Abstracted Recycling

Green in colour

Recycling container

Abstract heaven indeed!

[Olympus E-M5, Panasonic 20mm f/1.7]

Bower Woods in the Rain

OK, so my new Olympus E-M5 camera is supposed to be weather resistant, soooooo, out I went last evening to do some exploring through a local park along Piper Creek in Red Deer. My wife refused to come along as it was rather cold along with the somewhat wet conditions claiming that it only takes one person to press the shutter button! I took the camera and the 12-50mm kit lens, which is also weather resistant. In fact, the only reason I bought the camera as a kit was so that I had at least one lens that I could take out into weather and not have to worry about it. To say it was wet in the Bower Woods would be putting it mildly. It had been raining all day and every tree was dripping water off it’s limbs and leaves along with the constant light rain. I never paid any mind to the camera being exposed to these conditions other than to keep the lens pointed down if at all possible to keep rain drops from getting on the front element. A few images were ruined because of raindrops painting out-of-focus highlights on my images, but that’s likely to be expected in these types of conditions. I use a Promaster HGX UV filter on the front of the lens which has some great coatings making it a breeze to clean and doesn’t streak so easily as some cheaper filters will.

Walking through the woods was an absolute joy and I feel very privileged to even have the ability to walk on these trails, listen to the raindrops, and smell the lushness!! By opening up my senses fully and taking in everything around me, I start to relax my mind and it didn’t take long to start finding situations that were inspiring enough to start making images. I found a small pond virtually covered in pollen from the spruce trees which created a fabulous abstract.

 

The normally very slow and small creek was flowing quite strong after a full day of rain and managed to find a few place that allowed a nice view. Using as long a shutter speed as the conditions allowed (note to self – buy a variable ND filter) enabled the water to blur a bit which adds a bit of drama to the scene.

 

The water was rather dirty(although it does remind one of a nice vanilla bean latte) so for this image I converted it to b&w (speaking of b&w, anybody notice Lomo introduced a b&w 110 film this week).

 

I continued walking through the park until it was quite dark, which adds a sense of mystery to images if you accurately translate the receding light levels in your image. Not only was it starting to feel a bit eerie in the low light levels, but my battery was on the verge of dying, so I headed back to my car and home. I have quite a number of images from this outing and will try and post a few more once I get them edited.

 

 

 

[Olympus E-M5, Olympus 12-50mm]

Mark Creek, Marysville, B.C.

Marysville, B.C. is just south of the popular tourist town of Kimberley. The small Mark Creek joins the two communities and as the creek flows through Marysville it goes over a few very dramatic waterfalls. It is a short and easy trail, although it can be dangerous as some of the boardwalk is old and unstable and a few places have no guard-rails, so if you have pets or children, caution is strongly advised. I decided to try a new method(for me anyway) of showing water as opposed to blurring the water to make it appear serene. This method allows me(and now you) to see water as our eyes and minds are unable to. I wanted to capture the very fast motion of the raging currents without any blurring of details which shows the myriad of details of the workings of the laws of physics!! I needed to use shutter speeds of between 1/2000 and 1/4000 in order to accomplish the task and as it was a cloudy day this made it necessary to crank up the cameras ISO to 3200. This was even more necessary as I stopped my lens down far  enough to keep the depth of field I needed as the lenses viewed over the water.

 

 

“… but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”

John 4:14   ESV

[Olympus E-M5, Olympus 45mm f1.8]

Not exactly the Okefenokee, but….

Yup, there is swampland in Alberta, granted this one may disappear by the end of summer depending on how much rain we get. Really it’s just a ditch along a very small and (Don’t read this part Laura)very muddy country road in Red Deer County. Actually got to lock my vehicle in 4WD! Haven’t needed to do that in quite some time.

Anyway , back to the swampland…. I came across this place just as the sun was setting tonight as I played with my new camera (Olympus E-M5) and was so worried about losing my light that I simply slammed on the 12-50mm kit lens and cranked up the ISO to 1250 and started looking for some compositions amongst all the tangle. I thought the lens performed admirably. I even took a couple of these files up to a 40″ print in PS and they look rather good still, even into the corners. This of course may change depending on the focus distance, but so far at least at middle distance work it seems to be just fine. A slightly more relaxed time out tomorrow or over the weekend will give me a better idea of all it’s character.

I don’t expect it to perform up to the standards of the great Olympus 12mm and 45mm prime focal length lenses, but it is weather proof and has a very nice range as a one lens carry around kit. The E-M5 camera is fantastic to handle. I absolutely love the size of it, so small! A full compliment of lenses ranging from a full frame Rokinon 7.5mm Fisheye, right up to a Tamron 500mm mirror lens(which gives me the equivalent focal length of a 1000mm in 35mm talk) all fit in one medium sized gadget bag!!

