Dark streets and Dawson

I've had a few people comment with their ideas for image of the year, thank you very much. Now that I've got all my images on one drive it's much more convenient to review, and so I've been doing. Who knows what's going to show up in the next while?

There's a lot of photos to go through, almost 28000 for 2017 alone, with just under 1800 actually edited. Of those, I've assigned 4 or 5 star ratings to 191 photos. That comes out to one photo every 150 or so that I think is a bit beyond my ordinary. About a dozen make me go wow and get 5 stars. I could go on a quest to take more photos, doing things just the way I do now. Every 150 or so should be a winner.

Or, I could get better at taking photos. That's the route I'm trying to take, thinking about all the photos I see. Why do I like them? Where are my eyes going, and why? What would I have shot if I was standing there, and why? When I'm out in a group I usually spend a bit of time watching the others, trying to see what is catching their eye and how they go about capturing it.

I especially like looking at work by pro photographers. Even without editing tricks, and discounting long daytime exposures via filters, the pros consistently get better shots. There's generic advice of course. It's not like there is some secret to all this. The trick is to do your research to be in the right place (inches matter sometimes) at the right time for the right light with the right camera settings for the shot you want, and apply everything you know to get it in camera. Then comes editing and that's a whole other game.

It's kind of fun to go back through old photos and see what I've done with them. Some are overlooked gems that were never edited for whatever reason. Some have star ratings that I no longer agree with. A few times I've winced at the edit job and know I could do better now.

These are from the evening photo ramble in Inglewood a week or so ago. I love the mystery of dark streets. My writer's imagination starts working, wondering if one of my characters is lurking just down the way. (And some of them are lurkers, all right.) Wondering if something or someone interesting is in the shadows. Wondering what could happen.

Here's a panorama of Dawson City. I'd always meant to put this together and never did. This is where we got those super aurora shots on the last night of our trip.

Same viewpoint, looking a little further along the river.

One of the evenings I was out doing some city night shots, and want to take another look at those. Plus the bazillion aurora shots I've been meaning to revisit.

I found a few other undeveloped Dempster photos and will be sharing them along the way. It's been 3 months, and I still get chills looking at some of the photos. That trip was certainly event of the year.

A night walk

One of the nice things about retirement is that you can schedule your time as you like. At least, that's the theory.

I'm generally a morning person. Left to myself I'm usually in bed before 10, sometimes before 9, and I'm usually up before 6. Being in bed at 7 is rare, and past 8 is almost unheard of. In the summer that means I'm not going to get much night shooting done.

Places that are boring in real life and even worse in photos can turn into interesting and dare I say, even magical places at night. So that's one nice thing about this time of year, I can go out in full dark and explore the light and shadows of the city. And right now, night starts about 6:30 (there's an app for that). I can get some lovely shots and be home for bedtime.

The Camera Store organizes a beers and cameras event every other Thursday. Last night was it, to get you onto the cycle. People show up with their cameras at a pub, eat and drink and talk camera stuff, then stroll as they please to another pub to drink and talk more.

It's fun going by yourself, and even more fun with buddies. Last night I'd planned to meet up with my buddy Sean, and it turned out one of the women there had been in a Zeller class with me. She had brought a neighbour, and the four of us strolled amiably towards the new Zoo bridge set to open this weekend, then to the other pub.

A technical camera aside for those that care, feel free to skip a couple paragraphs. The sensor in your camera records the light that falls on it. You can control how this turns out through your camera settings. One of these is ISO. Don't worry about what that stands for, it's just a measure of sensitivity that used to relate to what film you bought.  Film, that's, oh heck you can look that up yourself.

For most cameras it starts at 100 and goes up, 200, 400, 800 and so on. The better the camera the higher the numbers go. (It's more complex than a tweet!) If the sensor doesn't see much light, you get a dark photo. You could hold the shutter open longer to let more light in. That's fine for a scene where neither the camera or subject are moving, or where the moving things (like tail lights) are creating an effect you want. Yes, your heartbeat is enough to move the camera.

