Missing in Action?

I know that I usually write here for an audience of one, but in case some passing stranger notices my absence, let me just put my hand up and say “Hi”.

I’ve been cooped up for a couple of months with a medical problem. It seems to be getting better, but I’ll know more around the end of March. Needless to say, I haven’t been doing too much photography, and I haven’t been too inspired to write either. So I’ve been thinking and planning and reading. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull all that together soon for a much more productive blogging experience.

However, I did get out for a drive to the photo store yesterday. We live on the wetcoast, so I’ve been hankering for a rain coat for my cameras. Not surprisingly, up to now it’s been a dead end looking for one around Surrey, but yesterday was the day. I picked up the Kata Element Cover E-702. If that means as much to you as it did to me, just know that yes, it fits a D3S and smaller cameras, but you may need another sleeve for your long lenses. The default sleeve seems to work fine for my Nikon 70-200 2.8 VR1, but I have yet to try it with my Sigma 120-400.

So that’s about it for now. Hopefully in the not too distant future, things will get into a routine on this old blog and there will be more to read on the daily escapades of Donsca 😉

Spring’s on the way

It was a beautiful day around Metro Vancouver. The clouds parted and the temperature went up to around 6 degrees, although the wind made it feel cooler.

I took a break in the afternoon for some fresh air, and went for a walk in Surrey’s Bear Creek Park. The gardeners were out clearing away the winter’s debri. There were a few people wandering about, but nothing like on the crowds on weekends. In a few of the gardens I noticed crocuses poking their first leaves up.

There’s a stream and pond in one spot, with a bridge passing over to the other side. There were about 40 ducks in the pond, almost 50:50 female and mallard. They seemed to cruise as a group, with the occasional, argumentative chase between mallards.

Gardeners, crocuses, and ducks flocking together in pairs. Lots of signs of spring, but the one that stood out to me was a bed of heather surrounding a spruce. Pretty much all the heather was in bloom, and there were reds, whites, purples, and greens all through the bed. This photo doesn’t really do it justice, but it gives you an idea.

I’m not sure what’s up with the spruce, but I guess someone thought it should be pruned into a spiral.

The next couple of months are my favourite time for photography. The smell and colours of new vegetation is fresher and much more intense than it is in the summer. It’s like the whole world wakes up, takes a deep breath and gets on with living after a long winter’s nap. Heh, for the most part, just like me 😉

The Shingle is Up

It’s been quiet here for a couple of months. The cold weather and a bout of pneumonia has kept me pretty much under wraps for a good chunk of December and most of January.

While I was there, I went into ‘stealth mode’ and did some serious thinking about ‘what’s next’. I didn’t want to accidentally spill the beans before any decisions had been made, so Twitter and Facebook have been barren too.

Still waiting on a specialist to deal with the infection, but a decision has been made.

Monday January 31 was the end of the day job. It’s all good. It was a great job, and I love the people I worked with. But after 4.5 years there, I just feel ready for a change. I’ll take a short break to do some more planning about where I’m going from here, and then get on with it.

I marked my first day off by getting a city business license for Donsca Communications; a “marker in the sand” that says this is the time and place. That felt pretty good.

Business planning is underway, but still pretty basic. There are a couple of certainties though: I will take more pictures, and I will write more. I loved doing both when I had the chance at work and whenever I’ve had the time in the past. Now I want to take that passion and do something with it.

Thanks to some savings, I won’t starve, but the technology budget has been frozen as of now 😉 Ahh, the financial part is always the hardest to bear. Of course, there is also part time work or a contract or two, as needed to top things up.

I’ll have more news to share about the journey soon. I expect it will be a slow start, but worth it in the end.

Out with the Nikon 24-120 F4 lens

Yesterday I dropped into the PhotoExpert shop in Delta and asked if they’d seen the new Nikon 24-120 F4 lens yet. Dave checked in the back and suggested he had one just for me 😉 Needless to say I bought it.

Despite the forecast of rain all weekend, it turned out pretty nice. A few very storm-like clouds kept threatening, but for the most part, they stayed away. The same thing happened on Sunday, so over the weekend, I had a few hours to try out the new toy.

I flitted between Surrey City Hall for colour, and Serpentine Fen and Delta to see what was going on. I wasn’t out early on Saturday or Sunday, so most of the wildlife was out feeding somewhere, but the colour at City hall was just fine.

I bought the lens to use at events, so I wasn’t trying it out under the circumstances I’ll use it most. Still, I’m pretty happy with what it’s done so far with landscapes. We’ll see next week how it works at a couple of next week’s events at work.

The new toy: a Nikon 28-300 lens

A couple of weeks ago, I tracked down the new Nikon 28-300 3.5-5.6G lens. When I was using my D300 more, I really relied on that range with the 18-200 lens for DX cameras. Since getting my D700 and D3S, I’ve missed it terribly when photographing events. The range is just so useful when you don’t really have time for frequent lens changes.

Anyway, the day after I got the lens, the weather cleared, and I headed out to see just what it could do at Bear Creek Park and Serpentine Fen in Surrey.

I was quite impressed. Sure, I have some work to do with my handling technique, but when it comes together with the 28-300, it seems this lens can shine. The photo of the duck in a pond was taken from a bridge. I was amazed how sharp it was.

This weekend, a colleague and I headed out early to see what we could find in terms of colorful shots. No dice for the first few hours, as fog was everywhere. On the bright side, that gave me a chance to try shooting in the fog, something I haven’t done much of before. The photo here is probably my favourite of the day.

I still have some work to do on my technique with the lens and with shooting in the fog, but I did like the mood of some of the keepers from that shoot. I also learned a bit more about the north side of the Fraser. There are some interesting spots for photos up around Pitt Meadows and Ruskin. I’ll have to go back and explore some more.

