All My Blogs

Canadian tiger swallowtail butterfly, Leduc, Alberta. Although I love good prime telephotos, the truth is that they can be a little limiting, literally.  The minimal focus point is often five or six feet away.  Not a problem with birds, as they rarely ever get that close to you, but it is a different story with my more diminutive subjects.   I recently acquired a Nikon Z 180-600 mm zoom lens.  I have been shooting a lot with it lately, exploring its features and enjoying the slightly longer reach it has over my 500 prime.  It has a similar shortcoming (pun intended), in that its minimum focus point is almost eight feet away at 600 mm.  However, when zoomed in at 180 mm, the focus distance decreases to just over four feet. According to Nikon, the reproduction ratio of the lens remains the same throughout its entire zoom range.  Now, I take exception to that fact because the distances and the zoom values don't align.  At 180 mm, the minimum foc...

Kathryn, Charles, Taylor, Landon, Jennifer, April, and Eric.  Dogs:  Murphy and Randy. Jennifer and her two children, Taylor and Landon, are Dell's child and grandchildren.  Although he has been gone now for some 17 years, his presence is felt through them and the remainder of his family.   We had a whirlwind visit this weekend as Jennifer and her kids came to visit and stayed overnight for two evenings.  We played cards, went to the beach, and reconnected.  It has probably been eight years since I saw them - a lifetime in a child - and it was wonderful spending time together. Neither Kathryn nor I are related to any members of the Silk clan, and yet my connection to them runs deep.  Friendships that span both time and distance have allowed us to remain connected on some level.  My own family is both distant and unengaged.  It's nice to feel the acceptance that comes with family, even if you aren't part of one.  Sitting around the t...

Bottom:  A group of 19 goslings cared for by 3 adults. Center:   Before their swim, the goslings were resting in the shade of a tree.  Top right:  The rest of the parents were on the other side of the Leduc Reservoir preening and enjoying a quiet moment. It turns out that humans aren't the only ones that drop their kids off at day care and spend the day doing something else.   Called a crèche or nursery group, this communal behaviour frees members of a community to get to the business of survival, which in this case seems to be preening.  With humans, it usually means going off to work, but the idea is the same.  Survival comes in all forms. The wild is much less hospitable.  The geese living in human communities rarely have to worry about predation, have plenty of food, and are near various forms of shelter should the worst come.  In the wild, they have to forage for food, avoid predators or gang up against them, or find/make shelter....

Photographed with extension tubes, a 105 mm macro lens, and a macro flash. I have enjoyed making macro photos for over 40 years now, first with my Nikon FE2 and 55 mm macro lens and later with my Nikon D-series cameras, 105 mm macro lens, and SB200 macro flashes.  Somewhere along the way, I discovered that adding an extension tube to my 105 and using a crop-sensor camera added to the system's magnification. I recently switched over to a mirrorless system, so my camera of choice for macro is a crop-sensor Zfc body and Nikon's Z105 mm lens.  I also use extension tubes, about 25 mm, which allows me to focus a bit closer.  Of course, this means that I can't focus at infinity anymore, but I can live with that, as I rarely need it when my mind is set on macro mode.  Of course, I can always pull the extension tubes off if I'm in a pinch. Although you can do macro photography without a flash, my best photos are done with a dedicated macro flash.  There are lots of them ...

Kathryn at Kelowna's Canada Day celebration.  Left:  135 mm @ f/2.5    Right:  f/10 I used a full-frame mirrorless camera and an f/1.8 135 mm lens to photograph my wife on Canada Day.  The high cloud meant there was very little shadow; fill flash wasn't needed.  I took a variety of shots ranging from f/1.8 to f/16.  The two above were taken at f/2.5 (left) and f/10 (right). Depth of field is influenced by many factors, but the main ones to consider are the aperture (f/number) and the focal length of the lens.  Relative focal length plays a role as well when using crop-sensor cameras, although the end results are similar.  The smaller the sensor, the higher the crop-factor.  You get more depth of field at any given relative focal length and aperture setting compared to the same settings on a full-frame camera. Some of my best portraits were done with modest telephoto lenses at low apertures.  At the low end of the scale is a goo...

Kathryn and Eric at Kelowna's Canada Day celebration.  Charles came too. We arrived early to find parking in downtown Kelowna.  It was a good thing, because there were few spots available half an hour before the activities began.  The crowds, initially small, rapidly grew in size so that there was barely standing room along the main pathways within a couple of hours.  The mood was upbeat, the venders and volunteers enthusiastic, and the weather perfect.   There was far too much to see in the four hours we spent walking around the site.  Canada flags were everywhere; we even had them applied to our faces.  Music filled the air, with solo artists and bands adding joy to the upbeat crowd.  There were also upright pianos located at various spots along the walkways where anyone with a little knowledge could apply it to the waiting keys.  Activities for the kids, food, and the joy of living in Canada brought us all together. Snippets of Canada...