The Best of 2011 Part III

October began with me scoring front row tickets to a Vancouver Canucks pre-season game against the Edmonton Oilers and the pictures that resulted led to (in terms of numbers) my most popular blog yet. According to my tracking software, I received 1500+ page views - and that was just within the first 2hrs of posting!

TIME magazine's "Person of the Year" for 2011 was The Protester and October marked the beginning of the Vancouver "Occupy" movement. Given the events that followed the Canucks loss in Game 7, I'm sure the officer below had a busy year when it came to crowd control...

Week 42 brought with it a trip to the Westham Island pumpkin farm.

The result of my pumpkin carving certainly isn't up there in terms of great pictures from 2011 but as creative endeavors go I had to include it because I'm still proud of what I came up with!

Week 43 brought with it a trip to the PNE's "Fright Nights" exhibition. I had a frustrating night as far as picture taking went and mostly failed to meet my high expectations (if only I'd brought a small tripod!) but this one turned out great and wins the award for "Most Macabre Shot of the Year"!

One of my regrets of 2011 was not taking my camera everywhere I went. There were so many missed shots. However, in November while on my way to a meeting across town I did have the foresight to pack my gear and ended up with some nice images in and around historic Gastown. This one turned out to be my favourite...

Despite the freezing cold temperatures of Week 45, I wrapped up and had one last foray into long exposure night photography downtown. This image from the corner of Burrard and Nelson ended up being my personal favourite.

With the Fall there often comes some stunning sunsets and armed with what turned out to be one of my best performing lenses of the year, the Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5 wide angle zoom (had to get some geek material in here!) Week 46 ended up being hugely successful.

Inukshuks and Canadian Geese - talk about being a true Canadian eh?!

As 2011 came to a close, terrible weather and massive work commitments curtailed my photo-taking adventures to a large extent. Testing out a lens I picked up dirt cheap from a pawn shop I was happy with how this one at Vanier Park from Week 48 turned out...

And in another test (the newly acquired Tamron 90mm Macro lens), this one turned out okay considering the low light.

Sticking with lovable pets, Max, the Powell River Goldendoodle made a return and won the award in the 2011 "Awww!" category!

Perhaps its fitting that I close this retrospective photo blog look back through 2011 with this image...

All in all, 2011 was a big, crazy, unwieldy year in many ways. A lot of transition for me personally and professionally. Through the tougher times, along with my awesome circle of close friends (you know who you are!) my trusty Canon 60D and this blog helped me stay creatively inspired.

Though the sun has set on this particular journey, others await! There may be fewer photo blog posts to come in 2012 but I'll still be out there doing my thing - Stretching the muscles of my creative side is hugely important to my physical, mental and emotional health.

Thank you for letting me share my pictures with you over the last 12 months, for giving me hugely appreciated feedback and for continuing to encourage my endeavors. Stay tuned for what's to come next and as always...

Until next time folks!

The Best of 2011 Part II

I'm not sure if the large number of favourite pictures from the latter 6 months of 2011 is indicative of any improvement in my skills or because better weather gave me more opportunities. Regardless, selecting only 12 pictures from 6 months of work proved too challenging for a procrastinator like me - So you get a Part II and a Part III!

July began with a trip to the Vancouver Aquarium where the best image captured turned out to be of the feathered variety rather than the fishy variety. Thanks to the "Birds of Prey" show I was afforded a super-close encounter with a stunning bald eagle.

July was also a month with several family birthdays (including my own). Combining three generations this photo of my Aunty Sylvia, my cousin Andrea and her beautiful one year-old Lucy (all of whom celebrated a birthday within a week of one another!) has special sentimental value to me.

Lucy surely wins the "cutest of the year award"!

No other month of the year brought as many pictures as August and among the highlights was a trip to the Greater Vancouver Zoo.

Of all the many awesome pictures I was lucky to capture, the set featuring the oh-so-not-camera-shy Ostrich was number one!

WEEK 34 brought with it a summer night jaunt around Vanier Park, False Creek and Olympic Village. Armed with a tripod and intervalometer I snagged some long exposure shots I am immensely proud of.