These images were all made handheld, and obviously, just as all good photographers should (or do), I would have benefited by using one as I could have slowed down a bit and used a much lower ISO which would hve increased the quality of the files. These are also all jpegs even though I was also shooting in RAW at the same time, it’s just that Adobe has not given us Olympus shooters any RAW processing capabilities in CS5 yet. I will rework these images once they bring it out and I can then easily eliminate some bits of chromatic aberration that are creeping around in the corners and I should also then be able to remove some noise as well.

 

[Olympus E-M5, Olympus M.Zuiko 12-50mm]

More from Ogden – Abstractions

One of my great pleasures is searching out abstracted images in the ordinary everyday places I happen to be in and around. This was the same day that Doug Williamson and I were out a few weeks back in the Ogden area in Calgary. Just like the last post, I can’t really say much about the images here in the way of explanation other than the balance of colours, textures and patterns appealed to me enough that I felt it necessary to examine them closer and attempt to capture an image that holds together. I hope you enjoy them, and as always I welcome your comments.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Panasonic GX1, Olympus 12mm M.Zuiko, Olympus 45mm M.Zuiko]

Ogden, Calgary, Alberta

Doug Williamson and I spent some time a few weeks back exploring the Ogden district of Calgary searching out some photo ops. We weren’t really looking for anything in particular, just things that caught our eye.. Things we could study to find balance and patterns. Things that may not mean anything to anyone else but things that somehow made sense to us at that time and in that place. It is fun to head out without any agenda and just explore with your eyes and mind to come up with an image that “works”. I can’t really say a whole lot more about these images as they were just things on that day that “worked” for me. If any strike you as something that “works” or maybe they all “fail” for you, I’d love to hear your comments!

Doug is a fabulous artist and I have had the pleasure of spending time with someone who inspires and enriches my life. I always look forward to the time I can spend with him and his very talented wife Shannon! Doug has a big exhibit of his artwork coming up in Calgary at the Wallace Gallery starting on April 26th.

[Panasonic GX1, Olympus M.Zuiko 12mm, Olympus M.Zuiko 45mm, Leica 60mm Macro Elmarit-R]

Red Deer County, Alberta

Listening to the alarm at 5:30 isn’t exactly what I would call exciting, but I know the potential is superb for some great photo opportunities if I could just get myself out of bed. Of course I do get up as once I’m awake I can rarely fall back asleep, so I pack my gear into the car, which I had gathered together the evening before to save time in the morning, and I head out of town. I had no preconceived ideas of what I wanted to photograph or where I might go to find these images and so just start watching the sky for interesting clouds or a bank of fog over a low lying bit of land or maybe some ducks resting on a slough. Whatever catches my eye gets a more thorough going over to see if I feel I might be able to put together some ingredients for an image.

I ended up southeast of town by maybe 20km or so next to a large slough and noticed that the car’s thermometer was registering -4C and so started to watch for frost laden grass and fog rising over the slough. I spent some time in the dark just listening to the birds at the slough, as I had maybe 40 minutes or so before the sun was up. I had seen a bit of grass in the ditch covered in frost only a few hundred meters before the slough, but decided to continue on with an idea of returning to the spot in a bit once it became lighter out. I am one of those people who really wants to see what is around the next bend in the road or over that small hill just ahead, and so that is exactly what I did. There were a few things to see and photograph as the sun peeked over the horizon, including this first image of grass rimmed in one of the first frosts of the season.

I decided then to head back to where I had first seen some other grasses in the ditch on the other side of the slough and up the road a ways. By now the air had warmed up sufficiently to melt the frost leaving many tiny droplets of water clinging to the individual blades. I searched through the tangled mess of grasses to find just the right combination of angles, and colours to make an image that captured the beauty I was seeing. It took a few minutes and once I located the spot I wanted to photograph I had to be very careful lining up my tripod and camera so as not to bump the leaves and lose all the tiny drops clinging to the blades. I stopped the lens down for maximum depth of field and as I had not brought my remote control,very slowly squeezed the shutter release for the 1/10 second exposure so as not to move the camera during the exposure. A quick check of the image on the LCD panel confirmed that it was indeed sharp and I headed off looking for more photo possibilities.

The deep rich tones of the grass contrasting with the droplets of water are what make this image, but also the right balance of curved grass blades heading this way and that in an organized manner. After travelling the backroads a bit longer, the sun was coming up strong and the interesting photo ops for me were over for the day.

