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  • Welcome to my Adventures in Photography

    This blog has been created to document my adventures in Photography as well as the day to day learning of new techniques and composition skills I am obtaining along the way.

    My intent is not only to showcase my experiences and photos taken, yet to help others along with their learning experiences as well.  I will be posting not only my favourite things, yet my mistakes and my attempts at various techniques.. the whole thing.

    I would love feedback as well... comments, critiques, questions... you name it... would love to hear what you think about my mis-adventures.

    Thanks for visiting... and hope to hear from you soon :)

    One last note:  If you are interested in learning more about Photoshop and Lightroom, head on over to the National Association of Photoshop Professionals.  I wasn't sure at first if membership was worth it, but the magazines along with the discounts for the programs paid for itself within the first week.  Yep... big fan.. lots to learn, but a great place to start.

Pelican 1550 Cases on Sale at unbelieveable prices… too hard to resist…

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 6:25 pm Posted in Photography Gear

Pelican Protector Cases at Acklands/Grainger – Model 1550 $129.99

I was in at Acklands Grainger about two weeks ago looking for some metric screws for my new stainless kitchen handles and noticed a new flyer out on the desk. The sale started that Monday (Feb 01 – March 26, 2010) but noticed they have the Pelican PLC1550BK on sale for $129.99 (regular $308.99).

Anyhow… the flyer has the wrong sizes (but the girl there verified the new catalog dimensions are the same as the flyer) as it states the exterior dimensions are 52.4″L x 42.8″W x 20.6″ D yet the Pelican site says the interior dimensions are 18.43″ x 14.00″ x 7.62″ (46.8 x 35.5 x 19.3 cm).

I assumed the Pelican site was right and Acklands has a misprint in both their flyer and upcoming catalogs… and yes when it arrived it is definitely the smaller version like Pelican states.

Either or… I picked up two of them as they are almost indestructible and waterproof to boot. I was thinking they would be great for the small flashes I have or even lens storage.

To that end… I’ve only managed to “pluck and pick” the foam from one of them for now…  and I decided instead of making it into a kit to grab and go that I’d set the case up for storage of my main camera/lenses.

I’ve still got one more to fill with my Flashes and Accessories such as the triggers, remotes, hotshoes and such… but am actually wishing I had two more for my studio lights as well as these.

Hmm… what’s a guy to do?  Did I mention they have a LIFETIME GAURENTEE on them?:)

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Shooting Muskrat… the good way…

Tuesday, March 2, 2010 6:17 pm Posted in Beavers, River/Lakefront

Holidays started today after a LONG, LONG week of 12 hour days and nights.

It’s one of those rest days… work around the house, drink lots of coffee, run around a bit and catch up on the e-mails type of day.

Yet… as we were getting ready to head out again I looked out past the deck onto the lake and wow… a Muskrat trudging along in front of the house.  Just a wee little one… slowly trodding along and stopping to take a break right in front of the house so I could run downstairs to get the camera.

Yep… I had the camera taken apart as I had been “plucking and picking” today, trying to get the gear into the new Pelican 1550 cases (more on that later).

But… I did manage to throw the 70-200 f/4 L IS USM on the Canon 50D as well as the 1.4 Teleconverter as I did not want to get to close to the wild little critter and ran through the snow in the front yard down to the lakeside.

Here’s a few shots with very little editing to bring back the blow-outs caused by me using spot metering to get the detail in the critter (and choosing to blow out the snow a bit).

Check out the rear feet on this thing…

So much for him hanging around for much longer… breaks over and off he/she goes…

And there go the after burners….

So… had to blow out the highlights with the snow a bit to get some detail in the Muskrat but wanted that instead of a darker object with all the bright, white snow.  I threw the camera on spot metering, single shot for focus and tried as best possible to stay steady despite my java infested veins (lots of caffine today).

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Snowmachine trail at -7 Celcius

Saturday, February 6, 2010 11:06 pm Posted in Friends and Photography, Nik Silver Effects Pro, Portraits

It was a gorgeous weekend and I just didn’t have it in me to stay inside and finish the wiring in the basement.  Nicole had already spent the morning at the farm working her horse while enjoyed a morning sleeping in.

I needed to do something creative today and Nicole was up for anything.  We took off driving around town trying to find something (bright sunny day, no beautiful coloured sky, lots of white everywhere from the fresh snow… hmmm) and ended up behind New Prospect School on the Snowmachine trails.

I took two lenses; the EF 70-200 f/4 IS USM and the Lensbaby Composer.  We started shooting on the upper trail, just out of the bright sunlight and despite the -7 Celcius temperature… it was still cold:).

Here is Nicole goofing around without her jacket on, a quick snap when she wasn’t expecting it…

For the next shot here we were back deeper in the trail, deeper in the shade…

Once we ended up at the bottom of the trail by the stream I fired off these last two as we were rushing to head home and out for supper.

The Lensbaby shots didn’t turn out as I had expected, maybe because I was in a hurry at the last minute, maybe because I couldn’t focus… ha… either way… lets just keep those shots hidden for the time being as I still need more practice with the Lensbaby.

But… I did learn a lot today…

We were shooting mostly in the shade of the trees, deep within the trail for the first two shots here and later with the third shot the sun was to Nicoles back.   What did I accomplish you ask?  I shot these with my 580ex II on ettl for fill.

Yep… I was shooting with a flash in broad daylight… trying it out in the worst way (on camera) possible to see how it would light up areas needing some fill lighting.  I can really tell the shots are done with a flash though… can you?

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Prophoto 3 update

Monday, February 1, 2010 8:41 am Posted in Web Software

Well… I have to say… I love the ProPhoto wordpress customizations.  I’ve just installed the V3 updates to the blog and will be changing the layout this week.

Stay tuned for some visual changes to the site… lots of customization with ProPhoto V3….

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Fall adventures, Portrait Professional and Photoshop masking/overlays

Tuesday, January 19, 2010 7:55 pm Posted in Friends and Photography, Photoshop CS4, Portrait Professional Studio, Portraits

Phew… that’s a title in itself isn’t it?

As I’m trying to learn more each day, well… today was one of those.  I’d seen a photo on Model Mahem that I liked today and thought why not try and emulate the shot in a way or at least the effect.

So I decided to start with one of the simple shots Nicole and I took this summer, this is her standing on the site of the future shop (aka the garage pad in the middle of the yard).

I started of running the shot through Portrait Professional to clean it up a bit.  Unfortunately Portrait Professional (or from what I know of it so far) only works on the head area and some cleaning up of the rest of the skin could be done manually.  For now… this is what I’m using for the rest of the testing and besides… she’s beautiful enough to start with so why mess with it ?:)

For the second round and to start the layering I added an overlay from OnOne PhotoFrame (but any would have done) and masked out Nicole so she was not covered by the overlay itself.

For the third and final attempt tonight I added a second overlay on top of the first and the mask, reducing the second overlay to 20% to not obscure the skin to much but also add depth to the first overlay.

So not the same effect as seen in the Model Mayhem shot, but fun playing around with texture overlays and such and happy about the learning experience.

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