Every year, I feel that I grow as a photographer. Be it from acquiring new equipment, from learning a new photographic technique, from shooting a new subject, or from learning new post-production editing features, I like to think my photography is getting better.
It's when I review the photos that I shot over the year that my growth as an amateur shows. I can look at a photograph that I took months ago, having forgotten all about it, and say, "Wow."
Sometimes, it's hard to whittle down a year's worth of photograph to a mere dozen or so images. For example, when my family and I travelled to France, in August, I took photos every day. It was really hard to pick a single favourite from that trip, and because I didn't want to repeat a lot of the photos I've already shown, I did my best to keep it to four. Or five.
(If you want to see more of the photos from my France vacation, check them out in my Flickr album.)
I spent a lot more time outdoors this year and a lot less time in the studio, though I'm still interested in learning about studio lighting and in photographing models. As a warning, some of the photos in this post may not be safe for viewing at work or around minors.
I played with long exposures and wide angles: a lot of times, my head was tilted skyward. I stood outdoors in the cold, in the pouring rain, and in the dark. But the results always made it totally worth it.
So, after months of scrutinizing over the thousands of photos I shot in 2014, here are the ones that I feel are my best efforts.
I also enjoyed converting my photos to black and white. In the past, I would post a photo without colour to mask the exposure errors or because the photo was otherwise dull. But I often made the decision to produce the photo in black and white before I even captured the subject. This shot of a stream in winter, taken behind the Mill in Wakefield, screamed black and white to me: dark water and trees, and snow. Shot at night, the exposure was just shy of 30 seconds. The result made it one of my faves of the year.
I held three photo walks in 2014: one for each season, less summer, over which I was too busy planning for my family vacation. This year will go down for the lowest attendance records for these walks. I had two photographers join me in winter, one in the spring, and none in the fall (my wife joined me but took no photos). I don't know if it was the early hours at which I held two of the photo walks or the fact that I scheduled one walk over the Thanksgiving long weekend; nevertheless, there were still those who took advantage of the light or of the quiet streets.
The photo above was shot during the winter photo walk, at Mer Bleu Bog, shortly after sunrise. I loved how the sun was diffused by the light cloud cover that almost seemed like fog. The dying tree gave the impression of loneliness, or isolation. It was a bit of a sad shot, and that's why I love it.
A lot of my photos this year were shot either early in the morning or late at night. This photo (above) was also shot just after sunrise, along the Rideau River, when the late thaw was causing flooding around the region. With the river meeting the roadway along which I was driving, there was a sense of calm in this spot.
Sometimes, I went crazy with colour. During the annual Tulip Festival, it's hard not to capture a cornucopia of vibrant colours, but for the above shot, I wanted to exaggerate the vibrancy. This photo was shot at sunrise, near Dow's Lake, during my spring photo walk.
About 10 minutes away from my home is a beautiful mill that is naturally photogenic. I have shot Watson's Mill, in Manotick, in the fog, in autumn, and at night. This image, shot over 30 seconds, shows the motion of the Rideau through the dam. I could have sworn I saw a ghostly woman looking out one of the windows.
Like I said, not all of my photos were shot outdoors. I did attend a couple of studio-photography shoots, though I found that I am becoming more picky with my shoots. I want to keep them simple, without any pre-conceived themes. I want to focus on getting the light right for the subject without having to worry about props.
One of the models that I met on one of my shoots, Fredau, was a treat to work with because she knew how to work with the light, needed little instruction, and had a great attitude and sense of humour. I've worked with her in a couple of shoots, including an outdoor shoot in the pouring rain (the shoot ended when my camera got soaked and finally stopped working) in Gatineau Park.
The following photo is a simple nude and is not safe for displaying at work. You've been duly advised.
Fredau, as you can see, has stunning blue eyes, and while I did enhance them in this shoot (along with the red nail polish) they were all I could look at when I composed my shots.
I do tend to shoot photos with few or no people, but I do shoot people. I was going to start a daily photo project, whereby I photographed total strangers, but I have shyness issues and find it extremely intimidating to approach someone I don't know and ask for permission to take a picture.