Or, you can increase the ISO, which makes the sensor more sensitive to light so the shutter doesn't need to stay open as long. This might be the right thing, if you don't have a tripod or your subject is moving.

So why not crank up the ISO and leave it there? Noise. It's like a false positive. The sensor sees a dark sky, but it's all twitchy and jumpy like a person that's had too much coffee and it's seeing stuff that isn't really there. So the dark sky we see is replaced by this grey with coloured speckles in it, and it looks gross. During the day the photo would be over exposed. The usual trick is to keep the ISO as low as possible and adjust other settings.

(Technical aside over. You can start reading again.)

So my buddy Sean and I get together periodically for a beer and a meal, and chat about the state of the world. We've known each other since 2002 or so, and both do similar kinds of work. I hadn't known he was interested in photography until I started. So we decided to join the beers and camera thing this time. My main camera thing was to explore where higher ISO settings bring in unacceptable noise on my new camera, which isn't as simple a thing as you'd think it would be.

The first pub was unexpectedly crowded, so we drank and walked. There are a number of nice scenes in Inglewood, and we had a nice time strolling and chatting, or waiting while one of us was engrossed in a scene.

Part of the challenge of shooting at night is balancing what our eyes see compared to what the camera sees. I don't want to tweak the photo so it looks like daylight. I want to leave in the shadows, and the subtle light reflections.

Once upon a time this place was the fashionable place to go, then it was really seedy for a long time, now it's a really good restaurant.

A splash of colour in a shop window.

I'm not sure about this one. I wanted more of a halo around the person but it didn't quite come out right. Maybe if I'd held off the shutter a fraction of a second longer.

This is actually a dangerous photo. As some of my buddies know, those numbers relate to a specific colour. Now they can hold up a skein to their computer screen, and wonder where the colour calibration is off.

Two of my photo walk buddies, eager to get to the next place. Love the hail battered window ledge as a leading line.

I'm really not sure about this one. This is what I was thinking of when saying a shot might be boring during the day. At night, I'm thinking the shadows and lines make it more interesting. Then again, you might think I'm smoking dope. Don't be afraid to tell me.

Yes, it would be easy to push the exposure and light up this building, but it would boring. I like the shadows, and the pattern of lights. Beats me why they have two lights together on the left side and not one.

You didn't expect an apple

Winter has arrived, snow and all. We can't complain; it's been a wonderful long autumn in Calgary. We've had some spectacular sun rise and sun sets, and I captured some lovely fall-coloured landscapes. Things are just a bit whiter today, but there's still colour.

Our neighbour's tree still has some apples on it. Most have been picked by birds, or fallen off, but a few are still hanging in there. I'm not sure what kind they are, but they are tasty.

The deal on Facebook is B&W, no people, no explanation. You'll see a few more of mine over the next week or so. This isn't Facebook, so you get an explanation. Nobody was out in this if they had any choice about it. I was leaning on my front steps and deliberately going with a bit of a long exposure, trying to capture the motion of the wind and snow. I didn't mind if the camera moved slightly.

Along the way I got this nice serene half moon photo. A bit later was a nice sunset. That cloud amused me, looking sort of like a giant moustache.

Here's part of that sunset you haven't seen yet. I was quite taken with that grouping of trees and the yellow backdrop.

This is such a durable flower it will stay in bloom all winter.

I've spent some time today watching Thomas Heaton videos. I just loved how he responded to a guy complaining about water drops on his lens during a stormy shoot. He quickly said that of course there were spots, and that technically it wasn't a perfect image, but so what? He goes on from there, you can hear him say it better than I could repeat. 

It's another step along the way of thinking about what I'm taking photos of, how exactly, and why. A work in progress.

