Derby time

Ahh yes the good ol fathers day fishing derby, so much fun we never miss one. This year we left Spencer at home with mom, he can be a bit of a handful with all the other kids fishing. The fishing was actually terrible though lol almost all the kids got nothing I think 5 fish got caught in 3 hours, it was just not a good dock fishing day. But realistically none of them cared George was stoked just to get the biggest piece of kelp lol. I was happy to see George flex his fishing skills he is getting so good at casting and jigging he was teaching other kids this year I did not even have to help him at all. A good time was had by all cant wait for filomi days for the next one. We also had a huge photo session with the lady who shoots for the newspaper so hopefully we make it in there this week keep an eye out!

Totem pole

 Here is the worlds biggest totem pole in all its glory. I am lazy today so I am going to copy and paste some info for you guys here.

The totem pole was built from two sections, one 163 feet tall and the other 10 feet. While most totem poles represent a single family, this one is meant to represent different factions of the Kwakwaka’wakw people. The figures include the Sun Man, a whale, an old man, a wolf, the Thunderbird and its cousin, the Kulusł, a two-headed serpent, a bear holding a salmon, and a raven holding copper. Despite the raw numbers that the Alert Bay totem pole holds the title with, hardcore totem pole enthusiasts have called foul on the carved wood spire due to the fact that it was built from two pieces rather than one. According to such record pedants, the true heir to the title of world’s tallest totem pole is a 140 foot pole located in Kalama, Washington, which is one solid length of wood. However because it was not carved by an indigenous artisan some do not count it as a proper totem pole either.This categorization is so contentious that the world’s former tallest totem pole, a 185 foot giant that stood in Victoria British Colombia (which was also built in sections) was actually taken down after a great deal of protest. However, even when a vicious wind knocked off the Alert Bay totem pole’s top section it was still the tallest in the world. 

Pretty damn cool if you ask me it is just amazing, anyways this was a 3 frame photo with the 35mm prime I then flipped them on their side and blended into a panorama then flipped it up rite.......this pictures actual size is god damn massive, as for editing I did turn up the colors slightly as the pole is pretty faded and I wanted to show the little paint that is still left on it. Hope you enjoy this I am trying to update more frequently but kids and work are taking my time lately lol

sprouts anyone?

Here is an older macro shot I did a while back. Nothing to special it is just some weird sprouts growing on some moss on a log......pretty exciting stuff, it is amazing what you will stop to capture when you start doing photography as a hobby little things you would just walk by become scenes of interest all of a sudden. I do not know how it came out with such depth of field at F5.6 though, kinda baffles me it has that much blur but I am ok with that. Hopefully I get out and get some new shots soon been super busy at work and with the two kids it has been hard to find time but that wont stop me lol new updates are slowly coming.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Well it has been a month since an update......I have been busy! lol. So here is my big boy (demonstrating his silly face in the second pic lol) But enough of that it is Spencers second birthday today! Time fly's so fast after you have kids it is insane, especially the second one. It seems like yesterday we were sitting in the hospital room waiting for you to arrive. This child has taken a toll on me over two short years for sure, he is strong willed, loud, destructive, courageous, and just a little crazy he is definitely my child alright, and such a handful but to be truthful I would not have had it any other way he is perfect. With the stress of a child so active and determined life can be hard at times but what we learn from the hard times can often lead us to achieve new things, give us a reason to strive harder and humble us in our later years, the love my children have gave me is unlike anything else on earth and I just want to tell everyone how proud I am to have kids like mine. Happy birthday big boy!

On Watch

Well It has been awhile for the ol' blog, I have been super busy lately and now me and the children are sick as a dog but none the less here is an update for ya. You may recognize the buoy from my selective color shot on it earlier this year. The eagles love to frequent this log and watch for fish and small animals in the long grass to eat. Yet again another shot with the crap tamron......zoom in on the head the chromatic aberrations are stupidly bad, plus I had to shoot with a high iso making the grain really show but oh well its still pretty nice. Cant really go wrong with any picture of these majestic birds.

Carnival

The good ol carnival, one of Port Hardys premier events for kids it is either going to be super fun or super scary for most......we managed to scare George pretty good this year lol. he has never been on this drop ride before so I grabbed the camera for a sure shot, and as suspected he was terrified lol This is one of the best and worst places to photograph children you can get such a broad range of faces and emotions but at the same time everything moves in and out of focus so fast it is hard to capture with the equipment I have but none the less it is awesome and I get a few good ones every year.

