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.