The First Day of Spring 2012 – Yuck!

March 20th, 2012 Thomasso

I am at home now, just got in, which is about 4:30pm, and I am looking around outside seeing more of winter than spring. The day was showing a little promise of spring, teasing us with some Sun in Langley City, but that came and went within minutes. When I got back into Fort Langley, it was trying to rain. The air was still very chilly, still feeling like winter with no hint of spring.

Hard to believe that today marks the time in the year for the planet Earth when the Sun is shinning right over top of the equator, calling this the Equinox. Due to the forces of nature, we here in the Western half of North America are still in winter’s grip. Even more sadness, is what some meteorologists are saying that our winter like weather will last up until April. April! Come on, give us a break! Two more weeks of this crappy weather!

Well, at least it is spring. I am hoping that the Sun does make an appearance, even if it is just for a little while. Here are some photos that I took when I just got home. A very Grey day out, eh?

I guess too, if you have noticed, I changed my watermark for my photos for spring 2012. Instead of doing it with the 3D rending program, I cut to the cheep and did the logo with the 2D vector programs called Inscape, which is a very cool program in its self. I was hoping for the some really nice bright photos to mark this day with, and to go with my spring logo, but obviously that did not happen. The weather is constantly changing, so who knows, tonight, perhaps, it could all clear up, or snow.

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A Good Day’s Shoot’n – Clear Sky: Good Sun!

March 17th, 2012 Thomasso

On my way back home today from being up in the Valley, I stopped just down the road from where I live, a little place called Glen Valley, and shot a few hundred photos. The day turned great as right around sunset the sky cleared right up from the South, and the South West from where Vancouver is. I was the supreme shutter bug, going on a shooting spree, as I had so much built up photographer’s anxiety from three months of bad shooting weather; this was my therapy, my chance to unwind, and shoot like this was the last day sunshine.

I think everyone around the world thinks that Vancouver, British Columbia, is surrounded by mountains. This is not true, as there are mountains to the North, but from the East and South it is mostly flat land, and as you drive further away, you hit farming country. This is not to say that you do not see the mountains from Vancouver, but there is a lot of flat land between them and the city. I live among the agrarian communities, mine is called Fort Langley. The above photo is a cranberry farm, below, more of a wide shot of Glenn Valley–same shot, different viewpoint.

Here is a close-up shot of the chain that blocks cars from entering the aquifer access road. Cool eh?

There you go–mountains, using my 200mm telephoto lens. With the crop factor on my camera, this works out to having a 300mm lens.

I then packed it up and continued on home. But this was only round one or two photo shoots. I also had in mind to fulfill a request made by a Twitter friend, SpacePops, who asked if I could shoot the planets Venus and Jupiter, as those two object were high in the evening sky, and very bright right now. I have better photo equipment to shoot them with as compared to an iphone.

So, the two points of light you see in the above image are planets, taken with my 30mm macro, ISO 100, F2.3, 1.25 sec exposure on my Sony A33. The top light dot is Venus, and the bottom is Jupiter. When I get my mount for my telescope, I should be able to get very detailed, and closer shots of deep-space objects, but that is later on down the road when I get more money saved up for this hobby.

While I was waiting for the Sun to set, and I was standing on the shores of the Fraser River in Fort Langley, I took this shot of the Bedford Landing housing development.

There, this concludes my day for photography. Have a great weekend everyone!

Posted in Around Town, Art, Astronomy, General, Photographs, Socail Media, Twitter | 1 Comment »

Friday Is Here

March 16th, 2012 Thomasso

Finally, Friday has arrived, and none too soon, as I have waited for the end of the work week to get here with so much anticipation. Although tonight I have a volunteer meeting to go to, just having time off from my day job is welcomed. I like my job, my regular employment, but this week was extra difficult with the new demands being placed on my employer to meet all of the requirements from our new contract. The added glum weather and co-workers stressed out, made for a situation that none of us wanted to be in. The great news is, I have two days in which to forget about that and focus on other entirely different stresses. What would life be without a little stress in it, eh?

Although I consider clouds to be cool for photographing, this one is currently parked over top of Fort Langley spewing out rain with no end in sight. This is the typical weather pattern from over the last three days: rain, sun, rain, sun with wind, rain with gusting winds, then more rain topped off with a short burst of sunshine–then repeat this pattern. Someone make it stop.

Anyway, it is the weekend. Time to unstress.

