Day 321 - Bollards or vases or statues, oh my

Don't you miss these kinds of odd little flourishes on the new construction? Are they bollards? Are they vases? Are they statues? Who knows! I certainly don't know who they are, even if I could figure out what they are. But I like the way they gaze down at you when you approach the front doors of the New Brunswick Legislative Assembly building. And I like the slow discolouration they undergo as time passes and the copper and iron above them bleeds from rain and melting snow.

No chance of taking this photograph straight on, since the figures are about 20 feet off the ground, so I was forced to step back, then use the zoom to try to get some level of detail in the shots. Tough to do on a dark day. As you might have noticed, I'm working on noticing and photographing detail rather than entire objects or buildings. Looks pretty good, I think.

Day 319 - On the limitations of flashes

An interior shot, not because it's a great example of photography but to show the limitations of the Olympus camera I'm using. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great camera for the price and for the fact that it is a glorified point-and-shoot.

One limitation is the built-in flash. It is small and fairly powerful but it lacks a diffusing filter that softens the light. This means that it tends to overpower subjects that are close to the camera, creating areas that are washed out with too much light and areas that are blanketed in very sharp shadows. As for more distant subjects, the flash is not quite "big" enough to make for a useful photo.

In this case, the atrium of the Legislative Building in Fredericton shows up as grainy and flat due to the lack of light. You get a taste for the beauty of its staircase and the bronze statue-lamp in the centre but the photograph is not quite crisp enough to do the place justice.

Day 309 - A misleading date and a coat of arms

Today we go with a detail from the Legislative Assembly building. This photograph shows misleading "1880" sign above the front door, along with windows and the coat of arms. Don't ask me which coat of arms it is because I'm not sure. Probably New Brunswick's or Canada's or even the British royal family's or something like that.

There's something that I like very much about this photograph and I'm not sure what it is. Maybe its the gentle colour scheme. Or the balance of the image, with the two windows, the sign and the coat of arms. Or maybe it's just the fact that I'm trying to take more photos of smaller details of buildings and I'm realising I'm not very good at it, so when one turns out pretty well I feel inappropriately delighted.

I don't know what it is that gives one person an "artistic eye" but I know I don't have it. But I do my best and I think this shot is one of the best I've done.

Day 307 - Taking liberties with Her Majesty

New Brunswick's Legislative Assembly building dates from 1882 (even though its front wall features a prominent "1880" carving) and, according to the descriptive plaque in the foyer, is made of sandstone with a mansard roof and matching towers (see bottom photo). It is currently in the process of being refurbished, with the exterior work being done first.

I trust that, as part of that refurbishment, the tradespeople won't display the same lack of respect that the workers who installed security cameras and pigeon-proofing showed when they defaced this poor carving of the Queen that keeps watch on the building's front doors (see upper photo). Yes, that is actually pigeon wire sticking out of Her Majesty's crown!

This photograph was not as easy to take as it might at first appear. The carving is located inside the arch of the doorway, meaning there wasn't much light to work with. Since the Olympus' flash washed out the details on the face and crown, I had to figure out a way to get a decent exposure while not losing too much depth of focus nor adding too much shake. I have to admit, I cheated a bit. I kept the shutter speed at 1/60th while allowing enough of an aperture to keep focus throughout the shot.

In other words, I underexposed the image on site and then fixed the exposure on my trusty old iMac.

I was also forced, because of the harsh angle at which I took the picture, to rotate the image slightly so that the carving appears straight in the photo. Neat what you can do, isn't it?

The lower photo is of the building itself. You can't get far enough back from the front wall to take a photograph of the entire building with a nomral lens so I had to zoom way out and accept the distortion caused by the use of the shorter lens (somewhere close to 28mm). Unfortunately, you can't fix that on the iMac.