The Trees effect

Found a few older shots from this past fall that I guess I had never got around to posting. Not just that but I'd never really even looked at them. I do that I guess; take a ton of photos each time out and never touch 3/4 of them.

Trees. Fall. Near my house. Nothing too special.
Fall always possesses me to try new things and experiment a little bit with light and colour.

This shot for example. Same area, same day, same camera, different settings and intentionally blurred to produce a bit of a painted look. I first did this accidentally but happened to like the way these shots can look when you purposely pan the lens during exposure. It's just a different spin on the same old boring shots of fall colour. I like this one enough that I think I will print it and have it framed.
After finding the last two shots the other day, I had some spare time and happened to have the camera handy so I figured I'd take a walk and try a few more. This time around the colours were a bit more bland but the effect remained the same.


So there you have it. Boring old shots made a little more interesting.

Ansel Adams once said " There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs".

That said, I'm going to go have a scotch and catch some sleep. Photogging tomorrow morning.

Star Trails Experiment #1

Tonight the weather actually cooperated for long enough for me to throw the camera on the tripod and set up in the back yard to do a test shoot for some more serious star trails.

I'd mentioned that I think I know what I'm doing now but tonight didn't seem to work out that well. I ended up shooting a 26 minute exposure at f/3.5, ISO 200, triggered via remote and aimed straight up at nothing but black sky filled with stars.
After 26 minutes I went outside to check my results and I had an image of a white, blown out square on my screen. No stars. No sky. Just blown out white.

It wasn't supposed to be anything fancy; more a shot to see if my camera (which is only capable of a maximum 30 minute exposure) could handle this type of shot without catching on fire and blowing up causing severe injury to any unfortunate passerby within a 30 yard radius.
I think my problem was the backyard light emitted from my neighbors porch and subsequent light reflected from my other neighbors olympic sized backyard hockey rink may have been picked up more than anything else by my camera's sensor, hence the overexposed white blob I ended up with.

Since my original location is closed to the public for the next 3 to 4 weeks, I'm not sure I will get the chance to carry out experiment #2 any time in the near future. Time will tell.

On a brighter note, I did get out this morning and shoot some local animals. When I went over these shots with Lightroom (on my laptop) I thought they looked perfect on my monitor. When I got home and viewed them on my other monitor they looked a lot more contrasty and saturated. Almost too contrasty for some reason. I dunno, have a look see...


See what I mean. Too contrasty.

Old shots revisited

No time to actually shoot new material drives me to revisit older shots from way back when.

Trowbridge falls cascades lower end

Trowbridge Falls upper river

Sleeping Giant sunrise, Pool 6

Silhouetted fishermen, Dog Lake, Ontario

Images © Ian Benninghaus 2010. All rights reserved
Not to be used without permission.