The Downside of Photography

Originally I was going to shoot film for the Colour Run, because a disposable film camera would be much cheaper to buy (used) than a disposable dSLR. As it turned out, the d100 fit the bill better than any Nikon film camera I could get for the same money (none at all) so off I went with the d100.

Which turned out to be a good thing, as I shot near 700 shots from inside the race.

The downside to that, is I had to sort through all 700 shots, and find the ones that stood out. In the end, it's taken several days to dig through and decide which ones I want to keep. I have a ton of colourful portraits of smiling people, hands in the air colour storms, party shots, and so forth, but before I dumped the entire batch, I decided I liked this one well enough to post. So, here it is.

New Friends

So my wonderful girlfriend finds an ad in a local paper for a Renaissance re-enactor's guild and brought it to my attention. Should be neat, I thought, and we went. As it turned out, they were having a big event this (past) Memorial Day and invited us out to it.

Gotta be dressed in period wear however, so at the very last minute she whips us some great gear and we go as local scribes.

Everyone there were super friendly and informative and we took hundreds of pictures. I'm still sorting through them, but here are some of my favourites.

All shot with my 50mm f/1.8 on my Nikon D1x. Not strictly period I know, but I'd left my Camera Obscura at home that day.

Happy Noodle Boy

This is the reason the 50mm f/1.8 is called the "Nifty Fifty", you can get such amazing shots with it, and it's a very fast lens.

Taken at the same park where the band just a few posts down, was taken. Normally this little guy pulls a Calvin (of Calvin and Hobbes fame) in front of a camera, but today he co-operated.

These Boots Are Made For Walkin'

Went to a bull rodeo the other weekend, they started too late at night for any good action shots by me, but I did catch this cowgirl's boots standing next to me.

50mm manual len on my D1x

Olé

Bottles of oil, taken from a local farmer's market. 50mm dedicated macro lens.

Leader of the Band

The head of the band, caught in a moment of concentration. I listened to him instruct the other members of the band on what they were going to practice and I am impressed, he is an excellent teacher.

All the drummer pictures are taken with a 50mm manual focus lens on my Nikon D1x.

Little Drummer Boy

We have a community band of Kodo drummers that kindly invited me to their practice. The background where they played was quite cluttered, so the images are cropped.

I look forward to going back and seeing them play outside where they will really shine.

This, On The Other Hand

Is most definately PhotoShopped. The colour has been boosted, and there's a border palced around the pic, and I softened some features. This was done for a woman that I met at the run who's daughter was in the event.

It was overcast, and raining at times at the run, though by this point in time it had stopped the downpour, but the colours still needed to be boosted

Red Man Group

Something I didn't expect to see in a race, was humor. There were a bunch of people dressed in silly costumes scattered throughout the run. It definately made being there more enjoyable and I'll be posting the shots as I get to them.

There were a bunch of primary colourmen, blues, blacks, reds, in singles and in groups, and even a few costumed superheros.

Here is one such fellow.

More people practice

Husband and Wife teams agreed to let me photograph them, they were most fun to shoot and were quite creative in their poses.

This is what makes photographing people fun.

Light

Around our downtown area are wire mesh reindeer. Only one had a red nose and I was actually only using this shot to show a friend the advantages of wide angle lenses, but I liked the way it turned out so here it is.

Thanks to Rudolph for holding stil while I photographed him.

Evocation, Part 3

I could not have asked for a better sky for these shots. Even the dead tree limbs were just about perfect.

Last One For Now

So nothing great for my last post of the year. Would have loved to end the year with an awesome shot, but I'm just not that good.

Oh well, a little bit of colour from Crabtree Falls for you.

See you in the New Year!

Out of Order

My new favourite place, Crabtree Falls. Should have been posted in November, but time and events got away from me so they are being posted after my Christmas greetings.

A series of four from there, and that should be it for the year, barring a sudden snowstorm.

Cheers!

Black Friday

Offical Zombie Walk in town. As usual, it was drizzling, freezing and of course overcast. And despite all this, there was a huge turnout of zombies and the pics came out great. Many thanks for all those who put up with me getting in their way with a camera. Of course the brains I had in my pocket for a scooby-snack didnt' seem to hurt either.

Black and White

The ability to shoot Black and White in my D1x exists, and I figure out how to do it so it wouldn't save in .jpg (and thus lose pixels) Amazing what you can learn when you read the friendly manual.

While on the subject of water

Went to CrabTree falls over the weekend to catch the fall colours and to perhaps climb to the top. I've been before (see winter pics elsewhere) but the area is so frozen over in the winter that one can barely climb to the first section. This time around the weather was perfect and I got lots of good shots.

Digital, with my Nikon D1x

Fun with Black and White

Also taken with my 50mm, and my Nikon D1x set to B/W mode and a yellow filter attached to the lens. The yellow filter is supposed to bring out the tone of anything green, but I also noticed it has the effect of removing haze, and thus making the image sharper.

Colour me late to the game, but I've just started to realize the flexibility of filters. Gotta find more soon.

Little People!

I was invited to a party where they had miniatures on display for an upcoming painting competition. I didn't have my full gear with me so I used local lighting and the off white (very off-white) wall behind them.

Not perfect, but the main focus came out well. Shot using my dedicated Macro lens and the D1x.

My friend calls miniatures Little People, hence the title of this post.

Local

I went with a friend to do some shooting downtown and had initially brought my newly acquired Yashica 44, loaded with film that had expired in 1963. This picture isn't from that, I'm still waiting on development of the 127 film. This is from my Nikon D1x.

Just some pigeons playing in a water fountain. I liked the look of them fluffed up like they are.