Harvest moon meetup

Some of you know my buddy Neil Zeller, the famous Calgary photographer. I actually knew him from before his photography career, when he was the famous Calgary barefoot runner. Every year about this time he does a photowalk. The idea is to show up with your camera, stroll around cameraing, and chat with other people interested in photography. There are about 70 people in the group photo Neil took.

I've been to several of these now, and they're lots of fun. This year I ran into several people I already knew in person, a few that I knew on social media, and a few people new to me. I got several nice compliments on this blog, thank you very much.

Normally I'm out shooting by myself, waiting for the light to be the way I hope for it to be, or strolling along however seems good to me. I can set up where I want to be, subject to safety and consideration of other people that are using that area. Every now and then I've been out with other individuals or small groups, and that's fun too. It's interesting to see what other people shoot and how they go about it. It's quite the change to be around so many people holding cameras all at once.

If you're on Instagram you can see the other photos by using the hashtag #neilzeller. I wasn't in a moony mood, if you'll forgive the phrase. I was more interested in lights reflected on the river. Editing night shots is a little interesting because of the difference in what our eyes see, and what the camera sees. As you edit, the program often assumes you want it to look like daylight, which increases the noise and often looks terrible. But we know it's dark, and I like to edit the photos so they are somewhat dark as well. I try to replicate the colour of the sky, and bring up the reflections in the water.

Some people are playing with composite shots, where they take one photo exposed for the scene with the moon a blinding white ball, then another with the scene really dark so the moon is properly exposed. Then if you properly placate the Photoshop demons, you get an image with both the moon and the scene properly exposed. I haven't done that.

Here's some of my shots.

Courtesy of Brad from Canon Canada, I got a chance to shoot a Canon 6D Mark II. Wow! I am seriously tempted. It feels great in my hands, and once I brought Lightroom up to date, the photos look terrific.

It wasn't a late night at all, even by my standards. I was thinking about doing some more shooting afterward, but headed home. Then darned if I couldn't sleep. My mind was full of photography projects, potential macro shots, a shopping list, and all sorts of photo related stuff. It took a long time to get to sleep.

I was rapt

The Bow can be a fascinating building. The interesting shape generates fabulous reflections in other buildings, and the reverse. Yesterday during my equinox photowalk I got some nice reflections of the Calgary Tower, and some shots of the brilliant sunshine that turned out really well, along with a bunch of shots of the Bow you haven't seen. There's been some nice things said about the LRT shot, thank you very much!

There were two problems with the Bow photos. One is that it's a tough building to compose a classically nice photograph. The other is the light show put on by the steam coming from the top of the building. It was sending these lovely cloudy reflections down the side of the building, echoed on the various faces. I clicked off almost 2 dozen shots of the clouds chasing each other down the building. It was almost like watching one of those old time barbershop spirals.

A few other people were standing there as well, heads tilted way back, watching. I was completely absorbed by it, thinking about light angles and reflections. I knew I was running out of space on the camera memory card so I put the camera down and focussed on looking at it.

I suppose if I'd been on the ball I'd have tried to video it, but I haven't done that with my camera, and I've no idea how it would have turned out on my phone. Plus, camera video eats memory space big time. As it is, I picked the one photo that I thought had the nicest cloud display, and tried to get the building shape looking nice.

Perspective is a funny thing. We know that most buildings are built straight up and down, but they appear to get smaller towards the top because of perspective. Our brains just deal with it, but cameras aren't that smart. Depending on the lens and a few other things you can get buildings leaning way over. There are settings to "correct" this but often the results look odd to our eyes. Having both sides going straight up in the photo tends to make the top of the building look much larger than the bottom.

Perspective is useful in other areas as well. Problem solving for instance. In one role I was viewed as an extraordinarily good problem solver, but the main reason for that is I had a lot of distance on the problem, wasn't involved in it's origin, and had no stake in the outcome. At work last week it took about 5 minutes to figure out an issue that was driving one person bonkers. It had never occurred to them that a database designer would not spell field names correctly, or even consistently.

