Creativity

Breaking the Rules…and your turn now.

March 22, 2011 by Younes
A lot of people, including myself, are always talking about breaking rules to expand your photographic horizons, yet, we just like everyone, we often fall in the same traps of routine and habit (if only to maximise chances of success or “save time”). However, I find myself continuously amazed at how much more I like the “rule-breaking” images compared to my more “regular”, “run of the mill” pictures. When shooting landscapes, I will often find myself pulling my wide-angle lens and/or only going out at certain times of the day. This week-end’s shoot was an exception, and I am that much happier for it. I had been sick for a few days, and despite the conditions being the no-nos of landscape photography (read: big bright sunny day at midday), Amanda and I headed out to shoot some waterfalls. Yikes. Waterfalls!!!  You know how you’renever supposed to shoot them in direct sunlight? Only shoot them when it’s overcast or even raining? Yeah, well forget about that. We headed out anyway.

Icicles on the dunlop trail – (Click on image to buy print)

Now don’t get me wrong, my reflexes tend to be of the strong variety, so needless to say that I headed towards the shaded areas where I could easily control the dynamic range. In fact, I spent most of the shoot there. However, as the sun rose higher in the sky, I found myself fighting for real estate faster than you could say it. Instead of packing it in, and calling it a day, I quickly switched to shooting ”light scriptures”. As light shines directly on water rippling down the waterfall, long exposures allow you to capture some intricate and lovely calligraphy-like light patterns.

Water calligraphy – Specular highlights on the surface of the water create fantastic opportunities to make abstract images in midday light – (Click on image to buy print)

But that wasn’t enough, as we headed down the fall, we came across these delicately lit ice-covered rocks that seemed to glow like jewels at the surface of the water. The high contrast between those shiny icicles and the shaded areas around it made them the winners of the day for me!

Avoid midday light? Or not. This image was captured as the sun rose to its zenith. – (Click on image to buy print)

Now, to the your turn part: I’ve been writing this blog for the last 2+ years, and it has mostly been a one sided affair. I think this is the time for me to turn over to you and hear what YOU want. Are there particular topics you would like me to cover?
  • Would you like to see the work of other photographers featured here?
  • Links to photography related business?
  • More how-tos?
  • More Why and How features (i.e. here is why I shot this image and how I achieved the look I was looking for)?
  • More Photoshop/post-processing stuff?
I would love to hear your thoughts.

Cool Water (not the one by Davidoff)

February 15, 2011 by Younes

I love wide-angle landscape photography as much as the next guy (just in case you haven’t noticed). So when I am standing in front of a great scene with that rare beautiful sunset/rise on the verge of exploding, it is a natural reflex for me to put my 16-35mm lens on, set up and simply wait for the light to materialize. However, notwithstanding the fact that 9 times out of 10 the light fizzles out leaving you with nothing but unfulfilled promises, I have to admit that this type of photography can taste rather bland. You see, the one thing that makes photography so exciting for me is the challenge aspect: how can you come up with a new twist on a scene, what can you do to get the shot that not only satisfies your sense of aesthetics but also has that sweet taste of “victory”? I have to admit that while wide-angle photography will often give me aesthetic pleasure, it rarely quenches my thirst for the challenge.

I have been to this location countless times. In fact at least 10 times in the month of September alone, trying to get the right light, the right composition. On one occasion, while waiting for those conditions to materialize, I decided to forego my 16-35 for a few moments and concentrate on intimate compositions with my telephoto. Lo and behold, I had so much fun, I could have spent the entire afternoon shooting just that 1 square meter area! Here, I wanted to take advantage of the setting sun’s reflections on the fast moving water and contrast its golden colour with that of the water in the shade. To add even more interest, I chose to make the V-shaped rock the centrepiece of my composition. A semi-slow shutter speed allowed me to capture the “light scripture” on the water surface as well as the splash of water hitting the rock. A few trials were necessary to nail down the right balance of all these elements, but I am pretty satisfied with the end result. What do you think?

Into the vortex

February 8, 2011 by Younes

Regular readers of my blog already know that I am a Frank Gehry unconditional. The guy is just brilliant. The Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) has been on my to-do list for sometime, but my visits to the centre of the universe were few and far between. So during my last visit to Trawna (or Toronto if you prefer), where a certain person I have some common affinities with resides (I will come back to that later), I took the opportunity to shell out the requisite $19.50 to visit the place. And what a place! The piece de resistance is the wooden staircase which winds its way up the gallery. This is what the staircase looks like from below, looking up.

Now, this visit also happened to be a massive eye-opener with respect to my image-making technique…You see, I am a big tripod guy. I firmly believe that the tripod allows you to slow down your process, take the time to pre-visualize your image, take the scene in, etc…tripod is also vital to get tack sharp images, in particular when light isn’t as available as you’d like it to be. To me, this is sacrosanct. Period. Except, as I have come to find out, it can get in the way of the very essence of what you do as a photographer: make images, images with impact. The certain person I mentioned earlier takes a more liberal approach to her photography. She does what needs to be done to get the image. Period. So if that means hanging off a cliff with one hand holding a tree and the camera dangerously teetering at the tip of her fingers, that’s what she’ll do (well the cliff hanging is more my specialty, but you get the drift). This is how she came up with viewpoints and images that I didn’t even know existed, let alone try to previsualise them. As I don’t really take her seriously, I quickly dismissed her technique and moved on…Nah, not really. In fact I went completely heretical and started flailing my arms, camera in hand, randomly shooting everything around. To my utter dismay (:P) the results were pretty interesting. See for yourselves…

The bottom line: don’t get hung up on techniques, rules, pre-conceived ideas or well-meaning advice. Simply go out there and remember to have fun and let your imagination run wild.

Blowing smoke

June 9, 2010 by Younes
It’s funny how much fun making smoke photographs can be…had I only known earlier…

I made this image as I am preparing a new magazine submission for next fall. Not only is it a blast to shoot, but the post-processing part is even more fun as you can let your imagination run wild. Love it!

201006 smoke encens plume-2b

Pots of Gold

March 16, 2010 by Younes
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.

201003 ice water fire-1

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).

201003 britannia ice river frozen pano crop

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