Thursday, January 28, 2010

My never-ending love affair with early-moning light






I really wasn't in the mode of taking any photos, this morning, but the lighting when I arrived in Bridgewater was quite pleasing. The winter affords a different kind of subtle nuance with its tones. Anyway, I am happy with these quick shots with the D40 and 70-300mm VR.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Flowing water, colors, and winter




The temperatures ballooned to well above freezing as a lot of the snow from the last storm finally disappeared. Visually, it looks a bit dirty and ugly for a winter day but the waterfalls as I drive into New Germany had a lot to offer. My Nikon AF-S 70-300mm VR is the perfect landscape tool for shots like this, the colors really stand out with some magic from NX2.

Saturday, January 23, 2010

Winter moon



I tried playing around with the polarizer filter and the 70-300mm VR zoom lens, I am finding there seems to be a slight sharpness loss with the extra glass, but these look kind of neat.

Thursday, January 21, 2010

More snow shots at home






This working only mornings does allow me some time to shoot. When I got home, the snow was still hanging on the trees, the blue sky was very inviting. I took the D80 and 70-300mm VR for a short walk and got a few decent files to add to my ever-burgeoning hard drives.

Ah, the pretty snow, lots of it to photograph!










We got some light flurries, overnight, it hung on just perfectly to the trees. I took the D80 and Tamron 17-50mm zoom and was determined to get better images than yesterday. I drove by the Highway 103 overpass around 7:45am, lots of traffic but the snow and light was amazing. The banks of snow were high enough to get some dramatic views.

Brookside Cemetery is another gold mine for images as of late, the early-morning sun and its warmth was an ideal companion for the freshly-fallen snow.

After further examination, the 17-50 is a very sharp little zoom, kudos to third-party makers for some of their unique lens designs.

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Another dumping









We got about 10 cm or so of the white stuff since early this morning, I took the opportunity to get a few scenics when it stopped around 9am. The Tamron 17-50 is nice but I am still not sold that it's as sharp as the Nikon 16-85mm VR; the latter has the Vibration Reduction feature which may be more useful than an f/2.8 maximum aperture.

Anyway, these look nice on my laptop and I hope you enjoy them.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Finally, some good winter photos!





I don't mean to whine or complain, I haven't been getting happy results in 2010 with my Nikons. I take this seriously, almost as if I were in a "slump."

The cold weather provides the adversity I feel I need to try harder. I was rewarded after wading through deep snow, this morning, shortly after sunrise. I had the Tamron 17-50mm with me on the D40. I can hand-hold this quite well even at 1/30th second for sharp images.

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Slow winter for good photos




2010 has been somewhat a poor one for winter photographs, or it has been extra-challenging for me. Even last week's storm didn't yield the images I was expecting. Anyway, I caught these yesterday, kind of nice lighting early in the day. The sun only made a brief appearance.

I am sure there will be more opportunities for successful winter images.

Sunday, January 3, 2010

Home can be anywhere it needs to be


I came across this young chap while doing a shoot for some friends about two months ago along the waterfront in Lunenburg. He lives in the boat along with the dog. I wonder how he is faring now that winter is here in all its fury.

D80, Sigma 50-150mm and SB-800.

Saturday, January 2, 2010

First storm of 2010









It didn't take long for our first Noreaster to arrive in the new year. The snow is piling up as I type, I was brave enough (maybe dumb enough at times) to go out in the storm and shoot. No problem to find interesting things to photograph but my D40 and 70-300mm VR ended up coated with snow. All is well, though, I know from exprience that photo gear can take some abuse from the elements.

I often reflect on whether or not shooting in color modes is worth it in the winter. There were some bits of color that stood out, but many files should either start life as b/w or be converted over, later.

Enjoy the weekend!

Friday, January 1, 2010

This is what it's all about - being with good friends who are like family!



New Year's Eve seems to come and go faster and faster every year. We all enjoy the company of good friends, I consider many of them to be more like family, as we ring in the New Year, together, brothers and sisters in the gospel.

Some traditions established in my life is to visit the Doreys for NYE festivities, they are great hosts and not bad crokinole players.=) Another one I have taken on as my duty is to get a group photo just before the clock ticks down to yet another 365-day period of mortality to live, with all its hopes and faith of being a better year than the previous one.

The shots were easy to get, thanks to Self Timer, but I almost blew it - I had mistakenly set the SB-800 for manual firing at 1/8th power with bounce! I was lucky enough to be using a wide aperture (f/6.3) on my Nikon 16-85mm zoom and ISO 400, and, of course, shooting RAW - the "forgiveness and repentance" file mode - the images were still about 1-1/2 stops underexposed but no big deal to fix with Capture NX2, they look fine.

Some people can get very silly without much provocation.

I hope everyone has a great 2010!