The next morning I invited my youngest son Alexander to come along. He agreed and jumped out of bed at the 5:30 wake up call, unlike every other day when getting up means going to school. We again packed up the car, went through the drive through at McDonalds for a breakfast sandwich, a juice, and a coffee for me. We headed to the same slough as I had visited the previous day and again listened to the Common Goldeneyes with the wind whistling through their wings, some Canada geese, a bunch of coots, and then some shotgun blasts from some hunters off in the distance. I made a few images of the fog and some of the birdlife before we moved on to what I hoped would be greener pastures.

We headed further south and discovered a great example of my favourite kind of road – one which is very rough, has virtually no gravel and has lots of twists and turns. Following it along for a couple of kilometres it ended at a gas valve, so I parked the car and we headed off through the frost covered grasses. Me wearing jeans and boots, Alexander holding on to summer in shorts and running shoes remember it’s -4C. To say the least he was a bit uncomfortable. I guess that’s how we learn right? We ended up trekking over a small hill to find one of the nicest spots I’ve seen in this area. I truly would love love to own the property and build a weekend cabin to head to every now and again to spend time reading and canoeing and exploring the countryside.

From the top of the small hill, the view was spectacular looking across the water with the fog lifting and ducks swimming about as the sun was rising. Directly behind us was a great group of trees that I spent a while looking for an image. I ended up looking back towards the water through the trees directly into the sun to make the next image.

We headed back to the car as Alexander claimed he couldn’t feel his toes any longer. I turned the heater on in the car and we backtracked down the road. Once again we headed south hoping to find another access point to the water. We did find one, but it was posted for No Entry and so moved on. A little further down the gravel road we found another body of water of about the same size as the last, but the access point did not provide a very nice view. I wondered through the ditches again looking for interesting compositions. The grasses here had a fairly heavy frost and after a few minutes of looking I found just the right combo of elements that made a pleasing image.

A little more roaming about and I found this one leaf lying amongst the grass. It is such an obvious use of the rule of thirds, but it was there for the taking! Both mornings I was using Sony’s A900 SLR with the Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. The camera was great to work with and easy to use, although I couldn’t figure out how to get it to bracket exposures and use the self timer. the lens is a solid feeling optic and quite hefty, so is the camera, but when on a tripod it helps to steady for the longer exposures I was dealing with. The camera provides great high resolution files when used at the lowest ISO settings, but once you venture up to 400ISO things start to fall apart. Landscapes at 100ISO is where you need to use this camera.

The lens has superb resolution in the centre of the image even wide open and stopped down this zone of sharpness expands out to near the edges, although I found the extreme corners to still suffer from blurriness even when stopped down. I would honestly prefer to have the same focal length lens, but with a maximum aperture of f/4, and optics which would exhibit outstanding performance right into the corners. I never really need f/2.8 in this kind of lens anyway and the smaller maximum aperture would reduce the weight and size of the lens into something I wouldn’t mind carrying around for a day. Not a combo I would purchase, but one that was fun to play with.

[Sony A900, Zeiss 24-70mm f/2.8]

Bower Woods – Red Deer

I spent an hour this morning photographing with the Pentax 645D camera in the Bower Woods of Red Deer. Unfortunately there wasn’t a cloud in the sky and the contrast between the shadows and sunlit areas was huge. So I purposely started searching out areas of complete shade or nearly so. I found this quiet spot where the recent rains have created a pond which some years is totally dry. I was able to create an image that held both the highlights and shadows by very carefully adjusting my exposure and referring constantly to the review histogram. I then opened it in Photoshop CS5 and opened up the shadows a tiny bit as well as pulling down the few extreme highlights to a point that looks very close to how I was seeing the area with my eyes. I am rather impressed with the ability of this camera’s dynamic range and being able to hold detail both in the highlights and the shadows. I didn’t have my 5DmkII with me to compare, but it seems that this Pentax camera has the edge in the area of dynamic range and easily in resolution.

 

 

 

 

[Pentax 645D, Pentax-D FA 55mm f/2.8]

Badlands

A trip to Dinosaur Provincial Park near Brooks, Alberta usually results in spectacular images of exotic landforms you just don’t see everyday. After a couple days of being mentally wowed my mind turned to more intimate views including close up details. This image was made after a rainstorm passed through. I quickly headed out knowing the power of erosion would have eliminated all the human footprints from the sand leaving beautiful patterns and saturated colours. The scale of this image is tough to figure out with nothing of known size to judge by. It really is quite a small area maybe only 1.5m across.

[Canon G9]

Wagner Bog

One last pic of snow and were off towards green everything, right? Wagner Bog is just west of Edmonton and a great place to go for a morning evening walk anytime. So much to see!

[Pentax 67II, 105mm, Fuji Velvia 50]