Crimson Sappling

One of my favorite times of day is early morning, before the sun has burned off the dew, before the grass has started to stand up straight and before the two legged destroyers have brought their wrath upon spiderwebs. You are never truly awake until you become victim to the old eight legged money shot.

I always take my camera along on early morning dog walks. I pick my battles and don't even think of taking it out of the bag before the 1km mark when she calms down a bit. And trying to steady the lens with a big plastic leash in your hand has its challenges. Do all of the shots turn out? Not even close. But if I stick with it I can usually get one or two good photographs before the dog decides to turn for home. As always, click on the photo for a larger view.

The Marble Game

My in laws have an interesting coffee table game. It is a game called Solitaire that is played with marbles. it's official name is the Duke of York Solitaire game and the rules are explained here.

I have always wanted to get a nice photo of it because the marbles are really colorful and the contrast with the wood and glass is nice. A couple of weeks ago I finally got the shot I wanted. Taken in Aperture priority mode with the camera sitting directly on the table next to a set of sliding doors for lighting. Another one that makes me happy. Click for a larger view.

The Church on Church.

For me, one of the focal points of the Verdun borough on the Island of Montreal, has always been Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs church on the corner of Wellington and De l'Église streets. One of the tallest non residential building in this part of the city, its two bell towers are always the silhouette highlight of colorful sunsets. I managed to get out yesterday and get a couple of exterior shots of this landmark and, as they have open houses often, I hope to return in the future to catch the evening sun coming in through the stained glass panes.


The following history of the church was borrowed from:
http://www.uquebec.ca/musique/orgues/quebec/ndsdouleursv.html

The church

The parish of Notre-Dame-des-Sept-Douleurs (Our Lady of Seven Sorrows) is detached from St. Paul parish in 1899 after the church has been destroyed by fire. In the prospect of paying for rebuilding a chuch that is located far from their home, some parishioners requested a new parish be established and to build their own church. Bishop Paul Bruchési, archbishop of Montreal, agreed with their request within one month.

The parish commissioned Joseph Venne, a well known architect for his excessive enthusiasm, so that he will, one more time, show his talents. According to the style of the day, the church is huge and magnificent. The architect, who is known for mixing various architectural styles, builds a Baroque styled interior and a Néo-classical styled exterior.

The barrel vault was painted by Louis-Euatache Monty. The altars, in Carrara marble and stucco, were produced by Daprato at the cost of $32,000, a huge amount of money for the time. The high altar measures 42 feet (12.8m) high by 25 feet (7.6m) wide and weighs 10,000 pounds (4536kg). The Virgin statue and the angels are also made of marble. The Last Supper and the chapiters of the pillars are of the same gilded and engraved bronze used on the doors of the tabernacles. The mosaics are made of Florentine glass and Vatican enameled glass.

The construction debt was completed repaid by 1924. On the same year, a drive to cover the cost of acquiring and installing bells in the towers yields an extra $15,000. The bells were cast by Paccard, in France. An 18-bell carillon is installed in the bell towers.

In 1929, magnificent glass windows depicting the mysteries of the Rosary were installed in the sanctuary.

The front steps are a regular congregation place of locals out for a stroll or running errands any day of the week. I really hope I do get the chance to photograph the interior soon.

Depth of Field

One of the things that has always amazed me about photography is depth of field. Once I had a handle on how to manipulate the different elements of the camera in Manual mode, my goal was to to learn to take depth of field photos not just by accident, but on purpose. The first couple of pictures are examples of getting depth of field pictures in Auto mode by getting a tight focus on an object and hoping it turned out.




By the third month with the camera I was ready to start trying to take some shots in the AV mode, adjusting the aperture value to get the desired amount of depth of field.
This little bird turned out OK, but the color is washed out. I should have gone up a couple more stops from 8 to 11 or so.


And finally five months in, the first Aperture priority shot that turned out exactly as I envisioned it. Not the most interesting subject matter, but it made me happy.





Now that this last element was in place I was ready to start taking photos confident that I knew how to tell the camera what I wanted them to look like.

Wellington Sidewalk Sale

I will continue with the learning curve posts soon, but I had to take advantage of some great weather and a Sidewalk sale a block away. Most of these were taken in Manual mode, ISO 100, 5.6 f stop and just playing with the shutter speed to adjust for shots in the shade. The first one was taken ƒ/ 7.1 to bring out the blue in the sky.







I will probably have more new stuff this weekend as it is supposed to be another stellar day tomorrow and the Tour De L'Ile bike race is taking over the island on Sunday. Should be good practice for the Sports mode and telephoto lens.

ISO - The Next Step

The first thing I played around with in the creative modes on the Canon was the Manual Exposure Mode. This leaves the shutter speed, f stop and ISO in the photographer's hands. I wanted to get a good handle on one thing at a time, so I started with ISO. Still housebound due to extreme temperatures, the next obvious subject was the dog. Not a toughie, because she isn't too excitable and will lay reasonably still for minutes at a time.

The room she was lying in has a large window and lights up well even under grey skies.I set the white balance to auto and adjusted the ISO to 1600. The f stop default in the mode was 5.6 and the shutter speed at 1/60. I also set the Picture Style to Monochrome for black & white and manually adjusted the focal length to 43mm. This was the first non flash picture taken.


Not bad. A little heavy on the highlights on her belly. I took a look at the White Balance settings and saw there was one for overcast conditions. I set it, then snapped another one at 55mm.


This turned out pretty good too. I was pretty exited about getting images this clear and not being dependent on the flash like the Kodak. The next project would be waiting for a slightly warmer day and trying the ISO experiments outside. I had to wait six days for the first opportunity. We finally got a blustery day with a high of -8C. Time to rock 'n'roll. The day was overcast again, but I was thankful for that to avoid a lot of glare off of the snow. Went for a walk down by the river and practiced doing shots of bare trees and shrubs.

I reset the White balance for sunny conditions, since it was still pretty bright out there. Again set it to Manual mode and Monochrome. Lastly I set the ISO to 400. Completely blown out white shot, so I dialed it down to 100, the lowest setting.


Not that great. Still quite whited out. I thought that it might be worsen by the sky which looked a lot darker, but was still the sky and emitting light. Reset the white balance to overcast and tried one more shot with the river and Nuns Island as a backdrop.

Nope. It was clear that the wind coming up didn't help the photo at all. But there was still the light haze to everything. Back to the drawing board. Tomorrow I'll show you what happened when I started playing with the shutter speed.

First Week

The first couple of months with the the 1000D were forcefully all indoor work. Our harsh winters here had me scared to take the camera outside until it was warmer or had a camera bag. I spent about three days with the manual reading everything about the basic modes. Then I started looking for things around the house to practice on.

Being a cook it made sense to start by taking photos of things I cooked. The subject wasn't going to move on me and it would allow me to play around with angles too. One day I made a tray of vegetarian lasagna and figured it was as good a time as any to do some shots. First was a pic of the full tray of lasagna.


This was shot in basic mode with the built in flash. All the settings were on auto. There was no digital editing done to this photo. The reds and yellows seemed well defined and the angle worked. Next was to get a frame of the finished product on a plate. All the same auto settings, but it took a few shots to get the focus right because of steam rising from the lasagna itself. End product turned out pretty good.


All in all it was a good start. I have been cooking for over 20 years and seen people paid crazy money to produce far worse work for menus. My next challenge was to figure out how to shoot without the flash. This was the night the Creative Modes section of the manual got read. No turning back.