London Postcards

I had a business trip to London with a week-end layover. With that kind of time in a location like that, you would think that I would have a ton of postcards to present. Not so. This time around I didn't take as many photographs as I usually do, although perhaps I can claim a case of quality over quantity? The opening photograph is a variation on the London Underground theme of a red circle and blue rectangle. I created it using a roll of red tape, a blue pen, and a piece of white paper.


The Lancaster Gate tube station was close to my hotel and was my main entry point to the Tube. The platform is accessible only by elevator or by a 128 step stairway. Not surprisingly, I noticed that not many people take these steps. Since there would be little interruption, I decided to explore the stairway with my camera. The first thing I noticed was the curve of the stairway: it reminded me a bit of a fan.




About half-way down, I came across this ‘peek-a-boo’ mirror and wondered why it was placed in this particular location. The intent seems obvious. I could see this couple around the curve coming up the stairs, but it is a circular stairway. If the idea is to allow people to see around the corner, shouldn't there be one continuous mirror all the way down?




I had time on this trip to look up a couple of old friends. I met up with Barb and we went out for supper at a Polish restaurant. Any cold-climate country's cuisine is high in comfort food. The Polish seem to have a thing for pancakes, so I had potato pancakes for the main course and super sweet apple pancakes for dessert. Awesome. Barb let me take this photo of her as we strolled along the Embankment afterwards. There were some funky blue and white Christmas lights hanging on some trees and I thought they would make a nice backdrop.




I also met up with Karen and David. They took me on a walking tour of their neighborhood in the East End. In all of my visits to London, I hadn’t spent any time in the East End, so it was a wonderful chance to explore. We came across this wall of graffiti on an old rail station house.




On my way to meet up with Karen, I explored St. John’s Church, which is near the exit from the Bethnal Green Tube stop. Designed by Sir John Soane and consecrated in October 1828, it has nice clean lines and there is a nice shot of the balcony in the slide show, but this open doorway inside the church really caught my eye.




Karen took me to Pellicci’s for lunch. The staff were wonderful and the food was great. I highly recommend this place to anyone going to London who wants an inexpensive, traditional style café that serves really good food.



While I just missed the Curry Festival at Brick Lane, the market runs all the time. I think you can find anything at this market. There was everything from regular market stall-type vendors to people sitting on the sidewalk selling out of their backpacks. The protocol seemed to be to put your wares out on the sidewalk, sit behind them, smile, and engage people as they go by.




So what were these guys selling?



Karen worked in the music industry for many years and as we walked around she pointed out places where various rock bands had their photos taken for their album covers. I decided to make a ‘cover’ for Karen and David, should they make their own music someday.



I didn’t take many shots while I was in London, but a slide show of the ones I did take is here.
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Postcards from the Arizona Desert

Trish and I spent some time in the Arizona desert. It was quite beautiful, in a stark way. Except for trailers, campers, and motorhomes, the roads were pretty empty from Flagstaff up to Page. The countryside varied quite a bit, although most of the rocks were sandstone red, which contrasted quite nicely with the blue sky.


When I think of 'desert' I think of 'adobe' houses. Our hotel in Page was adobe style and at sunrise the nice blue sky contrasted with the pale wall.




The desert wasn't full-on sand, but the grass wasn't as lush as the Canadian Prairies. However there was enough on the Navajo Nation rangeland for these horses to munch on.




Another big difference with our prairies are the 'monuments' that crop up in various places. They certainly make for an interesting focus point in a photograph. This one is huge. To give you some idea of scale, those are houses out in front and cars on the road off to the left.



We made it up to Monument Valley is with its famous "Mittens" monuments.




Of course 'desert' means 'little-to-no-water'. Little-to-no-water in turn means hardscrabble hillsides with almost no trees.



Our ultimate destination was Antelope Canyon, one of the most famous slot canyons in the world. We started at the Lower Antelope Canyon. Imagine a broad, flat desert with a huge crack in the desert floor. That's the entrance to the canyon.



To get in, you squeeze through the crack and descend inward and downward to the canyon proper. There you find a bit more room, but not much.



In some cases, it is a very tight squeeze, as you can see in Trish's photo of me taking some shots.



The canyon is formed and reformed by flood waters and the sand that flows with the water. The sand and water combination act like a gigantic piece of sandpaper, carving the walls into wonderful shapes with lovely textures. While the result of this erosion is interesting enough, but what makes the canyon so magical is the play of light on those walls. The light is not just any light, but a light that varies in colour and location second by second. You can stay in the same location and have a variety of different shots in just a few minutes. This is possible because the opening at the top is quite small and the canyon is mostly shaded from the sun. As the sun rises during the day, the light enters the canyon from a constantly changing angle which illuminates different sections of the walls as you watch. The downside it that managing the white balance is incredibly difficult, so I just set it for daylight and fired away.




