Tree, meet moon

It's just on full moon again. I only noticed as I was walking home from the photo gig the other night, and noticed a neat juxtaposition between a tree and the moon.

Then the next night I was out again hunting a nice sunset (no such luck) and saw another one. I kind of like the idea of a tree holding up the moon, or reaching for it.

I didn't think it was terribly murky here yesterday, but sometimes you notice it most at sunrise and sunset.

You can see why I thought the sky might light up, but this is as good as it got. There will be other sunsets.

Yesterday was summer. I was out for a lovely hot sweaty run in about 23 C sunniness. That was 6 K in 43:40. I'd been sort of hoping for 7 K, and might have been able to grind it out, but I think it was better to stop before I had to stop. Today it's cold and raining, but the pool was the same temperature as always. I'm not sure if the run took more out of me than I thought, but I felt a bit short of breath in the pool compared to recent swims. I took it easy and did some drill stuff.

March Image of the Month

That was a tough month on the photography front. I am getting darned sick and tired of winter. We had lots of snowy and generally cold and crappy weather so I wasn't out as much as I'd have liked. Still there are a few nice photos. The winner was fairly easy, but I'm having trouble picking out the runners up. There are 5 that I like, each for different reasons.

I'd looked at them this morning, but couldn't make up my mind. Then we were off to brunch with some friends at Blackfoot Inn. As I digested I considered more, and wrote a bit while thinking.  In the end I thought of which I'd most like to see printed.

For second runner up, a bridge of wine diamonds in the neck of a wine bottle. I'd never seen that before. I've no idea what I did to get the surrounding blues, and tracery of blue in the diamonds. I'd like to tell you I cleverly added a blue laser to the setup, but no. Once I was done the wine, the bottle went downstairs to meet the macro camera.

First runner up. Some might think this prosaic. A coffee mug. Meh. This is one of my favourite mugs, thrown by Connie Pike in High River. I was sitting inside about to take a sip when the morning light caught the mug just right and I started noticing some of the detail in the glaze. A few minutes later I was outside with the mug and camera. The shot actually took a bit of doing to get just right, so I was in and out several times looking at images on the computer rather than the camera. Afterward I took it downstairs to the macro camera setup for a closer look at the glaze.

And our winner! I was out hunting for some specific dusk images for a writer buddy of mine. Along the way I crested a hill and saw this. You can bet I got the car stopped as soon as possible. Some of you might recognize those old combines in the bottom corner.

Another of that hazy amazing sunset

I stopped several times to shoot that amazing sunset. Here's another for your delight, and if you missed the first one, it's here. This one is a few minutes later.

Hunting for a road

I have a writer buddy that has asked me to keep an eye and camera lens out for some specific things. Tonight was a an evening to try to get some of what she is looking for. There is a Google photos folder for her to look at.

Along the way I found these. The first few are on the way out of town, looking over the ring road construction. The inversion was pretty bad so you can barely see downtown. I figured that might make for some nice sunset shots, and I was not wrong.

The full moon. Oops.

Sunday night I was out trying to shoot the full moon rising over downtown. Again. It didn't go as well as I had hoped, mainly because I blew the settings. As you can see, the moon is so bright it was just a disc of white light. There is no detail to be recovered through Lightroom mad skillz. I thought I had dialled down the exposure to balance the lights of downtown and the moon, but not enough. It's a tricky balance, and maybe I was trying for too much, I was letting the camera take a bunch of shots in a row, with the idea of maybe assembling a movie. I should have realized with the clouds that wasn't going to work and changed course.

Just as a thing to mess with Facebook, here's the photo I like better, and then the one that is a technical failure.

There was a win, though. I did my research and picked the spot to shoot from to get a shot of the moon rising over downtown. I figured from my vantage point it would appear to the side of Banker's Hall, and go over the tower. I wasn't sure if I'd get the moon right above the tower. You can see the clouds that the moon is disappearing into, and it did. The show lasted maybe 5 minutes.

I didn't hang around to see if the clouds would clear up. There was a nasty cold wind and I was freezing. I guess there was another win, though. I was there to see it, and I'll remember the big yellowy moon right between the buildings and the tower. I was out trying to get the shot.

