Hi Folks:
There’s an old adage that says ‘A picture is worth a thousand words’, and since we’re both writers and we’re both photographers, in a given month we can collect a lot of ‘words’. In June we shot nearly 600 images between the two of us, and choosing one image is never an easy task. That’s my excuse for choosing two images for June. 🙂 These two images were chosen both because they’re good images in their own way and because of the stories they have to tell… Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
Things have been quiet around here of late; we’ll have to see what we can do about that!
Our photo of the month for May is a tribute to Marcia’s dad’s sweet partner, Joyce. She slipped away quietly on Friday, May 30. In her own way she was the perfect blossom of his life.
For Joyce
Okay, that’s it for now. Go out and make some photographs!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
One of the (many) benefits of living in Victoria is that we have the beauty of Beacon Hill Park to enjoy year round. In addition to the many wildflowers, the wildlife, natural landscapes and gardens populated by flowers, shrubs and trees from around the world, the park is also home to about three dozen peafowl. The vivid displays of the peacocks are very popular with tourists and locals alike (not to mention, hopefully, the peahens), but many people are surprised to discover that peafowl can fly.
The image of the month for April is one Marcia captured with her new pocket camera. We trust you’ll enjoy it!
Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!
Hugs,
Marcia and Mike.
Hi Folks:
It’s been a challenge to select a Photo of the Month for March… partly because together we made over 1500 images in March (admittedly many are for composites), but also because, in addition to Victoria’s colourful beauty this time of year (with the explosions of blossoms all over the city) we also made a trip to Tofino for a little beach walking and storm watching time. The weather while we were there was blessedly cooperative for a pair of photographers! We also made a stop in Coombs at the the Butterfly World and Gardens on our return trip. How to pick one image to represent all that?
Finally decided on this one as it sums up the best of everything from the past month. The beach sand and the shell remind us of our walks on both Chesterman Beach and Tonquin Beach in Tofino and our own Dallas Road shoreline here in Victoria, the shape pulls up memories of the butterflies in Coombs, and the butterfly also brings us to the many wonderful flowers we experience every day in our walks around our Pacific island paradise. Might also be a nod to the invisible ‘angels’ who seem to guide serendipitous events around us… 🙂
Angel Wings
Original image made by Marcia on her Samsung Galaxy S4, pushed around some in Lightroom. Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
Well, one of the (many) benefits of living on our Pacific island paradise is that spring comes earlier here than it does to the rest of Canada. As a promise of something yet to come for friends and relatives back east, in February we went out one day with cell phones in hand and captured images of the various flowers we found in bloom in and around our neighbourhood. We then put them into a photo-mosaic using Lightroom’s Print module. We offer it here for you to share in as well!
Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
In a fit of madness a couple of weeks ago, Marcia and I made a last minute decision to run away to Tofino for the weekend. We wrote more about that journey here: Eating Our Way Through… Tofino! We had a lovely, relaxing weekend with a lot of walking and more than a few images. I haven’t yet looked at all of the images I made that weekend, but Marcia and I narrowed the ones I had processed down to six, then three. Of those, I selected this one because it sums up most completely the feeling we had of being there, walking the beaches, rising and ebbing with the tides… This is a 3-image HDR composite, joined together using Adobe Photoshop Elements 10 and finished off in Lightroom 5.
Chesterman Beach, Bull Kelp
Now go out and make some photographs!
Hugs,
M&M
Hi Folks:
At the end of July a friend of mine and I traveled slightly ‘up-island’ toward Duncan to visit the old stone ‘Butter Church’. It’s a church with a somewhat colourful history – built in the mid-19th-century by a Catholic priest, using Native workmen for the construction. The church was built on Native land with a verbal agreement for it to be there. The priest in charge raised dairy cattle on the land surrounding the church, churned butter from the milk he collected and used the money from the sales of the butter to pay the workers, hence the name. Services were held in the church for ten years, but the local bishop wasn’t happy with the verbal agreement for the location, ordered a new church built on a different site and the existing one was deconsecrated and abandoned. A few attempts were made over the years to restore the church, but today it has largely been left to the elements. The quality of the original stonework is mostly what’s left to be admired.
Hi Folks:
For this month’s Photo of the Month’ post I thought I’d combine a Lightroom tutorial as well. In the past we’d done blog posts on making diptychs and triptychs in Lightroom and on creating mirror images in Lightroom; this post combines both of those ideas. So, we’ll start with the final image and then go back to the beginning:
Nature’s Sonograph
Hi Folks:
We’re featuring one of Marcia’s flower images as our ‘Photo of the Month’ for May. While Marcia doesn’t share Mike’s passion for f/stops, shutter speeds and the like, she has great fun making images with her Android-enabled cell phone camera. We both do. Almost all of our cell phone images are made using the Camera 360 software, as ‘undeveloped’ as possible, and then brought into Lightroom for final editing. This is Marcia’s favourite image of those she made in May. Victoria is known as the ‘City of Gardens’, and walking anywhere in Victoria for most of the year is an open invitation to stop and photograph the wonder! Continue Reading →
Hi Folks:
This image was made on April 7, down at Clover Point and looking back toward Victoria. I was out for a walk that day without my camera, but the wind was really blowing and the clouds were just incredible so I made a number of images using my cell phone camera. It was blowing so hard I had to lean against lamp posts and the like to hold the camera steady, but I think the results in this image at least were worth it. This is a six-image panorama, stitched together in Autopano Pro and pushed around some in Lightroom. This is the first image I’ve posted that was processed in Lightroom 5 Beta (some great new features, BTW – can hardly wait for the final product!).
Oncoming Storm
Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!!
Hugs,
M&M
P.S. You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.