Trish was shooting with her Canon G7 and made some lovely captures of the colours, such as this one:




I also loved the various hues of reds, and I did make a number of photographs that tried to capture them as best I could, but I was really after abstract black and white images. The shape, textures, and tones really had me pumped, although it can be hard to visualize tones when you are staring at such intense colours. Here are a couple of shots to explain what I mean. This shot is colour and is very plain-Jane:



If you ignore the red hue and visualize what it would look like with the tones only, you might get a capture like the one below, with its much more appealing contrasting planes of rock.



Along the same lines is this shot.




While it is very nice with its flame red hues, it doesn't communicate the hardness of the rock that this monotone does.



There were two other elements to work with as well. The first is the shafts of light streaming down into the canyon and the second is the hordes of people wandering through. If you want to get a 'people free' shot, you need lots of patience and a good guide to help with crowd control. In this case, I decided to use a time lapse shot to not only capture the light beaming down but the people walking past.




Even though I was after wild and freaky shots, my favourite shot is this simple one of sand pouring from a ledge.




A slide show of Trish's photographs is here. As an added bonus, she even has a shot of our new puppy Bobb taken before the trip.

A slide show of my photographs is here.









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Sophia Evrovski's First Postcards

My first follow-up to the Baby Bellies session is Sophia Evrovski's first Postcards. She's still a tiny little thing, but already has the making of a great model: she doesn't get cranky like her mother does when I take her picture!

Taking pictures of wee ones is a bit of a challenge as they squirm and move even when they are sleeping. Getting Dad to hold her seemed like the best idea, plus you can see the contrast in sizes.



Here is a short slide show of some of Sophia's Postcards.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

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Dusty Postcards

I just had to do a major sensor clean today and thought I would post some comments for those searching for information later.

Of course you don't HAVE to clean your sensor OR do it yourself. You can send it back to the manufacturer or drop it off to a repair shop. I did this when I bought my first D-SLR. I waited 2 months to get it back from Nikon and swore I would never do it again. Likewise, you can remove the "bad" spots from your pictures in post-processing using a clone tool, and I do this myself when I haven''t been able to clean in between shoot. Eventually you will have to clean your sensor.


Cleaning usually involves using a dry brush and a wet swab. How often you have to clean will depend upon the camera you have, how often you change lenses, and what environments you shoot in.

Disclaimer: I don't have great habits when it comes to keeping my sensor clean. I change lenses often and I often leave lenses off the body for a while. Sometimes I will remember to flip the body over so that the body opening is facing down in my bag and dust is less likely to get inside.

You will see sensor dust appear as black spots on your images. They are much more noticeable when you shoot at f22 than when you shoot at f2.8 (I won't bother to talk about the physics of why that is). You can check for dust by shooting a blank piece of white paper. Don't shoot in focus, as this will pick up any imperfections in the paper. So defocus, set your f-stop to 22 (or the highest value possible) and don't worry about shutter speed - all you are looking for is an out-of-focus white background to contrast the dust bunnies on your sensor.

You can usually see the dust form the display on your camera, but it is better to pull the image into your favourite piece of software and zoom in as you pan around the image.

Here is a shot from my cleaning session today:



Unfortunately, this is after several cleaning passes already and you can see there is still LOTS of dust on the sensor (black spots circled in yellow).

After a few more passes it cleaned up much better, although if you look close enough, you will still see some dust spots.



You will notice I didn't bother to properly adjust the colour balance. In fact, this is a mixed light shot (light from a window and a desk lamp) I'm not looking for a great shot here, just something to highlight the sensor dust.

Many cameras allow you to load a dust reference shot. When you do this, the camera's built in software will attempt to remove the dust spots itself. This can save you effort in post-processing, although I'm always reluctant to leave this sort of judgement based task to automated routines. If you want to try it, check your manual for instructions on how to do this.

Depending upon your habits, you may have to clean more often or less often. When I shot with a Nikon D70s (no built in sensor cleaner), I usually cleaned my sensor once a month with a dry brush and once every three months with a wet swab. Sometimes more often if I shot in a dirty environment like a sandy beach. Now that I am shooting with a Nikon D700 (built in sensor cleaner set to clean on start-up and shut-down), I clean less often. Now I usually clean it every 6 months with a dry brush and once a year with a wet swab.

After a lot of research, I settled on Visible Dust gear. In particular Arctic Butterfly for my dry brush and Vswabs for my wet swabs. The pages linked above have really useful videos that will show you how to use these products. Note: The wet swab is a USE ONCE deal. Do not try to use it a second time (i.e., no second pass.) Make one pass and toss. If you need a second pass, break out a second swab.

Again, how often you clean depends on your habits and where you shoot. I just came back from shooting in Antelope Canyon where I was under tight timelines and the environment was extremely dusty. This meant I was changing lenses often and was pretty careless about how long my camera body was open to the dust. I certainly paid a price for this. My sensor was so dirty that I made 3 passes of the dry brush and three passes with a wet swab. That's 6 cleaning attempts following only one shoot. Click here to read more!

