Tag Archives: photo of the month

Photo of the Month – Cathedral Grove

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Hi Folks:

March has been a busy month for us, but we did take one day toward the end of the month and head ‘up island’ to Cathedral Grove.  A part of MacMillan Provincial Park, Cathedral Grove has been ‘gentrified’ to provide easy access to a stand of several-hudred-year-old Douglas fir and cedar trees.  Unfortunately many of the trees are suffering from root rot/fungal infection, and a heavy wind can bring down a rain of branches.  Fortunately for us, on the day we were there we had sunshine (it only rained while we were driving), little wind, and not many other people.  I made over 400 images that day, almost all of them for HDR/panoramic images, and collapsed that number down into less than fifty composites.  I’ve joined them all up but have yet to push them around in Lightroom.  I do have a couple, however, and thought I’d share them here.  Both are 3-shot bracketed exposures (HDR, at +1/0/-1) and converted to B&W in Lightroom.

The Sentinel

The Sentinel

Ancient Watchers

Ancient Watchers

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.

Photo of the Month – February

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Hi Folks:

Here we are, with the first week of March come and gone already and we have yet to do a ‘Photo of the Month’ post for February!  Egads!!  I do have something to share with you, but it has less to do with a particular photograph and more to do with the way it was processed.  The image below is one I captured using my cell phone camera – nothing new there – but it was also processed in the phone using ‘Photoshop Touch‘ software for Android phones.  There are iPhone/iPad versions of the software as well as a version for Android tablets, but since my Samsung phone is what I have and use, I figured it was worth the $5 to give it a try. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – Ocean Waves

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Hi Folks:

I didn’t do a lot of photography this past month, but did escape down to the shore for a bit one afternoon. I love the endless patterns in the way the water meets the shore, and have photographed it with varying degrees of success. Today’s ‘photo of the month’ is one of these but processed a bit differently. Rather than trying to illustrate the water itself I played with the colours and contrast in Lightroom, adding a blue split tone value to the highlights to render an abstract image of swirls and shapes. Could be water… could be marble… could be…? I trust you’ll enjoy it.

Swirls

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Photo of the Month – Winter Storm

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Hi Folks:

Through the winter months we can get some very high tides (and consequently very low ones) known as ‘King Tides‘.  Winter here  also tends to involve a fair bit of rain and some really powerful winds.  The combined effect isn’t as strong here in Victoria as it is on the west coast of the island, but it can still be pretty amazing.  I went out a couple of years ago to try to photograph this remarkable occurrence and ended up with my camera (and me) getting swamped by a rogue wave!  Both of us survived the encounter, chronicled here: Photo of the Month – Winter Storm. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – A Return to Film

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Hi Folks:  According to Wikipedia, it was 120 years ago (1892) that George Eastman first began supplying Thomas Edison and William Dickson with 35mm film for their movie projectors.  Film was around before that, of course, but in a variety of sizes and feeding systems; 35mm film became a standard in 1909, and in 1934 the 35mm film cassette for still photography was introduced.

So, in honour of 120 years a group of us met on a rainy afternoon in November at Ross Bay Cemetery to celebrate a (temporary?) return to film and to the days of B&W.  Some had never shot film before, for some it took a while to remember how to work a film-advance lever, and for others film is still in daily use.  For the most part there was no autofocus, no LCD screens (“you have to look through the little viewfinder there”), and no ‘instant’ results.  Those who had film cameras brought them, and those who didn’t were welcome to bring some film and borrow a camera from someone else.  I brought six cameras (five 35mm and one double lens reflex) and loaned out three.  For those who just can’t get into film, they were welcome to bring their digital cameras and there wasn’t a bucket of tar nor a bag of feathers anywhere about.  More on that in a bit.  Overall it was a lot of fun.  Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – August

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Hi Folks:

Since we profiled one of Marcia’s cell phone camera images for July, it seemed only fair to use one of my cell phone images for August.  I saw this leaf as I was walking down the sidewalk one day, and it reminded me of a little lizard sunning itself on the concrete – blended in really well with the background, too!

Leaf Lizard

Leaf Lizard

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
Mike.

100 Photos

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Hi Folks:

Rather than doing a ‘Photo of the Month’ post for May, I thought I’d profile someone else’s work instead.  Actually, a lot of someones.  A non-profit group in Sweden called ‘ADay.org‘ asked photographers around the world to make photographs on one day – May 15, 2012 – and upload them to the group’s website. Although a day is 24 hours, because of international time zones it actually worked out to a 48-hour period.  Each image had to fit into one of three categories: home, work or connections, and there were various sub-categories for each.  Each photographer was allowed to upload up to 10 images of his/her work.  All of the images will eventually be displayed on the group’s website, and selected images will be put together into a book.

All of the images are currently being gathered, organized, etc. and they’re expecting to launch their full website in June.  In the interim they’ve provided two links: 100 photos and 100 profiles.  The first link shows a selection of 100 images made that day and the second shows profiles of 100 of the photographers who submitted their work.  Clicking on an image will show a larger version, as well as the categories and description of the images (in one of a number of languages!)  Clicking on a profile will show the image(s) uploaded by that photographer and other relevant information.  Those who submitted work run the gamut from the very old to the very young, of every ethnicity, income bracket, etc.  And their images are all personal glimpses into the lives of these people.  People made photographs and described moments of birth, life, death, joy, sadness, work, play, religion, the environment, concerns… the entire panopoly of events, all happening (in the annals of time) more or less simultaneously.

We’ve looked at a number of the images and several of the profiles so far, and we’re amazed both at the diversity and the closeness of the subjects.  A little girl having breakfast in Portugal could be seated in the United States, and grandparents giving their grandson a bath in Japan could be doing the same in England.  It shows us how incredibly diverse we are, and also how much we all share the same hopes and dreams, the same caring for each other.

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. You can see our May 15th contributions here:

Marcia
Mike

Photo of the Month – April

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Hi Folks:

Something a little different for April’s photo of the month post.  We’ve had this little cough syrup bottle kicking around for a while now – after it had been emptied I washed it out, removed the label and started using it to grow a stem of bamboo.  Since the bottle had water in it and was sitting on a sunny windowsill I became intrigued by the raised Chinese characters on the side of the bottle so I invested a little time one afternoon making some exposures of the jar.  This one’s my favourite:

Nin Jiom Pei Pa Koa cough syrup bottle

Now go out and make some photographs!

Mike.

Photo of the Month – Fun With Mirrors

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Hi Folks:

This being April 1, I thought the image below would be appropriate for the photo of the month for March.  Back in the film days I used to do things like create photo montages by sandwiching two slides together into a single frame, but when I first got into graphics programs (CorelDraw 3) I started being more creative with a few of my images.  One technique is to take an image, cut it in half either horizontally or vertically, take one half and mirror it, then stick the two halves together again.  The results are always unknown and often unexpected.  I did a blog post a while back on ‘Making Mirror Images With Lightroom‘ that showed one way of making such images while making them look realistic at the same time but ‘realism’ isn’t always a necessary goal. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – October

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Hi Folks:

End of the month again, and while Hallowe’en is tomorrow, I’m not going to post pictures of zombies, ghouls, ghosts or other Hallowe’en characters. I thought I’d mention something else entirely: serendipity. Roughly defined as a ‘happy accident’, serendipity from a photographer’s perspective often comes about from having a camera at just the right moment, to capture something you might otherwise have missed. Most of my photography is landscape work, and while I do go out on photographic expeditions, I usually have a camera with me wherever I go – even if it’s just the camera in my cell phone. Continue Reading →