Startrails at Topsail Beach

Photo of the week #4: This photo is my first attempt at shooting startrails. It was taken at Topsail Beach tonight and is an approximately 43-minute exposure. It was made by combining 80 30-second exposures to get the startrails with one 3-minute exposure to expose the foreground. The photo was fairly heavily processed to help compensate for the fact that 4 minutes of the exposure contained extra light from a car's headlights (the beach's parking lot faces the ocean). Also, the focus is unfortunately very soft in the foreground due to the fact that the camera shifted close to the end of the series of 80 short exposures, before I took the final 3-minute exposure.

Since this was my first attempt at startrails, I think it turned out ok. But, I've definitely learned some valuable lessons for my next attempt (not the least of which is to either dress warmer or to shoot startrails in the summer only!). I also had to rely very heavily on help from Geoff for this shot, including everything from borrowing his ultra-wide lens, to help with exposure times and tons of help with the post-processing (very much appriciated!). He was also a great sport about standing around outside in the cold for an hour, just so that I could take a photo :)

Also, in case anyone is interested, I used a program called Startrails (http://www.startrails.de/html/software.html) to merge the 80 30-second exposures. I would definitely recommend this program - very easy to use, fast and free!

Pinecone at Long Pond

Photo of the week #3: Another shot from Long Pond, this time of a pinecone. I took this shot using my new macro lens, which I've been using quite a bit since I bought it. It was unfortunately quite windy yesterday when I took the shot, which made focusing extra challenging:

This next shot was taken by adding a few extension tubes to my macro lens. The extension tubes are great because they let you focus on a very close subject. The downside is that they make you unable to focus as far away from the camera as you would normally be able to. For example, while I was taking this picture, a cute little bird perched on the tree just a couple of feet away from me. Since I had the extension tubes on my lens, I was completely unable to focus on the bird and totally missed that shot. Small consolation, but my originally planned shot did turn out well in the end:

Finally, here are a few extra that I just liked:

Night time at Bowring Park

Photo of the week #2: This is a 400 second exposure that I shot tonight at the Grotto in Bowring Park. The oddly colored sky comes from a combination of the nearby orange street lights mixed with what little color was left in the sky. The harsh shadows come from the bright spotlight that shines on the grotto in the night. I like how the shadows give the photo a 3D look, but I think it might be fun to go back sometime and try the shot again, this time with the spotlight covered.

I'm also including this shot, because I think it's neat. I took this one at the duck pond while Geoff was taking this photo. This is a 20 second exposure that I took hand-held. I was trying to create a light-painting effect using the park lamps and street lights that were off to the right of the bridge in Geoff's photo. I was moving the camera in circles while the shutter was open, which caused only the relatively bright lights to show up in the photo. The rest of the background was too underexposed to be captured by the camera. The bottom half of the photo shows reflections in the pond from the lights.

Olympic Torch Relay

Yesterday, the Olympic torch relay passed through MUN. I went with a few co-workers to see the runners and brought along my camera. We couldn't really see the flame being passed off and only saw the runner for a minute as she passed by:

They were giving out free coke at the event in neat cans that were shaped like bottles:

I also took a few shots of my co-workers:

Dogberries at Long Pond

Photo of the Week #1: A photo of dogberries that I shot yesterday while enjoying the sunshine. I took the photo at lunch time by Long Pond. The wind was very cold, but it sure was nice to see the blue sky!

New goals

Time to set a new goal! Now that summer is over, it's becoming increasingly difficult to stay motivated when it comes to taking photos (among other things!). In an effort to regain some momentum, Geoff has convinced me to commit to taking at least one photo per week for the next year. The hope is that a potw challenge will serve the same purpose for my photography that a gym buddy would for exercise. By committing publicly to a goal, I should be more inclined to take my camera out of it's bag, even when I'm feeling too lazy to do so. I've recommended the same for Geoff, but apparently having already completed this challenge a few years ago gives him the right to rest on his laurels for a little while (his potw challenge photos can be found here).

In addition to the motivational aspects, this project should also help me improve in a number of other ways. First, by taking more photos I should be able to improve my technical skills simply because of the extra practice. I will also be forced to try new techniques and to be more creative in my subject matter (ie, hopefully you won't have to see too many last-minute snapshots of my cat). Most importantly though, I'm hopeful that the need to post at least one photo per week will help me to become slightly less critical of my photography, since I won't have time to obsess as much over small details like I do now.

So, on that note, any good challenge needs a few rules. Mine will be: I'll post one photo per week to this blog for the next year with the label potw (though I'm hopeful that I'll generally post more than one photo during some weeks!). I'll consider a week to consist of Monday-Sunday and a photo posted on any of those days will count as part of that week. This means that I don't intend to regularly post on any particular day, but there should be at least one post per week. Finally, I'll be considering the challenge to have started yesterday. This means that I now owe you a photo, which I intend to deliver by the end of this week. Check back later!

Night time at the Basilica

A few shots from a night time outing to the Basilica tonight. It was my first experience with night time photography - definitely something I'd like to try again in the future!