Fortunately, I attended a portrait workshop in November, which showed the best approach to asking a stranger for a photograph. The workshop ended with a challenge, over the next year, to shoot 100 strangers. I have accepted that challenge and will start showing my photos over 2015.
If I am going to take a photo of someone, I tend to do it from a distance, just as I had with the next photo.
Of course, I wasn't going to ask Hawksley Workman to stand still and hold a pose while I photographed him. Instead, I listened to his wonderful music, uninterrupted, and shot from a safe distance.
No one can accuse me of not loving my city. I take photos all over Ottawa for my Where In Ottawa challenge and I have shot some of our unmistakable landmarks countless times. And I never get tired of doing so.
I especially love shooting photos around Parliament Hill, in the Byward Market, and the National Gallery.
The photo above was taken after the great hall of the National Gallery underwent renovations and repairs, but before all of the drapes where hung from the glass roof. Illuminated at night, the skeletal frame screamed for a long black-and-white exposure.
After the drapes returned, so did I: this time, with a super-wide-angle lens. Again, the shot called for black and white: in post processing, I also gave the shot a grainy texture.
As I said, my vacation to France lent itself to great photographs. There was the Arch de Triomphe...
... and the colusseum in Arles (which, with its colourless stones, called for black and white).
And though the rocky outcrops of les Alpilles was stunning...
... nothing made me gasp like the sunset in Paris, as seen from the Louvre.
What I love the most about this photo is that it was unplanned. It came down to me being in the right place at the right time. There is no exaggeration in the post processing. While I did have to balance the light and increase some of the colour, I believe that I have accurately captured what the sky looked like in this photo.
If you don't believe me, you can ask my youngest daughter and my friend, who were with me when I took this shot.
It was a magical hour to be there.
I purchased a super-wide-angle lens about halfway through the year. In France, this 10-20 mm lens was on my camera more than any other lens. It came in handy when I shot indoors but also was great at capturing landscapes. One of my favourite photos that I shot with this lens was taken inside the domed hall in Les Invalides. While I was able to capture both the dome and Napoleon's tomb in the frame, doing so created a less-than-appealing distortion. But I didn't mind the distortion when I pointed the lens upward, capturing just the dome.
While the sunset shot at the Louve was, without doubt, the best sunset that I captured in 2014, I did capture one sunset shot that I also like. And it's not so much the light from the sun that makes this photo, but it's the subject, the reflections, that do. For me, at least.
This sunset shot was actually taken just before my family and I left for France, and until the sunset at the Louvre, it was my favourite sunset shot of 2014.
When the long-overdue Strandherd Bridge was completed, in July, it brought the southern Ottawa communities on both sides of the Rideau River together. And when the bridge opened, I had to use it.
And shoot it.
This 10-second exposure shows the motion of the traffic in both directions. If you look carefully, you can see the shadow of me and my camera on its tripod. Ian Black, of CBC News Ottawa, showed this photo during his weather report.
I'm looking forward to 2015 and the photo opportunities that await me.
Thanks for following me, for your encouragement and inspiration. All the best to you for the new year.
I got my first camera for Christmas, in 1975. I was 11, and point-and-shoot pocket cameras were the rage. It was a Kodak Trimline Instamatic 18: a 110-format camera with clip-in, desposable flash—eight shots and it was done.
My camera came with stickers, which fit into a textured recess on the top, just above the viewfinder. I chose a stylized Canadian flag—a red maple leaf on a white background and a touch of red at one edge.
It was my first foray into photography.
With my Instamatic, I shot family events, like birthdays and holidays. I shot friends at school. In grade 6, I took my camera with me, when I participated in a bilingual exchange in Québec City. I shot up Chateau Frontenac, the Citadel, and Montmorency Falls.
The photos weren't great: the colours were muted, the images weren't sharp, and you could never enlarge a shot to anything bigger than a 4 x 6, lest the grain show. But it was easy to use: insert the cartridge, crank, shoot, crank, shoot... when you were done you opened the back and took the cartrige out. It was foolproof.
