Favourite Shot, February 2013: dltphoto

Not every shot I take is a visual masterpiece. Sometimes images aren't necessarily about an award winning composition or the rule of thirds etc.... Quite often they are a memory, hopefully a fond one. This months favourite image was one I can't forget as it was a birthday present for my wife from her sister. She giggled at it for quite sometime. A happy moment.

Chasm (pronounced Kaz-em): dltphoto

Enjoyed seeing one of my images posted to the newly added "tourismbc" feed on instagr.am. It doesn't win me anything or make me more famous. It's just nice! (warm and fuzzy).

APAC Photoclub Submissions: November 2012: dltphoto

Last month saw the massive APAC Seminar here in Abbotsford. I enjoyed it, it's great to see all the reps and all our customers, at least a good hand-full of them all in one place. Also this year I had one of my images showcased and printed by Lens & Shutter. So proud! hahahahah

"motion blur" which was supposed to be titled "when two atoms collide"

First up for the evening was the assigned category "wheels". A previous shot which readers may have seen in a previous post from Barkerville. maybe.. I don't recall if I posted this shot... anyways. Its pretty obvious. It's a Wheel. Purely the title is the only thing that can save this shot! "It's got some wheel flare"... Wheel. Get it? Real Flare?...ha hahah. no. sorry. I wasn't expecting any great numbers and got punished suitably.

Assigned Topic  "Wheels",  "It's got some wheel flare" score 22 ( from 30)

Next up, A Phone shot. ooooooooh. Curses!

Abstract, "New Horizons". score 6

 It was a shot that I thought was kind of interesting. I did apply a cross-processing action to it to give it this interesting cyan/ greenish look. It was featured more recently in my "favourite shot" for September, which I showed the original capture along with the cross-processed version.
Architectural, Abstract and kinda Artsy. Perhaps the type of shot a designer may use in a Loft space to create form and interest within the minimal space.... Something like this!!!

Image ripped off from google images... thanks whomever you are.

"Abstract:  images extracted from a larger reality or subject. An abstract image is, usually, independent of pictorial references and reduced to form, colour ,tones, texture and line." ( APAC Guidelines for Category)

Since I got such a low score for this image I quizzed the Judge at the end as to why it didn't do well. Apparently it didn't fit his description of Abstract. Really. So I asked him what he thought the photo might be of and after 4-5 attempts of guessing it wrong, he then suggested that this image is an Abstraction, not an Abstract. Oh Dear and Really?? An ABSTRACTION not an ABSTRACT. This should be the point where I storm out and knock over some chairs in disgust.
This fills all the criteria that I can see.

Images extracted from a larger reality, CHECK ( its a big building)
Independent of pictorial references, CHECK ( no story line here)
Form, Colour, Tones, Texture and Line, CHECK, CHECK, CHECK, CHECK and CHECK MATE!

Someone suggested I submit it again, since another Judge might lap it up. Personally, I want to show new images. I dislike seeing the same image re-posted.


My third image for the evening is definitely one my readers have all seen before. I was testing the theory that things in three's always do well, according to CAPA rules and other fellow club members. For the sake of attempting to score well, which apparently didn't work, I did remove some items from this image in order for them not to be distracting for the judge. It would appear to be necessary if you don't want to get caught out, point wise, with irritating things they don't like in the image. It can make all the difference to some Judge's, but apparently not this ummmm Judge.

 This happens to be a "real camera" shot from my Nikon D200 with the "Highlander" lens.

Architecture, "get to the point", score 7

"Architecture: images depicting  buildings, structures, interiors and  surroundings, whole or in part, that
emphasize design or functionality." (APAC Guidelines for Category)


It would appear that the Projection system for the club has been fairly bad recently so I may have to start printing to get the right image judged. Although, It probably wouldn't matter and at the end of the Day it makes no difference to me. I still enjoy all three images. That guy wants to look at nasty overdone HDR's and overly PS'd images... that's his choice, have at it.

