Dear Reader (2020-07-21),
Introduction
There are two walks in today’s post. Except for two images (and you can guess which ones), all of today’s image are type 1 images. These are images that are of a documentary / diary / point of reference nature. I see theses images as steps or exercises towards x.
Monday July 06 – Fullerton Loop < 7 km – Counter Clockwise
As much as I have been enjoying my stupid o’clock mountain hikes,
sometimes the thought of a long drive to a trail head is exhausting. Today I broke with my customary behaviour and
went for something a little closer and started late afternoon.
Initially, the path is a veritable forest highway used by hikers, cyclists, and equestrians. Eventually the path becomes a narrower but still wide trail. Based on who I encounter, the trail is well used by runners. Initially, I see very little, and the views (2nd half) though pleasant are not enticing. Instead I experiment with different worlds.
Monday July 13 – Edworthy Falls via Elbow Lake < 10 km – Out and Back – with Liz +, Michelle
Thursday and Friday were busy days (report to come). There is still plenty of room in the parking lot when Liz , Michelle, and I meet around 8:30. The wide path is surprisingly steep, though not as steep as the one for Ptarmigan Cirque. In less than 1.5 k we arrive at Elbow Lake and begin the easy walk around the lake and onto the falls. It is a wide trail through an open valley that is pleasant on the eye. Today, I’m more like a sponge – soaking things in but focusing on very little.
Technically, I choose more automated settings than my normal manual mode – I’m an unhappy egg. Furthermore, I inadvertently continue to perpetuate my mistake of yesterday into part of today with camera set to capture jpg instead of raw. This results in images without my regular set of adjustment possibilities – more egg unhappiness. I think I need a big sticker on my camera which says “Check your settings dummy”.
The company is enjoyable.
Cheers, Sean
All rights for all material on any media reserved – © Sean P Drysdale 2020
Good backgrounds for your flower photos. It tends to be quite challenging to remove distracting background colours and objects in the image. You might explore the use of a speed light with closeup flower images, especially adding more depth of field. The speed light allows closeup at f22, another pictorial interpretation.
At last. Some time to actually look and think about something that is not a SQL statement or an xl spreadsheet.
You knew I’d like the wild flowers, not that I know what any of them are, other than the lily. At least I think the orange one is a lily. Speaking as someone who has photographed a flower or two in my day, you’ve done several things really well. One is just the right amount of background blur. Within the constraints of distances and lighting and the lens, there is a certain possible amount. Usually, but not always, the maximum is the best but it depends on composition requirements. That’s why I like the third one, purple flowers exploding out of the photography, with a background somewhat blurry, but still able to tell what it is. In fact, without knowing what lens, I’m guessing you worked carefully to get the background as in focus as possible. Getting the hairy bits in focus really brings the flower to life. The last one, I’m puzzled by, a bit. It doesn’t quite work for me, but I’m not sure why. The first thing I wanted to do was recrop it, then I started looking at the yellow flowers and tried to think about where they were in terms of thirds, or golden rectangle. Then my eye wandered around in the big green space for a while, looking for patterns.
Hope you didn’t lose too many photos with the inadvertent settings.
Keith, thank you for visiting and commenting on the flower images, especially as you are a flower master. I’m glad you enjoyed them. In the last image of the Fullerton Loop, I was consciously playing with convention and trying to place items in non-standard places. The fact that you wondered around the image suggests I was at least partially successful. I think the image might have been more successful if I had tried the same idea with a slightly larger flower. fyi I really only use 3 lenses the Sigma 10-20, Nikon 35mm, and my favourite lens the Nikon 105 macro. Cheers
PS the images I lost were banal.