The snow is mostly gone, here on the prairies, but it will be some weeks before we see greenery and flowers blooming. I can’t wait! It has been a long winter and I sure could use a bit of color. Late spring or early summer images are great for it because all is fresh and green is bright and not dimmed by dust of late summer days.
We are lucky here in Alberta, because some nights are full of light show. We had a couple of gorgeous Aurora showing last fall and I have managed to capture some shots without leaving the city.
I know, I know it is winter and everybody posts winter photography, but I am not ready for it yet. I see it outside my window every day, so I want to see something warm, colorful and pretty. Hope you are in need of this as well.
It has been a while since I’ve posted anything about Elk Island National Park. So, I think, it is time for some lovely sunset from the beginning of summer, when all was green, flowers were blooming and days were warm and long.
I'm not very happy that summer passes so quickly in these parts.. There is not enough time to take full advantage of it, however, we do what we can. This year we have had a rare opportunity to take some of my family and friends along for a trip to the Rockies. It was a wonderful adventure, though there was not much time for fine art photography. There is simply not enough time to wait for a perfect light / conditions, especially when you try to cram as many places to show your visitors as you can. However, one can always practice a bit of travel / family photography while visiting all those beautiful places in Alberta Rockies.
As Kasia was saying in the previous post about Taste of Edmonton and street photography. We both not street photographers at all. Even though Kasia, still thinks I'm better at it, I would like to disagree with that statement. Real street photographers like Antonio Rosario from Switch 2 Manual, or Olaf Sztaba , are definitely someone to emulate, but me and Kasia are just opportunistic photographers.
We had a chance to attend the annual Taste of Edmonton. Its a gathering of restaurants where you can purchase bite size dishes. As always it's always full of people, so one would think a perfect time to practice street photography, which is a foreign to me as the surface of the moon. Still having excellent photos of Antonio, and Olaf, and my good friend Mark in mind, I loaded the little Minolta Autocord with some film and went in search of images. Since most of street photography I have seen is in black and white, I thought I would be presumptuous, and add a little color to it.
The whole experience left me nervous, and afraid. Good thing the little medium format, twin reflex camera, from the late 50's was an ice breaker. People would, if not stare openly, actually ask about it. This resulted in conversations, but not a lot of images, unfortunately. Still I tried my best to emulate, and "see" like all my friends mentioned above, would. Well I tried, and here are some results from that little outing.
The color film was Kodak Portra 160, and the black and white is the Kodak Tri-X 400.
Enjoy!
On the onset of this little write up, just want to warn that the images attached to this post are not really safe for work :)
Had a great opportunity to shoot with Kate again. She's an amazing model to work with. Her understanding of poses, and light is second to none. We planned an outside setting for the shoot, but it being autumn in Alberta, the weather did not cooperate. That's one thing that went wrong.
This year wasn't very good for sunsets. Huge forest fires in the NWT were at fault, bringing smoke and haze. So far there were only a couple good days, and most of the time the beautiful fluffy clouds would burn away by sunset, leaving empty blue skies. This is was one of those days. The canola fields in Alberta, creating wonderful contrasts with the big blue skies, it's always a great sight.....
I was debating with myself, if I should post these, as unfortunately it's a perfect illustration of a mistake. One big mistake, of being lazy. Almost every year we venture into the Edmonton downtown to view the spectacular fireworks display on Canada Day. This year, we figured we are going to try a different venue. So we got there a few hours before the show, and were greeted with huge masses of people....
When I started with my photography, years and years ago, I was never keen on photographing people. I was once told that my images, although very nice, looked like post cards. They never featured my friends or family, only the nature and landscapes surrounding us. I wasn't deterred by it, and kept making images the way I liked.
So it came down to this, last night of vacation, and last night in Nuremberg. It was a good time as any to take go for a little night walk around the old town. Brought the tripod, Fuji XT1 for it WiFi control from the iPhone, and.... a wrong lens. Yep. I thought of bringing the 10-24, but then I thought, that anyone would bring that lens. So I opted to be different, and brought te Fuji 56mm f1.2.
It has finally come to this. Last in day in Nuremberg, and my good friend from Hooked on Europe decided that it would be good to go out on the streets again, and try some fuji night shooting.
From the hill where the Altenburg Castle is located, it's a short drive the town of Bamberg. As mentioned in the previous post, it's a very old city, and very beautiful. Walking around the streets on a beautiful sunday afternoon, there are lots of people relaxing, and enjoying the views.
Walking around old town of Prague can be quite rewarding if you like street photography. There are interesting people, tourists, political rallies, musicians and many others. It's never boring.
One thing I have to say I like about the Czechs. They know how to play up to tourists. The old city hall tower has an observation deck, which is accessible and the views are stunning. Now, all the German towns and cities also had towers with observation decks. The only difference is that the Czechs were smart, and installed a nice elevator in the tower, Germans are a little more primitive, and if one wanted to see the top, one had to use the old way of climbing, namely stairs.
