July's favourite photo is...

At the Owl's Nest.

This was a real surprise to me. I like the photograph too but I really thought one of Cousin Ineke's choices, the two gorgeous sky photos (#4 and 6), would win. But people seemed to really like the form and composition of this photograph of the shelves and books at the best used book store in Fredericton, the Owl's Nest.

My sister Lynn had sent me a colour-corrected version of this photo (making it less green) but I managed to delete it accidentally while cleaning up my email account before I could include it here. I'm not sure I like the corrected version better but I was hoping to let you decide for yourselves!

Oh well. If Lynn can send me the adjusted pic again, maybe I'll add it. Thanks again to everyone who voted and don't forget to cast your vote for your photo favourite from August, from the choices posted last week.

Day 362 - Another happy photographic accident

Add this one to the list of photographs that, at first glance, seem not to have turned out but then, when you look at them more closely, you find that they are better than you could ever have imagined (or planned).

This is Emily. She's skating at the Lady Beaverbrook Rink during one of its daily free skates. There's not much light. Emily is moving pretty quick. And the Olympus is having a mess of trouble adjusting for it all. I set it at the slowest shutter speed that wouldn't show the shake in my hand (1/60th of a second) and opened the aperture up as far as it would go.

It's a recipe for disaster and that's what, at first glance, I thought I had gotten, even after I worked on the picture in iPhoto. Emily is not in focus (the guy in the coat behind her is, however), the contrast is terrible, and there still isn't enough light. I was ready to discard it.

Then I looked at her face. The concentration on it. The peaceful concentration on the act of skating. And I realised that the fuzziness of the image, the low contrast and the darkness all add rather than detract from the effect of the shot. So I kept it. I showed it to Emily and asked her permission to post it here.

"As long as you don't mind me copying it onto my Facebook page," she said. No problem, Emily. Enjoy. And thanks for being a part of another happy photographic accident.

Day 357 - Life's subtle opportunities

The composition of this photograph pleases me. I like the appearance of each of the individuals elements in the shot (the lamp, the number, the plant and planter) and I like the way they work together, with the lines of the window, door and siding serving as a backdrop.

I am also quite fond of the muted palette of the colours in this photograph, which allows the quiet greens in the plant to stand out and the little red berries to shine. The strong yellow from the lamp itself interests me: I didn't expect that and I wonder if it is a product of the work I had to do to make a rather dark photo brighter.

I think that, after a year of doing this, I'm finally starting to develop something of an "eye" for interesting photos. More and more often, I find myself able to spot these kinds of subtle photographic opportunities that my daily life brings me. And I'm getting better at capturing the scene with a single photo, framed and properly executed on-site.

Day 356 - A tie and cap? Oh deer

A fun snapshot from a day's wanderings around the neighbourhoods of Fredericton, today's photograph features a very life-like stuffed deer peering out at the street from the front porch of a house.

Did I mention the deer is wearing a baseball cap and a tie?

Not much to the photo itself: basically, a point and shoot shot with iPhoto helping slightly with the exposure to make up for a dark, cloudy day. Kind of fun, though.

Day 351 - A river of lights

It's funny. I think I like the way the lights look reflected in the St. John River better than in the original, on the house on the north side of Fredericton.

A cold night, tripod and long shutter speed make for a neat photograph, this one combining the Christmas lights with the river for a nice effect. I'm still amazed at how many houses are decked out in lights like this one, all over the city. Some with many colours and others just a single colour, a hundred times over. My mom would have loved it!

Day 333 - The blurred brick wall

One theme I seem to be exploring of late in my photographs is the idea of different levels in the image, especially the simplest two: the foreground and the background.

There are a lot of decisions to be made when taking a photograph like this. You have to decided how to frame the shot, how close to get to the objects in the foreground and how much space to leave around them (on the sides and top and bottom). You have to choose the angle from which you take the photo (again, both from side to side and up and down) which will have an impact on what forms the background to the shot.

Once you've made those decisions, you have to choose whether you wish to have all elements in sharp focus (by prioritising a narrow aperture setting on the camera) or different levels of focus at different levels of the shot (by opening the aperture up and then compensating by speeding up the shutter). I had the aperture setting at its smallest (f8) with the shutter at 1/60th for the first picture I took of these lamps and the shot was boring: everything was in focus.

So then changed the aperture to f3.4, increased the shutter speed to 1/125th of a second and suddenly you've got this much more interesting image, where the finely focused lamps stand out against the interestingly textured but blurred brick wall.

Day 317 - Recognising our own impermanence

The classic footprint-in-the-sand image, taken on the slowly growing beach in Pickering, Ontario.

