Day 120 - The Olympus Says Hello

A strange photograph for today's entry, taken at the Fredericton Airport a couple of nights ago.

I was testing the set up to try to take a picture of the plane that would fly Patti to Toronto. I placed the Olympus on the window ledge in the Arrivals areas of this tiny airport and experimented with various settings to try to get a clear, well-lit photo of the tarmac outside the terminal

What I didn't consider was how much impact the light behind me would have on the image. When I looked at the photos later, I realised that the camera itself was blocking out that backlighting, allowing it to see out the window, through its own reflection. Cool, eh? Too bad the pictures of the plane were not so interesting.

Day 119 - The Cathedral

Fredericton is home to a number of beautiful church buildings, most notably Wilmot United (of which I have posted a number of photographs in the past) and this one, Christ Church Cathedral, located east of the downtown core, near the St. John River.

I'm fortunate to have had a beautiful, sunny day for this shot and I'm quite pleased with it, even if it is a bit postcardish. I took the Olympus off automatic to get this one since the autoprogram tended to overcompensate for the sunlight and leave the church details too dark. I also closed the aperture right down to extend the depth of focus as far as I could: the foreground trees tend to draw the attention of the autofocus so that, without a strong depth of focus, the church would be blurry.

Speaking of trees, while I think Fredericton has an awful lot to offer in terms of beautiful, photogenic buildings and picturesque scenes, I do find myself frustrated by how often trees and, even worse, hydro wires tend to mar the scene.

Day 118 - Airport Carts

A trip to the airport this evening brought a whole pile of new photo opportunities. I tried a variety of different pictures, using a plethora of camera settings, and was surprised to find that my favourite photograph was also the first photograph I took.

Taken with the Olympus on automatic and the flash turned on, this image of a line of luggage carts appeals to me and I'm not sure why. It has an abstract feel to it but also a sort of industrial flavour. I like the lines of the wire cages and the balance of the wheels at the bottom of the image with the blue flaps at the top. You'll probably see some of the other shots from tonight's airport visit in later blog posts but, for now, this one is my fave.

Day 117 - Memories of Snow

Another miserable April day (bitter cold, icy wind, heavy rain) kept me inside and out of sorts, meaning I didn't feel like taking up the Olympus and trying to be creative.

As a result, I decided to dig into the several thousand pictures in my iPhoto database for this blog to find a photograph that I like but haven't used. This image was taken about a month ago when Patti and I decided to take a trip north toward Miramichi, just to see what's up there.

The Miramichi River is well known for its salmon fishing and the city of Miramichi lies only about two hours from Fredericton. We took the scenic route, however, and didn't quite make it there before deciding to turn back.

On our return journey, we enjoyed a brief visit to Doaktown, one of New Brunswick's many interesting small communities. I took this photograph from a driveway near the town's Tim Hortons outlet. I love the shape and colour of the birch trees that centre the image and I like the fact that river itself is somewhere in behind the trees. A postcard more than anything else, I have been quite fond of this photo ever since it appeared on my iMac after the trip.

Day 116 - Daffodils in Spring

Okay, so I've come to like photographs of flowers. Sue me. In this case, as I walked home along my usual route, I found this lovely, practically perfect daffodil, all by its lonesome, at the side of a house.

It's harder to photograph than you might think. I still haven't figured out all the programs on the Olympus, including the one for close-ups like this, so I was forced to do my best with the autofocus and zoom. I took a number of shots that just didn't work out at all but this one I liked.

I don't think my efforts were helped much by the constant stream of pedestrians who walked past, many of whom clearly thought I was out of my mind for taking the picture. Oh well, I never really cared what people thought of me anyway.

The breakthrough for the photo came when I took careful pains to steady myself as a platform for the camera, rather than just trying to squat, point and shoot. The camera also has an anti-shake function but I'm not sure how effective it is when the photographer is actually falling over while taking the picture!

Day 115 - Lily at Play

Meet Lily. She's a seven-year-old golden retriever who lives near us in Fredericton.

Lily loves to chase balls, especially the bouncy orange kind that our dog Marlee likes. I love this photograph because I think it captures that story so amazingly well. With the sun behind me, Lily sits in my shadow, her avid eyes fixed on the ball that I'm holding over my head, even as I take the picture. You can see the shadow of the ball in its throwing arm above her and to the right.

She's ready to go. and I'm glad I was ready with the Olympus to capture this image.

Day 114 - The Table's Set

I like the lines, curves and colours in this photograph of our dining room table set for guests. We've been collecting a variety of nice glasses and dishes for entertaining and, when Patti arranged things so beautifully, I thought I'd try to capture it all with the camera.

