Day 62

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I went to the museum grounds this evening and shot some reflections in a fountain, the sky, and some of Government House. Then on the way home I saw the clouds reflected in this downtown office building. So I stopped and took some photos and ended up liking this one the most.

Day 61

Copyright Peter Mitchell

This is on the grounds of the Mutart Conservatory in Edmonton.

Day 60

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I thought the sparks in this image looked a little like one of those drawings you do when you don't look at the paper while you draw. (Click on it to show it larger, it will show the lines better.)

Day 59

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I went out for sunrise this morning and decided on this location. It was a little farther to walk to than I remembered so it took me longer than planned to get to it and therefore I missed some of the earliest sun. But I like this image.

Day 58

Copyright Peter Mitchell

This is an old glass block window in our house with the light from the setting sun coming through. With the reduced size of the image it doesn't show as well and I think I just missed the best light with this image. A few earlier shots were not as clear but the sun was higher. I couldn't just ask the sun to stop setting for a moment so it just shows me again that I have to plan more.

Day 57

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I looked at this cedar yesterday and liked the way it looked with the sun coming through it. I decided to photograph it today and have learned that I need to be better prepared. I went out just before dinner and took a few shots only to have my battery die. I hadn't looked to see what the charge was and recharged it ahead of time. A storm is moving in so the sun has not been consistent and there is a good breeze blowing as well.

So I put a bit of a charge on the battery and went back out and got this image. Now I just need to remember to always check and charge my battery.

Day 56

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Day 55

Copyright Peter Mitchell

This is a blown glass wine glass with the sun as the light source casting the shadows.

Day 54

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I did more water drops today. There were a lot of images I really liked but I decided to post this one that is not modified and not cropped. I used a long exposure, 1/5 of a second, to get the trails of light.

Day 53

Copyright Peter Mitchell

We stopped in Nanton, Alberta for a brief rest stop and I took the opportunity to photograph these grain elevators. There is a lot of smoke in the air from forest fires in B.C. and it is also cloudy. I didn't get much detail in the sky but I like this image.

Day 52

Copyright Peter Mitchell

We are on our way back to Edmonton and spent most of the day in the car. I shot a number of photos from the moving car getting the motion blur in the foreground. And it seemed that a lot of roads in Montana don't have any place to pull over to stop and get out. (Unless you want to be right on the shoulder by traffic.) Anyway, this image is from the highway south of Great Falls if I remember correctly.

Day 51

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Just outside Billings, Montana.

Day 50

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Feet on a fence.

Day 49

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Went out at sunrise this morning, a little earlier than yesterday, and went back to the hayfield. I really like the early morning light on the hay bales.

Day 48

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Early morning light on this field and barn in Billings, Montana.

Day 47

Copyright Peter Mitchell

We went to these stables today and I liked the way these doors looked.

Day 46

Copyright Peter Mitchell

We arrived in Billings, Montana today.

Day 45

Copyright Peter Mitchell

We are heading to Billings, Montana. We stopped in Great Falls for the night and on the way I took this in a rest area. I tried a few with bracketed exposures and plan to try an HDR image when I get back home. If it turns out I will post it to compare.

Day 44

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Water falling on a window shot from below. I had set this up to see what I could get with rain falling on it and shot from below. The clouds were threatening but there were just some sprinkles of rain so I used a hose instead. This is not altered but it looks black and white since it is shot straight up at the grey clouds.

Day 43

Copyright Peter Mitchell

It was a really busy day so I didn't actually get out until after 11PM today. Took this image of a painted window on a pedway crossing a downtown street.

Day 42

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Again I didn't have anything specific planned for today. This little cactus plant on a window sill caught my eye. I like the curve and the colour of the spines.

Day 41

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I wasn't sure what I was going to do for my photo today so I decided to head out to the eastern edge of the city. The clouds were looking interesting and I thought it might make for a nice sunset. I stopped by this field and immediately was swarmed by mosquitos when I stepped into it to take my photos. I feel like I'm covered everywhere by bites but I like the image I got.

Day 40

Copyright Peter Mitchell

After doing yesterday's panorama of the Edmonton Folk Festival I wondered how well it would work to do one with macro images. I ended up using a weathered fence board as the subject and included 5 or 6 images in the final image here. (There were more but my tripod centre column does not have a groove so the images ended up shifting to the left as I moved down. As a result I dropped the rest of the images.)

Day 39

Copyright Peter Mitchell

It was Folk Festival weekend in Edmonton. I didn't go, but here is what it looked like from across the river. This is a panorama from 3 images. (Click on the image to see a larger version.)

Day 38

Copyright Peter Mitchell

This evening the project was to capture the LRT train in motion. I started this capture just as the train was coming into the frame on the right so it allows a lot of the background to "show through" the train on the left.

Day 37

Copyright Peter Mitchell

It was still a challenge finding the right settings to get the background blur but keep the subject in focus. Some of the best background blurs also had a blurry subject. I think part of the problem was not tracking at the same speed as the subject. More practice needed. But I did get a few that worked and I like the way this shot turned out.

Day 36

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Well, still working at getting it right. I spent some time reading about capturing motion and getting the background blur. I read about and changed the settings on my camera. And I tried again with our dog. I've realized that choosing a dog as the subject matter is an extra challenge since there is so much movement. It is hard to have enough in focus but yet show enough background blur.

I am going to try a different subject next time with more than grass for a background.

Day 35

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I wanted to try capturing a sense of motion. I got our dog running across the backyard and tried to get her in focus and blur the background. I'm going to need to study my settings and try again, but out of all the shots I liked this one. Even though most of it is not in focus I liked the lines in it and a bit of a sense of circular motion in her back legs.

Day 34

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I like this one flipped over like this.

Day 33

Copyright Peter Mitchell

I did more water drops today. I tried directing the sunlight up through the drops as well as just from above. This is with a zoom lens at 300mm shot towards a shady spot in the yard. I think most of the results look better enlarged. It is hard to see the colours and patterns at a smaller size like this but I like the drop pattern here.

Day 32

Copyright Peter Mitchell

We went for a hike today at Islet Lake in Blackfoot Grazing Reserve, which is east of Edmonton. We hiked to a point that is between Islet Lake and Elk Push Lake where there is a nice little view point over Islet Lake.

I hadn't take many photos up to this point. A few mushroom shots of the many varieties we had seen. We had just started back when this dragonfly flew by and landed on a twig to my left. The bright red colour caught my eye so I stopped to take a few shots.

After a few shots it flew around in a little circle and then came back and landed on another twig facing a different direction. I took a few more shots and tried a number of different angles. It was like it was posing there for me. Turning it's head now and then as if to say "How is this?". It repeated this several times giving me lots of opportunity to try different angles for different backgrounds.

The image above had a birch or poplar behind, I didn't look closely at the tree, but I liked the effect.

Here are a couple of others.

Copyright Peter Mitchell

Copyright Peter Mitchell