There's lots of ways I'm enjoying the perspective that comes from getting older. Many fads are over before I even know they are a thing. Ignoring fads is so restful.  It gets easier and easier to determine if the floating elephant rule is appropriate or not. That's one of my most useful rules for living. Follow the link there and see if it will work for you.

The moon, part two

What goes up, must come down. This morning had clear skies. You bet I was out there, but not entirely happy with the result.

I've learned I can reliably get an ok shot of the moon itself. Boring. The image I have in my head was moon set over downtown, big bright moon, bright buildings. Right place, right time, right skies. Technique was not quite right. It takes at least two separate images to get both the buildings and moon properly exposed. Each is a bit tricky on their own, and together is tricky and difficult. Maybe I'm missing something. That's ok. You start, you learn, you get better. I'll be trying the shot again, though probably not this afternoon. More clouds.

Found this image a little later. It only occurred to me then if I'd walked a little bit to my left I'd have seen the moon going down the side the building. Live and learn.

Here's another view of the building the moon disappeared behind, that leftmost one, shot during sunrise. It's dark material anyways, not much internal lighting for whatever reason.

I had a buddy come along, and we amused ourselves with some other shots. Here's a corner of Fort Calgary, with some tail light trails.

My buddy captured me, hard at work.

The clouds didn't cooperate

Shooting downtown skyline from the south at sunrise. There was great colour in the sky off to the east and I was hoping it would light up the sky above downtown. Alas.

I'd never really noticed the roof and lighting of this condo building. The semi-circle roof thingies (I'm too lazy to look up the correct architectural term) look like they should have a clock in them, and I was thinking of that old Harold Lloyd movie, where he is hanging off the clock face. You've seen the image. The sky is an ugly colour and I couldn't do much about it, but the buildings are nice.

One of my favourite buildings in the city. It's entirely possible I've spent more time inside it than any other building in the city other than my home.

I had hoped the pre sunrise rose glow way up high would deign to descend, but no.

Off towards the east there was a fairly nice sunrise going, but this is all the pink I could get over the city, and I had to push the image a little to get even that.

Almost done

The bridge, that is. The pedestrian bridge over Anderson Road. The opening is Oct 29 at 9am. That's the ceremony, but I don't know if the bridge will be actually open for us before then. It looks open, if only they would take the fence down. I can't wait to see what the view is like from there. The equinox sunrise and sunset shots ought to be pretty good, but I'll have to wait and see. Stay tuned.

What the photo doesn't really show that well is how bright the sun was reflecting off the guardrails.

A long time ago, back when Anderson Road west of 24th St was a bit of a backwater, and there were still personal residences with driveways there, one could cross directly in any number of places. There was a stop sign, and one could go forward into what is now called Tsuut'ina First Nation, or turn left and go down 37 St. That went downhill to this scary one lane bridge with a sharp 90 degree bend at each end. Back then you were nearly out in the boonies.

Then they replaced it with the current setup, which is much better for vehicular traffic. Pedestrians have to wait at the lights, which is a pain when you're on the clock. Normally I started and ended my runs there.

Soon we'll have the bridge. If I could run that far, I could run over the bridge, up and around the reservoir and back for about 24 or 25 k run, without having to stop at all. Even going down toward Fish Creek I have to cross at least one major road.

I just got in from a dry run shooting the moon. It's full tomorrow night, but I thought I'd try for a horizon shot as practice. Stupid clouds. Not even a good sunset shot. That's the breaks.

Scored coffee with a buddy today, who helped clarify my thoughts around a new computer. Gonna wait a few weeks to see if there are any updates to the iMac lineup coming. That was after a nice 45 minute easy spin, with one hard bit.

Lots of photos of the cats today. I'll work on them and post the good ones. Stay tuned.

A change of life

My last day at Penn West was Aug 31. I have deliberately tried to think of myself as a retired person, rather than a working person on vacation. For a start, I don't (yet) have a job to return to. Not that I'm out there digging under rocks looking for one. There's been some expressions of varying degree of interest, but there's lots of ways for the wheels to fall off the various wagons before the paperwork is signed.

