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]

Downtown Red Deer

[Leica X-1]

Old Court House – Red Deer

A two image stitch showing the Old Court House in downtown Red Deer at night. Another of the excursion courses that I was helping teach with Dwight Arthur, this time on night photography. An exposure of 5 seconds was necessary to capture the light. In order to get the deep blue sky you should squint your eyes and when the brightness level on the building looks about the same as that of the sky it’s time to shoot. I was a bit late on this one as the sky is a bit dark, but it almost always makes this kind of photograph look better than when the sky is black.

[Canon 5DmkII, Canon EF50mm f1.4]

Red Deer’s Old Train Bridge

I made this image while teaching an excursion course with about 8-10 students along with Dwight Arthur in Red Deer. We talk for about an hour or so about  a photographic technique or method and then head out for a few hours of fun photographing. This night we were doing a B&W course.

[Canon G10]

University of Lethbridge -1st Choice Savings Centre for Sport and Wellness

 

[Canon 5DmkII, Zeiss 21mm Distagon]

Novus Designs

Over the past few years Nicole Fox who is Novus Designs has decorated some homes that look absolutely gorgeous. I have had the privilege of photographing them and a few of the images from a home in Medicine Hat are included here.

[Canon G9]

 

Interior Design

I have been enjoying doing some interior design photos with my Lensbaby. These two are from our place.

 

Mission Hill Winery, West Kelowna, B.C.

I quite enjoy visiting the Mission Hill Winery in the Okanagan. Fantastic architecture, not to mention some pretty decent wines as well. When photographing architecture, straight lines really should be kept straight for the most part. Very few lenses, save  some very expensive and highly corrected ones at that, are capable of achieving these perfectly straight lines. A fantastic tool that is available for a very reasonable price that helps tremendously is from a company called ePaperPress called PTLens. This software corrects lens pincushion/barrel distortion, vignetting, chromatic aberration, and perspective. I use it extensively for architectural photography, but also for nature images where relatively straight lines like trees, for instance, need to be corrected. It makes all the difference in the world to have no barrel distortion visible in an image, and PTLens eliminates it better than any other software I have come across. It even corrects the barrel distortion from many point and shoot cameras, rendering a very professional looking image.

[Canon G10]

 

 

Below is a quick comparison as a before and after. Left image has not yet been corrected using PTLens, nor has it been converted to a grayscale image and toned. For me it is most definitely worth the price and tiny bit of extra effort in order to achieve a far better quality image.

CN Tower – HDR

An HDR (High Dynamic Range) image made with three images. One exposed for highlight, one for midtones and one for shadows. These were then combined in Photoshop to make one image that appears as I saw it. Most if not all cameras have a drastically reduced dynamic range( difference between pure black and pure white) compared with human vision. We can see detail into the darkest shadows and into some very bright highlights whereas the camera blocks up the shadows and blows out the highlights. I have to be very careful using this procedure as it can be easily overdone leaving me with a very flat, low contrast image or one that looks completey false compared to reality.

[Canon G10]

Toronto late at night

[Canon G10]