Calgary At Night

UPDATE: I've now actually moved to Vancouver and have started a blog with daily posts here - Vancouver Daily Photo

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One of the joys of living in Calgary is the cold winter and short
daylight hours...wait that doesn't sound right. But it does get
darker earlier this time of year which makes it easier to capture some
night photography right after work - if you're willing to brave the
cold. I tried my hand at some night shots of the city from Nose Hill
park, although the wind picked up a so my tripod was shaking a bit
during exposures.

This last photo took my 18mm up to 55mm over 4 seconds in a zoom burst.

Getting Back to Morocco

I'm finally getting my files more organized and have migrated to Lightroom 2.0 for this process. This process has many many steps, especially when going back to files originally on film. I'll be creating more detailed posts on my digital asset management (DAM) process, but during one of these steps I went back to 2003 for a while, organizing my photos from Morocco. Below are a few favorites.

Around the World in Black & White

I've been using Picasa for a while now, but only now have I used the portable slideshow function. The site makes it pretty easy to present a number of photos for viewing in any website. Below are a number of photos from some of my travels. All in black and white (hence the title of this post), and all geotagged - although you'll have to venture over to the Picasa Web Albums site to see them on a map.

Salt Harvesting in Bolivia

The salt flats in Bolvia stretch for miles, and only a small portion is actually used for salt harvesting. None of the salt leaves Bolivia and is only used for local consumption. It is first scraped into piles (top left), then brought outside the oven (bottom left) to dry a bit more before going to the oven area (top right).

Abstract Patterns

I tend to take a lot of pictures of patterns - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes on purpose.  And when I say 'Abstract' in this sense it's not to such a degree that the actual subject is illegible, just not the main focus of the photo if you're looking at it a certain way.

 

Picture Descriptions:

Door Rivets (Rabat, Morocco)

Wooden Chairs (Sharon Temple, Ontario)

Cafe Tables (Salamanca, Spain)

 

 

Vacouver Island in Black & White

Some of these pictures might not be the first thing that comes to mind when you think of Vancouver Island, or the town of Sidney to be specific.  I had the opportunity to be in Sydney for a couple weeks through my day job and tried to get a bit of different viewpoint on the world around this sleepy little town by Victoria.  All these images were taken in colour, but after sorting through a few of them, I thought these ones looked good, if not better in black and white.

 

Sailboats (Sidney, BC)

Rusty Old Car (Sidney, BC)

Padlock (Sidney, BC)

Old Cheetah Tank Tread (Sidney, BC)

 

 

HD Video to Photosynth?

Some exciting news came along the other day, abut Photosynth.  They've now made it possible to upload and create your own "synths".  If you're curious about what this software can do, check out this excellent video by Blaise Aguera y Arcas on the TED.com website.  One key issue I'm wondering about is the possibility to merge this technology with HD Video.  I don't see why you couldn't develop something that extracts the high definition frames from the video, maybe taking every 10th frame, and creating a 3-D model in Photosynth from say a short video around a house, or a long video through a city (similar to street view, but with way more potential for detail).  You could even zoom in on certain details. 

 

Although I don't have any HD video equipment, I'd like to try it with the simple video function on most point and shoot cameras.  Check back soon to see how this little (or big) project turns out.

Theme: Night Photography

We'll start this photo blog off by including my heading picture within the theme: Night Photography. I've been into night photography for a while and the shots above were taken several years apart, from 2002 to 2008. The only one taken with a digital SLR (Nikon D80) is the lightning photo.

Lightning Photo (Calgary, Alberta) - This turned out to be at the right place at the right time, with the storm far enough away not to get any rain, a nice vantage point north of Calgary's Downtown, and a tiny tripod (no idea) for shutter speeds up to 30 seconds.

Mary-Go-Round (Leeds, UK) - Taken with a point and shoot, one of the favorite parts of this photo for me is the 1.50 price still visible in the centre.

Night Market (Marrakech, Morocco) - All I can say about this picture is that I think this is the stall that made me sick for the next week on that trip.

Plaza Mayor (Salamanca, Spain) - One of my favorite and earliest night shots, leaning against a column with my point and shoot, it turned out pretty well - showing the movement of the people.