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As a still photographer, I rarely take video.  However, I wanted to play with the video features offered by my iPhone 15 pro.  I had never tried the slow-mo feature, but at yesterday's game it seemed to be a good thing to do.  I recorded at 720p - a large but not full-sized video that would keep up and download times short.  The result was satisfactory - as long as I kept the videos short. The slow-mo feature works by having the camera record at 120 or 240 fps and then playing it back at 30 fps.  Older iPhones record at 120, so the speed is reduced by a factor of 4 while newer iphones (12+) record at 240, so the speed is reduced by a factor of 8. I probably shot 20 minutes or so of video.  I also did some stills with my iPhone, but they weren't as good as the ones I shot previously with my DSLR and mirrorless cameras.  I did discover one interesting thing.  You can take multiple frames by pressing the shutter button in photo mode and dragging it s...

Josh and Leanne circa 2001.  At the beach during a camping trip. The natural world is an amazing place.  It is full of all kinds of wonders and things to discover.  A caterpillar on the finger, a butterfly on a flower, or a bug in the water.  Each living thing holds its own beauty and celebration of creation.  And to explore them, all that is needed is a bucket and a net. Although electronics have taken away much of our children's curiosity about the living things that make up our surroundings, there is still the opportunity to get them interested in nature.  You don't have to be there, but it helps.  It is important that children learn the value of nature, to be gentle with the creatures they handle and to learn something of their natural world.  It helps to show them that you are curious about it too and that learning is something you can spend a lifetime doing. Whenever I have been on a walk with my kids, we always would explore what was around...

John's Family Conservancy near Kelowna, BC.  Which format do you prefer? Landscapes, horizontal compositions, are called that because they are often used to photograph outdoor natural settings.  Portraits, vertical compositions, are likewise because they are used to commonly photograph individuals.  However, A landscape can be shot in portrait format and a portrait can be shot in a landscape format; it's entirely up to the creator of the image.  Hopefully, that made some sense to you. Although it's true that I shoot landscapes horizontally as a normal means of composition, I do occasionally like to mix things up a bit and shoot them vertically.  Much of it depends on the scene and what it is I want to achieve.  For the above photos, I decided I would use the foreground tree as a significant subject and shoot it in both formats.  The results are both good, although I like the portrait presentation better because it makes the main subject all the more ap...

It was our third game.  We were the X-men (actually, team  χ - the Greek letter chi - being the chi-men, which sounds more like a spice than a baseball team) and playing against a team much younger than ourselves.  The final score was 28-9, and we weren't the 28.  I brought along my Z7ii and Plena f.1.8 135 mm lens which allowed me to shoot at very low apertures and very fast shutter speeds.  The image above was at f/1.8 at 1/1000th of a second. Looking at the above photo, do you think the runner was out or safe?  The image was actually falsified as the ball was not where it seems.  If you look at the image below you can see the original, the one a moment after it, and where I got the ball from. This was the photo a moment later.  So, how is it possible that the ball seems to be in a much different position - it should be closer to the mitt, not further away.  The truth is that the first image had the ball copied from the above one and pasted...

Male and female Brewer's blackbirds photographed at Munson Pond, Kelowna. Too small to be crows, ravens, or grackles, these birds may seem hard to identify to some.  The blackbird moniker is somewhat misleading as the males actually have a greenish iridescent tint to the body feathers; it's only the head that is really truly black.  And to top it off, the males also have a bright golden eye.  The females are relatively dull, a flat brown colour with a black eye.   The species is very hardy and can be found in most environments.  It thrives in regions occupied with people and undisturbed nature equally well.  They cover most of the North American continent, with the exception of the far eastern states and provinces.   These blackbirds, like their other kin, feed on a wide variety of foods including grains, seeds, and insects.  They will take protein in other forms too as they have been seen taking frogs, nesting chicks, and small rodents....

View from John's Family Conservancy with (above) and without (below) a polarizer filter. Whenever I am shooting landscapes, especially scenes of nature involving water and sky, I like to have a polarizer filter on my lens.  Although the effect of such a filter is more dramatic when clouds are either absent or sparse, even cloudy days benefit from its use.  Blue skies become more vivid, water loses some of the reflection, and the land loses some of the day's blue cast.  The effect the polarizer has on the image relies heavily on the time of day and your angle to the sun. Photos from Akoara, New Zealand.  Above - with polarizer.  Below - no polarizer. You can see from the photos above that a polarizer doesn't always have the same dramatic effect on a scene.  The images on the left show a significant difference with the colours of all the elements being strongly affected.  The shots on the right show only subtle changes; the most dramatic being the colour...