But my family had a collection of Time-Life books on photography, and I wanted to take pictures that looked like the ones on those pages. My father had a real camera, a Minolta SR T-101, and I wanted to learn how to use it.
I loved that camera. It had a 55mm f/1.2 lens that produced super-clear images. The split-circle in the viewfinder made for quick focusing. All you had to do was line up the image in the top-half of the circle with the bottom half, and you had a sharp image. For the exposure meter, you had a bar that would move up and down with the amount of light that passed through the lens. An arm with a loop at its end moved up and down when you turned the aperture ring or the shutter-speed dial. When the light bar was inside the loop, the exposure was balanced.
There were no program modes on this camera. It was completely manual.
My father let me borrow it from time to time, when I was in high school. My best friend, Stuart, was also into photography, as was his dad, and we would shoot black-and-white film, and develop it in a makeshift dark room in his family's basement. In the last few years of high school, Stu and I joined the yearbook team as photographers, and we would use the school dark room as well. Many of our senior yearbook photos were shot by us or by another photog, Sandy.
My father's SR T-101 got a lot more use in those years than it had in all the years that he had owned it (he still owns it but I doubt it's seen action in decades).
When I went to college and took the journalism program, my father thought it was time for me to have an SLR of my own, and so we went shopping at our local Black's Cameras. The manager knew me, because I worked in the same shopping mall, and he sold me a great package: it was a Minolta X-700 with a 28-75mm zoom lens. I could still attach my father's lens to it, but this camera was far more advanced than his old body.
My X-700 still had the same focus screen, was still a manual-focus camera, but it also had an aperture-priority setting and a fully automatic exposure mode. Instead of the arm-loop exposure meter, this metering used lights. I didn't find the lights faster than the metering system on the SR T-101, but there were lots more features than the fully manual camera I had used to learn the basics of photography.
My X-700 travelled many places with me. It has been to the United States, Mexico, the UK, Holland, Germany, Italy, South and North Korea, China, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and Malaysia. It has shot weddings, countless birthdays and parties; it has shot the Berlin Wall and the Great Wall of China.
I used that camera from 1985 to 2008, and pulled it out a couple of times since (it was on my lap as I wrote this post). I loved that camera. I still do.
For Christmas in 2008, I joined the D-SLR club with my D80. Minolta was gone, having lost out on the digital photography market and being swallowed up by Sony. With Canon and Nikon as the top D-SLR manufacturers, it took me many months of reading reviews, comparing specs, and price hunting before I finally went with Nikon. I came so close to going with Canon.
And now, as we finish 2014, I am finding that digital photography, while it has many advantages over 35mm photography, there is one major setback. In the digital age, nothing lasts forever. My camera has had its motherboard replaced, its card reader replaced, and now its sensor seems to be wearing. Night shots produce lots of digital noise. In 2015, I will be looking at replacing my camera, upgrading to a better model.
Or perhaps I'll return to the simpler days, to my X-700, or even further back, looking to borrow my father's SR T-101.
The days of the Kodak Instamatic are long gone, thank goodness, but 35mm lives on.
For now.
Thanks to Scott Oakley for giving me the idea for this blog post.
In February of this year, Midge Ure performed one of Ultravox's classic songs, "Vienna," on Ireland's RTÉ Late Late Show. It was just him and an acoustic guitar, and it was powerful.
On Tuesday, March 3, Midge will be performing at the Black Sheep Inn, in Wakefield, and I expect this acoustic show to be no less impressive. I plan to be sitting up front and centre, and I want all of you to join me. Buy yourself a ticket and help me celebrate my 50th birthday in the best way I can imagine.
Here is Midge, performing "Vienna" on The Late Late Show.
If you want to join me, here are more details about my birthday celebration.
Happy Monday!
I've never cared for Secret Santas in the office, or anywhere, for that matter. I don't feel the need to pick a random name from a hat and then try to figure out something about him or her (you just know you're going to pick the name of someone you don't know well), and then spend money and time choosing a gift that will not enrich the life of that individual. That won't give them anything that they truly want.