Postcards Post Hurricane Bill

We had a hurricane blow through here last week end. Bill reached Category 4 status at one point, but dropped down to a Category 1 by the time he hit Nova Scotia. Fortunately the eye never made landfall, so the winds were only "tropical storm" strength. A short slide show is after the jump.

The sun was out very quickly as the eye passed, as there was no rain on the back side. While the eye didn't make land fall, it did pass nearby while the tides were high, so there was a good storm surge. The winds stayed high as well, which made for some great shots down near the Peggy's Cove Light.


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
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Postcards from Dubai

My usual business trip photographic victim, Angie, is on maternity leave, so on a recent trip to Dubai, had to make do with Ian. This is the lobby of Pacific Controls, our host for the trip. Their headquarters is a bespoke building that is the first Platinum Green building in the UAE, and only the 16th such building in the world. It’s hard to imagine how these glass walls can holdback the raw heat of the desert, but they did the trick.




That evening, we presented our product to some interested parties in nearby Abu Dhabi. Ian and I have our set-up down pat, so I had lots of time to take more shots. I imposed myself on the staff of Arasca, the company who organized the meeting. Both Pacific Controls and Arasca were consummate hosts, including patronizing my photography habit.




I was able to take advantage of a gap in my travel schedule to spend a day touring Dubai. My driver and guide was Talib Hussein. After 18 years with the Dubai police in the Traffic Patrol Section, he knows the city well. Talib Hussein thought that the man-made island(s) of Palm Jumeirah would be the best place to shoot a sunrise. We went to the edge of the top curl, looking back on Burj Al Arab, a 7-star hotel. The true size of this hotel cannot be appreciated in a photograph. I was about 3.5 km away when I took this shot before the sun came over the horizon. The "fog" is actually dust from a storm that blew in from the Iraqi desert.




When the sun finally appeared, the dust turned a nice golden hue. The hotel is truly massive and it dwarfs the Jumeirah Beach Hotel next to it.




After a few shots of the hotel, I made a couple of frames of Talib Hussein with the hotel as a backdrop.




After a quick breakfast with Ian, who opted to sleep instead of watch the sun come up, we headed down to “creek side”. The Creek is where Dubai was founded. We circled around for a quick visit to a couple of mosques.




Then it was on to see several of the markets, or “souks”. Small alleyways crammed with goods for sale seem to define markets the world over, and the Spice Souk, Gold Souk, and the Fish Market in Dubai are no exception. Many brands are present. Even Walt Disney does business in the Spice Souk.




The fish market was the busiest and nosiest market; all the fishmongers were shouting at both passers-by and at each other. One stopped me and asked for me to take his picture. That drew an immediate rebuttal from his neighbor, who insisted I also take his picture.




I had a tour of some of the older establishments, such as the Dubai Museum and the Old Souk, where we munched on some traditional Arab fare cooked by a woman in traditional garb.




With the setting sun came a tour of a couple of the famous Dubai malls, including the Dubai Mail where I snapped Burj Dubai. Modern Dubai looks nothing like old Dubai, and my original shot looked out of place with the other shots I took, so I processed this one to look like a worn, old-fashioned postcard. The original is at the bottom of this post for comparison.




This quick tour of the city lays good groundwork for me to do a more in-depth study at some point in the future. It would be nice to also spend more time in Abu Dhabi and compare the two cities.

Normally I embed a slide show of my Postcards, but Flickr is blocked in the UAE, so for my new friends there I have posted the rest of my shots below. For those with full access to Flickr, all of my photos there are geo-tagged, meaning you can see where the photos were taken. Click on a photo to go to Flickr. In the lower right hand side of the Flickr page, you can see the location of each shot, and click "map" to see a map:






















































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Smokey Postcards

"The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance." - Ansel Adams

Ansel made this comment in the days of film photography and his point is that both parts of the process, the taking the picture onto a negative and then printing the negative onto a print, are equally important.

Most photographers handed the second half of this process over to someone else when they gave their film to a commercial lab to be developed and printed. The film and paper producers had standards for processing their products based on assumptions about the intent of the photograph and the limits of the process. Of course the strangers who finsihed making the photograph had no idea as to the photographer's intent for the picture. Ansel's comment was a reminder that a photographer had to know and understand these standards, when to follow them and when to break them.

The negative has been replaced by a sensor and the 'wet' process of developing and printing has been replaced by computer manipulation of a digital file. The whole process of moving the file from the camera and making a print can be done automatically following established guidelines by equipment manufacturers. Like the 'wet' process in the days of film, this 'dry' process is based upon assumptions about what the intent of the photograph is. Ansel's comment is still applicable today and photographers need to understand the 'standard process' and when to break it.

I didn't have any shots from any recent shoots, so I dug into my archives for some smoke shots to practice my "post-processing" skills. My smoke shots came from an earlier shoot and this time I decided to explore composite images and adding colour overlays onto an image. I experimented with individual colour overlays:




I also experimented with graduated colour overlays:



Next up was creating kaleidoscope-type abstraction:




All of my shots are in this slide show:


Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.
Click here to read more!