Pacific Treefrog

Here is a little pacific tree frog, they are among the most common frog species we get around these parts. I have no idea where I took this shot, hell I cant even remember taking it I just stumbled apon it and said damn I was close in to this guy that day better share it lol. Frogs are awesome for macro shots as they actually will sit still for the most part and let you do it, this guy let me get to minimum focus distance zoomed in at 55mm for a nice macro. His colors are not really that special but they have such contrast they are amazing at blending in almost anywhere. Hope you enjoy it I got lots more frog pictures to come in the future I love these little guys haha.

Winter sunsets

Winter sunsets are a thing of the past for this year already, they can be the best setting to shoot in such a wide range of colors in the cold sky's it is amazing. This is just a simple silhouette of a slash with the sun dropping down behind it. Nothing overly fancy here just mother nature doing her thing. I really enjoy the blend of color in this one from dark oranges to bright yellows and blues to purples it has almost got it all. Well I guess its time to stay up later for the spring and summer sunsets now :(

molting time

This is a neat one behold the molting goose, the picture was shot way to slow and is blurry but you can still see whats going on here. So every year Canadian geese molt, which is the process of loosing torn and damaged wing feathers and growing new ones, geese will group together and find some water to hide in for a month or so while they do this usually around June to July. It is also neat when they swim with their wings in the lakes, they will see a boat or whatever coming and instead of flying away the paddle furiously and man they can move (I have pics of this for a later date). I am sure this is a stressful time for these birds as they cant cover ground to get more food or to safety. Anyways thought it looked neat I am going to try and get better pictures of them molting this year later on.

Easter

Its Easter time again and the bunny dropped lots of eggs this year for the boys, this was little Spencers first year actually picking them up. I had a hell of a time trying  to keep Spencer off the beach and focused on getting eggs lol, I also had a hell of a time capturing a decent picture of the boys in midst of all the chaos down there. I should have opted for a more automatic setting on the old cam like an aperture priority or something, the light went from rain to snow to dark to super sunny in like 5 minutes so the captures I did get were all over the place. No big deal got some memories outta the deal and had a ton of fun, the town puts on a good show every year for the kids its a hoot.

Snake Eyes

Here is the common garter snake, to my knowledge this is the only kind of snake I have ever seen up here this side of the island. They are nasty little buggers......no they do not bite they just stink, when they are startled they activate musk glands that extrude a little white paste that is so stinky its nasty. I seen this guy just before I ran him over so I hopped out lied down and shot him with the cam before he slithered off into the grass off the road. I had my 18-55 kit lens on and this is about as close as one can focus, I cropped it slightly after that to zoom in more and that is about it. Wish we had some more snakes around here they are beautiful creatures i would love to do more shots of them one day.

First kiss

Here is a real gem of a picture, The first time we had a kid we did not take enough pictures so second time around I over did it lol, but that led to some amazing shots like this one. This was about 5 minutes after George met his little brother for the first time and gave him a big kiss. Memories like these get me all soft and fuzzy inside witch is why I must stress to anyone reading this take pictures of your kids they wont stay small forever!!! I really do not have to much to say about the photo nothing fancy or special here just love and affection is all, family is so important nowadays it seems like we all forget that so please capture your children and loved ones these memories can last forever if you take care.......................and if anyone was wondering I have been having computer problems again so its been awhile but she is back up and running now so watch out for some fresh updates coming your way!

The Golden Hour

MMMMM you put the crab in the bucket? yes you do! One early April morning I went for a little drive and came across this gem of a setting, a perfect sunrise on a super low tide what a good day to be crabbing and let me assure you the man in the picture was filling his bucket with ease this day. what a good way to spend the morning outside instead of sitting around the house. The exposure is a tad out of focus but I shot at F7.1 so you can barley tell anyways, pretty happy with it considering I was using my shit tamron lens again, almost no editing in this one it was seriously that bright out that day, it was damn near impossible to measure the light for my camera. Almost that time again things are warming up here on the north island, time to rinse out the ol crab buckets!

First shoe on the tree!