ADDED:

I just had to add this shot from the same batch of shots I took of that storm cloud. I edited this one from the RAW file, trying to clean up some of the noise from using a hight ISO.

The details: 160mm (285mm at 35mm format) f13 1/500 ISO 400.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about weather, Bitching about work, Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs | Comments Off

Going Back to Black and White: For the Moment

March 15th, 2012 Thomasso

With a freak storm that lasted for fifteen minutes, and weather that changed from hot and sunny, to cold and pouring rain, the only thing worth photographing today were clouds and a rainbow.

I converted the above image from my RAW format, into black and white image, using Dark Table, software that works with RAW files in Ubuntu 11.10. This was shot with my 200mm, f11, 1/400, ISO100 (300mm in 35mm formate) using my Sony A33.

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After the Storm – Pretty Rainbow Shot

March 15th, 2012 Thomasso

I just thought I would share this with you all. I also posted this on Twitter too becuase this is the first time I got a shot of a rainbow like this. I almost can see the entire spectrum of light in this shot.

The storm left as fast as it came, all within about fifteen minutes. We had lightening and thunder along with it; rare around these parts. The rainbow is pretty with this lens. The shot was taken from my back yard.

I shot this with my 50 to 200mm lens, at 50mm (78mm at 35mm standard) on my Sony A33.

Posted in Around Town, Bitching about weather, General, Photographs, Twitter | Comments Off

Yes, My Neutral Density Filters Came In From China

March 12th, 2012 Thomasso

Yes, my ND (Neutral Density) filters are here, and I cannot wait to try them out. I just need some Sun light to used them. Yes, I know, I am laughing too, “Sun light in Vancouver, this time of year…Yeah – right!” Actually, these filters are for shooting in places where there is too much light, and you want to step it down without effecting the colour, or the composition of your photo. Also, if you are going for these smooth, flowy water effects when shooting waterfalls, or Sunset-beach shots.

I have 3 full ND filters, 3 graduated ND filters, 2 coloured/tinted filers and 2 polarized filters. The ND filters are the ones I am eager to try the most. I have already been in situation this year where one of these filters would have saved a really cool shot. The Sun over the water is, in my opinion, the most common time that I can think of that I would be using one of these, but there have been other times while I was in the forest and the Sun was in the wrong position to make the shot.

I know, you are thinking, “hey, these are square, not round… How do you use them?”

Well, I have the special adapter for these filters. But, they are also used by hand-holding them too, in cases where just a little area is needed to be filtered out. Probably most of the time I will just hold them with my hand while shooting. But if I’m going to filter out the whole shot, then yes, I will use the holder.

Now all I need is some Sun, and a good beach or water fall, and I can test these filters out.

Here are some links on Neutral Density Filters:

Luminous Landscape

Red Bubble

Photo Tuts Plus

Have a great week!

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Daylight Savings Time, the Birds and Photographically Happy

March 11th, 2012 Thomasso

Today I am generally feeling good, although there are a few gripes that popped up, but I am busy so they do not really count as being blog worthy. “Busy,” seems to be my most common adjective describing 2012 so far for me. I am staying home today to catch up on personal things that I have ignored for weeks now. There a some family matters that I need to deal with before time takes them away and they end up forgotten. I also want to spend some time reading more literature about my camera, and make a list of what else I want to buy to feed my photography bug before time and money make it impossible to do in the short term.

So far today the Sun made a brief appearance through the clouds, and I hopped outside to photograph some really neat looking storm clouds, but the light was too strong, so I may have to wait until later on in the day to shoot them. I did shoot some tree branches that have started to bud, sending the message that spring is here!

Black and white photos seem to have a look and feel on their own when taken from the same colour image. I always believed that a black and white photo was a waste of pixels taken from a colour camera, but now I am seeing the artistic value they make, especially when shooting clouds. Clouds really stand out from a blue sky. However, in this case, I was not shooting in black and white, but I was using one of the cool photo effects Sony has on this camera where it only shows a selected colour, as in this case, blue, and leaves the rest of the image in black and white. After taking it, I thought, “wow, this is really cool.”

Other than my watermark, there is some blue in this photo–right at the top of the tree on the left.

As proof that spring is here, I did not have to go far from my doorstep to find a branch of a tree that is budding. This is a branch from a Walnut tree that grow along the property line. Fort Langley is populated with many of these trees. And yes, they produce walnuts.

