Bugger Christmas.

Yes, someone has been knitting waaayyy too much. Anyways, for my birthday this year I got to spend an amazing weekend out in one of my favourite places on earth, Tofino. And although it felt very unnatural for a vacation, I decided to act like a real photographer, and get up before the crack of dawn to take photos. Putting my pants on in the dark, I felt kinda nuts, but I have to say, blowing those bad boys up on my computer, the shots were amazing, so worth it. Well here ya go.

Dunno who those people are. The longer I was out there the more people came out with tripods looking like me. I was one of only 2 or 3 at the beginning, by the time I went inside the beach was more or less littered.

An early photo, one of the first. I think I had run down between waves to get one of the wet sand because I love the reflection of the sky on the sand.

I really like the colours in the sand on this one too.

This is what it looked like when I finally decided I was too cold and it was time to go back inside. You can see the sun hitting the trees across the water. This was my view from the cabin btw, pretty sweet eh.

Decided to go b&w with this one, this is Cox Bay, where we normally surf, except the wind was pretty gnarly this day, so the waves would try and crest, and then they'd just get pushed over into foam.

This morning I got up early to do another before sunrise shoot, I'll admit I accidently forgot to set my ISO and ended up shooting everything at 800, but I learned my lesson, and won't do that again anytime soon. The shots should be pretty good though, they're at an old academy near downtown. Next week we're slated to shoot in a giant cemetary, depending on the weather of course.
Ok, knitting time again . . .

And then there was HDR . . .

I know I'm WAAAYYYY behind the times as far as new age photographers go, but I will quite happily admit, that today, for the very first time, I have made HDR images. So I thought I'd put them here, though I don't think many people see this regularly. Its kinda nice though to at least have a place for myself to keep track of what I've been up to, with very visible dates attached. 

So it was a wonderfully stormy day today, but the storm had given way to sunshine by the time I crawled up to Mt Tolmie with my camera. All that was left of the foul weather was some wicked wind that I had to contend with, so I only took a couple photos, using my bracketing on the camera, starting off at a -0.7ex then with a +/- of a full 2 stops just to see what could be done here. So this is what I got quickly before admiting defeat against the wind and going home again. 

Facing north, with a circular polarizer and the sun at my side gives the sharpest colour. Despite the shot being at mid-day, there is more information both in the dark areas and the light.

A trickier direction to try and shoot mid-day, more or less straight a the sun, there is less colour available, and my polarizer didn't so much for me. The best part of this shot though is the contrast of the clouds glowing over the city.

Prime example with a circular polarizer of the difference that is made just by the direction you face in respect to the sun. 90 degree angles give the best results. Hard to believe really that these two shots were within a minute of each other, from more or less the same spot.

So now I`m sitting here with the Photoshop CS5 for Dummies on my lap, I borrowed it from the library, and I`m going to go explore some more photoshop features now. I still find that editing is not nearly as dynamic as in Lightroom though, and I suspect this Adobe Bridge thing can help me out, I just haven`t nailed all these things down yet.

My cousin's wedding.

 Well, I do have to say, getting the opportunity to shoot a few at my cousins wedding was a huge boost to my photography ego. Even while editing them, I was kinda getting down on myself, I need more practice indoors. I'm a pro outdoors, but I still haven't read the little book that came with my speedlight . . . But once I gave myself a bit of time to cool off after editing, I was really happy with the results. Heres just a few.

 

 Probably my best portrait so far. That's Annabelle.

My cousin Jennifer. A moment of peace between trying not to cry or hurl.

 

Sisters, Karen and Jennifer. The location was beautiful, the only trouble was dodging harsh light because it was a mid afternoon wedding.

Gotta go to work now, so thats why I'm keeping it brief. Ciao

Went on a holiday . . .

Then to a wedding. I took many great photos at each. I've really been trying harder lately to make sure I bring my camera, and make sure it gets to come out of its bag. I've just been feeling distracted this past year or so, and this has gotten surprisingly difficult. I'm starting to feel now that I could possibly make a profession out of this, but I'm my own biggest critic, and that is really the only thing stopping me. Oh, and a phobia of being poor.

So, the photos I have to share today begin in Oregon. We were at the sea lion caves, and now that I have photoshop instead of just lightroom, I might revisit this one later to re-edit it. But it still gets me pretty excited. Like all my photos, it should be viewed best by clicking on it and expanding it as much as possible to get the full resolution and effect.

The original was dark on the walls and slightly over developed through the center. But I think its quite beautiful now, and makes me think of the whole 'sirens on the rocks' bit. I have since finally figured out how to work the bracketing on my camera, but this would have been a perfect HDR scenario to reclaim information on the walls without sacrificing.

Crater Lake, OR. Once again, not knowing at the time how to work my bracketing, I had a lot of photos where I had to work to balance the over exposure of the sky, or the under exposure of the foreground. This shot was the only one I think I had with no sky, and I have it rotating on my background with a few others, but every time I see this one it gives me that little feeling in my gut. I love it. Crater Lake was amazing though, and I'd recommend anyone go if they have the time, its only a few hours south of Portland.

Redwoods in California. I really liked the labyrinth look the bark has, like vines growing outside the tree. I'll continue this post tomorrow, but I had a nap while this photo was loading and now I'm feeling a little less inspired.

Sungoma Fun with Tosh

Well, Tosh absconded from Facebook, so I'm getting crafty by planning to put a heap of photos on here in one post to share with him, and anyone else then who may be interested. I suppose I'll narrate a bit too.

 

Well seeing as I can't seem to move the photos to have two side by side, this is gunna be long. 

So we got some garden . . . 

 Fun stuff . . .

More garden . . . 

 One tipi shot . . . they spell tipi that way somewhere, I saw it, seems more politically correct for some reason.

 Fleurs . . . 

Good view from a good chair . . .

 Fun door . . .

 Tosh's awesome place . . .

 I didn't freak out, so I manage to get a bumblebee shot . . . 

Fun boat . . .

HUCKLEBERRIES! . . . 

SOOOOO freaking many of them . . . I was half shooting, half shoveling into my face . . .

More huckleberries . .. . 

 Buried in berries . .. . oh yeah, I went there :)

 Random materials . . ..

Sungoma Mansion . . . 

Bumbley bee . . .  

The stage at Sungoma . . .

Hippie stuff . . . 

Long exposure inside the stage building . . .

Long exposure . . . .

Photos of the building of the stage . . . 

Past glories . . . 

Long exposure . . . 

Hippie home . . . .

A boat, on land, what crazy people . . . 

The one side of the stage building has and opening roof.

Further wandering . . . 

Fleurs . . . 

Tosh's view of Richards mountain and the lake . . . 

Tipi.

 Tosh's . . .

 Tosh.

And so . . . that was a day wandering around, camera's in hand. Only took me a couple weeks to edit, but to be fair, I went to California and back before I finished. I had a hell of a time doing what I normally do to that last photo of tosh, but I couldn't let it go, it was too good. I had to be content with a severely differing exposure top to bottom and some mad blowout/loss of information.


In other news, my mom gave me her camera last night . . . Its the first camera I took photos with when I was like 12. I took 10 photos, I still have them, I still love them. But I was only very rarely allowed to touch this camera, and its the reason I bought my own nice camera, and now its mine as well. Its film, and I'm pretty stoked.