Here is some crazy ones for you guys, these are my sons first runners on the shoe tree. What a better way to immortalize the first shoes then the ol' tree, I have put many shoes on there since i was a kid and I plan to  keep doing it lol. As for the pictures themselves it was a single exposure that i then created copy's of with different exposure values then overlapped to make a crazy over-edited HDR ounce again because I love them lol, then I cut out the shoe and de-saturated the second one for a cool selective color look. I edited these fast as hell just to get something on here, its been a few days so they have a couple really rough unpolished spots if you look up close but still came out pretty neat.

Portal to Asgard?

As I was watching the new Thor movie last night watching them teleport back to asgard they fly in some crazy light tunnel through time and space and it looks like a crazy rainbow beam of light, it reminded me of this weird picture I got years ago. This was taken at the quatse river fish ladder I really did not know what I was doing, I was just playing around with settings and ended up with this super over exposed gem, somehow these crazy light rays and weird bokeh blurs showed up. It really is not a good exposure at all the movie just made it come into my mind so here you go lol. This is a 2 second exposure at F22 on a tripod, I am surprised the light rays showed up at all, at 2 seconds long I would have thought it would just be blur but I guess not. Really wish I could take another properly exposed frame and overlap the light rays on it that would be a cool picture maby next time.

Bent outta shape?

Well here is something you do not see everyday, this deer must of had some fight or it just never grew back in rite, or maby it never fell off who knows. But what I do know is he hung around for awhile I spotted him a few times but only had my camera this ounce. The pictures are weird as hell I shot them with my tamron zoom and it has the craziest depth of field blur ever, that combined with grass equals CRAP! but oh well the subject is neat so I am going to share them with you anyways. Have you or someone you know ever ran into one of these bad boys?

BIG 5 TODAY!

Here is george my first born, today he turns five years old wow time flies. I could not have asked for a better son, he is so polite and kind its amazing he fills my hearst with pride and joy like nothing else could I would not change him at all even if I had a choice he is perfect. The picture was a quick shot of him making his birthday cupcakes last night and one from the day he was born, precious moments indead 99% of the reason I love photography is getting to keep these memories with me forever alot of people take it for granted but not this guy im loading up 1000s and 1000s of pictures. Anyways the first picture I edited in about 2 minutes and it shows lmao look at the dark spot on his head where I covered up some color real fast hahaha, oh well its all about him for me nothing else matters. I have to go do birthday stuff now big day for my big boy!

Ma Dawg

This is my dog Duke he's just shy of a year old now and what a great dog he is. The little bugger is pure bread beagle a real hound for sure he cant keep his nose out of anything, besides that he is great with the kids and for the most part a well mannered puppy. Taking photos of him is another story I swear he hates my camera, he never lets me take pictures of him lol. Not too much to say about the shots.....the bottom pic I was trying to get his eyes only so I shot at f 2.4 putting a lot of his face out of focus no big deal. There will be more pics of this little devil to come in the future he's just too damn cute not too.

Something new to me

We will start with the subject here, this is my beautiful wife and son at his first real time at the carnival. Such amazement the young ones get from all the lights and sounds, he was pointing at everything that day so cute. The picture on the bottom I shot and edited way back in 2015 I love the exposure but liked it best in black and white and the top picture is a double exposure effect with the same picture and a mountain range picture from atop merry widow mountain. This is my first attempt ever at a double exposure using Photoshop and wow it is way harder then you think I could not believe how many steps are involved and how difficult to make the effect look cool is. Google double exposure and you will see how cool they can be. With that said I will be practicing these and I will figure it out and I am sure I will come up with some good ones one day. I really dont like the double exposure picture at all it is not what I thought it would look like but I am going to share it to show you what progress looks like practice makes perfect lol.

Uh oh!

That moment a fisherman looses his bobber or hook to a branch is a hurtful gut wrenching feeling, you want that old hook or lure back but do you want it enough to swim for it lol. This bobber fortunately is not mine haha but it presented itself to me one day so I took the opportunity to shoot it. Not to much to say about the photo its kind of boring definitely could have been framed better the subject is neat but composition is not great at all. I have been really busy lately and just had to upload something so this was a rush job hope you guys like it!

