Big Hill Springs

Ken and I had a chance to go out photographing today - a few degrees below freezing so ideal for photographing ice and a warm water spring that results in falls and ice throughout most of the winter.

Bowl Of Wooden Fruit

I noticed the fruit in the warm afternoon sun at the window. Made several images and wasn't quite happy. Went back and photographed two more images - no, that didn't solve the issue. Back upstairs a third time, sun fading a bit but managed a third image after moving the two bananas from the background. Cropped the sides after a bit of thinking, did a slight blur on the bowl in the bottom edge, desaturated the colour a tad and now I'm pleased with the result. Shot of course with the Velvet 56.

Rose Bush

We'd just come back from walking the dog and notice the late afternoon light on the Rose Bush.

The first shot, before I remembered to turn down the ISO from 6400 - but as it happens, I quite like the effect. Unlike the previous shots that were monochrome with a tint added, this is original colour, left a tad cool, but colour none the less.

A bit more editing - darker along the bottom on the right, a tad more local contrast in the spouts, and just a whisp of raising highlights in the same area. Oh yes, and a tad more toning.

Kettles

More with the Velvet 56 - I'm really liking this lens - especially if there are specular highlights that can be flared - in this case stainless kettles in an industrial kitchen.

Death Valley Floor

Found on the ground in a mostly deserted town in Death Valley. Shot on a Phase One that was part of the workshop.

Garden In Snow

First Snowfall

Soft light, flare prone Velvet 56 lens, Sunflower in snow.

Lensbaby Velvet 56 - Cotoneaster

I'd never been fully satisfied with the Lensbaby Composer, except in one situation - where I used it for close work with an extension tube - this eliminated the distorted edges and came closer to the dreamy look I wanted. Recently though, I was made aware of the Velvet 56 and it seemed to have several characteristics I was looking for - the right look and the ability to do close work without adding extension tubes. This shot was made in our back yard.

Discovery WIldlife Park

As close as I'll ever get to a safari and a very pleasant experience, Bring you chain link fence filter. This was shot while it was still foggy, the fence close enough and the lion far enough for the fence to blur out, 300 mm. f5.6 on the Pentax 645Z, oh yes, and ISO 6400.

Badlands Gully

31 years I have been visiting Dinosaur Provincial Park and have yet to get bored with it. Time moves on though and this time I had to contend with mountain bikes instead of boy scouts. Still, there was enough left to satisfy me.

Dinosaur Provincial Park 2016

It's been a couple of years since the last visit - and I always enjoy exploring. We'd hoped for sunset light but this was as much as we got and this was weak sun through cloud, and even that disappeared shortly after making this image. It's a stitch, using the 120 macro on my Pentax 645Z.

I realized that one reason I like to stitch is that the image is larger on the LCD, and composing carefully is more successful. I wasn't sure where to start and end the image so went over, using seven vertical images - but in the end trimming down to about four - for a 130 megapixel image file.

There's a bit of colour in the foreground plant material but in the end it was more distracting than helpful and I was not surprised to find the black and white image more sucessful.

The left hand side of the image is in shade, the right in weak sun, so there's a fair bit of editing to balance things, including some curves layers with the top right corner shifted left, as well as some Akvis Enhancer selectively applied, more to the background cliff face than to the columns.

Grandfather Tree

Located at Cochrane Ranche, a short distance west of Calgary, this 300 year old tree is most impressive. I wanted to make an image that might be a little different and so chose to shoot it wide open, with a very narrow band of sharpness on the base of the trunk. I wanted a low contrast image and so used curves to further emphasize the trunk compared to the background., with some subtle field blur at the edges of the image at the far left and lower right. It was then toned with my brownblack toning action, then adjusted further by double clicking on the layer and then changing the blending by shifting the output right hand split slider (option move). This latter reduced the rather heavy sepia look and especially the pinkish looking light tones.

The image is 9000X15500 pixels, three images stitched from the Pentax 645Z. I just can't stop myself from  stitching after years of not having enough pixels. Guess I'll have to make a 60 inch wide print some time.

Yet Again

And Another Car

Back Out Shooting

Yes, it's been months since an entry. One thing and another, and the addition to our household with Sophie, our now six month old Standard Poodle.

For example, today we went in the morning to the off leash park, then there was leash training , then this afternoon, more leash training on the way to the local park to practice Fetch with a tennis ball, and then back to the Off leash park, and now she's rested up and ready for action again and she's not tired but I am.

Anyway, Ken and I popped over to Gasoline Alley at Heritage Park to photograph the old vehicles and a good time was had. For convenience I took the Sony 6000, and did enjoy the convenience of the zoom, but sure missed the simple manual focus of the Pentax 645Z - sometimes the image would magnify but not for long, and trying to move where it magnified was more than challenging.

But it was sure nice to be shooting again.

Two weeks ago we went back to Jura Canyon and not all those images are even processed at this point - stitching and blending in progress.

 

And the image below is from Maligne Canyon a year or so ago, discovered on the SD card and I thought worth working on.

 And from Gasoline Alley:

And this gas pump glass:

Jag

1956 Jaguar XK150, an ongoing project to which I'll be returning. I might try cropping the bottom image on the left, dramatically reducing that white horizontal blob, losing the curve in the bottom left but resulting in a cleaner and stronger composition of the verical white against the steering wheel and background of the seating.

Hearth

Back and sidewalls of a blacksmith's hearth, standing outside. I'd photographed the right side previously and liked the image but wanted to include both sides. I used focus blending on two separate halves, then stitching the blended images after.