I took a series of pictures at first that focused on a single place setting but, in reviewing them on the Olympus' small screen, I found them to lack the visual interest I saw so clearly on the table itself. So I zoomed in a bit, then decided on an angled approach: maybe a cross-section of several settings would capture the vibrancy better. I think it worked. And I just love the colours in this photograph (and in the dishes themselves). It's surprising how well things match, since we've collected them over a period of time, some as gifts from friends and family and some as individual purchases we've made in our travels.

Day 113 - A Bunch of Grapes

Sometimes it pays off to leave your camera lying around at a party. We had some friends over last night and the Olympus somehow became part of the scene.

Imagine my surprise when, in downloading the photos to the computer this morning, I found a series of extreme closeups of myself eating grapes. And great shots they are.

It's like the photography elfs helped me with my homework. What impresses me most about this picture, which I believe was taken by our friend Lisa, is the fact that the individual grapes are in perfect focus but my hands, holding the small bunch and providing a frame for the image, are both just fuzzy enough to make it interesting. Even neater, my hands are located not only on the right and left of the picture, but also front and back: the hand on the right is between the grapes and the camera while the hand on the left is behind the grapes.

That's a pretty great auto-focus function at work.

I did absolutely nothing to this picture in iPhoto. This extreme closeup is exactly the photo Lisa took. And I think it's fantastic!

Day 112 - For the Birds

A house finch and a chickadee share some time at our backyard feeder in this photograph from a sunny, warm Good Friday here in Fredericton.

I am rapidly falling in love with my tripod, which allowed me to get a series of wonderful shots of these birds at the feeder even as I sat chatting with a friend. I set up the tripod, bolted the Olympus in place, pointed it at the feeder and then set the manual settings to the perfect combination of shutter speed and aperture.

That allowed me simply to touch the shutter release each time a bird landed and began to eat. The tripod gave me stability and the manual settings ensured proper light and (I hope) crisp focus. My only worry is the amount I've had to blow this up: I cropped in close in iPhoto and I'm worried that the focus won't hold up as well when the photo is brought to full size on the web-page. Oh well. We'll see.

Day 111 - The Art of the Bowl

Patti and I share a love of pottery. We are enamored with the work of Don Zver, who lives and works just outside of Hamilton, Ontario, and have amassed a nice collection of his pieces: mugs, a tea pot, cream and sugar servers, even a candy dish and chip-and-dip tray.

Now that we're in Fredericton, however, Zver's work is no longer easy to find. That's why we're so pleased to have found an up-and-coming local potter by the name of Danielle Lee, a student at a local College of Arts and Crafts who makes the most beautiful bowls.

At a recent open house and sale at the College, we got a chance to chat with Ms. Lee and see her working space. She was very welcoming and even let us see her collection of "seconds", pieces that didn't work out quite the way she wanted them to look. We loved the two bowls in the foreground of this photograph and, despite the artist's protestations to the contrary, we think they're perfect. We're delighted to have convinced her to sell them to us, bringing our collection of Danielle Lee bowls to four.

I had a lot of fun taking this photograph as well. First, I wanted to find a location for the bowls that would provide sufficient space but not too much background detail so that the bowls remain the centre of attention. Then I had to choose between a close-up shot, that caught more detail in the pottery but gave little hint of its lovely shape, or a picture from further away, that caught the shape but sacrificed texture and intimacy.

I took all kinds of shots, some with flash and others without, using the trusty tripod to give me ultimate flexibility. The picture I finally selected for this blog uses only natural light from the window behind the bowls and as small an aperture as the Olympus offers (f8) to ensure crisp focus throughout the frame.

No matter what I do, however, my photograph will never do true justice to Danielle Lee's artistry.

Day 110 - Are you kidding me?

On Sunday, APRIL 18, I put the snow blower away in the shed and arranged our lawn furniture happily in the yard. I then rolled the barbecue out to its traditional place and starting planning a summer of outdoor festivities.

On Wednesday, APRIL 20, I took this photograph. I know, it's not art. But it's so angrifying I simply can't believe it. Snow. And ice. On our patio chairs. And our table. And even (not captured in the photo) on our barbecue.

Crazy

Patti says she thinks the chairs look sad in this photograph. I agree. But we both might be projecting, just a little bit.

Day 109 - Live Rust

The walking bridge in Fredericton spans the mighty St. John River and provides hundreds of people (and dogs) on foot and on bikes (the people, not the dogs) a scenic way to move back and forth between the city's north and south sides.

Renovated from an old railway bridge, this rusted steel structure is one of the first glimpses a visitor gets of Fredericton on the way in from the airport. It is also one of the most photographed features of the city.