Joes Lake

Way back in 2013 me and the wife went for our morning drive and stumbled upon this amazing light setting over Joes lake. It was about 8:30 in the morning in august with a slow foggy sunrise and it made for amazing hazy light, kind of neat looking in color but really like these in black and white more. Both photos were shot at f8 so its all in focus this time, I did not own a tripod at this time and my camera does not handle high iso very well so to achieve speed I am forced to shoot a lot in large apertures often creating way to shallow depth of field (you may have noticed this on earlier photos of mine if you know what I am talking about lol). These photos still came out a bit grainy and blurry because of the harsh fog, I did not do to much editing to fix this at all on these I kind of like them the way they are so here you go.

Feather Frost

The magical feather frost I did not know much about this stuff despite seeing it my whole life. I looked up some info and I guess it is kind of a rare form of frost (we get tons of it!) which needs very specific conditions to form, this frost is tiny strands of water freezing inside a waterlogged piece of wood and being extruded through the grain making fine hair like frost. The pictures were so hard to take it was way to dark forcing me to use a large f stop to achieve brightness thus destroying my depth of field in this macro.......next time bringing the tripod for this. Frost is unusually hard to deal with in Photoshop as well, its so white its hard not to drown out details while editing but that is why I love photography it is a constant learning experience it never ends every exposure is a different challenge.

Family Day Sunset

Well as the title suggests it was family day and after playing and having fun with the fam jam all day we decided to top it off with a late hot dog roast at Rupert Arm. Realistically I missed the good shots as the sun set, I waited to long and all my glory shots faded away so I hopped on the cam at the last moment and tried my best lol. The end results are ok I am not in love with them at all. It is surprising what a small campfire puts out for smoke, I was battling it in photo-shop it really kills long exposures like these but thankfully photo-shop worked for me to save the day. I hope you enjoy these pics from one of my favorite spots of all time.

Bird On The Wire

Ok I lied its a bird on a rope lol this is a barn swallow, they like to live in little tight spots commonly in barns and sheds with open roof framework.They are super swift and agile as heck they just bomb around so fast. A beautiful bird really but is known as more of a pest. This little bugger sat nice and still for me while he was chowing on something in his beak (zoom in on the bottom picture to see). The pictures turned out pretty nice considering they are shot manual focus at 230mm by hand with no image stabilization what so ever with my shitty slow Tamron zoom, I have talked about how bad this lens is before but we wont get into that fully, just zoom in on any picture and see the harsh chromatic aberration going up the birds back so no cropping what so ever on any pic with this lens or it would show too much, like I edited these and you can still see it grrrr. I got some nice exposures of them in flight as well but that will be for another day cant share it all at the same time gotta keep something for later lol.

Hunny I Love You

Well folks its valentines day around here and I am feeling the love. This is my wife Laurie who I love with all my heart, she is the kindest funniest and most beautiful wife and mother to my children I could ever ask for. Sometimes we laugh sometimes we cry but I always enjoy my time spent with her she brightens my day no matter what. This woman helped me get to where I am at today and has been my inspiration for everything I do, I do not know where I would be today without her. There will be no real story behind the pictures besides I never took the first one it was done by a friend with a knack for photography as well. I did not have time to scour through thousands of images this morning so I picked the first two I liked sorry hunny there are some better ones but I do not care I could stare at the blurriest worst framed pic I got and still catch feels for ya. I hope you see this today, I love you with all my heart babe.

Dog Love

A boys joy when he meets his first dog.......I  swear he thought it was real for awhile lol. This was My first born Georges first Christmas at grandma and grandpas house. He fell in love with the big dog as soon as he layed eyes on him, the love was undeniable. As far as the picture goes just some basic photography nothing too fancy, I did not own an external flash yet so the skin tone got a little buggered up from the on board flash that you cant adjust, it just blows straight out at your subject where as I would prefer to bounce the light off a wall or roof to conserve colors. It is all about the smile anyways hope you enjoy his smiles as much as I do.