More photos from the photowalks on Flickr

Can a beach be boring?

In the summer, Mud Bay Park in Surrey is pretty much a ‘plain Jane’ kind of park.. It’s flat and open, has one man made path, and follows a rocky, muddy shoreline on one side, with a marshy, migratory bird habitat area on the other. The standout feature is probably the old Burlington Northern train trestle at the east end, linking the north side of the bay with the south, near Crescent Beach. A few trains a day keeps things interesting.

I went there to take some photographs anyway. I knew there had to be something that keeps me going back, so I slowed down and spent some time exploring.

When something caught my eye, even for a second or two, I tried to figure out what it was and how I could turn it into an interesting photo (at least interesting to me). In processing, I tried what I learned in Vision and Voice (see my last post) to show what I saw or felt as I took each photograph. It’s harder than it looks, and I’ve got lots to learn, but it was fun.

With this photo of berries and flowers, I was walking along an open path, looking at the vegetation that had overgrown an old fence. At one angle, even under the plant’s canopy, the bright colours stood out against all the dead, brown grass everywhere else. What attracted me was the variety of life out there that’s hidden, unnoticed until someone slows down to take a look.

Actually, when I noticed them, I was just about to put the camera away, while I headed back to the car. If I’d done that, I would have stopped looking and missed the shot. Note to self: you won’t get the shot if your camera is in your bag while you’re rushing off to the next great location 😉

If I continue working on the image, I’ll probably darken the background a bit, brighten up the berries and flowers, and increase their vibrancy a little. That might draw the eye to the colours more. But for now, I’m happy with it.

There are more shots from the day on Flicker.

Summer reading

I finished reading Vision and Voice by David duChemin today. The bottom line? Recommended.

He starts off defining the difference between how you saw/felt the image you took and what it says to the viewer when it's done for display. He does that well.

Once he gets that message across, he proceeds to show you what he means, and that's where the book really shines.

Using tools like focus, light, shadow, color and sharpness, he shows you how he crafts an image in Lightroom that leads the viewer to see what he saw and feel what he felt when he took the image. In the process, he describes, in a non-technical way, what all the sliders and buttons in the Lightroom develop module do. He focuses on the why, rather than the how, and I liked that for a change. There are lots of technical books that describe the how. They're useful; this is just a refreshing difference.

His examples are clear and to the point. He's not dogmatic about how to do it, he's just showing how he did it and why. Nice. He also has copies of the images he uses that you can download and follow along to see what's going on.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book. I was reading in Kindle on the couch with my iPad, but I frequently had to get up and run to Lightroom on my desktop computer to test the various ideas he was describing. I learned lots, and spent a couple of hours later in the afternoon, trying some ideas on my own images.

I've read duChemin's other books, VisionMongers and Within the Frame, and most of the ebooks he has available through his latest endeavour with Craft and Vision. I've not been disappointed, period.

My recommendation? Go get 'em.

Playing with the new toys.

So let’s see how blogging goes from the iPad with a bluetooth keyboard…

I finally got out today and took some personal time with my D3S. I’m pushing 1800 photos with it over the last 2 months, but very few are personal. Most are for events at work. It was nice to get out again.

Walking along the shoreline at Crescent Beach, I came across this carrot mixed in with the seaweed. Seemed like a strange place for a carrot, but perhaps not. About 30 yards away there was another one just like it. By then, I figured I had potential for a salad, of sorts 😉

Anyway, the carrots were probably just remnants from the beach folks the day before, washed up with the tide.

I’ll be interested to see how the photo comes across on typepad. I’m using Blogpress for now, just to see how much I can do. So far the keyboard is working out quite well. I’ve tried to scale the photo down a bit and aligned it left on the page. We’ll see.

More tk

Oops – was I supposed to check the ISO?

I decided to see how the eagles were doing out around Boundary Bay. Close to the airport there’s a turf company that seems to attract seagulls and eagles, so I grabbed my Sigma 120-400 and my D300 and went to see what I could find.

There wasn’t as many eagles as I’d hoped, but there were a few in the treetops and others flying around with the seagulls. I grabbed some shots as I walked around and tried some panning as well, hoping to catch a clear shot of the birds in flight.

The photos looked great on the camera screen. They always do. But when I got home, they had a funny look to them. Soft, almost blurry. Hmmm. What’s up?

I’d loaned my D300 to a colleague, while his was in for sensor cleaning. Could he have changed some settings? Was it the lens?

Delving deeper, I started going through the pictures some more. Noise. Serious noise present in every one. Back to the camera, and sure enough, I’d forgotten to check the ISO setting. I’d checked the shutter and aperture and did some testing for exposure, but you don’t need and ISO of 3200 on a sunny day. Sigh.

Anyway, what to do. I dove into Lightroom to try a few things, and while I was there, I remembered I had Nik’s Define 2.0 plugin. Ran a couple of pictures through that and it cleaned them up to an amazing extent. Added a bit of Nik’s Sharpener 2, popped them back into Lightroom, and I’ve got a few usable pics. Not great, but usable.

Lesson learned: Reset things to a common denominator right after a shoot (or after lending out your camera). That way you’ll get fewer unwanted surprises and most likely, better photos.

Photography

Pokin’ about City Hall

Managed to get out for a couple of hours on Saturday, so I poked around City Hall for some pictures. Quite a few daffodils and early flowers breaking out, and looking very colourful, given that most of the place was still tucked in for winter.

I did find this plant with its undecided leaves. Not sure if it is a usual thing, but the two tones seemed odd. I’m use to dark and lime green as leaves mature, but green and brown? Interesting. Must learn more.