Dog bed

From Photo of the day (2009)

Not actually her bed. My 60 lb pooch and I share a single bed at night. She was hanging out waiting for me to go to bed the other night when I was doing some school work. I liked the lighting and the expression. I had to fiddle a fair bit with this because of the low light and the fact that it was an incandecent bulb (things came out looking yellow) I set the camera white balance to incandecent, then further cooled the colour temperature in Picasa. I had to play with the fill light and highlights to make up for the darkness of the picture - without digging out my tripod and hoping the dog would hold still for an extended period I made do with some increase in ISO. Not liking the grainyness you get with low light and high ISO, I kept it as low as possible and fully intended to rework it a bit in Picasa. It is not a shot that would be large print quality - you would see the grain - but it works for this situation.

Pine cones

From Photo of the day (2009)

I took the camera to the dog park on Thursday hoping to get some shots of dogs playing but no score. I almost got a great one of Jazz (a labradoodle) and Meg sitting - but Jazz went and turned his head for the shot, and then he was leaving. This one was the best of what I had. Nice and sharp. Douglas fir cones, hanging ready to drop their seeds. I cropped, increased shadows a bit and sharpened.

A collaboration

From Photo of the day (2009)

I have been a bit lax on my photo shooting of late. The usual culprits - school, dog, hawk, rain, and early darkness have conspired against me.
I was sorting some pictures and came across this one my father took while we were out hawking a few weeks ago. I fly Fowler in Langford under some high-voltage wires, and this is the pole that holds them up. I guess someone took a paintball gun to it. The fall rain soaked plants and the way the paint had dripped looked cool. Granted I didn't see this while flying, paying too much attention to my bird. I put it in black and white as the colours were a bit drab (dad is new with the settings and the camera may have been on auto) and this just made the plants and the paint blur together better. I also cropped to remove some of the noisy branchs and bring the focus back to the post.