I'm glad I was able to capture it on a warm, sunny spring day before the bushes and trees are in leaf. I like mixture of earth tones in this photograph and the way the wild shapes of the branches complement the rigid lines of the bridge.

Day 108 - Abstract Tree with Flags

I liked yesterday's picture so much I went back to see what else I could do with the amazing trees that stand in front of the various government buildings along Queen Street in downtown Fredericton.

In this case, I thought it was neat the way the flags in the background seemed to hover in the space in and amongst the different-sized branches of this tree. The autofocus of the Olympus defeated my efforts to capture the flags in crisp detail and blur the branches in the foreground but, even so, I am pleased with this shot. It's not perfect but it does seem to blend very nicely the natural with the artificial.

Day 107 - Abstract Tree

One of the many great features about Fredericton is its trees. Everywhere you turn you will find massive, ancient trees stretching up toward the sky, trees with as much character as any human being I've met.

I wish I knew more about trees. I wish, for example, that I knew enough to be able to identify the kind of tree that inhabits, dominates in fact, this photograph. I don't, unfortunately, so I am left simply to marvel at the breadth of its trunk and the complex muscularity of its many branches.

I've taken many wide-angle photos of trees and forests but I'm learning that a closer up view, one that centres in on one aspect of the thing, can be as interesting if not more. Here, the texture of the bark and the vivid green of the moss contribute to the beauty of the image. And the small human who inhabits the bottom right corner of the frame seems insignificant by comparison.

Day 106 - The King's Quarter

As a kid, I used to love to search for old coins. My friend and I would get whatever money we could and go into a bank to buy a roll of coins (pennies, nickels, dimes, and sometimes even quarters, if we could afford it). We'd unwrap the roll and check every coin to see if it was old. We'd repeat the process for hours, usually ending up with a couple of keepers at the end of the day.

It felt like treasure hunting. We would never find much but, every once in a while, a King George would rear his regal head and we'd have a keeper. King George VI (1936 - 1952) was great; King George V (1910 - 1936) was even better.

One day last week, I found this little beauty among the change I received at a local store. A 1950 Canadian Quarter. Sure, it's in terrible condition (the details on ol' George's head are completely worn away) but it's kind of awesome to think that this little bit of silver has been jingling in people's pockets and purses for sixty years now. And it certainly brought back a lot of happy memories.

For the photo, I tried to find a setting for the coin that would suit. The top of a concrete fence post in downtown Fredericton turned out to be just the ticket: muted colours, interesting textures, but not too much to detract from the simple elegance of the coin.

Day 105 - Bench Warmer

I am still trying to figure out why I like this photograph so much. Is it the shapes of the bench and the fence behind? Is it the warm, honey colour of the wood against the black and grey background? Is it the angled lines that draw your eye up and to the right?

I have found that this blog has changed my way of looking at the world. I now walk through my life thinking about angles and light and focus and framing issues. I was sitting talking to a friend tonight and I couldn't help but think that the way the sunlight came over her shoulder to illuminate one side of her face while leaving the other in darkness would make for a great photograph.

In this case, I think I like this photograph for all of the reasons I mention above. It's just an interesting image, with nice lines and the lovely colour of the bench to make it special.

Day 104 - Brush Strokes and Stunning Colour

I honestly don't know what to say about this photograph. The product of patience and plain luck (and the 18-times zoom on the Olympus), this portrait of a strutting grackle simply took my breath away. I heard him before I saw him. Then I had to sneak up on him, zoom right in and click away. He moved in and out of the shadow of a large trailer (you see one of the trailer's metal supports in the photo) so it took some time to get a good shot.

This is taken at full zoom. I still had to crop it in iPhoto, which results in the very slight lack of focus. Rather than a fault, however, I find the slight blur to the image of the bird actually adds to the picture: because it's not perfectly focused, I see the grackle's feathers in brush strokes of colour, brush strokes that make him look almost painted, with vivid, magnificent colour that only a grackle in sunlight can offer.

Day 103 - Postcards from the Fred

A postcard shot, plain and simple. With another flat, grey sky to contend with, I had to frame a picture where the interest comes mainly from the subject matter and the composition rather than from anything to do with the light.

Downtown Freddie is rife with interesting old buildings, punctuated by lots of trees. I like this image because of the balance of the two bare trees (foreground left and bottom right) which is echoed in the balance of the two lamp posts with their bulbous white lights. I also very much like the lovely red-brick building that the trees and posts frame, though I'm sad to say the building is mostly empty right now.

I feel like this photo is something of a montage of elements but, because of the balance and the composition, it works for me.

