Younes Bounhar Photography

End of season

This time of the year is likely the slowest as far as landscape photography goes (in our region at the very least). No more snow to smooth things out, no more ice for aesthetic relief, brown grass, leafless trees. Just about everything is poo brown. What that means is: 1) I shoot something else 2) I get to reflect on some of the things I’ve shot in the last few weeks. (I’ve decreed today “lazy sunday” – yes I write my posts days before they are published…sometimes- so no shooting is happening…you get my drift).

Just before everything turns “poo brown”, we get some of the most interesting shooting conditions around here. I really like the transition period where the river starts to thaw, but isn’t completely thawed out. This gives rise to some pretty cool subjects you can focus your attention on. A few weeks ago, I posted my “pots of gold” shots. A few years ago, I took this shot in similar conditions. Needless to say, that this transition from winter to spring gives rise to countless opportunities to photograph ice patterns (like here or here).

This year, I was particularly intrigued by some interesting patterns on the surface of the river that were likely caused by the lack of snow. These were a bit harder to capture than I anticipated because I simply couldn’t get enough altitude to capture a “top-down” view that really emphasized their repetitive nature. That said we enough perseverance I got some results that at least rendered the essence of what I was trying to achieve. I would love to hear what you think…

Posted on March 30th, 2010 in Photography Tips | 3 Comments »

Checklist

• Golden light reflecting off big rock onto small wet rock: check
• Small wet rock reflecting golden light off bigger rock located in shaded area for blue color: check
• Polariser to maximise golden light off bigger rock located in shaded area for blue color AND slow down shutter speed: check
• Long lens to isolate water splashing off small wet rock reflecting golden light off big rock: check
• Slowish shutter speed (1/20s) to catch water splashing off small wet rock reflecting golden light off big rock: check
• Incoming tide to splash water onto small wet rock reflecting golden light off big rock: check
• Patience to fire off 500 shots in the hopes that you will get the right splash of water nto small wet rock reflecting golden light off big rock: check

Posted on March 29th, 2010 in Images | 3 Comments »

Plan A

For those of you who actually pay attention to what I say (I like to pretend there’s many of you), I spoke in my last post about always having a plan B. Well, I thought it may be worthwhile to show you what my plan A was in the first place, since I never really discussed it. For all the times I’ve been back to Montreal, I don’t have a single skyline shot of the darn city, that is til recently. So my point in heading to Jean-Drapeau was to take aforementioned skyline picture of darn city.

The day had been mostly overcast, but something (my little pinky most likely) told it might just clear up enough for a really gorgeous something. Well, whatever it was, it LIED, cuz a sunset, there wasn’t. Not that this has stopped me before. I’ve learned fairly early that you’ve got to make the best of whatever situation you are facing. (By the way, if you’re having trouble following the flow of this post, don’t you worry, it’s me, not you ,no really).

Since sunset didn’t really happen, I thought I would at least take advantage of the fast moving clouds in the sky. So, I put on my ND400 (10 stop ND filter) and picked as long an exposure as I possibly could (the longest one that day turned out to be about 7 minutes). This particular one is around 4 minutes I believe.

Here, I didn’t use any ND filter as the light was diffuse enough, and I knew that my D700 could handle the whole dynamic range. I pushed the exposure by about 3/4 stop in the bottom portion to bring out the detail in the buildings, and that’s about it. Thank you Montreal!

Posted on March 24th, 2010 in Images | 3 Comments »

The Monster

Always have a plan B (improvised or not).

It’s funny how you can live in a place for years (8 in my case), yet never explore parts of it, even though they are smack in your face!! Well, I did just that on a recent visit to Montreal and skipped over to le Parc Jean Drapeau as I wanted to catch the sunset. Whether the sun has actually set that day, I couldn’t confirm for sure as it sank behind a massive bank of clouds. One can only assume so given the darkness that soon covered up the place. No sunset, no problem. I had my plan B, which frankly, and I knew (really I did, or at least that’s the official line), was going to be more fun than the aforementioned plan A. You see, there was this cool steel statue standing behind me, and I just knew that once those big spots surrounding it would be turned on, the whole thing would take on a new life of its own. The only problem was, the spots never came on! No lights, no problem! You can always count on street lights for some fill light, you combine that with a sturdy tripod and 30-60″ exposures and you are set. Dusk and articifial lights are truly a match made in heaven…I’ll let you be the judge.

And this is about 10 minutes later. I just love how a subtle change in light, gives a completely different look.

Posted on March 23rd, 2010 in Random thoughts | 7 Comments »

Pots of Gold

This past winter hasn’t been a glorious one as far as photography goes in our area. Barely any snow, or ice, or fog, it has been about as plain as you can get.

But it wasn’t all for naught! First, we’ve been getting some fantastic weather of late, very unusual for the season. Mostly, though, the river has been providing a great subject of late with some interesting thaw patterns. In fact I have spent a few days over the past couple of weeks studying a little area a few minutes away from my house, and all I can say is that it’s been a blast.

These two shots were taken on two separate days using a combination of techniques. Both were shot way past sunset as dusk provided some fantastic colour reflecting on the water. For the image below, I got as low as I possibly could to catch as much of the reflecting light. I used a polariser to further strengthen the reflection, then I zoomed out to 300mm at f/22. Even with the small aperture I couldn’t get as much depth of field as I needed so I basically took two images, one focused for the front of the image and one for the back. The two images were then blended manually in photoshop to give the result below.

For the second image, the process was essentially the same but with a slight modification. As I returned to the scene a few days after the first image was taken, there were even more “pots” on the ice than before. Since I wanted to capture as many of them as possible, but still make them an important part of the image, I decided to make a panorama. The final result below is combination of multiple horizontal shots. Each horizontal shot is a blend of two images to maximise depth of field. The resulting blends were then stitched together using photoshop’s photomerge function. I can’t quite remember the total number of shots, but all I can say is that the image below is a crop from an image that would print at 60×10 ” at its native resolution (34mp).

Posted on March 16th, 2010 in Creativity Images | 3 Comments »

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