Category Archives: Photography

Posts regarding photography and related topics.

Photo of the Month – April

Posted on by — 4 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

Continuing a recent trend, since both of us are photographers our ‘Photo of the Month‘ post contains two images, one from each of us.

First up is Marcia’s image, and before we go any further it should be mentioned that both of us are affected by apophenia – specifically pareidolia. Don’t worry, it’s not inherently contagious. Besides, we prefer to think that it’s not so much seeing order in chaos as being able to see what’s really there… 🙂 This image was made in Mill Hill Regional Park:

Your Adoring Gaze

Your Adoring Gaze

Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – February

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

At the end of February we took advantage of the Be a Tourist in Your Own Hometown celebration to pay a visit to the world-famous Butchart Gardens. The Gardens were busy for this time of year, but not overly, and with a little patience we were able to wander around for several hours and make some good images. Below are two of them.

The first is an image made by Marcia in the Japanese Garden, converted to a monochrome sepia. And no, the white in the image is not snow, but moss. The mosses were so vibrant that day we needed to reduce the saturation on many of the images to make them look believable!

Japanese Garden

The second image was made by Mike in the Sunken Garden. This tree is a favourite of ours, and one of Marcia’s favourite images (for both of us) was made of this tree. The processing here was actually an accident, in part, but it looks as though the tree and surroundings are emerging slowly onto the page, radiating out from the centre.

Sunken GardenOkay, that’s it.

Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

My Favourite Image of the Year

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

Every year that we can we head to Government House on New Year’s Day for the Lieutenant Governor’s levée. It’s an opportunity for us to meet the present Lieutenant Governor and his/her spouse, listen to the opening speech, the bagpipe music, toast the piper, and partake in some coffee and good food. We also stroll the grounds and make photographs of the flowers already in bloom – that we dutifully send east to family – just as a reminder of what’s yet to come for the rest of the country. 🙂 Before heading out to wander the grounds, however, at some point we head to the balcony at the back of the house, look out over the grounds and the Juan de Fuca Strait beyond. It’s also my opportunity to make some images of Marcia, and without hesitation it’s my favourite image of the year.

Marcia on New Year's Day, 2016

Marcia on New Year’s Day, 2016

I know she looks beautiful here, but the image doesn’t really do her justice. You’ll just have to take my word for it.

From Marcia and me, we wish you a new year filled with as much happiness, health, prosperity, excitement, love, peace and adventure as you can handle!

Hugs,
M&M

P.S. Santa Claus brought us both new cell phone (cameras) this year.  Who knows where that may lead!

Photo of the Month – Winter Storm

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

At the end of the year the pull of the moon and the changing ocean currents combine to give us both winter storms and very high (and low) tides, known as King Tides. It’s a subject we’ve written about before, both in 2010 and in 2012. Every experience is different, and fortunately (unlike in 2010) I didn’t get swamped by a rogue wave this time.

The image below was made at Holland Point on December 12. The rocks that appear in the mid-frame are actually bedrock extrusions, and the one on the left stands about 12′ (~3.7m) above the surrounding seafloor. I went out at night on December 23 and not only could I walk out to this rock, I could almost walk around it. I’ve never seen the tide that low before.

Holland Point, King TidesOkay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!!

Hugs,
M&M

Photo of the Month – November

Posted on by — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

One of the (many) benefits of living in Victoria is that we generally have flowers in bloom all 12 months of the year. A favourite thing for us to do on New Year’s Day is to go to the Lieutenant Governor’s levée (reception) and then wander the grounds, making images of the flowers (images we dutifully send back east, to remind friends and family of what is coming for them). 🙂

We’re not entirely without winter’s chill, however. Marcia made the following image of hoar frost on English ivy leaves one November morning on her commute through Beacon Hill Park.

Hoar Frost

Okay, that’s it! Go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Lightroom 1.4 for Android

Posted on by — 1 Comment ↓

Hi Folks:

When Lightroom Mobile (Apple only) was first introduced you needed a CC subscription to use it. Adobe eventually introduced Lr for Android, and with Lr Mobile 2.0 for iOS in October they dropped the requirement that you have a subscription. Lr 1.4 for Android was introduced today and it also has the same lifted restriction. If you have a CC account you can link your device and your Lr catalogue on your computer, but it’s not necessary.

Lr for Android 1.4 is available for free from the Google Play store so I downloaded it and tried it out. Continue Reading →

2016 Photo Calendars

Posted on by — 4 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

This is the sixth year now that we’ve made our MS Word photo calendar templates available, and as with the past couple of years, we’ve also created a series of templates and calendar images you can use with Lightroom or other graphics software. This year we’ve also added one more option, which we’ll get to below. I created a template in MS Word that allows people who don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom or the equivalent to make their own photo calendars, so we’ll cover that first; the Lightroom stuff is below that. I used MS Word 2007 to make the template, but saved it as both a Word 2007 file and a Word 97-2003 compatible file. Basically it’s a series of tables, one for each month, that look something like this:

Continue Reading →

Shooting Fall Colours… sort of

Posted on by — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

If you live in the northern hemisphere then autumn is upon you, and if you’re fortunate enough to be in an area that has deciduous trees, then they’re likely in the process of turning the glorious colours of fall – reds, yellows, oranges, browns… (NB: if you want to know why the leaves change colour in the fall, click here). This is a great time of year to be a landscape photographer, and it’s easy to become seduced by all of those colours. However, it’s also a good time to look at the underlying skeleton of your photographs, and one way to do that is to remove the colour and move to a monochrome palette. (Yes, this is an attempt to put off the ‘learning to see in black and white’ post I keep thinking I should write, but for now this will serve well as placeholder. 🙂 ) By shifting away from the colours of the leaves we can look at shapes, at form, at movement, at textures, at light and shadow… All of these essential components exist in colour images as well, but they can get moved to the background of your compositions if you’re not careful.

The images below were all shot in nearby Beacon Hill Park on the same day. All were shot with my cell phone as I was walking through the park, and they all share similar processing in Lightroom. They all reveal what lies behind the colours that are so wondrously revealing themselves right now.

Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Awakening Spring
Remembering Summer
Cherry Leaves
Admiring Its Reflection
Waterfall
Distant Conversations
Reaching Up
Sheltered
Forgotten Playground

[Show slideshow]

P.S. It’s important to remember that unless you have a camera with an achromatic sensor (since there are only a few companies in the world that make them, if you had one, you’d know) with digital you’re always capturing colour information even when you’re shooting in B&W. As such you can adjust the luminance values of the various colours (shown as grayscale) to change the contrast and overall look of a B&W image either in camera (when shooting jpg, by choosing a different recipe) or in your raw file conversion software.