Category: Photography

My friend Ed Hansberry made a post to the Mobius mailing list, where we were discussing digital SLR cameras, asking whether or not he was the only one that liked point and shoot (P&S) cameras. This was my reply.

Ed,

I think everyone that has a DSLR also has a P&S – the two technologies are not mutually exclusive in any way. I never leave my P&S behind, even if I’m bringing my DSLR, but I will sometimes leave my DSLR behind and only use my P&S. P&S cameras are great, but there are some things they’re not so good at:

• fast shutter release (for getting that picture right away – even the worst DSLR is faster than the fastest P&S)
• flexible lens choices (though there are some P&S cameras with amazing zoom)
• low-light photography (noise free, focusing without much light)
• super-sharp images (I love my Canon SD 870, but the image quality it has pales in comparison to any DSLR)

On the other hand, P&S cameras have video while “real” DSLRs do not. The best camera you have is the one you have on you – so there have been many instances where my P&S camera got great pictures that my DSLR did not simply because I have my P&S on me. Continue reading The Question of Point and Shoot Cameras

Gallery here.

At the end of November I was fortunate to be invited to Microsoft’s Mobius conference, so Ashley and I decided to go a few days early and see the sites in Amsterdam. Here are the pictures from our journey. We’ve added comments on many of these pictures because we discovered that if you use Picasa’s comment feature, it embeds it into the EXIF comment field and Smugmug extracts that and shows it under the photo. Cool!

The snow was fresh this morning, so I decided to step into my backyard and take a few pictures of it. These are also my first public photos with the Nikon D300 (an amazing camera!).

I’m finally getting caught up on some of my photo processing, so I’ve uploaded my photos from  CES 2008 and my time on the Media Center Blogger Bus.

A few more  pictures after the break… Continue reading CES 2008 & Media Center Blogger Bus

In mid-July (yes, I’m that behind on processing some of my photos) I spent a little over an hour chasing one of the most beautiful sunsets I’ve ever seen. I shot over 120 photos because I just couldn’t stop – every few minutes the light changed, and a new version of the sunset would appear. I shot from three different locations until the sun went down past the mountains. The beauty of creation was never so brilliant! The whole gallery is found here.

Ashley and I went to the Lethbridge Air Show with our friends Kim and Mitch Berreth in August 2007. It was the first air show I’d been to, so it was interesting to see all the planes up close. The Snowbirds performed, and a monster truck showed up as well – a curious addition to an air show, but it was fun taking pictures of a big truck crushing already mostly-crushed cars.

My camera worked overtime – I shot around 1300 photos, trying to capture the best shots possible. Unfortunately many of the aerial acrobatics were a bit outside the range of my zoom lens, so these photos involved a lot of cropping and a lack of sharpness. The biggest challenge though was in post-production: I had shot so many photos that were nearly identical it was a headache to pick the best ones. It took me hours to get through them all and an added bonus was a smudge on my lens that had to be fixed in almost every single photo. At any rate, the photos turned out pretty well for being my first attempt at shooting fast-moving objects from the ground. Here are a few photos from the online album.

Last weekend a friend of ours was having a birthday and she decided to have her friends come out and join her at Shakers, a “family fun park” that has go-carts, mini-golf, arcade games, and other amusements. I opted to not do the mini-golf or go-cart racing, instead offering to be the event photographer. The afternoon light was quite nice, if a bit overcast. Later on I put the camera away and played a game of laser tag – it’s clearly a game for sissies and paint ball is much better (did I mention that I got a score of zero, getting killed more times than making kills?). Here are a few photos* from the event:

*I’m amazed that I was able to get so many photos given that the battery in my D200 only had a 28% charge and my back-up battery was dead. The D200 has such great battery life (for my needs at least) that I hardly ever think about power issues and forget to recharge it every now and then.

Jef and Alex getting things going in the first of many go-cart rounds.

 

I think Ashley was yelling at someone to get out of the way – she does that when driving too. 😉


That’s right kids, this isn’t bumper-cars, it’s go-carts!

 

Continue reading Rowena’s 25th Birthday Party Photo Shoot

I finally managed to get through some of my back-logged photos after having a very busy summer full of shooting a wedding and the reception, a BBQ, a softball game, and a baptism. So after shooting and processing photos for everyone else, I’m finally getting some time for photos of my own. In late June/early July, Ashley and I went to visit our friends Tim and Melissa Heerebout in London, Ontario. We were there for a weeking, making trips out to Toronto, Niagara Falls, Niagara on the Lake, and elsewhere. Lots of fun – here are some of my favourite photos below (can you tell I had a hard time picking just a couple?).