Icicle image taken with OMD E-M1

Icicle

This image taken with an Olympus OMD E-M1 and a Canon 50mm FD Marco lens wide open at f3.5.  Focus peeking turned out to work with a manual lens and proved very useful.

After the Storm

After the Storm

Link to M4\3 videos

Neat link to M4/3 videos here:

Snow Fall from the front Door

A great snowy day outside. I'm under the weather so this was as close as I got to the snow...

Taken using the Panasonic GH2, 12-40 Olympus F2.8 lens at F4.5 and 40mm. I've printed this large (24") and the Olympus glass is just amazing. Its definitely a future go to lens for me.

 

Snow Fall from the Front Door

 

Simplicity in camera UI article

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/an_appeal_for_divergence_and_simplicity.shtml

The above essay by Mark Dubovoy is well said. I'm wondering why my new OMD M1 cannot be configured easily the way I want it via a computer program. I'm thinking the Olympus image share program should allow me to reconfigure the camera via some easy purpose driven dialogs and defaults.

Lake Dalrmple

Reflections in Ice

White Out

Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique

My role of Ilford GFS is used up and we are now going to try a roll of Canson Infinity Baryta Photographique. Thanks John B. at Vistek for your advice!

The roll of  paper is in the HP Z3100 and profiled. Now what to print? Black and white or colour?

I've printed the first large print and this is one fine paper. The first print was this image http://www.johngreen.ca/2013/12/snow-fall-from-front-door.html

Santa be nice...

Dear Santa,

How about a Olympus OMD E M1 camera for Christmas?
I've survived the year (LOL) and been mostly good.
If the camera came with a 12-40 F2.8 that would be sweet as cherry pie.

:-)

The Cemetary Cross - Père Lachaise Cemetery

The Cemetery Cross

Image prepared using the 'Wet Plate 2' setting of Nik Analog Efex Pro tool. Taken in Paris in the spring of 2004

Analog Efex Pro is Cool - Kisses for Oscar

Explore the look of classic cameras and explode your creative options!

An example....this was taken in 2004 at Paris at Père Lachaise Cemetery. I selected the look of Analog Efex 'Classic camera 4' for this monument.

Kisses for Oscar

http://www.google.com/nikcollection/products/analog-efex-pro/

Fall Circles Back

Fall Circles Back

Spread Your Wings

Spread your wings and simply fall,
Into the rushing air,
For this love,
Once its prisoner now do you fly. 

           Adapted from lyrics by the Blues Traveler

Spread Your Wings

 

The Dreaming Tree with Holga

The Dreaming Tree with Holga

Taken with an IR convert GH1 and the plastic fantastic Holga lens.

Dreaming Tree in the Fog

Dreaming Tree in the Fog

A rainy Sunday morning took me to my dreaming tree. The fall colours and the fog add somewhat to the image.

Canon 5D Mark 1 and Sigma 50mm F1.4 were the tools used.

Enjoy!

Creek of Dreams - Infrared

 

 

 

 

Creek of Dreams
 

Taken with a GH1 converted to infrared. Processed on Lightroom>PS CC>Silver Efex pro 2>Lightroom

Tiffany Falls Ancaster Ontario-Dweller on the Threshold image

It was an overcast day. The rains the rains the previous day had left the rivers flush with water. This day I had an objective in mind for my few hours of unsupervised time. Tiffany falls is not far from the homestead and I wanted to do some moving water images using the yet untried variable neutral density filter (Daisee ND Pro DMC slim.) After looking about, this was my first composition and I still think its the best. I took my time visualizing the image before starting.
The equipment used was a vintage Canon 5D, 24mm TS, tripod, cable release, L bracket etc.

Exposure was 25 seconds at F16, and ISO 50. The tilt and shift lens has a lot of depth of field at F16 without too much diffraction. There was some lens shift used in this image.

I tried exposures from seconds to 10 minutes.
The variable ND was very useful with its ability to dial in exposure. You can easily dial in 30 seconds. This is the maximum with the built in shutter. A timer application on the phone was used for measuring the longer exposures. I did not find exposures over 30 seconds that interesting for this subject. There was some wind in the valley and really long exposures had too much tree movement for my liking.

The threshold could be impending fall season, the angel like falls, the dreamy water scene or...




Dweller on the Threshold

Hanging On

Hanging On

B&W or Color Image. Which one...?

Comment with your choice of image.

Grand Canyon South Rim

Storm to the North

Hope

Hope B&W

Evening at the Rocks

Cracks In Time

Sunset over the Mountains

Meeting Art Wolfe in Vegas

I met Art in Las Vegas a couple of weeks ago at the Natural Wonders Gallery. There are needless to say a lot of excellent images hanging on the walls there.
Art is a fantastic speaker with a marvelous sense of humour. It was interesting to hear a few stories on the people he has photographed.
I picked up a copy of his latest book "The New Art  of Photographing Nature." This is a wonderful book for any photographer! There are a lot of good creative ideals in it. Especially useful to me were the topics on shitter speed. See page 152 when you get the book. Interestingly enough a fellow attendee purchased that print in a medium size.  Paul (AKA me) really liked that lion print too. It will look marvelous wherever you decide to put it.. ISBN 978 0 7704 3315 4

http://www.artwolfe.com/

http://www.natural-wonders-gallery.com/#/Home/

Special thanks to Maria of the gallery for getting me into the full meet and greet for Art.

