I brought my DSLR to work along with my piece of #14 welder’s glass in the hopes that the sun would be visible at lunch. A small break in the clouds allowed me to capture a bunch of photos, including this one:

I believe the small dot in the bottom right quadrant is Mercury. Or dust on the sensor, but it’s appears in more than one photo taken on different parts of the sensor, so I think it’s Mercury because it matches the maps I’ve seen.

I hear that the weather in Ottawa is rather icky right now, so I thought I’d post a picture I took a couple of days ago to give everyone hope that there’s something other than snow in the world.

I was in Halifax in the summer of 2004 when the tall ships were in town. One foggy day, I spotted the Europa in the harbour in Halifax under sail and fortunately I had my camera with me, so I was able to capture the following photograph:

While looking through all of my photos to put together a presentation for new members night at the Camera Club of Ottawa last month, I came across this photo, which I hadn’t seen in a few years. I actually thought that it might have been lost for good, so when I found it was very happy.

I entered it in the CCO’s February slide competition in the Open category, and I’m happy to report that it took home an Honourable Mention.

As I’ve mentioned in other posts, I joined the Camera Club of Ottawa in September and I’m really enjoying myself. The club meets every Tuesday and there’s usually a guest speaker, or workshop, or some sort of competition.

I’ve put a few images in the competitions since joining. I had my first honourable mention in November for one of my fireworks photos, which was a nice little ego boost. But the gold standard, an Award of Excellence, has so far eluded me.

Until tonight.

(more…)

I set my GoPro to take a photo every 10 seconds last night. The resulting time lapse is pretty cool:

I love taking pictures at night because the low light lets you take long exposures and get some rich colours and other effects that you simply can’t get during the day, so I headed out Saturday evening to see what I could find downtown.

People standing around the Centennial Flame on Parliament Hill:

Cars and buses on Wellington:

As I mentioned in another post, I recently joined the Camera Club of Ottawa. This has caused me to reflect on my photographic history.

Though I’ve been taking for photos for almost as long as I can remember, starting with a 126 film camera when I was really young. When I was a bit older, I moved on to a twin-lens reflex 120 camera and learned black and white darkroom techniques from my grandfather. I finally got a Nikon N2000 (a 35mm camera) in high school, where I shot a gazillion rolls of black and white film with the camera club and yearbook and printed more black and white photos than I can count. I continued this in university where I joined the camera club, which gave me access to their darkroom facilities.

Once digital cameras hit the market, I bought a Kodak point-and-shoot type of digital camera, but I still shot film, just not as much. At some point, I upgraded to a Canon SD850IS point-and-shoot that had much higher resolution and more features.

Eventually, I bought a Canon digital Rebel DSLR and my days of shooting film were at an end. I’ve shot tens of thousands of photos since going digital. The freedom to shoot and not have to worry about running out of film or the cost of developing and printing is truly liberating. Granted, when I was shooting black and white film, I tended not to be terribly concerned about it because I was mostly shooting bulk film and did my own processing, but it’s still nice to be able to spend 10 or 15 frames (or more!) trying to get everything just perfect.

Currently, I primarily shoot with a Canon 70D, but I have some other specialized cameras, including a GoPro Hero 3 Black and a DJI Phantom 2 Vision+. While all of my cameras can record video, I don’t tend to shoot video with my 70D, mostly because you can hear the autofocus of my Sigma 18-200 chattering on the audio. I still use my Canon SD850IS from time to time and I also shoot a lot of photos with my iPhone 6. It’s amazing what you can do with the camera in your phone.

Lately, a lot of people have been asking me “so, what type of photography do you shoot?”. That’s the topic for another blog entry, I think.