Week 4: Are You Gonna Finish That?

a bird

I'm a little early this week but I was happy with the photos I have so far and I am doing nothing exciting tonight so the blog it is.

The last two days have been a mix of good and not-so-good stuff.  Yesterday morning my drive to Elliot Lake took an extra 45 minutes due to weather.  Have you ever driven when the road is just white from edge to edge, the huge snowflakes are flying into your headlights and you lose your sense of up, down and left and right?  Well, that was the first hour of my day yesterday.  Then later when I got in my car to go from one school to the next, I noticed the check engine light was on.  Crap, what to do?  I got that temporarily taken care of and drove in much more reasonable weather back home.  The trees were so beautiful with the fresh sticky snow I had to pull over to take some photos.  When I got into the Sault I decided that Bellevue Park was likely beautiful so I headed there for a few more photos (I'm sure you know that when I say a few, it does not really mean a few).  This morning we had a stunningly blue sky from horizon to horizon.  We haven't seen the sun in so long, I didn't care about the -20 degrees and after seeing the one student I had scheduled, I headed out to shoot (after first confirming with my boss that I could flex my day).  The waxwings are still there so I haunted their trees for a while.  I was feeling so peaceful and happy, basking in the sunshine and I really didn't want to leave but the car had an appointment.  $370 later I was heading up to Connor Road to meet a friend for a little hike on some Voyageur trails.  Ten minutes into that, we passed a partially ice-covered waterfall.  I aimed the camera, depressed the shutter and...nothing.  The black screen of death is back!  Aaarrrgh!  I dug out my notes from my last dealings with Canon Canada but they didn't get back to me this afternoon.  I guess that's what I'm doing on Monday.

My assignment photo this week is of a pair of bohemian waxwings.  I forget which one had the berry first...I saw them pass it from one to the other but apparently the camera didn't see that part.  This photo looks like the male is saying, "Are you going to finish that?"

I saw some other birds today.  A chickadee of course.

And a sparrow, I think.  I can confirm the species tomorrow when Levi's birder friend comes over to play cards.

I had a similar photo of a group of the waxwings last week but today the sky was so blue and the birds were facing the sun.

This is part of the boardwalk.

Since the sun was shining there were cool shadows everywhere.

The snow and ice with the sun behind it was making glittery sparkles everywhere.  I couldn't capture the glitter in the snow but if you look in the background, all those little circles were sparks of light shining on ice.

Here are some photos from the not-so-sunny day yesterday.  First we have some berries at Bellevue Park.

A lonely bench in the snow.  We really don't have much snow this year.

This one I took when I pulled over on the four lane just outside of town.

That's it for this week.  Send healing (or replacement) thoughts Hermione's way.

Week 3: The Birthday Edition

Levi

I chose the assignment, "Levi" this week because last Sunday Levi actually let me take his photo!  Mark it in your calendars, folks because it may not come around again for a long time.  Mind you, he was not posing for me, he was talking to his friend but when I pointed the camera at him, he didn't turn or duck his head.  The other reason I chose this photo is because today is his 15th birthday.  Hard to believe I know, but my boy is 15!  He's on his way to meet Peter who is coming for dinner and a sleepover.  I have to ice the cake and then the boys can decorate it.  Want to guess how over-full of icing it will be when they are done?

The photo of Levi was taken last Sunday morning in a deep freeze at Whitefish Island.  The rest of the photos were taken there too.  I have decided not to feel guilty about getting the camera out only once a week.  After all, the change from the 365 project to the project 52 was so that I didn't have to shoot every day.  I will have to choose my topic at the beginning of the week though, in order to stop obsessing over it all and enjoy the process rather than stress over it.  That's how I handled it this week and it seemed to work.    I did want a few more photos of Levi but the opportunity did not arise so I am okay with just the one.

There was a huge flock of waxwings...identified by Christopher, the birder, not me or Levi.  We watched them for a while and decided there were two species in there.  When we got home and googled, we confirmed that there were cedar and bohemian waxwings.  The ones with the yellow bellies are the cedar waxwings.

The ducks were quite amusing.  The two girls were fighting over the boy.  You can't really tell because the ducks' faces don't look ticked off but the one in behind kept pecking at the one in front, chasing her off.

And of course the boy thought he deserved all of the attention.  It looks like he is saying, "Yeah, so?"

Alright, I give up!

The frilly ice amused me, especially the one that is tipped on its side.

And finally, more pigeons in trees.  The one on the right thinks he's an eagle.

That's all folks.

Week 2: Can We Talk About This?

food colouring

A weird topic yes, but something I enjoyed doing two years ago and wanted to try again.  I did not enjoy it this time though.  For some reason the water had a lot of little air bubbles in it and they showed up in the colours.  I couldn't figure it out...same water, same glass, same procedure of dripping liquid food colouring in the water...yet bubbles appeared in the photos, and not in a helpful way.  What the heck?

I also don't so far like my bright idea for this year's project of just having all of the ideas listed and choosing one at random each week.  So far, I haven't been able to decide what to do and I have left it until the last moment (what I was trying to avoid... the guilt of not putting in the effort). This has resulted in not meeting my actual goal for each week which is "to make a photo that I am really proud of or at least quite happy with."  I'm going to have to spend some time this week thinking about the plan for this year.  Any advice is welcome.

Or maybe, I should just stop being grumpy...think of kittens and bunnies, and the fact that my India photobooks are finished and ordered!

Anyway, I have a couple of the food colouring photos and I have a few photos from last Sunday at Whitefish Island.  It was a gorgeous cold, snowy morning and I had the place to myself but sadly, the birds were hiding - probably keeping warm somewhere.

Yes, yet another chickadee.

Week 1: Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

smoke

I have a list of 52 ideas for shooting this year and I plan to choose randomly, based on what's going on, what the weather has to offer and if I feel like working at it or being lazy.  This week I chose lazy.  

I thought of getting started last Sunday...it was a gorgeous, sunny day with awesome shadows on the snow (shadows is on the list for the year) but instead I stayed in my pajamas all day and didn't do a darn thing (except finally finish processing my India photos...yay!).  During the week after work I thought a couple of times that I should get Hermione out but I hadn't yet printed off the list and couldn't really remember all of the ideas.  This morning (yes, at the last possible moment again), I decided that I would do the fruit in fizzy water thing but I forgot to put those items on the grocery list.  So I read through the entire list trying to get some inspiration and settled on "smoke."  

I got out the black backdrop, the tripod, the flash...then...I couldn't remember how to do it.  After some starts and stumbles I realized that I had to use the flash off to the side of the smoke and thus required the use of the flash triggers.  Alas, last week I found out that the battery in the transmitter was dead but I didn't have a small enough screwdriver to get in and find out what kind of battery was needed.  This afternoon, with time a-wasting, I searched high and low for the mini screwdriver set that Levi has, unsuccessfully.  Finally Levi noticed I was looking for something and asked me what it was.  I told him and he said, "Oh, those are in my bedroom."   Huh.  I got the trigger open, made a trip to the Source and got the weird battery.  I got everything set up again and started shooting.  

The source of the smoke is some incense and the different colours are from using different coloured gels over the flash head.  The difficult parts were focusing (I eventually had to leave the camera on manual focus) and waiting for the smoke to rearrange itself back in front of where the camera was pointed.  

Once I got the photos up on the computer, I was fascinated with the variety of patterns in the smoke.  I could look at them over and over again and find new swirls, coils or interesting lines.  I included several shots to cover a variety of colours and some of the different swirl patterns.  I see a dragon, a face which could be Aladdin's genie and a baby reaching up with one arm.  What do you see?