Red Rock Canyon Lookout

Red Rock Canyon Lookout

I took this picture a couple of weeks ago. This is a HDR image from a set of three. Processed in LR5, NIK HDR2 and PS.

Lightroom 5

I just downloaded the new Adobe Lightroom 5.  Using my NAPP discount code took 15% off the upgrade price. Thanks NAPP!

I thought long and hard about going for the Adobe creative cloud. But since I usually only upgrade PS every two versions I decided to wait. Next time I may not have a choice, but now I do.

Also, Joan wants to stay on Lightroom 4, and if she was in the cloud how would this be done? V4 is not in the creative cloud at the moment. Not everyone wants the latest and greatest :-)

Lightroom gets a lot of use so this product gets upgraded every release, but its only $70for the upgrade.

Mother Mountain Goats Keeping Watch in Zion Park

64 gig card in the GF2

I got a 64gig sdxc card and dropped it the GF2 (travel camera). Wow 4137 raw images on one card. That's a long trip.

The dreaming tree and other infrared images

On my hike this morning I came upon a clearing...there was this tree and bails of hay...I thought infrared image.

The Dreaming Tree

  

Curves for a Sunny Day

Cylinders Cast on the Landscape

The Mystery Forest

 

The above image taken at 1/20 second while swinging the camera upwards. Images were processed in Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop CS 5, and Nik tools.

Inexpensive focus lever for Panasonic 14-140 M4/3 lens

Using a plastic filter wrench and a rubber band makes follow focus easier on the Panasonic 14-140 M4/3 lens. The inside of the filter wrench is toothed and fits the groves on the lens focus ring perfectly. There is no slippage in use. Velcro ribbon on the handle would work well instead of the rubber band and I have made this change.

The filter wrenches are two for six dollars from B&H (plus shipping.)

The filter wrench that I used

Attached filter wrench to lens

The filter wrenches I used are available here: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/807009-REG/Sensei_FW6277_62_77mm_Filter_Wrench_Set.html

Enjoy!

Art in progress

Art in Progress is one delicious art show on artists. I've found it on the HiFi channel.
Get it!

Sunrise

Life is but a race between the lights
Unless you pause
For the sunrise once in a while



Sunrise in Infrared

Daylight

 

Macro photography with a +4 close up lens



I found an Hoya close up lens filter set on sale for $20 the other day. In the set of three was a +4 lens. Here are two samples image using a GF2/14-140 plus +4.  The plant is in the front garden at the house. Sufficient equipment for close up flower images I would say...

Dear Muse



Hey Muse I've found you again. You were right next to Hogla on the shelf.
This image was made with a Lensbaby Muse with F4 plate and single plastic optic. This is a one of a kind image due to the unpredictable fun of the Muse lens as you bend and twist it.

Cherry Blossoms Vision 

In the garden today

This is the first time that I purposefully put a little horizontal distortion in an image within Lightroom. I'm aware of the technique now. Sweet! Thanks John Paul Caponigro!

Toronto zoo

A few quick selections from the Toronto zoo today. I was using the GH2 and the Panasonic 100-300 lens. My thoughts after using this kit are that a quicker focusing or manual focusing lens/camera would be better at the zoo. However, overall this was an easy to carry kit and did fine.

The Matron

The Thinker and the Fool

So Sweet

My Domain Until He Who Must Be Obeyed Shows Up

Pretty Blue and I know It

Dear Holga

Holga,

I know I have been distracted for a while. Thanks for waiting for me. I suppose there was considerable loneliness waiting on the shelf for me to feel inspired again.

Thanks

Here are two images one in color and the other an infrared black and white using the creative Holga lens for micro 4/3. The cherry blossoms were falling from the trees on this day. It was the start of a new beginning for the trees and a moment to capture for me.

 

 



I find it interesting that a $25 dollar plastic element lens can be sufficient to create soft dreamy images. More importantly the hour I had there was fun.

When to put the camera down and wait for anothe time?

If you pick up a camera and you are not inspired should you just do something else until your muse changes your state of mind?

May/June Digital PhotoPro (R)evolution Dividing the Freme

This was one of those moments where I thought 'Why did I not think of that?' I was reading the (R)evolution article by John Paul Caponigro and had the evolutionary learning bulb light up. I've used cropping, compositing (limited), retouching, but NEVER thought of purposefully using distortion. This is a simple and elegant concept. Get the magazine and read the article!

Art in Progress TV show

This show can be found in the HiFi channel. Can I say fantastic! Seeing what goes on with artists and their works is inspiring. 