September 2012: Favourite Shot: dltphoto

This months shot was a simple Instagr.am shot. I just enjoy the composition and the lousy app'd finish of it. I am including the original phone capture so you can see how sometimes what you see isn't really what you end up with.

Instagram'd Version

Original, No Edit

Alouette Lake, BC: dltphoto

When planning your annual thanksgiving weekend holiday at Alouette Lake, please make sure your pack some shorts. These words have never been spoken by NO ONE EVER! Beautiful Summer like weather in October. I'll take that!

 All images in this post post with the Mega, but oh so slow Sigma DP1s. Really it has brilliant detail. Its a shame!

APAC Photoclub Submissions, September 2012: dltphoto

Well, Its photoclub season again. This means submitting new images to be critiqued and butchered by "experienced" judges in the photo judging industry!.. Hahahahah, not really! well maybe somewhat.

So the Judge for this first month was Francois.. no, Francoise... umm I forget, lets call him Frank for short. Frank was very specific about how he wants to see images. He wants them "RAZOR SHARP", and I quote "images need to be Razor Sharp".
Fortunately  my images were "RAZOR SHARP", sadly one was of a sunset type scene. Frank suggested if your going to submit Sunset Scenes, it had better be spectacular because he's seen them all. Wonderful! this exhibition night should be interesting.

Sunset on Lake, score 8

First up was my shot in the Landscape category, As you see I scored an 8, which is really not a bad score in the photoclub world. I guess the only way to have scored a 9 or 10 would have meant that my image needed to be "spectacular". Its not your stereo typical sunset, its bold and vibrant. Actually it shows very little of the sunset since its just a reflection/ ambient shot. 

So, feeling pretty good about myself so far. Next up a Film Marco shot I did which I featured in a previous post "Pink Wheat". Having enter film images before and watching them being judged up against digital images and imaging wizardry, I have decided to enter them through the digital process without people knowing its film. The Judges are now so used to manipulated images that they aren't able to assess film images the way they should.

Needless to say my second entry into the "macro" category scored me a repeated 7. I didnt expect to score so well anyways. Its a random shot with shallow depth of field that really makes the image kind of messy, since the wheat was blowing in the wind, it was a case of rapid shooting to get one good one. Perhaps if I attempted some better selective cropping it could work better. I am really not a "special effects" type person, I enjoy good "razor sharp" images that I can capture in the camera and tweak mildly in programs like Lightroom. I am soooo not a heavy filter on top of filter type of guy. I am going to keep sticking to my plan and the photography I enjoy. Good "razor sharp" images as close to out of camera as possible and hopefully they will look "spectacular". Is that OK Frank?

 We did have an assigned topic for this month, "though a window", but alas I didnt have anything I thought really worthy that might score well. No need to put in something I personally wouldn't have scored well. This was a pic I considered but it wasn't crying out to me.

Random Road Signs, Instagr.am :dltphoto

http://instagr.am/p/OSMkkrq32D/

Camping 2012, "Nostalgic Version, Part 3":dltphoto

The Final installment...
Leaving Barkerville but rather than doing a wicked 10 hour journey in one stint we decided to have one last night at Green Lake, fortunately our 'normal' camping spot was still available!

Tourist Centre, 100 mile house

Camping 2012, "Nostalgic Version, Part 1": dltphoto

So since I have been so amazingly nostalgic since getting the two cameras from the UK, which were my dads, I thought it be fitting that for this holiday I would use the Cameras that my dad would have used for his holiday time. Now, as mentioned before, the film processing and film technology is far superior than back in his time, so the results I am getting maybe far greater than he ever got. Not to mention that I have surpassed my father in the art of photography. For him it was a hobby, the guy who was always relied on to take pics, not that he was a wealthy man who could afford many cameras, in fact quite the opposite. The Turners were a very stereo typical working class family were dessert at dinnertime was a massive luxury. I still see the little house my dad lived in back in Taunton with Uncle Norman and Granddad Sidney and Grandma Daisy, sadly I can only remember growing up seeing Uncle Norman, I have no recollection of my Turner Grandparents.... anyways.. i got off track!
So, I am using his camera's to record our holiday! Again, I am likely to be a little less frugal with the amount of shots during the vacation than he might of been, being that film and other costs would of have been maybe out of his reach.
The two camera's I used are the  Pal M4 and the Voitlander BL. I grabbed some of the oldest film I had in my fridge in the hope that I might add a bit more character to the shots with some fogging and discolouration, but alas that didn't seem to effect anything, also I used a little black and white also...None of the images are edited anyways on the computer, just scanned and saved low enough rez for the blog.

