Christmas Night Lights!

 

You can't do Christmas photography without trying to capture some of the beautiful light displays put on by many around this season. Night photography is always a bit tricky. You can't use too high an ISO setting. How long do you time it for? What aperture do you use? All these things come with a bit of experimentation and practice. Fortunately, digital cameras today, it's much easier. You don't have to try some things, go home, develop the film (or give it to a photo developer) only to find out you messed up and have to do it again.

I find that, for the Lens I used for these shots (Tamron SP AF 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II) that if you open the lens up to F2.8, the images tend to be a bit soft. I find, that with most lenses, a nice mid-range aperture of about F8.0, ISO between 200 and 400 and an exposure time of .5" to 2" (depending on ISO and amount of light) work really well.

Here are some more images:

Color vs. Black and White

One of the things as a photographer, you look for ways to make an image be more captivating or intriguing. A very common way to do that is going back to the tried and true black and white image.

Sometimes, particularly with nature or outdoor photography, the colors just don't grab you, and the image has more contrast than eye-catching color to it. Such is the image above. This was taken at the Swan Lake Nature Sanctuary while walking across the bridge. The color of the foliage around the dock doesn't draw you into the image. The dock is the central object of attention and looks much better as a Black and White image.

What do you think? Send me your comments, I'd love to hear them.

Bouquet of Roses

Lovely bouquet of roses given to a good friend of mine.

Personally, one of my favorite types of photography is Macro Photography and there are some great macro photographers out there and some great web sites dedicated to them. One such site is http://photomacrography.net/. Check it out!

Around Thetis Lake

Victoria has some really beautiful scenery and places to take pictures. This area is around Thetis Lake where a path takes you around the upper and lower lakes that comprise Thetis. This particular day provided beautiful lighting and a wonderful calm on the water. Some great scenery and a nice hike.

I will post more images from this day.

Playing with HDR Photography

High Dynamic Range (HDR) Photography is a process whereby you combine 3 or more images and different exposure levels into a single image showing the complete range of light and color. The idea is to try and produce more of what you see with your eye, vs what the lens in your camera sees.

Often, even with a dSLR camera, the image you get out of the camera isn't quite what you saw at the time. This leads to disappointment of the photographer. But, in many cases you can use HDR techniques to capture what you truly saw.

This image was taken at Clover Point in Victoria, BC during a lovely sunset.

New Opportunities

So my old photography blog, http://photo-op.ca/, is now offline and the domain will expire at some point soon. I have to retrieve the server still and grab a WHACK of data and images on it. I will slowly re-post some, but not all, images here in this new blog.

Also, starting in January, I will be opening up to doing Wedding Photography shoots. If you need wedding photos, just send me a message. I also have a business associate that DJ's Weddings and we can offer a package deal.

Stay Tuned!