The governments here are trying to rebuild the shoreline of the north side of Lake Ontario, using a variety of techniques including adding clean fill and installing water breaks to create small, protected areas of beach. It seems to be working. The waterfront in this area is really becoming a lovely area and there are even real sand beaches forming.

Here, my sister's single footprint marks the sand. It's an image of surprising beauty that captures the significant impact each of us makes on the world while still conveying a recognition of our own impermanence. And also, it shows the weird treads on my sister's shoes!

Day 306 - The photographer's gain

Some time ago, I posted a photograph of a man on a crane, working on the top of the Fredericton City Hall clock tower. What I thought was going to be a quick fix has turned into a major renovation of the outside of this historic building.

This new photo shows the tunnel they've constructed that leads into the city tourism information bureau on the first floor of the City Hall building. Looks inviting, doesn't it? "Come on in and find out what we're all about!" it shouts at the passing tourist.

The tourist's loss is the photographer's gain, as this scaffolding-and-mesh structure serves as an interesting subject, with its many lines and colours, the perspective it provides as it moves into the background and the contrast between the structure itself and the curved shape of the bricks on the ground. A challenge to get the lighting right but a neat photo nonetheless.

Day 305 - Jack says "Hi"

Happy belated Hallowe'en everybody. Believe it or not, this is the FIRST Jack'o'Lantern I have ever carved. He adorned our brand new front porch last night for the Hallowe'en festivities and we even got a compliment about him.

In order to get some shots of Jack lit from within by a candle, I got out my mini tripod and started taking shots at various aperture and shutter speed settings to see what would work best. Needless to say, as I fiddled with the camera, the evening darkness also grew denser so it turned into quite a challenge.

The top photograph is the first one I took. It's got an aperture of about f4.5 with a shutter speed around four seconds. It's a good, crisp picture but I wanted to see if the flickering flame of the candle could be more visually interesting with a smaller aperture and a longer exposure.

The lower shot was taken under much darker conditions and with a 15 second exposure. This resulted in a dark photo (no matter how long you made the exposure, there just wasn't much light) so that Jack's face stands out better but the slower shutter didn't seem to do much with the flickering flame. My guess is that the light from the candle was already diffused as it passed through the carved features of Jack's face, so that, even if the flame itself moved while the shutter was open, it made no difference to what the camera saw and captured. The question of course is: which photo do you like better?

Day 298 - Photographing the flame

Abstract art in low light. This is a photograph of the flame in the fire place, taken with a shutter speed of 1/80th of a second, much too fast according to the light meter but necessary to freeze the flame and avoid flaring.

With the fall upon us and night-time temperatures dipping below zero, our fire-place is starting to come into play on quiet evenings with friends. We're fairly new to the idea of fire-places but very much enjoying the experience. Not to mention the photographic opportunities it offers.

Day 297 - Red sky at morning (No. 2)

I learned the old saying when I was in the naval reserve: "Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky at morning, sailor take warning." I've decided to adjust it as follows: "Red sky at night, sailor's delight; red sky at morning, sailor take photos."

Gorgeous morning colours, taken as I walked to the bus, with the aperture as wide as possible and the shutter fast enough to take the shake out of my hand. Amazingly, despite what the Olympus' light meter told me, the pink sky gave me enough light to get this fabulous photo.

Day 295 - Birthday by candlelight

The camera is on the table. The aperture is as narrow as possible (f8) and the shutter speed is at four seconds. The only light comes from the candles on the cake.

Neat photograph, I think. The birthday girl is a little bit out of focus because, like any human, she can't remain absolutely still for even four seconds. It's not even that she moved intentionally during that time: the living human body is never completely still, what with the breathing and heart beating and blood flowing.

The flames on the candles are also moving, which gives them that rounded look. Everything else is still, sharp and in focus, making for a really interesting photo. I like the texture of the table cloth and the balance with the two foreground objects (top left and low right). I also love the dramatic lighting from the candles and the reflection of that light in the two wine glasses.

Day 294 - Playing with fire

f8 at 4 seconds. That's what it took to get this photograph of the first fire of the fall season at our house. I tried the shot at 15 seconds, to see what the difference would be, but all the extended shutter speed did was make the flames more fluid, less crisp. And it lightened up the other details a little too much, in my opinion.

Low light photography interests me greatly but I'm not sure the Olympus has what it takes to explore the subject as far as I want. Its aperture range is too narrow (f3.4 to f8) to provide the flexibility I would want. Oh well. I'll push it to its limits and see how it does.