I  had a few minutes today with a flower from the garden, this is what I came up with..



The setup for this image was like this...

The camera in use is a Panasonic GH2 with an ancient manual focus Canon 100mm FD macro lens. A polarizer was used to reduce glare from the leafs. Some fill in light was directed on the flower with the silver reflector. It was overcast when this image was taken, which was a good thing. I selected the tree bark as a background, although I would use something else next time. The image was processed in Photoshop using the Nik tools. The tree background was darkened leaving some detail there.

Art as an intellectual persuit or not...?

Art is a concept. Is it an intellectual pursuit or feelings and trial and error on behalf of most artists. I think the latter and those that follow art make it an intellectual concern.

A new HD background/wallpaper gallery has been created on www.artfulimages.ca.
Images can be downloaded for personal use. Enjoy!

Link to gallery is: http://smu.gs/1063ihj

The four sweet commands that fixed the boot on one of my Windows 8 laptops.
From the command prompt (booted of a windows cd into recovery mode)

bootrec /fixmbr
bootrec /fixboot
bootrec /scanos
bootrec /rebuildbcd

Full article here: http://www.techspot.com/guides/630-windows-8-boot-fix/

Happy dance....

Artful Images Smugmug site configuration high level steps

The Artful Images site has shaped up nicely.  Configuration of the site was not that difficult. The easy customizer tool was a very good start. Its amazingly powerful.
Selecting a theme that gets you most of the way to your desired look and feel is wise. Try them all...Then push the easy customizer as far as you can to modify the layout. Add navigation, change fonts and all that good stuff. Don't be afraid to change your mind as you go along.

• Next step is to publish some site content in galleries. Don't try to build the whole site at once. Create content in phases. The organization of your galleries may change. Mine did as I worked through the content groupings. The site hierarchy I expect will continue to evolve. I know it will. I started off with no categories and then later created them. So I would say this part of the site is fluid and easy to change using the Smartmug interface.
• Install the Adobe Lightroom addin and configure it to upload content.  Test it. Define a set of default settings for the creation of new galleries. This will save you time each time a gallery is created.
• Adding a custom URL and Google analytics key came next. Do this through the account pages.
• The following step was using the advanced customizer to add CSS to change what layout you want. There are many web sites with complete code samples or code snippets. Google search is your friend here.
• Build some more galleries....tweak the CSS once again.
• Add some non image content pages such as an About page. Link them into the navigation.
• Adding content for SEO is a good thing to do. Pay attention to image keywords. Mine are a mess and I will need to work on this next as I publish more images. My mess comes from not using Lightroom keywords well. Now I will have to fix and enhance a lot of Adobe Lightroom keywords.
• The homepage has undergone several revisions. I started with a static single image and a bio section. Now it has a slideshow, a bio section full of text about the site and not me, and a keyword section for search engines.
• Keep evolving your CSS as your site progresses. CSS its not a once done thing with this type of iterative build. Mine has changed many times. Remember less is more here. Keep your CSS to the minimum.
• Check your custom pages for markup errors and fix them. This could be things like mismatched tags.
• Review how your site looks on a tablet and adjust layout as necessary again. IOS and Android would be wise. The Android slide show needs work by Smugmug. The theme that I had chosen for the site had a broken layout when using Chrome on the Android Nexus 7. I changed the theme at this point to one that rendered better.
• Create a blog and link it to your Smugmug site. The blog will be useful for frequently updated and current content publishing. Such as this :-)
• Publish more image content with good relevant keywords.
• Smugmug was a wise choice for me. I needed the easy publishing features mostly. I got them. Customization has been easy. Perfect enough!

My site is at: www.artfulimages.ca

New LED studio lighting to replace halogen bulbs

After four of the 'studio'  halogen MR16 bulbs burnt out, I went to get some more. Let me say I hate replacing these bulbs. Finicky work. I have considered LED lighting before and there are LED MR16 bulbs available. They are pricy, however.Today there was five bucks off from Ontario Hydro instant rebates. I've replaced five halogen bulbs and the results are outstanding.
The bulbs to get are the 'Bright White Light' ones from Philips. They are 5000K bulbs and my prints look great under that color of light. These ones are dimmable. BCMR10R16 35Watt.
Hopefully, I will never be replacing these bulbs again :-) 

Faded Tulips

Henrys Burlington

The new Henrys Camera Store opened in Burlington today (April 10.) 
The staff did not know what the opening specials were yet. Watch for the flyer they said.
The store is laid out and stocked like the other Henrys retail outlets.
I'm still partial to the bargains at the Henrys outlet store :-) or Burlington's two other long time camera stores (Burlington Camera and Duncan and Wright.) There they know my name...

Poison Dart frog- Molly

This would be Molly...
Dendrobates tinctorius, the Dyeing Poison Arrow Frog

Toronto Distillery District Walk

Behind the Green Door......from the Toronto Distillery District this morning.

Behind the Green Window.

Forgotten

The Light Slowly Rusting Away