Other sure signs of spring are Daylight Savings, which I hate, and Robbins (birds in general) going into spring mode. This morning the chirping was so loud I woke up at 6:00am listening to them doing their business. Yelling, “get a room” makes no difference to them; and they do not care whose watching, or listening to the racket. But that is O.K., as I had to get up anyway becuase the shift in time due to Daylight Savings.

ADDED: Last minute photo.

Above–I shot this one with my 200mm (300mm in 35mm format) but it had a really high ISO on it, so I saved it in RAW, and edited it into a black and white JPEG image.

I think we may see some lighting after all tonight? I would love to shoot that! Possible lighting photos coming up!

Posted in Around Town, Art, Diatribe, Events, General, Humour, Photographs | 1 Comment »

Need More Light: Homemade Photo Studio Project

March 10th, 2012 Thomasso

Yes, I am the first one to admit, I need more light if I am going to create my fantastic photos inside my home. At this point in my armature quest for prefect lighting, I am using two small desk lamps which are so poorly suited for studio photography that the effort to make seemingly good photos has put my nerves to the breaking point. I see in my future buying some half decent light stands, or a combination of flashes with soft-boxes.

With the light that I have on hand, my working area is about 20cm by 20cm; not very big. I am also using two different types of light: one incandescent light source, and the other, a compact florescent light; both are about 40 watts. My poor White-Balance indicator is not happy with me.

I am using white typing paper as the background. With this set-up, I am surprised at how much control I have over the lighting! I like the soft look, and by justing the paper I have over the lamps, I can get some really nice soft light effects.

And yes, I went back to my apples. This time I went with all three apples instead of the one, to see if I could improve on my composition and lighting skills. This is where I seen the need for more powerful lights. I also wished that I had a better key light source, and one additional  light lighting up the background.

I finished off taking some more shots of my pencil, which is the perfect model–never moves, and never complains. This shot is perfect for summing up how I felt when finishing my homemade experimental studio–having a bad hair day.

Have a great weekend. I am off to Chilliwack/Abbotsford, BC with some colleagues from KPU heading over to the Corrections Canada Parole building for some lectures on Halfway Housing in the future. Should be fun.

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Shooting an Apple

March 9th, 2012 Thomasso

It is raining outside, and I have a pile of paperwork to work on, but no initiative to start it, so, after watching the latest YouTube video from DigitalRev TV on cheap camera food photography, I suddenly became inspired to try some of their tricks for food photography myself. So here I go.

Ta-Da! My apple shot with my “no cost” studio set-up for less than, well, from what I scrounged around the house:

Notice the smooth lighting on the left. This was my homemade light box which consisted of a cardboard box, with a cut-out hole that fits a letter size sheet of paper over it to defuse the light, and a cheap old 40W incandescent tiny light bulb as the light source. The blue light on the right side is from a LED flashlight with a sheet of toilet paper taped over it to defuse the light from it–but still a little too sharp. The muslin, or back-drop, is just good old typing paper tapped to my tripod.

Here is the web-link for DigitalRev TV Youtube video on “DRTV Cheap Photoshoot Challenge – Food Photography” where you can see how they did it. They are funny, only becuase they cannot act, which makes them that much more entertaining.

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A Short Walk Down Mavis Avenue

March 8th, 2012 Thomasso

The weather was turning to the bad, and I was loosing light fast after just getting home from work. I wanted to shoot some photos before it started raining, as in typical Vancouver fashion, when it rains, it usually lasts for a week before the next weather system moves in with sunshine mixed in it. Again, like my last four posts with photos in them, these feature my spiffy new 30mm macro lens.

I have also done some math on my camera and lenses, and found that my 30mm lens is really not a 30mm lens when basing it on a 35mm format. My censor on my camera has a 1.5 crop factor which means that my 30mm lens is really a 45-47mm lens. I might as well call it a 50mm portrait lens. Oh well, at least I get super good close-ups with it, at around 19mm minimum focusing distance. It is still a cool lens.

Dead plants from last year. Oh how I am missing the warm sunny weather. Come on spring, hurry it up and start!

Last year’s Rose-hip.

From prickly plants to stone blocks.

Actually, with the Sun defused behind the clouds, the bokeh looks really awesome in these shots! For those who do not know what bokeh is, please have a look at Bokeh-Wikipedia. These shots were taken along Mavis Avenue, in Fort Langley by the railway station.

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