It was sometime between 7:30 and 8:00, walking along the Rideau Canal in Ottawa on a Sunday morning during PAB 2012 weekend. It was clear and bright, with the promise of a warm day ahead, but with early morning stillness upon the water.
Tag Archives: Ottawa
On the Wall
I have a fun time last night with my good friend Mark Blevis putting up my photos for the Wild Oat Show in Ottawa. It is a real thrill to see all the images as a cohesive unit on the wall:
Here is an article in a local Ottawa Neighbourhood newspaper about the show:
A Reminder . . .
The next couple of days will be very busy as I do my final preparations for my first photography display/sale ever:
Beginning on January 3rd (and continuing through the month of January), selections from my 2011 Photography project “Women and Cameras” will on display/sale at the Wild Oat Bakery and Cafe, 817 Bank Street in Ottawa.
This project features images captured using traditional film cameras, and printed on hand coated paper using two antique printing processes” Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown. The subject of each image is a portrait of a woman, with an antique/classic film camera, like in the example below:
On Wednesday, January 4th at 7 pm at the Wild Oat I will be giving a presentation on my project, and the two processes I used to create these images.
If you are in the Ottawa area I’d love to see you there!
Good News
Another final image for my Women and Cameras series, this time a real Cyanotype of Memento Mori.
And the good news? Beginning in January of 2012, my Women and Cameras Series will be on display at The Wild Oat Bakery and Cafe in Ottawa. I will also be giving a presentation on how I create these Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown prints. Details to follow!
A Different Path
Last Friday, I took part in the PAB 2011 Content Walk. The idea was to walk around central Ottawa with cameras, audio recorders etc. to create content and tell stories. The weather rapidly became the story, changing seemingly every ten minutes, but mainly rainy. We spent some time outside, and I got some pictures taken around the canal locks, but soon we had to retreat to the safety of a pub. The weather got steadily worse, but in the basement of the pub we were having a great time. We got some great light and my favourite is the image below. I had to push the film to E.I. 1600 but in this context I don’t mind the grain.
Old and New
I am just getting over the flu which waylaid me last week, and in addition to missing work I had to cancel one scheduled photo shoot, plus any random photography. To try to ease the jonesing, I went into the vault to give a second look at images worth working on, and ended up with today’s image.
An old photography trick for making flowing water look more like flowing water is to slow the shutter speed down so the water blurs and retains a sense of movement. Of course, the expectation is that one is a) using a tripod and b) on solid ground when trying to create this shot. In my case, neither applied as this image was made on the PAB 2010 boat cruise on the Ottawa river this past June.
Even with the Vibration Reduction enabled on my Nikon D90, it took shot after shot (at 1/3 second, handheld) to get what I was looking for.
What really made the image for me though, was when I converted it to Black and White with Apple Aperture the other day during my flu-driven incarceration; using a red filter setting with higher structure dialed in, the modified image provided an intensity that was not there for me in the color version.
It is ironic that digital technology both made the image feasible in the first place, and enabled me to make it look analog.
