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