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.

Wow, february eh. I think someone isn't being fair dinkum with me...

I did try to post something a month ago or so, but then my other half yelled at me for stealing all the bandwidth trying to upload a photo when he was trying to play NHL 11, so I stopped.

I think this might've been the photo. I was at home one morning, and like a lot of nights, I didn't sleep much past 6am. In this case it was a good thing, these retards were outside jack hammering around 730, I looked out the window to check it out and saw a typical male-occupation-oriented situation of 5 guys standing around watching one guy work. So I took a picture.



I see no workers, just a lot of tools strewn everywhere.


Anyways, its Easter monday, I've concluded I hate holidays more than ever, but I did make it over to Saturna, and within a half hour of getting there some amazing light crept in, so I went on a shooting spree. (Something about that makes me nervous to leave it there, but I'm going to leave it, we'll see if anything happens)

So I crept around the garden with my camera, and mostly shot photos of the dog because he's fuzzy, and catches backlight beautifully.

Ozzie, a cockapoo-sheltie border collie cross.

I got about 2 good photos with the little monster, I almost got a couple other good ones, but everytime I put my camera to my face he'd start barking.

And then there were flowers...

It's been awhile since I've taken pictures of flowers, and I don't normally like to, cause everyone else does, so if I do, it has to be different somehow. I do like what I come up with when I point my 50mm at flowers though, cause the lens has a very short depth of field, and its fun to play with textures and pick your focal point out while leaving everything else as a dreamy haze. Bokeh when used properly is fantastic, but as the consequence with so many people getting ahold of cameras like mine and not studying photos and theory, bokeh is abused. I really will support anyone who wants to get into photography, but they have to be willing to spend some time. Its like me and my guitar, I don't subject people to it cause I'm not good enough, but I enjoy it, so I keep it to myself. I'm too much of a perfectionist I guess.

I know I've just vomitted a heap of things onto this for the first time in months, but I have one more, its a video. Its my first time lapse! I planted some calendula, and then got sick for 2 weeks and had to take about that much time off work (it sucked), so I took pictures every half hour for a few days of my calendula seedlings popping up through the soil.

So until next week, hopefully. . . adieu.

Too cold to swim.

So I just took pictures instead. I took a little impromptu road trip, and wound up in Jordan River the other day. It was a very interesting day, I took some pictures, and brought back a post card. It was a good poor-mans vacation. Anyways, I didn't take too many photos, but I got one out of them that I'm especially proud of.

This one was shot with my Nikon 16-85 at 85mm, doing my best to frame it the way I wanted without getting too many brambles in the shot. I also couldn't step forward anymore, which would normally solve the problem because at the end of the the road I was on there was a bunch of construction, and they we're already looking at me like a crazy for parking and wandering their way. My iso was set at 200, and I literally did such a minimal job on editing, I'm pretty stoked. Heres the original.

I adjusted the exposure, with my curve focus on highlights, I also adjusted the clarity, and I think I may have darkened my blues just a wee bit to bring out the mountains under the clouds. But thats about it, oh and I corrected my horizon. I do my best at the time, but its one of my pet peeves I always notice on other peoples photos is that no one pays attention to the horizon being slanted off. I contemplated cropping out the bottom, where the brambles are, but I'm just not a cropper, it just didn't look right to me then. My frame would have been compromised.

I do love this photo though. Growing up on the island I've always loved the way the horizon is always blue, and the mountains are all just solid, with different levels of blue indicating their distance. When I was young, I would always draw a landscape that had islands coming in from the sides and tipping down to the ocean, green on top, and with a yellow, sandy base. I always tried to think of something else to draw, but would normally, when put on the spot in school, draw the same thing, and now that I've gone and come back, I realize what an amazing spot in the world this is, and why it's ingrained in me.

Till next time.

It's been awhile again.

So to keep things up maybe this will turn into a knitting blog . . .

Gunna try not to, but seriously, I haven't picked my camera up in a week. I took a trip on my own out to Jordan River, met some interesting people and hung out around a camp fire for a couple hours, and took some beachy-westcoast photos, but I haven't edited them yet. I've been working this week again though, and its been taking so much out of me that I haven't even been knitting. I've just been watching a lot of How I Met Your Mother and Big Bang Theory, wednesdays are even turning into Canadian programming night for the two of us, we watch Dragon's Den followed by Republic of Doyle, which is a pretty ridiculous bit of genuine Canadian production along some similar lines and similar humour as Due South.

But back to topic . . . I have a photo, of knitting! I was bent on making a hat for myself, but I finished it off too soon and its too short for me, it fits perfectly, and I like big bulky hats I can twist my hair up into. So I`ll have to try again, but the colours are fun.

Shot with my Sigma 50mm with flash, because I was so close I kept blocking the natural light coming in, and I needed enough light for that colour to really glow. Oddly enough my exposure time worked out to 1/13 sec, which should certainly warrant a tripod, but it came out pretty sharp, so I lucked out.

Word on the street is that I may get together with one of my bosses for a night time shoot of the city from a high-up location, she wants to give some long exposures a try, and I told her I had a wee bit of experience with that, so we`re gunna team up. It should be fun. I`ll come throw one up in a day or two from last year, but right now I`m feeling rushed to make it to Wal-mart before the masses so I don`t have to stand in line for a half hour to get out again . . . Adios Amigos (and Amigas).

G'un do some knittin's today.

Yeah I like to pretend I`m from the southern US sometimes, just for fun, its how I get my kicks.

Was just doing some editing, I took a photo a couple days ago when there was suddenly heaps of crows flocking around and hanging out in the oak tree across the road. The extent of my telephoto capabilities is 85mm, but I am still pretty happy with this shot. It was nearly black and white to begin with, because of the tree having no foliage, and there being a very definitionless white-cloud backdrop. So I just got rid of the last hints of colour and blew up the exposure a wee bit to turn the sky pretty well white, and that is pretty well all I did to edit this shot.

I just think its kinda fun, I`m thinking on a f-art level.

F-art; definition; The combination of two words Faux and Art used to describe otherwise kitchy and mass produced art designed more closely to match colour schemes than for their artful intent. © Rights reserved by Maylia Janzen.

I like shooting my own spin of f-art though, especially when its something a little more sinister than daisies, like a sleeping tree covered in crows.
¸
Thanks again to my first follower, I think that officially christens this blog into proper exsistence. Some one else looks at it, its not just me typing into oblivion.

Hey There Molly!

Well, it appears I have one person who noted my absence over this past month, thank you Molly. I'm about half-way though editing the photos I took yesterday, but I figure I'd throw one up on here right away. I lucked out and became aware of an impending long sunset coming up while standing at good altitude (some places would call it a mountain), so we had amazing views of the inside oceanway between Van Isl. and Saltspring. I also had a fantastic subject, I mean, who doesn't like 7 mo. old babies? Anywoo. . .

That's Amy. Shes my buddy. The other one is Molly, shes Amy's handler.

Well, in other news, I've got two weeks off work, so I'll see what I can do about an entry a day. I mean, what the heck else am I gunna do? Oh yeah, I do intend to become a runner over the next two weeks. I like working out, but sometimes when work is going to be busy I have to think ahead so I won't get worn out at work, but now I can just focus on wearing myself down so this next two weeks is easier mentally. Oh and I bought new yarn today, and started a toque for me . . . haven't made one of those since last July.

Thats all I have for you today folks. I'm out.

PS. the 'be the first' follower position is still up for grabs at the bottom of the page, giv'r.