Moments before death

The last moment of an animals life is a precious moment....wounder what he was thinking before he got smashed into the side of my leg. Maby he was wondering why my eye (camera lens) was so big and why is it blinking at me hmmmmm wow I should sit here and watch.....theeeeen splat! Ya that was it no more bites for me lol. anyways enough of my sadistic love story this pic was taken wide open f 3.5, 18mm, iso 100 this lens is not a macro so to get this close in focus was surprising and impressive to me I only cropped this photo a little bit to get in even more. I am absolutely in love with macro photography and will be buying an independent macro lens one day then watch out close ups of everything will be flying out of here lol

Late For School

Well as per request here is my hdr rendition of the merry widow crew bus that is in the bush on the way up there. I will try to put the pin on the location map exactly where this is found if you want to try and find it, it is not far off the road and easy to find. Back to the picture, it is 6 frames overlapped and edited to the nines. I mean really really edited this was another one of my first hdr photos and I was just playing around with heavy editing for fun, normally I would not edit this much because it makes a picture look fake and with this one the weird aberrations and color fringes show the extent of the editing badly. The picture is still fun to look at though, I have deleted the original pictures so I can not do a re-edit of this until I go photograph it again. Next time it will be even better now that i understand the technique and camera much more then when I did this exposure. So keep watching for more I will be re doing this pic one day I love the subject.

Black Velvet

Well what do we have here now.......that is right its mushroom time folks. Another one of photography's favorite subjects, I do not know why but there is something awfully captivating about shooting mushrooms. It seems like every photographer does it and it is satisfying......cant tell you why lol, hmm maby its the details, colors and uniqueness about them that makes them so fun to photograph who knows. This big black ugly shroom was located in alert bay during a hike on the nature trail leaving the campsite. This island is loaded with mushrooms it is unreal, lots I recognize and lots I do not, this one I do not rite now never cared to look it up it was so jet black and velvety there is no way I want to eat it anyways lol. Free hand macro shots can be tricky and this one obviously involved me lying in the wet mud to capture...(photographers do stupid shit like that) It was also shot at F 7.1 to capture all the detail in the subject as I was about 3 feet away (my minimum focus range with this lens) I shot it at 50 mm or a 75mm equivalent then I cropped it to get in real close. I love the shot and I hope you all enjoy it as much as I did.

Albino Goose

 The mythical albino Canadian goose........pretty damn sure its albino I googled them and they look identical. Anyways this was another exposure shot with my extremely shitty tamron 70-300 mm lens so quality is not on point at all but still an awesome bird to look at. I swear I took some better photos but cant find them (still in sorting progress lol). This bird was hanging around all spring in port hardy I seen it in town a few times so i  began hunting it, then on April,7/2017 my chance arose so I loaded up my shit and I shot it!.......with my camera.

Boy Oh Buoy

Oh Buoy ! well here is another lost buoy found along Rupert inlet.......pretty boring eh. Well i thought so too so I tried some selective color with this one. Selective color can really put emphasis on a particular subject like this buoy, It can make things pop rite out of the picture and make ordinary boring things seem interesting. This technique can also be used to display a strong message or convey importance to a particular subject (watch Schindler list I am not explaining this one lol). My camera makes this all to easy with built in modes for this but it can also be achieved with basic editing software too. This is another older exposure of mine, I am sorting through 10,000+ pics at the moment that are a huge mess so the old ones are coming out of the woodwork lately lol.  It is really fun to try to make something so boring into something interesting, there are even apps for your phone to do this try it out photography can be very rewarding when your happy with something you shot!

Old Coal Harbour dock

The old coal harbour dock during a perfect sunrise, This pic was taken 2 days after Christmas in 2013 and is one of the first HDR edits I made that I really like......in fact it is still one of my favorites. This spot can bring back some fond memories of when I was younger and I am sure a few of you viewing this feel the same way about it. As far as the exposure both pictures are 6 overlapped exposures at half steps of exposure value (1 normal,2 lighter and 2 darker in half steps). Both exposures were shot at 18mm wide and at F 3.5 knowing what I do now I would of increased the F stop to focus the whole exposure better but I am happy with it regardless. HDR (high dynamic range) photography is really fun you can do extreme ranges of contrast, color, and detail that are not achievable from a single exposure, this can sometimes make it super unrealistic looking and over photo-shopped but I love them and so should you. People see these and immediately think WOW all Photoshop.....well im telling you rite now try it out for yourself  photoshop is an art on its own not a magic wand this is not a silly cell phone color filter this took serious work and most people do not understand this aspect of photography its not just the picture taken or the equipment, so many hours go into the editing on 99% of every picture you see. So never judge a book from its cover you need to understand how it is written first.

Simply Fire

FIRE. . . . . the holy grail of photography, it is one of the easiest things to photograph in so many different ways its mindblowing. This small fire was in the beach hut at grant bay and we were under fire from rain, hail, wind and brief spots of sun. Not to much to say about it just enjoy it.