Saltspring Grab Shot

Mouat’s Clothing Store in downtown Ganges on Salt Spring Island has wonderful window displays. Worth a look.

And that’s just what I was doing. On a recent night trip into Ganges, I had parked the MINI right in front of one of the Mouat’s Clothing store windows. And since I’m always feeling the pressure of coming up with a daily Salt Spring photo, I grabbed the camera and lens I had with me. The Canon 1DMkIV, superb in low light, with one of my favourite lenses, the 35 f1.4. No tripod, no polarizer to reduce window glare; one quick exposure then off to get groceries.

The message here I think is carry a camera. And use it. I needed only a second to take the shot and didn’t care in the least that the IS0 (film speed) was 800. Good grab shot and a great tribute to the folks at Mouat’s Clothing who build such fine displays.

Mouat’s Clothing occupies most of the Harbour Building, constructed by Hans Hazenboom years ago. Construction was a welcome renovation of the old K&R grocery store.

Mouat's Clothing, Saltspring

Filed Under: Musings, Saltspring

Pet Portrait

I came across these two images of a West Highland Terrier today; thought I’d share them with you.

This puppy, smallest in the litter, had an ear that refused to stay up. Priceless pose.

West Highland Terrier puppy

And here he is all grown up and happy in his native highland terrain. Another interesting pose:

West Highland Terrier adult

Does your pet need a portrait? Contact me!

Filed Under: Musings, Nature Tagged With: ,

Fresh snow should not be grey

If your camera makes the snow look grey, it’s working perfectly.

The exposure meter in the camera is designed for the average scene, say a sunny day with blue sky, puffy white clouds, green grass and Aunt Martha in her National Geographic red shirt. The camera attempts to average the metered area and render it equivalent to a mid-grey tone. And that works for the average scene. And therefor it works most of the time. But not for a snowy scene.

If you photograph a grey card, the camera will do what it’s told and make it grey.

And it will try to make a white card grey.

And a black card grey.

In photo terms it correctly exposed the grey card, underexposed the white card, and overexposed the black card.

That’s why your white snow looks grey. And to get it white, you just need to take a bit more control. Most cameras have a simple exposure compensation dial. You can use that for a quick fix. Since the camera underexposed the white card (or snow scene), just move the dial to add exposure. Try some thing like +1 or +1.5 to start.

overexpose for white snow

By the way, in order to correctly see images on your computer monitor, you should read about calibrating your monitor. On a correctly calibrated monitor you should see, in the image below, a series of equal width vertical bars from white to black:

calibration bar

Filed Under: Musings, Nature

No Pain, No Gain…

At least half of us viewing this soccer photo find it painful.

no pain, no gain

Filed Under: Musings, People Tagged With:

Seeing Soccer in Half a Second

It’s not often you see an entire team lined up at the goal mouth. Castaways number 20 is kicking the ball towards the Salt Spring net. Meanwhile, Salt Spring appears to be in various states of readiness (or willingness) to get in the way of the shot. This image is brought to you with one repair due to a clothing malfunction (unseen to the spectators but captured but camera in 1/1600 sec).

at the goal line

But wait there’s more. Below is a series of shots. From the first image to the last, exactly one-half second went by. Even if you were close enough to see the action with the naked eye, there’s no way you could see exactly what took place. What did the referee see? Was there a foul?

201010112

201010113

201010114

201010115

201010116

As an aside, I’ve been noticing a call from some photographers to slow down. Take only one image at an event. Manual focus only. Use only a 50 mm lens. Film good, digital bad. Huh, what?

I too miss some aspects of shooting in the late 70′s with a Leica or Hasselblad. But really, a lot of that is just romantic thinking. Particularly with moving subjects. And deadlines. And editor expectations.

In the seventies we did everything we could to capture the action for sports magazines. From pre-focussing where the long-jumper would be at the peak of her flight, to staying up all night in the darkroom and getting the film to the bus station by sun-up. There was a lot of stress. As a young photographer, I remember changing film without looking at the camera; both to keep my eyes on the action, and (sigh) to try to change film faster than the photographers around me!

We still work to deadlines. We still do our best to capture the decisive moment. We just do it better now. And we have just as much stress.

We still communicate. But we wouldn’t tell our editor that we prefer to slow down, unplug, mail a handwritten letter rather than send an email…

Filed Under: Musings, People Tagged With: , ,