Day 102 - Barber on Duty

I quite like this picture, taken on York Street in downtown Fredericton. The barber pole adds colour (complemented by the red awning in the bottom left of the frame) while the perspective created by the line of lamps in the background adds some visual interest.

On a cloudy, cool day, there isn't much in the way of light and shadows to make a picture really snappy. As Mr. Freeman suggests, focusing on small details and being aware of the background helps to overcome the lack of dramatic lighting.

If I were to go back and do this photo again, I think I would close down the aperture to try to get more depth of focus: though I like the way they bring a three-dimensional quality to the image, I think the lamps in the background might contribute even more if they were all in sharper focus.

Day 101 - A Walk in the Trees

This photograph makes me feel peaceful inside. Taken during an evening walk at the Provincial Tree Farm (not its official name, I promise you), the picture takes advantage of the flat light from the cloudy sky and the wonderful symmetry of the lines of trees.

I think it captures the gentleness of the evening and the peace of a walk with the dog through the forest. Marlee and Patti have finished playing ball and are now just starting their slow walk back toward the car. In situations like this, the Olympus' automatic settings work very well and I can focus on the composition of the frame. I took about 60 photos on this walk and I think 55 of them were really good. That's what a nice setting, interesting characters and a well-designed auto-program will do for a photographer.

Day 100 - Drying Dishes

Sometimes your camera surprises you with what it finds in strange places. Today, despite gorgeous weather outside, I spent most of the day indoors, including making a tour of the house with the Olympus.

I took pictures of anything that interested me, from the chandelier in the dining room (no flash) to the monkey cushion on our living room couch (with flash). To my surprise, many of these impromptu, point-and-shoot photos turned out really well.

My favourite, however, was this one. A close up of dishes drying in the rack. I think the curving strip of powder blue makes this shot, especially the way it separates the rounded shapes at the bottom of the frame from the less elegant, glass shapes at the top. I keep going back and looking at the photo and thinking: this is a really interesting picture.

Day 99 - For My Mother

Two years. I miss you mom.

Day 98 - Fish out of Water

Close ups. Ahh, close ups. You just have to love extreme close ups to make photographs interesting. In the bright sun of mid-day, a close up on this detail of a fountain in front of the old city hall in downtown Fredericton comes to life.

And it's got to be one of the ugliest little statues I've ever seen. A gargoyle of a fish that, during the summer, spits water into the stone basin below all day and likely all night. There are four of these ugly little buggers in this fountain and all it takes is a nice close up to see just how ugly they really are.

The strong sun creates crisp, dark shadows which add drama to the image. The light also brings out the colours really nicely, though the rust seems to stand out the most, doesn't it?

Page 97 - The Image of Trees

For some reason, I've grown quite fond of photographs like this one. The bright, bright afternoon sun cast crisp, dark shadows on the brick wall of this building, making for an interesting contrast of light and dark, red and black, curves and straight lines.

I'm now at day 97 of this year-long photographic journey and, to be honest, I'm running out of ideas for winter-scene pictures in Fredericton. I am coming to the realisation that I am going to have to start planning my photos, rather than just finding something of interest every day as I wander through life.

It's amazing how patterned my life is. I walk the same streets every day, go to the same buildings, see the same things. On good days, that patterning adds some challenge to the task of finding and taking interesting pictures; on others, however, it makes life really hard. I'm looking forward to a change of weather and a chance to travel further afield to find my shots.

Day 96 - Shadow Play

Morning light continues to amaze me. This photograph presented itself to me as I ate my breakfast cereal. The early morning sun cast this amazing shadow, of the trees in our yard and several items on our window sill, onto the wall in our kitchen.

I just loved the colour and quality of the light and the contrast between the shadows, sharp and fuzzy. I grabbed my mini-tripod and set the Olympus up on our kitchen counter to get the shot. The main battle was the conflict in light: the shadows were being created by soft sunlight but there was a great deal more general light coming in from the brightening sky outside. How do you get your camera's settings right to ignore the brighter light between its lens and the shadows?

I took a lot of shots to get a decent image of the shadows and this one still needed to crop an overexposed section at the bottom. Still, as my book says, sometimes you have to take the shot as best you can, knowing that you'll correct problems later on your computer.

The slow shutter speed required to get the shot, however, allowed a certain amount of fuzziness to creep in, especially in the shadows of the moving branches. Nothing I can do about that!

Day 95 - It's April, People!

This past weekend's snow storm was bad enough but, when I saw this gem of a front yard on a walk this morning, I nearly threw a fit. And then I started singing, despite my best efforts to stop myself, "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas".

As my beloved mother would have said, had she been presented with this spring-resisting display: "It's April, people!"

