Day 217 - The Blizzard

Just a quick post for yesterday.  This shot was taken through my second floor bedroom window.  The glass was dirty and I had the wrong lens  but it did its job.

I felt guilty taking photos of this little kid struggling and stumbling through knee-deep snow.  But this is life here - I did the same on Monday.

Day 216 - The Snow Continues ...

... with winds howling outside my window, blowing the snow around and throwing everything out of gear!

I was expecting the snow storm since I'd been keeping close tabs on the weather forecast and so I decided to bring my little point & shoot camera with me to work today.  I didn't want to risk getting moisture into my other camera since it's really a basic camera and neither the body, nor the lenses, are weather-sealed.

After being busy all day, I realized that the light was waning fast on an already gloomy day.  So I walked over to our cafeteria and shot down on the blizzard from the fourth floor windows.  I couldn't get many decent shots either by way of composition, or by way of settings.  There's hardly any optical zoom, so the digital zoom on the camera got me a lot of noise and I couldn't really crop in tight either.  And there were reflections on the glass window to boot.  

These were the best shots from the evening.

The patterns caused by the footprints in the snow were pretty interesting, especially in the second shot.

Day 215 - Christmas Theme (Pt. 4)

Just a continuation of the Christmas theme I'd started way back in October.  The first one was a quick shot while I was playing with the flash and got bored from not getting what I wanted.  

I also took the opportunity to get a little bit more comfortable using the monopod.  Although I found a couple more ways to be more effective and efficient with the tool, I'm absolutely convinced that you can't use it for anything slower than 1/8s shutter speeds if you want to get any sharpness out of your shots.   In fact, I think I'm steadier when hand holding my shots at 0.5 secs, than I am with the monopod at 1/8s!  Now, that's something!

154 mm, 1/10s, f/5.6, ISO 400, Shutter Priority, AWB

I had to use Shutter Priority because I wanted to fix the minimum shutter speed to avoid camera shake.

154 mm, 1/100s, f/6.3, ISO 400, WB set to Flash, but later adjusted in Lightroom, Manual Mode, Flash fired at -2 stops, external flash fired powered down to 1/8, placed 6 inches to right of subject and bounced off ceiling.  Phewww!  That was a long description! 

I'm not very happy with the second image.  The background is quite cluttered in this one, and could definitely have been better composed.  But as far as light is concerned, I think it's a slight improvement over previous tries.  I'm yet to figure out the power levels on my external flash - maybe I'm reading the levels all wrong as there are no markings on the bars to show the different levels and the one page user guide that came with it was mostly written in Chinese (at the expense of sounding ignorant, I wouldn't know if it was Mandarin or Cantonese).  Maybe the mystery will one day be solved?  Maybe I'll break down and Google it one day!

But meanwhile I'm definitely considering a light kit.  But the dilemma is always which one to get first - camera body, lens or light?  

Any suggestions?

Day 214 - My Updated Website

I was a little bit under the weather today, and I lost a lot of time when I fell asleep this afternoon.  Therefore, there was no time for photography, and the little time I had, I thought would be a good way to use to update my website:

http://shutter-tripper.photoshelter.com/

Please take a few minutes to check it out and leave me some comments on what you think.  I would love to get your feedback.

Thanks to all that take the time to help a poor soul in distress! ;-)

Day 213 - Montreal Downtown

I froze my knuckles and my nose,

I froze my cheeks and froze my toes.

I didn't get too many good shots

Despite taking lots and lots. 

Ok.. I'm not a poet!  But the little verse just flowed through - unrestrained! :=P

But it pretty much sums up my evening adventures.  I bought a monopod yesterday, in preparation for my trip over Christmas and I broke it out this evening.  It was a very useful thing in a couple of ways - I did manage to get a few shots that were sharp enough to be posted, but more than that, I found it easier to shoot when I wasn't handholding the camera.  The freezing cold and the heaviness of the camera and bag could have tired me out much sooner than it actually did.  Although I'm still not 100% sold on the monopod yet, I think I will find it very useful over time.

Day 212 - Sneak Peek ...

... At what I've been up to with the smoke shots.  I'm still going through a huge learning process of working with Photoshop, but once it's done, I'm going to be one whole load more proud of myself! :=D  This still needs a lot of perfecting, but it's one step at a time!

Enjoy the soup!

Day 211 - Something Different

Ok, I won't bore you to tears with the smoke stuff today.  If I allow myself to be honest, I didn't get a chance to do any photography.  I actually had an appointment for a therapy session and spent much longer than I had planned.  Public transport is not always the most reliable, so obviously everything got delayed.

I took this opportunity to post a couple of old shots I had wanted to post a while ago, but never got around to it.  I was trying bokeh of my christmas tree and this is was what I got.

It's really very simple to get these types of light shots - you just have to turn the focussing ring on the lens till the lights are all out of focus and the shape/size you want your bokeh to be.  I took some pains to turn them into perfect circles.  These shots were made with the 90 mm lens I have.  

And if you're worried about the kind of therapy I'm undergoing (I can always pretend you're worried, of course), it's nothing serious - it's called retail therapy! :=p  I spent more than an hour looking for purses and silver cake decorations and returned with an armload of stuff that I semi-need, or don't need; including some jelly beans and fruit pearls!  Of course I didn't get what I went to get!  Go, figure!