I made my first attempts at "light painting" with this sculpture...

And this art installation...

Meanwhile, this next picture was somehow stumbled upon by a rock band in Greece who recently enquired about using it on their next album cover!

My night ended at Olympic Village capturing images across False Creek of B.C. Place. The stadium upgrade was still in progress back in August so I might just have to visit this spot again now that all the new exterior lighting is complete.

September brought with it a new toy in the shape of a Lensbaby and this was my favourite shot I managed to (literally!) squeeze out of it...

Come back soon for the final part of this look back through 2011 which will include pumpkins, macabre kitchens from hell, Canucks and glorious sunsets!

Until next time folks...

2011 WEEK 46: More November Sunsets!

Think of it as my "Black Friday" special - you get two lots of pictures for the price of one. What do you mean, you just stumbled across this site? Come on, stay awhile. Order a print. Help me fund a new lens!

I accept PayPal. Just sayin'... Okay! Back to sunsets!

Isn't it a beauty?

As well as odd sculptures (scroll down for evidence!), a penchant for bird pictures (also see below!) and generally geeky things (too many examples to mention...), I'm also developing an odd fascination with benches. I don't know if its the shape, the texture, the location or something more metaphysical to do with all those millions of behinds that have sat on them and experienced the view. Benches are interesting. Maybe one day I'll own one of my own. Until then, I'll snap more pictures of them.

I've taken many shots of benches over the course of this years photo adventure. I still don't feel like I've captured the perfect bench but hey, there's still 6 weeks left so who knows...

Weeds are generally not particularly photogenic. However, backlight the crap out of them with some sweet golden rays and "Voila!"

A short distance along the seawall I found a gaggle of Canadian Geese pecking away at the grass.

I love this shot for all kinds of reasons.

This one too turned out great. I suppose it should be titled "Waddling Into The Sunset".

Right beside the geese was... Yup! You guessed it! Another one of Vancouver's fascinating and bizarre  sculptures. I'm told this one is supposed to represent two wedding rings but when it first went up my interpretation of it was a symbolic representation of The Greenhouse Effect...

The shot above was pretty much straight out of the camera or SOC as the camera folks say with no PP (Post-Processing). To complete the geeky side of things, all of these photos for this week were taken with what is still one of my favourite lenses in my arsenal, the Sigma 10-20mm f/3.5. It's a lens that has a natural warmth to the glass. This, combined with the "Cloudy" colour style exposure setting, a low-ish ISO and with the aperture closed down to expose for the brighter areas of the sky, is what made this sunset pictures work so well.

At least, in my humble opinion... Art is as they say "in the eye of the beholder".

Here's a "Thermo-Nuclear" take on the shot above with heavy cross-processing.

I took a picture of this tree with my iPhone just a few months ago and it was a giant mass of green.

That's it for this week (ahem... last week). I'll hopefully catch up again and end this epic photo adventure with a bang AND on schedule!

With only a few weeks left in 2011, I'd love it if you could take a quick scroll through all the many pictures I've taken over the course of the year and let me know in the comment section which ones were your favourites. Otherwise I'll be forced to do my own Top 10 Photos and you know what that'll mean... A whole bunch of birds and weird sculptures!

Until next time...

2011 WEEK 46: November Sunset

I'll skip the usual "I'm behind/I've been busy" malarkey and excuses for being late with the blog... But I did take the following photos last week so technically they are still "WEEK 46"!

I'm trying to get into the habit of taking my camera wherever I go. You know, just in case. On this particular occasion I had some banking to do and took a quick half hour diversion along the seawall - and I'm glad I did because it was a quite lovely winter sunset.

I wish I'd been framed just an inch higher so as not to crop the tip of the seagull's wing. I still have the bad habit of framing through the viewfinder instead of playing it safe and using a slight crop in post-processing to make the photo sing. I've lost count of how many times I've wished I was just a hair wider!

The above picture is right out of the camera. No cropping. No post processing whatsoever. Sometimes it just works :)

The seagull in the first picture was on his way over to these folks...

