposure which had been a thirtieth of a second without the filter became two and half minutes, given the falling water a nice blur.
Sherman Falls
[click for a larger view]
Days 26,27,28
Okay, so there is no photo for day 26. I had to work all night, for the second time in 3 days and decided getting some sleep was more important than getting a photo.
For Day 28 we have a Droste effect picture of Gemma. Gemma didn’t really want her picture done, so this was a little rushed, and not quite what I was looking for.
Gemma, 28/365
And For Day 27, another office portrait. I had to go in to our Orbitor Drive office for a presentation, and afterwards ran into the most excellent Mike George. So after I gave him a few minutes to peruse my blog to see what I am up to, I asked him to sit for a portrait, and without hesitation he agreed (Thanks Mike!). So here we are in an unused office, with natural light coming in from the left, and a handheld flash to the right.
There seems to be a theme of laughing in these portraits, and if you know Mike then that is how it should be. Mike has one of the biggest laughs of everyone I know. Curiously he introduces himself as, “The quiet one”, and only if you meet more of his family does that make any sense.
Mike, 27/365
Day 25
Just fooling around with this shot. Taken just before the end of the day. I was playing with my 90mm wide angle, and took a shot of the floor to see how narrow a depth of field am getting with the lens wide open.
Shot on Fuji FP-100C45.
Days 23,24
Another post with two photos, and I better hurry up and shoot today’s photo. I only have 30 minutes left.
So first we have another portrait of a co-worker. For this photo I convinced Kevin McGouran to sit for me during lunch. Kevin was reluctant, and says he doesn’t like looking at pictures of himself. I said, “You don’t have to look at it, you just have to sit for it!”
After some further pushing he agreed to be a subject in my photo of the day series. I am glad he did, because as you can see he is really photogenic. And it was fun to do as he has a great laugh, and eventually let one out, and I managed to capture it.
I am still working on developing a rapport with people in front of the lens. Somewtimes I think my blather makes sitters more nervous rather than less. But this one went well as Kevin is a great friend, and was quite patient with my stumbling.
From two days ago we have my old Yashica TLR, which regretfully doesn’t work any more. I shot an awful lot with this camera after I first picked it up at a pawn shop on Queen Street. But it had already been well used before I acquired it, and after a year of hard use it decided to give up. I fixed it once, but I don’t think I’ll try again.
Days 21,22
So two photos in today’s post.
From Friday we have #21 of 365, A lovely friend of ours came over for some dinner and between dessert and a game of Catan we squeezed in a quick portrait. This is in the living room, simply using the bay window curtains as background. I used a single flash shooting through an umbrella to camera left, and should have put in a white bounce to camera right.
And yesterday I felt like playing with something really high key and tried a simple glass of water on a white background. Nothing exciting here, it mostly worked out the way I wanted it. Practise more….