I had the 6D on a tripod with the 70-200 lens aimed at downtown. At the same time I had the 24-70 on the T6 and was shooting some sunset and cloudy colours shots that turned out ok, considering I wasn't in a good spot for seeing the sunset. As well, here's the 6D set up ready to go.

Plus, as a consolation prize for scrolling through photos that are at best documentary, here's Celina!

Playing with the clouds, and cats

Everybody loves brilliant flaming sunrises or sunsets. But I was looking out at sunset earlier this week, and wondering how the new camera would capture the subtle cloud colours and textures.

The moon is always hard. Here's it's just beginning to emerge from the clouds, but I was mainly trying to see if I could get both the moon and the bit of colour all into the same shot, along with some of the shades of blue.

Curtis is just so impossibly cute. It was only after I walked away I realized I should have done a video to see if it would pick up the little snores and grunts.

I disturbed Celina's beauty sleep. "The Cat Judge shall hear of this!"

With Linda being away, both cats have tried 'helping' with various tasks. I'm not sure why they thought operating the track pad with their head was a good idea. Cats are mysterious. In any case, they offered a great many editorial comments.

These are iPhone photos.

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.

Sunday roundup

Keeping track of images can get confusing. I need a better system. I currently post images on my blog almost daily, and periodically on my Facebook wall and two closed Facebook groups, plus Instagram (I'm keithcartmell there if you want to follow me). The best images go onto my photoblog, updated when I have some images worth adding.

Sometimes I lose track of where I post what, and some escape being posted at all. Right now I have no way of looking at my folder of edited images and knowing which have or have not been posted. I could start adding tags to them, I guess, but I wonder how well that would work out? Let's try it and see what happens.

Here's some images over the last week or so that I don't think have appeared anywhere else public, are not not in a blog scheduled to be published (right now I have 2 queued up), and yet I think they have artistic merit enough to be published.

A sunrise last week. It went to a closed group on Facebook, but I know some of my readers will have seen it there. So you see it twice, life is hard all over.

And a sunset the same day, also posted to that closed group.

We had a good week for sunrise and sunset shots, and I posted a bunch here, if you missed them.

These are from the photowalk in Fish Creek, you can see part 1 and part 2 if you missed those.

From our front garden yesterday, a rose leave. These two are actually macro shots, since they were shot with the 100 mm lens with all the extension tubes. In fact, they were the only two shots. I was disappointed that I'd missed the other shots by just that much.

It's been a productive week for photos. Stay tuned, I've got a photo related contest coming up. I'm still working out the details, but it should appear Nov 6. Mark your calendar!

Sunrise, Sunset

Yesterday was a big day for morning and evening photography.

Calgary sunrises are often pretty to look at, but don't photograph particularly well because there are no clouds. There is a beautiful colour gradient, but it never looks quite right in a photo. Unless you've got something dramatic happening in the foreground, it's actually a pretty boring shot.

Sunsets usually have cloud, but are placid ho hum affairs much of the time.

Every now and then either can be beautiful and you wish you had a camera. A bit more rarely you get spectacular and you grind your teeth with envy when your photo buddies post their awesome shots. Even more rarely is the morning and evening of the same day, AND be there with a camera.

I just made it for the sunrise, having to forego coffee, grab the camera, and run. This is one of the 'reject' shots. I don't have many to choose from since I got there late.

Here's a 4 shot panorama you may have seen on Facebook, though that's a bit misleading. The proportions are almost exactly 16:9, which I can get from an individual photo. The difference is there is far more detail, since I was shooting the individual shots as portrait. It turns out to be 9936 x 5802 px.

Sunset I saw coming in plenty of time to be out and waiting. First, here's some of the 'reject' shots over about a 10 or 15 minute period. They start looking more to the south, as the colour gradually arrived from the east. I love the delicate texture and curlicues of cloud here. They show up beautifully on my version, not sure how well they'll show up in the blog version.

Off to the west, colour developing.

This is looking north west.

This is looking almost due north. I'd say that's lots of colour.

I was walking back to the house when I realized if I stood on the street and played chicken with a bus, I could get this nice silhouette of the tree.

Here's the sunset 8 shot panorama taking up about a quarter of the sky. It turns out to be 14978 x 5963 px. Or in print terms, about 48 x 20 inches at 300 dpi, meaning extremely high quality print. For something like this you could double that size and still look great.