I used to participate in Secret Santa at work, feeling compelled by peer pressure. These days, I have become immune to peer pressure: I only participate in any office social activities if I truly want to.
And I usually don't.
I'm not a Grinch, nor am I a Scrooge, but especially, I'm not a Secret Santa.
Two days ago, on Christmas Eve, as with every year, I did the bulk of my Christmas shopping at the last minute. I usually have an idea of what I need to buy—Lori does most of the shopping for the kids and extended family members, while I get something for Lori, a few little things for the kids, and some stocking stuffers.
I also like to shop in the stores on Christmas Eve because I have worked retail and I know that there can be lots of stressed shoppers. There are lots of folks out there who treat store employees like crap, and so I like to go in and be extra-nice to those workers, to try and make them feel appreciated.
I jokingly refer to the Carlingwood Mall as the geriatric shopping centre, as there is an abundance of grey-haired folks with walkers and canes, moving slowly through the corridors and spending extra time in the shops, looking to strike up conversations with the employees. For a short time, I worked in the CIBC at Carlingwood, and I spent more time just chatting with the seniors who paid a visit than actually conducting business.
It's fine. Most of them are friendly, kind, courteous. The only time I didn't like encountering seniors when I was in Carlingwood Mall was when my kids were infants, and we would navigate the hallways and department-store aisles with a stroller. We would constantly be held up, as the elderly would faun over our wee ones, would reach out to touch a smooth cheek.
"Please don't touch my baby," I would say before any contact could be made.
But I like Carlingwood Mall. It has lots of good shops and is in a convenient part of town. And so, on Christmas Eve, as I was making my final purchases before heading home, I found myself in one of these stores, waiting in line behind a silver-haired lady, who used a wheeled walker for support, trying to purchase a few items for her grandsons.
She moved slowly, her shoulders slumped from a busy day of shopping, or perhaps from a lifetime of hard work. She seemed to be in no rush to finish her purchases, was content to chat with the salesperson at the cash register. The cashier, in turn, was friendly but purposeful: there were others waiting to tally their items, to move on to more shopping or to head home.
When the elderly lady's items were summed up, she opened her oversized purse, retrieved her wallet, and selected a credit card.
When the credit card was declined, the woman asked in a meager voice if the salesperson could try it again, and again, the card was declined.
"I don't understand," the woman said, "I've been using it all day." Indeed, an assortment of parcels and bags rested on her walker. She reached into her wallet and selected another credit card. "Try this," she said, handing it to the cashier.
The second credit card was declined.
Silence.
The woman dropped her head, her eyes showing the calculations she was trying to make. Those shoulders, that already sagged, seemed to slump further. Her face denoted sadness, as though she might cry, as she came to terms with the possibility that her grandsons would not be receiving the gifts she had found for them.
The salesperson, meanwhile, looked at me with an apologetic smile, unsure about how to deal with the woman who could not pay but had not determined her next step.
I'm neither a Grinch nor a Scrooge, and though I wanted to make my purchase and leave the mall, I didn't want to see this frail lady leave empty handed. I looked the salesperson in the eyes and mouthed, "It's okay, let her go. I'll pay for her."
"Really?" the salesperson whispered back, her eyes wide.
I nodded. Smiled.
"Oh, it looks like we're good," the salesperson said to the woman after making a show of checking the register again. "I guess our machine slowed down." She placed the goods in a bag and handed it over, the cancelled transaction slips in the bag. The senior loaded up her walker and began wheeling it towards the mall.
It was only about thirty dollars. I wasn't going to miss it. The lady might discover what happened when she got home, if she bothered to look at the voided receipts. Or she might not ever know.
If she had other shopping to do and tried to use those credit cards, she would discover that they couldn't be used. But at least she could bring her grandsons some joy.
Only the salesperson and I would know what truly happened. On this Christmas Eve, for the first time ever, I could claim to be a true Secret Santa, anonymous and giving something truly desired. And that was good enough for me.