The first couple weeks of retirement have not been entirely unalloyed pleasure. I got a sniffle as a departure present so I was fighting that off. There was a 26 K run scheduled for the 3rd, and I bailed out at 22 K. From then till now the running has essentially been a no go zone. I don't think I actually injured myself, but I do think I was right at the ragged edge. My running mojo was in the middle of that zone where I couldn't get at it.

Other things happened as I gave my legs a break. Lots and lots of photos, some blah, some good, and some spectacular. They haven't all made there way to this blog, but some will, at least one a day. You may have missed yesterday, a skyline shot from the west, since I posted it quite late in the day.

Naturally I've been taking some time for reflection. Lots of people think of September as a time of new beginnings. A new school year. Coming back from vacation. Lots of people schedule new jobs for a September start after the kids are back in school. Money managers in various corporations look at their budgets and decide if they are actually going to spend, because now is the time if they're going to at all. Moms with kids going to school get together with their mom buddies to have a little celebratory freedom drink, then get down to the serious business of whatever it is that newly free moms get up to. It's probably best if their husbands don't know. I know some moms read this blog, and some might have kids that age. Feel free to comment!

The trees are changing colour here, meaning lots of golds, yellows, and almost orange. Not much red. Still, it's pretty spectacular.

The other day while rolling and stretching I got a huge thunk from my back and things started feeling better. There was a baby 3K easy run that felt pretty good, as did an easy spin on Thursday. Today I was itching to run, and ended up 5.5 K around the neighbourhood with my run buddy. We were forced, FORCED to stop and admire the view of Fish Creek. (Assembled from 7 individual photos, the resolution in the original is amazing.)

Since the clock wasn't running, we didn't mind taking a minute. That's been my mantra just lately, it doesn't matter if things take a few minutes longer. Unless it's traffic on the way to a place to watch a celestial event. Then minutes might matter.

So far I'm enjoying it, sniffles aside, and I'm glad that's ovre. The run felt good, and stretching after produced another series of good noises. I am hopeful I'll be back in the running groove soon, though I'm not going to push for the October marathon. I've seen too many buddies injure themselves trying to come back too fast, too soon, too hard. Not me. I'd rather settle into good volume, quality runs, and postpone a marathon till next year.

I'm having fun taking photos, and learning more about Lightroom and other photo related software. Still lots to learn. I've seen a couple more potentially good places for skyline shots I'm going to explore. Photo buddies, feel free to reach out for shared photo trips!

First Image of the day

I've been thinking about lots of stuff lately, much of which is not fit for public discussion, at least not yet. But Neil had one piece of advice that struck home as I was thinking about how to use my time.

So this is going to be the start. I want to post an image every day. It will start here, because it's a platform I have now. Later it might migrate to another. They could be an image I just took, or it might have been taken a while ago. The images might be pedestrian, in that it's an image of something, in focus, hopefully a nice photo but maybe nothing special. Or maybe it's something nice dressed up in a way that has people saying "ooooh!". Maybe something unusual, or an image I got lucky with. Whatever.

Maybe I'll tell a story with the image, or maybe not. Maybe it will tie into whatever I'm blogging about, or maybe not. Maybe it will confuse you, or fascinate you, or enrage you, or make you want to give me money for an autographed copy of it. Whatever. It's a place to start, and I'll be trying to make them better every day.

I'm not going to bore you with the camera settings, and if you ask I won't tell you. There's any number of settings that will produce a similar image; find out which ones will work for you. This was during my walk on 8th ave during Beakerhead while Linda was busy with something. Later we strolled actual Beakerhead stuff, and there's more photos taken, but not yet published. Maybe later.

As always, comments are welcome. You can tell me you love the shot, or that I screwed up and it would have been much better had I done such and such.