I’ve had this picture for a long time. I originally didn’t care for it. In fact, I cared so little for it that I don’t even have the original image. I cropped it this way a few years ago.

Coming back to this shot today, I found that I actually like the movement, the shape of the bird, its foot out and ready to land, the head turned away as if it has been distracted at the last moment. It is, by no means, a sharp, beautifully focused picture of a bird straight out of a bird book, but I think I like it better this way.

It’s time I bid farewell to Upper Antelope Canyon. It was good while it lasted, but I think I’ve posted enough (unless, of course, I change my mind and post some more later). Moving on from Page and heading south back toward Phoenix, we take a little turn off Hwy 89 before Flagstaff to check out some pueblos in Wupatki National Monument.

Wupatki National Monument was established to protect ancient dwellings of puebloan people. Perhaps tomorrow I’ll actually post an example of one of these ancient dwellings, but before I do, I wanted to first share this portrait of a desert tree. Something about trees in the desert really work for me. I don’t know if it’s the isolation, the determination, the shape of the branches, or something else, but when I see one, I’m almost immediately lying in the dirt with my camera down low grabbing a shot against the desert sky.

I captured this image of Mt. Baker last summer as I was travelling to Vancouver on an early morning ferry from Salt Spring Island. This vantage point is still pretty far from shore and shot with a 400mm, hence Mt. Baker looks like its sitting right at the coast when it’s actually over 150km in the distance. I like how the sun had lit up the mountain top, but had not yet made it through the clouds.

This is a red-tailed black cockatoo shooting past me as I grabbed a few frames at 1/40s. And no, we don’t have any cockatoos here in Edmonton. This shot is a few years old when I was living in Australia. The slow(ish) shutter speed allowed me to capture the motion and the panning allowed me to capture some detail in the bird.

This is a photo that originally had quite vibrant colours, but I found it all a bit distracting. There was so much colour it actually detracted from the image (for me). By removing the colours, I stripped this down to nothing but the bird and its shadow.

The problem with this photo is I think I captured it a moment too late. If I had shot the bird when it was in front of me or coming up to me rather than having just passed me, I would have seen its face and an eye. The image still works for me, but I’d be very interested in seeing the same thing rewound back in time about five seconds.

On another note, I’m always keeping an eye out for new photo blogs that make me stop and look. Found a new blog today – new to me, not new to blogging. If you love artistic images with mood and feeling, you have to check out FATman Photos. There are some very interesting images with a unique eye. Take a look!

 

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In case you’re interested (as Jeff mentions below in the comments), this is the original image with no edits save for some dust removal.

 

Haven’t done a portrait in a little while so here’s a post-swim-lesson-crazy-hair portrait of Mischief the Kid. Or maybe I should call her Giggles. Perhaps Tiny. Her favourite activity is stealing her big sister’s stuff (toys, books, bookmarks, … anything really) and running off to hide it. You’d think no one ever paid her any attention.

Shot indoors with off-camera flash bounced off an umbrella reflector. Black and white conversion done with Silver Efex Pro.

 

This is an oldie, but one of my favourite portraits in my catalogue. Yes, I know I’m supposed to be posting new material, but I’m single-parenting at the moment and I have my hands full. That’s my excuse and I’m sticking to it!

This was a tricky shoot. This little fella was moving at a million miles per hour and was virtually oblivious to my presence. I caught the occasional glance (like the one above) as I crawled around on the floor after him, laid on the floor in front of him and generally just tried to keep up. While I did get this shot (thank goodness) I also got a lot of blurry-running child, out-of-focus-moving child, and mostly-out-of-the-frame-jumping child. Child portraiture is hard work!

135 days ago, I’d never penned a blog before. It started when I was looking for a project to help me push my skills as a photographer, to rediscover what I love about photography, to test my abilities and to try out new techniques and styles to find my own voice. It has been an interesting 135 days and I think I’ve learned a lot.

One thing I’ve learned is how supportive a blogging community can be. I’ve met the nicest folks amongst my fellow WordPress bloggers. I’ve seen some amazing and inspiring photography that has pushed me to work harder and to try new ideas. Plus, having other daily bloggers in the same boat sure helps keep the pressure on.

Early on I spent a lot of time looking at my stats, seeing how many people had visited each day, where they’d come from and which pages drew the most attention. I was thrilled when I had high numbers and a bit disappointed when the numbers were low. It was an over-simplified popularity metric and I was definitely obsessing a bit about my numbers and forgetting why I was writing this blog. So, the next thing I learned is to ignore the numbers. I don’t remember the last time I checked my site stats. It’s better this way. Counting site visits presumes that the goal of my blog was to be get lots of hits. That was never my goal. The quality of my photography is in no way measured by the number of hits my blog gets.

The flip side is that visitors represent community and the members of the community have a wide variety of views, opinions, and tastes that I really like tapping into. I’m so pleased when you drop by to read the blog and especially when you choose to share your thoughts on a photo. I like getting feedback and love it when someone offers specific ideas on what works and what doesn’t. Critique me. Tell me what you’d change if it was your photo.

Ultimately, this blog is about what I’m doing as a photographer and the photographic techniques and styles that I’m exploring to help me grow. So, in response to my own question, I blog for me. I share the details of how I make a photo to give back to my fellow photographers out there. I read other blogs for inspiration and I comment on others photos to be a member of my new blogging community.

Who do you blog for?

Feeling a bit rushed and a bit wordless today. I’ve seen many a photo blog feature Wordless Wednesdays. How about Text-free Thursday? Or at least Text-lite Thursday.

Honestly, I think I’m better with flours than I am with flowers. With the endless array of flower photos out there in the world, how’s a guy to separate himself from the pack? I see lots of nice pictures of flowers, but I very rarely find them inspiring. Most photographers shoot flowers at one time or another. With good reason. Flowers are remarkably complex, have surprising shapes and provide readily accessible subjects for camera jockeys like me. I’m never quite satisfied with my results though. I guess I better keep trying.

These folks on the other hand seem to have it nailed. These are just a few really nice examples of flower shots I’ve seen recently that have inspired me to raise the bar:

– Adrian’s Unknown Flower
– Sasi’s Weed?
– David’s Field of White
– Lynda’s Petal
– Emily’s Dandelion.

I guess now that Spring has firmly sprung up here in central Alberta I should be practicing my flower shooting skills. Despite the arrival of Spring, I captured this image indoors at the Muttart Conservatory in their feature pyramid (they have four themed pyramid greenhouses) which is currently running a celtic theme.

Processing notes: I processed this image a couple of days ago and didn’t take notes and don’t remember what I did. Poorly done if I’m including processing notes in all my blog entries! Looking at the photo though, I can see that I cropped it from the original composition. I believe I did the majority of the rest of the work in Silver Efex Pro where I converted it to B&W, selectively adjusted shadows and highlights in the background, brought out a bit of the texture in the flower,  split toned the image (blue/yellow) and then added the border.

This is one of the cell blocks in Fremantle Prison located south of Perth in Western Australia. As a convicted offender, you did not want to find yourself in Fremantle prison.  It was built in the 1850s by convicts and, in some ways, it didn’t get a lot of updating since then. It’s dark. The cells are very small – about 2m x 2m. The toilets in the cells were simple buckets. And that was when it was closed in 1991.

You can find a few more pictures of the prison on my Flickr photostream.

Processing notes: I just converted it to B&W in Silver Efex Pro tweaking the lighting in a few places. I then enhanced the texture in the floor, walls and ceiling to bring out a little more of the details. Lastly, I darkened the edges to draw attention into the photo.