Abandoned

The skies cleared up today, the sun came out and I thought I would take the camera and tripod out to see what I could see. Actually, since it was midday, not a great time for pics in the open sun, I headed into the forest because I saw this old, abandoned car that I thought would make a good picture. I used a preset in raw that provides an interesting effect and here it is with a few tweaks. I considered converting to black and white but the colors provide more drama in this case. Enjoy.

Rena Contemplating Flower

Here is my wife, Rena, looking at the little flower that I posted yesterday. She was thinking about it being alone and strong, not part of a group. I'm not sure what message she got out of it because she does like to be with groups. Sometimes though, we have to be strong enough to stand on our own. I think that then makes us even more valuable when we are part of a group.

Anyway, this may or may not be the picture for today. It's raining and we're going shopping. I have lots of 1600 ISO pictures from yesterday that are still good enough for posting until I can get back with my tripod to retake some of them. There are some fascinating pictures around here that I am looking forward to capturing and then developing them.

Rena's Flower

My wife and I are camping at the Living Forest RV park in Nanaimo, B.C. for a couple of weeks plus. As I have done a bit lately I plan on posting pictures during my holidays. I'll try to post one a day although I don't plan to keep it to a picture taken on that day only.

Today, we went for a walk along the Nanaimo River. I took a number of pictures, mainly to see if I could find anything that would cause me to haul my tripod out in the evening or early morning. I did find lots and plan on rewalking the trail with the tripod. Of course, I didn't sufficiently check my settings and shot everything at ISO 1600. No wonder my shutter speeds were so fast. D'oh! Anyway, this flower turned out not too bad. I've called it Rena's flower because she was impressed by it. There weren't very many of these along the way and they were always alone, not in clusters like daisies. She related to that because of her independent spirit and so this is the first picture posted on our holidays. If I get a chance I'll ask her to write a little addendum to this post explaining what she was thinking.

3 from Vernon

Here are three pictures I took around the area where my grandson was playing T-Ball. I took them on a sunny day at the end of April when I was in Vernon, B.C.

I found this shadow interesting and wondered how it would like in camera.
















This is just a picture of a wall. I liked the different textures.

















This final one is a portion of an old freezer that was sitting in a parking lot a half a block from the ball field. I was intrigued first by the very fact it was in a parking lot and secondly, by the patterns of the rust and the MagicMatic logo and symbol.

Watering Cans

Wow, it's been too long since I've blogged a picture. I've been busy adjusting to the new lifestyle of shiftwork and 4 on, 4 off, plus the new HD cable box has me watching way too much tv.

Anyway, this picture was a shot I took of a display inside the store at Davison Orchard in Vernon, B.C. It looked pretty good after initial development but I applied a lomo style cross-processing action and finally used a hue/saturation adjustment level to get the final look.

Enjoy.

Another Shot of Nathan

Here's a more "normal" looking picture of my grandson, Nathan. I used that Dave Hill technique on this one, too. I kind of like it.

Lot's more pics were taken during this short little game of T-ball but I need to take the time to work them just a bit.

1/200 sec, f4, ISO 400, 200mm.

Nathan and T-Ball

My wife and I are holidaying in Vernon again because that's where my son and his wife and the grandsons are. On the way through Kelowna on Wednesday, I stopped at Lens and Shutter and picked up the Canon 70-200L f/4 IS lens, the best (and most expensive) lens I've ever owned.

On Thursday I had a chance to try it out at my grandson's T-Ball game. I took a lot of shots and am in the process of developing them but I like this one where Nathan is hamming it up while standing on third base. Usually he can be quite shy and uncooperative when I'm trying to take his picture but this time he decided to act up for the camera. In this shot, I applied an effect that is getting quite popular (and common) that is based on some of the technique made famous by Dave Hill.

Details: f4, 1/160 sec, ISO 400, 70-200 lens at 200 mm.