I went for a walk in the neighbourhood the other evening. It was a beautiful evening and I had to get out, if only to feel the late day sun and smell the air. Late spring air smells lovely.
I found myself stopping at various points along the way: watching a neighbourhood baseball game, greeting a neighbour out with his family, watching some kids skateboarding on the oval. And something unusual happened. I started taking pictures, without a camera.
Continue reading “Image-ination”Early spring for my family is filled with birthdays, including mine. This year, the eldest sibling in our family reached 70 years of age. Who would have thought that day would come! Seems we were all just in our twenties, let loose on the world to make a difference.
My brother turned 70 and we gathered the extended family at a restaurant to celebrate. Mid-way, my sister suggested, and my niece’s husband took, a group portrait of all us old ones (I was going to use another word…) and that resulting image has now been shared with everyone through multiple printed copies. (Not shared here for privacy reasons.)
I realized as I printed the photos that we don’t have many family moments like these in pictures. A sad reality of growing up in a household where food and clothing were the priorities and a camera was a luxury we could not afford. But you don’t get a second chance at these. So I have a few thoughts on this subject.
Continue reading “Family Moments”It’s a sad reality for each generation that we tend to gravitate either to the familiar – people we know – or to the contemporary – people who are like us. That means same generation, maybe the same values, maybe the same challenges, maybe the same likes and dislikes.
It’s certainly somewhat true for me and something I have to work hard to avoid as I get older. Even in this age of endless social media, I now tend to seek and follow people who are closer in age to me than to the grandbabies in the family. It’s not because they share the same likes and dislikes, but more because they share the same challenges of age, mobility and have somewhat similar general life experiences as me (didn’t grow up in the Internet age).
I think it’s important to recognize these trends in us and maybe from time to time to step away from them. Here’s a couple ways I’ve done that.
Continue reading “Discovering Young Talent”A week ago, like many of you, I packed up the car and headed out to what I thought was a good location to view the total solar eclipse. The first one in my area since 1979, it promised to be epic, if you found the right location.
Well I did and I didn’t. The location was good – open space, near water, where we would see everything surrounding us. The problem was clouds. They thickened as we were setting up and completely engulfed us at totality. No corona shots, no Bailey’s beads, no diamond ring, no nothing.
I learned a few things from this experience and thought I would share them.
Continue reading “When It Doesn’t Go As Planned”A few days ago, word of the death of Alyn Wallace began to circulate on social media channels. Alyn was an accomplished landscape photographer and nightscape photographer, primarily known for his stunning captures of the night sky against iconic natural and man-made backdrops.
I believe he was in his early thirties. Cause of death has not been disclosed as of this post. All indications to that point were not indications at all – postings on his website about future projects and upcoming plans.
Alyn was the author of what is fast becoming the manual for this type of photography. Photographing the Night Sky is a masterpiece of image and word, and shares easy-to-follow guidance on these types of image captures. It was published in 2022, and is its own fitting tribute to his legacy.
I didn’t follow his work closely, but admired it. His artistic eye was evident in all of it, giving even more strength to the stunning compositions he captured in the middle of the night. He worked alone, typically out of sight of the majority of humanity as we slept while he worked. He must have enjoyed the magnitude of the sky, the solitude of late night captures and the peace of both.
I just wanted to thank him for his work and to say he will be remembered. Days like this seem to come too often. Thank you Alyn for sharing your days with us.
For some odd reason, over the past couple of weeks, several of the landscape photographers I follow have posted videos about their YouTube experiences. Some have been active for years, others for just a couple. But all are reconsidering what the effort to produce content ultimately means to them and whether/how they should continue.
Most have noticed a slowing in the growth of their channel in both views and followers. Some of that appears to be a legitimate change in audience interests. But some of it also seems to be the ever present YouTube algorithm, which chooses how and how often a video is presented for viewing.
I rely on YouTube for my artistic “fix” and also for more mundane activities such as home repairs. So this change is troubling to me. What does it mean?
Continue reading “Is YouTube Dying?”There is a raging debate right now among pro and hobbyist photographers alike about where to draw the line when editing images. Of course, this stems from the other big debate around the role of AI (artificial intelligence) in photography, but comes at it from a different slant.
Some time ago, Samsung was accused of faking a moon image to demonstrate the new low light (or was it astro?) features of its latest smartphone. Samsung’s response was that nothing is “real” in photography anyway so what does it matter?
What does it matter?
Continue reading “Get Real, OK?”Spoiler alert: I prepared this a few months ago, as you can tell from the images and clips (we are in winter here in Canada). Things have changed a bit in terms of the equipment used since this was prepared but the message is the same. Read on to the end to find out…
One of the things I have always found a bit ironic in photography is that as you become more and more proficient in the craft, you might seek out better equipment typically, and then, also typically, you TURN OFF all of the advanced automatic features of that better equipment and go “full manual”. I’ve never really understood that. Why would anyone do that?
I decided to try a totally different approach with an area of activity that is growing for me: vlogging. Instead of turning everything off, I’ve put together a basic but decent rig and turned ON all of the automatic functions I could find. I’m doing nothing manually. I think it’s working really well so far. Read on to see what I’ve done. I’ve included a few video clips as well for your entertainment.
I live near Toronto, Canada. On April 8 of 2024, my city will be just on the fringes of a total solar eclipse, with 99.8% of the sun plunged into temporary darkness. Niagara Falls, Buffalo and Rochester, New York, will be in the direct path of the eclipse. Might be doing a drive across the border. 
The eclipse is expected to last almost 2-1/2 hours, with “totality” lasting about 4 minutes from 3:18 to 3:22 p.m. local time. NASA has a full web page dedicated to the eclipse at: https://science.nasa.gov/eclipses/.
Photographers and astrophotographers everywhere are making preparations to capture the eclipse. Some have elaborate plans to drive to, fly to and/or camp out in areas where they “know” there will be no clouds. They have multiple setups with long lenses, wide lenses, telescopes, video and still photography planned. There are whole collections of people from astronomy clubs, photography clubs and those just out for an adventure that are planning to camp out. Regardless of how you plan to experience the eclipse, if you do plan to capture it, there are some things you need to know.
Continue reading “Photographing the Solar Eclipse”I love to learn. Have all my life. And the winter season is a great time to learn new things, since most of us are stuck inside.
I’ve been concentrating on two paths of learning this winter: astrophotography image processing, and architectural image processing. The first deals with doing the utmost to ensure good image quality and colour representation in the tiny objects photographed in the sky. The second deals with adding tone, contrast and artistic adjustments to architecture to turn them into works of art (beyond the work of art that the architect already produced).
Both paths have brought me in touch with several teachers, respected in their fields. But they could not be more different in their teaching styles. One of the challenges I’ve had has been finding a teaching style that gives me the right learning experience for me.
Continue reading “Teaching Styles – Finding the Right One for You”Fine Art, Architecture, Landscape and Event Photography
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