Life is an adventure. It starts when we were born, and we didn't have any choice about that. At least, that's the way it looks to us. There are those who believe that our lives here on earth are just a part of a greater life that began before birth and goes on after death. Some believe that we have many lives, and we gradually learn as we go, or pay off a karmic burden from a previous life.
I sometimes think of my photo expeditions as a little mini journey of life. It starts when I pick up a camera with the intent to take a series of photos. I might have a specific subject in mind, or I might be going out to see what I find. In this case, I choose to pick up the camera, and make choices about what gets captured by the camera. Sometimes there is a story that goes with the photos, and you need both to make sense of the experience. Or not.
In some senses the story ends when I put the camera down again, but in wider sense that isn't true. For digital I have to take the SD card out of the camera, plug it into the computer, import the data into Lightroom, and then review and edit. For the film cameras, the roll comes out when done, gets taken to the lab to be developed, picked up again, and then there's a digitization process.
Only then do I see what I captured. Often they are a random collection of photos unrelated to each other. Sometimes I goofed on focus or exposure and the photo is nothing, or maybe (highly unlikely) it's a masterpiece. At best I can call it an abstract and pretend I planned it that way. For intentional photos most of them are 'there I was and this is what I saw.' But sometimes I know I got art when I took it, and every now and then it's the editing that makes the photo.
So today you get a bunch of the unusual photos, most of which probably need a story.
Our front garden during our long autumn at sunset. It looked nice to my eyes, but I knew the camera could capture details in the green and brown stems that my eyes wouldn't see. I hoped the colours would come out and I'm quite pleased. The actual composition might be a bit of a mess, but such is life sometimes.
Another sunset. The surprise is that the colour version isn't much to look at it. A few streaks of light pink with lots of blue sky and crappy looking grass. I took it while using the camera as a sophisticated light meter for the film camera. I didn't even look at it when editing the other photos taken during the same session. Then I went back and tried B&W just to see what it looked like. It brought up all kinds of cloud detail that can't be seen in the colour version.
This started with me looking at a map and trying to figure where I could get a specific photo of the sun rising between the buildings downtown. I succeeded in that, though I didn't know at the time that if I'd closed down the aperture I'd have got a better starburst effect. So this photo is from my Mordor days, as I think of it, where I went crazy with Photomatix. I'd never do that now, unless it was for a specific audience or a comic book cover or something where I was well paid.
Just for reference this is as close as I got to the photo I had in mind.
I was out for a long run when I saw this, and went back with the good camera because it made me think of my buddy Beth of SUAR fame. I'd wondered if she had snuck in a visit to Calgary and hadn't told me. There's a joke there, that I'm pretty sure some of my readers will get. I'd sent it to her at the time and it made her laugh. If she sees it today, I hope it gives her a good laugh again.
And Curtis! What can I say? Im pretty sure I never blogged this because much of it was out of focus. What do you think he wants?
5 minutes and a slightly different direction separate these two photos. And you wonder why photographers sometimes obsess about details. I had thought the pedestrian bridge would be a great spot for sunset photos, but it wasn't then, and it's worse now what with the new ring road. The photo I want to get from it is due east with the moon rise over Anderson road. Sometime in the next 19 years, if it's not cloudy that evening.
Sean, this photo will make you laugh. During our walk the other day we stood exactly where this photo was captured, and I mentioned that I didn't think I'd ever been there before. So much for my memory.
And the long promised time lapse of the aurora from the recent Yukon trip. In this case we were too far north, and for much of our evening we were looking straight up at the aurora. What we saw as a thing band of colour would be a spectacular curtain of light from further south.
Of the Day
Driftwood
Flower
Peony
Lily
Landscape
Looks like Tombstone, but it's actually Top of the World Highway.
Tombstone
Green Fools
Moose
Lynx
Film
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