Barkerville BC, Artistic View: dltphoto

As you saw on the previous post a few of my "Promotional" style shots, well here are just some of my more artistic renderings...

Thought I would throw a B&W in here...

Barkerville, BC: dltphoto

Somewhere way up in the middle of nowhere on the road that takes your hours to get there is this wonderful little town called Barkerville, Established 150 years in a time when Gold was in them there hills....
This is an excellent place where people have restored an old Gold Rush town and have made it into a wonderful destination for  people, willing to do the drive, to mooch around and look at some of the old buildings that made up this Western style town.To make it even more enjoyable they have capped it off with people in full dress for the time period wandering around pretending to be characters from that period, really quite the photographers paradise!
Since I hadn't really read to much up on it, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. I certainly didn't imagine it being as large as it was. The buildings were wonderfully rustic, not like the good old brick I am used to from good ole England. The Only thing I missed or would have liked was the occasional tumble weed to go rolling down the main street!! that would have made it priceless

Here are some of my favs to give you some character feel to the place

Pal M4, Part Two : dltphoto

So since I had so much drama on the first roll and that I fixed it or at least hoped I had fixed it, I thought it fitting to give it another roll. Having seen the results when I got the film back it reminded me of how wonderful film really is, this is a process which has been around for such a long time and to this day is still amazing. It really can stack up against digital. Don't get me wrong, digital is soooo convenient and cost effective and easy to delete and and and... but film has never lost its appeal.
This little Pal M4 is very, very capable, in the right hands of course. I am quite enjoying it! As I mentioned before I have a little wide angle lens with it, here's to show you how little extra the wide angle offers. I have yet to determine exactly "how wide" it is, no literature on it that I can find at this time. I guess its around 35mm wide equivalent from the cameras native 45mm.

Firstly.. you need to FOCUS it... duh!!!

With the wide angle lens on

Without the extra lens (45mm)

 So the scene is fairly different you see more of the cars and more of the poles in the background. Since I am also using the Wide Angle viewer on top of the camera I am sure my alignment is off a tad, I didn't use a tripod like I probably should for this experiment, but really who reads this and does it really matter???? heheheheh

Pal M4: dltphoto

Another treasure that I have recently inherited from the UK is the Pal M4, back in its day it was the worlds smallest full-size 35mm camera. As compared to the the Voitlander it is a little smaller, but with this treasure I have another component.

So as stories go, this one started off well. Having been in my Dads camera box for eons, it has since been given to me. Figuring its not just a shelf piece and everything seemed to fire I decided to put a roll through it to see if it really was all still operational. So we went on a little visit to Seattle and around Abbotsford and I shot the roll though. I sent it off during the vacation with great anticipation to check the roll, when pickup time came the roll was not there... Eeeeek! I waited impatiently for another week but alas all seemed doomed. So I decided to give it one more roll and the camera trigger decide to give up. After some encouragement and a "technical tap" in several directions it freed up and decided to work again. Then by some stroke of fortune I found the missing roll...Joy of all joys...So now I have a working camera and the first roll through it in maybe 20 years.... or maybe more!!

enough now, here are the results.

Yellow, Yellow and yellow

APAC: Photoclub Submissions, June 2012:dltphoto

This months submissions caught me a little off balance, since I was enjoying some well earned vacation time with my family and I quickly grabbed three images in the folder of potential images for submission!