Honestly.

Day 94 - The Union Jack

Back to the old Loyalist graveyard on a grey, rainy late winter day for this dark image of the Union Jack flying between two memorials.

On days like this, I generally try to find a shot that has enough interest in its subject matter to make up for the lack of drama from the flat, even lighting of the day. It's not easy to find new and interesting shots so often and, if I'm not feeling in a creative mood, it is sometimes almost impossible.

That being said, I do like this photograph. I think of it as a study in shades of grey, with the muted colours of the flag standing out somewhat in the centre. And I'm also learning that, as much as the Olympus tempts me simply to point and shoot, putting a little thought into every picture tends to make even the simplest ones better.

In this case, I took a couple of pictures of this scene with the camera on its automatic settings, then wondered if the low light would cause it to lose depth of focus by opening the aperture up too wide. So I switched to manual, closed the aperture down as far as it goes (f8), then slowed the shutter speed to compensate from a light standpoint.

The result is that the obelisks in front and the flag in behind are in focus. I could also have tried another, more artistic shot, by going the other way to the narrowest possible depth of focus, then getting an obelisk in sharp focus and the flag nicely blurred in behind.

I add this tiny photo of a robin to remind us all that, no matter how dim and dull the sky, it is still spring in New Brunswick.

Day 93 - Spring Willows

A simply gorgeous day brought blue skies, sunshine and temperatures approaching 10 degrees. A great day for a walk in the UNB woodlot with friends and dogs.

I brought the Olympus in hopes that the sunshine, snow and budding trees would work together to provide some nice opportunities. I think there were a lot of nice pictures to be had out there today: I just didn't seem to be able to get them.

Thank goodness I took some photos of a pussy willow tree (bush?) near the end of our walk. With the bright sun behind them, the willow buds provided their own dramatic lighting.

While the limbs and branches remain fairly dark, the furry buds themselves are brought alive by the sunlight streaming through them. I purposely kept the shutter speed up to accentuate the contrast and I think it worked out fairly well.

Day 92 - Bridge to Nowhere

I don't know anything of the history behind these stone bridge supports that march across the Saint John River at the foot of York Street in Fredericton. I wish I did. I think they're a really neat part of the Fredericton waterfront.

Looking at this photograph, one would think that the North Side of Fredericton is made up of just a couple of buildings. It looks quite barren over there. Freddie's north side, however, is a bustling part of town and it's growing, at a much greater rate than the south side, in fact.

I played a lot with angle, light and depth of focus while photographing these massive stone walls to try to make them as interesting as possible. I still think they lose a lot of their life when captured through the lens but they are an interesting and picturesque part of Fredericton. And well worth capturing "on film".

Day 91A - Snow In April

I know I've already posted some photographs (some truly gorgeous photographs, if I do say so myself) for today's entry but, if I'm going to consider myself a reportage photographer, I'm going to have to be willing to yell "Stop the Presses!" from time to time.

Fredericton is getting belted with snow today and it's APRIL!!!!! This is absolutely nutty but beautiful at the same time. Spring flowers and more than a foot of snow. Yikes. I can't believe I'll be getting out our snow blower on April 2. That's Freddie, I guess.

Day 91 - Spring Flowers

Despite the fact that Fredericton is expecting to get more than 20 centimetres of snow today, I'm still firmly convinced (in a kind of desperate way) that spring is here.

Patti has supported this belief by bringing some beautiful cut spring flowers into the house: daffodils from the Cancer Society and tulips (a dutch treat) from the flower shop. Under her care, they have all burst into bloom at the same time, making our dining room a colourful, happy place.

These photographs are as close as I'm going to get to studio shots. To get these pictures, I moved the vase filled with daffodils into the light from the dining room window and even got out my tripod to steady the camera.

I took about thirty shots of the daffodils, trying different compositions and different camera settings. The shot I chose was one of two photographs that are exactly the same but for the size of the Olympus' aperture and the shutter speed.

With a larger aperture (f3.4) and a faster shutter speed (1/30th), I got a lovely shot wherein the burgundy curtains in the background were significantly blurred and the flower on the bottom right of the bunch was also slightly blurred; the shot I've posted, however, was taken with a much smaller aperture (f8) to increase the depth of focus and a slower shutter (perhaps 2 seconds). The curtain is still somewhat blurred but the increased depth of focus means the flower on the lower right is crisp.

The tulips were even more fun. I left them in the dark corner and ended up having to set the shutter anywhere between 8 and 15 seconds to get enough light. I love how rich and deep the colours turned out and I'm pleased with the composition of the shot. All in all, a very pleasing effort!