I love the blackbird flying in on an attack run in the lower right corner.

It was very cold on this day and the windchill made it colder. There was barely a soul on the beach. This guy was perhaps searching for another person who also "loves walks on the beach..."

Lots of washed up driftwood was littering the beach from the storm several days previous.

Winter light is very different to summer light and at sunset you can point your camera in two different directions and its almost like they were taken on different days. Towards the sun...

Away from the sun...

I know I've included a shot of the Inukshuk at English Bay before but these felt different enough to the one taken way back in WEEK 5.

And just for fun, here's a totally over the top, post-processed (and heavily cross-processed) "Thermo-nuclear" view! Where's the bomb shelter when you need one?

Considering I was only out for half an hour, I'm very happy with the shots I managed to grab before my fingers froze up.

I still have a few more to share so check back tomorrow.

Until next time folks, thanks for stopping by!

2011 WEEK 37: Hey baby, check out my Lensbaby!

What, you ask, is a "lensbaby"?

It's my latest toy (and a cheap one thanks to Craigslist). As for what the purpose of it is, well, it's what the pros call a "selective focus" device. The principle is very simple - basically it's a stand alone lens with a focal length of around 50mm that is attached to a bellows which connects to the camera. The bellows allows the user to bend the lens (and thus the light passing through it) changing the focal plane with it.

"Focal what?" This is the area where the light hits the sensor of the camera and normally it is parallel with the subject - focus at 8' and everything on that axis in the range of 8' (depending on f-stop, depth of field etc. but that's a different subject!) will be in focus.

The Lensbaby allows the user to shift the plane of focus into different angles for various creative effects.

This is what it looks like:

And this is my first photo taken with it:

Pretty funky huh?! These are the stairs at the longest renovation/upgrade site in Vancouver - I swear they've been replacing shrubs, re-doing concrete etc. here for YEARS.

The Lensbaby is a tricky little thing to get the hang of. It's extremely sensitive and the first challenge is how to hold it and be able to move it while still being able to take the picture - Move it a millimeter too far in one direction and everything is out of focus. The fact that the bellows is free-moving and can be twisted into pretty much any direction and you can see where the challenge lies. This is one of those gadgets where one has to take many more pictures than normal just to get one that turns out.

Ah... Fall is definitely here. I love the colours in this one. It also gave me a false sense of confidence because I got this picture in just two attempts. Not so the rest... In two hours I took over 300 pictures and ended up with only 20 or so keepers.

A photo walk downtown wouldn't be complete without another entry in the "Vancouver's Weird & Wonderful Scupltures" series. Nor would it be complete without our infamous bike lanes...

This next one is one that only kind of works... I wish I'd been able to nail the focus on the flowers not the leaves.

I took many, many pictures of the fountains around the Art Gallery and this was the only one that had anything in focus. 

This next one was snapped in colour but as soon as I saw it I just knew it would be more effective with some high contrast black and white post-processing treatment. It has that dreamy New York period feel.

I don't know why Nelson Street is an enemy of God... Or is this a Simpsons reference?

The Lensbaby really focuses one's attention on the subject of the photo - It's a creative form of tunnel vision. Again, I took a lot of photos to get this one. I also got a lot of strange looks: "What the hell has that guy got on his camera?!"

Depending on where the light is and how it is hitting the Lensbaby, weird things happen. I brought out the funky in this next one with some post-processing warming and with the addition of a vignette.

No effect needed on this next one. Straight out of the camera as it was captured:

The same goes for this one too...

Something about this next one makes it my favourite. I love the colours and the dreamy softness.

All in all, for my first fumbling attempts, I think I achieved some moderate success. I'm looking forward  to experimenting a lot more with my new "baby".

FOR THE GEEKS: The Lensbaby product line has a whole bunch of different versions. I have the Lensbaby 2.0 which comes with an aperture adjustment kit and aperture tool (that's the odd looking gadget beside the lens in the top picture. The higher-end Lensbaby products come with Macro lenses, different shaped aperture kits and versions that allow the user to lock the focus in place which given my struggles I can imagine would be a very useful feature.

Until next time folks.