First up was the assigned topic, "my Community Landmark".

Since Abbotsford is fairly spread out I thought I would try a landmark which is always a landmark. Every now and again, these little crosses show up in a farmers field for everyone to see. It relates to someone's opinion regarding abortions etc of which I have no opinion, that's not what this post is about!

Anyways, this is a shot right out of Insta.gram (phone App)!!!! even still had the border on it. It scored a 22 which was right in the ball park, at least I chose an image for MY community and not some other community far far away, after all the challenge was "My Community Landmark"

Crossing the Field, (Score 22)

 Next up was an image from my "stigma" from Green Lake last summer. It was one of the few Sunsets I got during that holiday which worked out, the detail was really nice with the "pink wheat" in the foreground. Minimal editing done really, just converted it from the weird Sigma Raw.. This scored a surprising 8, of which being the top score of a Level 1 Rookie, meant I had to speak about it. Nothing to say really.

Sunset at Green Lake, (score 8)

 The final submission which a Fog shot from December I think, this one also happened to be from my Phone, didnt really mean to add another phone shot this time, I just grabbed the image that I saw first. Once again it scored a very pleasing  8 and I gave a quick talk about it, although I didn't mention that it was from my phone... duh!

Powering the Fog, (score 8)

Voitlander Vito BL: dltphoto

So my photography enthusiasm came from somewhere, we all have a story. I originally assumed I walked into it  due to interests in Art etc... at school/college and that my eldest brother bought me my first REAL camera, but alas I have become the person from whom  helped create me. We all have someone important at sometime we lose from our lives, some are lucky enough to have a full life time with them. Others, like my family, aren't quite so fortunate to grow old with and share our successes. I am extremely grateful for all my years with my father. He was my rock, my mentor and apparently my muse.
Today, I am lucky enough to have some of his belongings, things which some people inherit and really have no use for then discard, since they are valueless and useless to them. For me these items are the building block for how my biggest interest began, his cameras!
Since I really share these glory pieces with my brothers they realise the only person whom can really use them is me. An honour which I gladly accept.
Initially I was assuming they would wonder into the camera vault section of my mothers museum back in the UK, but instead they were not scheduled pieces for that. Hoorah for me.
Thanks to a recent visit from eldest brother I now have two of  Dads, more well-used 35mm cameras. Classics!

First up for testing to check that they still work is the Voitlander Vito BL. Originally marketed sometime around the mid 1950's. This particular model did have the benefit of a metering system for more accurate exposure, alas this is no longer functioning but that is a minor issue, since I have other more modern cameras with light meters I can use for reference.
Having had so many years experience with film cameras in different light situations I feel I am fairly confident with judging exposure close enough for the forgivingness ( if that's really a word) of film. Basically un-like an SLR or DSLR, you have to focus by distance only, you can look through the viewfinder but the focus wont change, you have to rely on your sense of distance.... (eeek. no auto focus. hahahah)
Enough with the boring chit chat, how about some images!!!!

Favourite Photo Backlog, March, April and May 2012:dltphoto

Ack... its been a busy few months, honest!
Here are March, April and May's, "my Favourite Photo".

March, 2012

 I just love the busyness of this shot, the snow coming down in March... MARCH, with the tree bloom wanting to sneak though. Nikon D200 w/70-200 2.8vr

April, 2012

 This was from a typical April, sunny and warm for brief periods! Nikon D200 w/70-200 2.8vr

May, 2012

This was from a little photo escapade I went on with Mr Koopmans. We got a decent half days shooting done in and around the Maple Ridge area before it began to rain. This was a little wooden box that caught my eye. I loved the textures! Nikon D200 w/ 60mm 2.8 macro

I'll try not to forget the next  "my favourite shot" of the month post.

Holiday Time= Shooting Time:dltphoto

Cotton, not Snow

Colours

 

Othello Tunnels, BC

Seattle, Downtown

Grey and Blue

Ground view to the Market

Othello Tunnels and Museum Of Anthropology