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Sarah, Lianne, and Leanne, Christmas 2018 When you are young, Christmas is about time off school and presents.  As you get older, it becomes more and more about the important people in your life.  Getting together with loved ones.  Then life changes.  People move, pass on, or are no longer close.  What you are left with are memories. Yet those memories should be an inspiration for revisitation.  Talk to those you miss, who you may have lost contact with, to family members you don't seem to chat with any more.  Get together with friends, family, and neighbours.  Christmas should be more about the present than the past (not presents, you know, the tense - no, not tents, like getting a tent for a present - the present, like the here and now). I love the photo above because it reminds me of when my children were at home and the associations we had with their friends.  We were also friends with their parents and it was always a time of thanksgivin...

I love photographing wildlife from my kayak. I enjoy photography, so much that it has shaped my life in many ways.  And, although I have had the opportunity to shoot across a wide range of subdisciplines, my preferences always take me back to shooting outdoors.  More specifically, photographing wildlife. I teach photography as a home business, and one of the things I tell my students is to determine what their passions are.  I tell them to buy equipment and look for opportunities to explore those things that are important to them.  My focus, of course, is photography, but the idea includes all areas of life. From the standpoint of photography, it means buying equipment that will allow you to step up beyond whatever limitations currently restrict you.  For example, many people own a generic "kit" telephoto lens such as a 55-300mm f/4-5.6 lens that gives them telephoto abilities.  Although this is true, such a lens does not even remotely compare to a good 80-...

Four of my favourite camera bodies I have owned over time. This is a great time to buy a used DSLR camera.  Many camera companies are either replacing their DSLR cameras with mirrorless ones or augmenting their existing lineup with them.  People are selling their older DSLRs off in favour of newer mirrorless cameras, and in the process selling off their lenses too.  That's because mirrorless cameras have a larger bayonet mount than their cousins; you can mount older lenses, but only with an adapter. Consequently, you can pick up used bodies and lenses at reasonable prices.  There is also a larger volume of them available than there would normally be.  So you have got both selection and price working for you.  You don't want to just buy anything though, as you can get someone's problem.  If you don't know enough about cameras, bring a knowledgeable friend with you when you buy.  Consider some of these suggestions: Buy from a reputable dealer or sel...

A mild telephoto, low f/number, and near focus facilitate out-of-focus backgrounds. Depth of field is affected by quite a few variables, but the three that you have direct control over are focal length, aperture, and point of focus.  Sensor size plays a large roll in this as well with larger sensors producing less depth of field than smaller sensors at any given relative focal length.  The above photo was taken with a 135mm focal length prime lens at f/1.8 on a full-frame mirrorless camera. You don't need a really expensive lens to do this, but there are a few qualities you may want to incorporate in any equipment you buy if you intend on getting a nicely out of focus background behind your subjects.  These include: A prime lens versus a zoom lens A lens with a low minimum aperture (f/2 or lower if possible) A mild telephoto (85mm to 135mm relative preferred) A subject that is not too far away (think portrait versus full-body photo) A background that is a good distance aw...

Photographed with a 135mm f/1.8 Plena lens on a Z7ii Nikon camera. I am not much of a fan of gulls, mostly because I find them a pain to identify.  I have included a composite of photos (5 taken from the All About Birds  website) to give you an idea of what I mean (below).  Besides the juvenile, winter, adult, breeding, and non-breeding variations, you also have regional variations and interbreeding with other gull species.  Of course, I have lamented on this issue before. Variations on the ring-billed gull, 5 images copied from All About Birds  website. Ring-billed gulls are more common inland than they are around major bodies of water.  It is interesting that one of the places they are said to frequent are "shopping malls."  Like many gulls, they will eat almost anything they can fit down their gullet.  This is one of the reasons they are often found around garbage dumps.  This is another reason I am not fond of gulls; they are sometimes id...

Chief Sw'kn'cut life-size statue at the waterfront park in Kelowna, BC. Most people will tell you that they rarely, if ever, operate their camera in manual exposure mode.  The reason is simple:  too complicated, difficult to get good photos, and causes anxiety.  And yet, by learning a few simple tricks and turning on your camera's live histogram display, you can take better photos than ever before. I took the above photo two days ago while visiting Kelowna's waterfront park.  I only ever shoot in manual exposure mode now, in both my DSLRs and mirrorless cameras.  The mirrorless cameras have a distinct advantage in that the digital viewfinder allows you to view the image with a histogram superimposed on the image.  The DSLR provides an optical viewfinder and so there is no live histogram available, but if you turn on LiveView and use the rear LCD screen, you can usually incorporate a live histogram display. At the very least you can view an images histogram ...

Winter plumage of red-necked grebe.  135 f/1.8 Nikon Plena lens Photography is about creating an image, and the likelihood of getting a good photo increases with the quality of your equipment, especially lenses.  I am all for saving money but at the same time value quality.  Unfortunately, the two rarely go together. I recently purchased an f/1.8 135mm Nikon "Plena" lens.  It is primarily a portrait lens, used for head and shoulder shots, as its wide-open curved aperture produces the most spectacular bokeh you can imagine.  The reason "Plena" is used has to do with its edge-to-edge sharpness.  Many of the reviews I read stated it was the sharpest lens anyone there had ever seen. Not only is it sharp centrally, it is sharp at its edges, meaning that any photograph you capture will not show signs of a soft focus as you get away from the center.  I photographed a grebe yesterday and enlarged the full image (inset) almost 17x to produce the crop shown....

From left to right:  135mm FX body at f/1.8, f/8, and f/16 If you haven't looked at the above image in full size (it is a HD image), you will be missing something of what I am about to say.  There are three factors that you have control over regarding depth of field on your camera, and all of them have to do with your lens.  These include aperture, focal length, and point of focus. I use the above images to display the relationship between depth of field and point of focus.  In all three of the above pictures, I focused on the second bollard (post) but changed the aperture throughout (I have seven shots, each having the aperture used a stop apart).  You can see clearly that the first image has very little depth of field while the last is sharp from the first post all the way to the gangway. As the aperture gets smaller, depth of field increases.  The point here though is to look at HOW the depth of field changes.  Clearly, it is not equidistant from th...

Shot of my bird feeder from my deck.  Left:  3x zoom (no digital zoom) Middle:  15x digital zoom from 3x camera.  Right - 100% crop from 15x I recognize that smartphone cameras are becoming something of the norm when it comes to capturing images these days.  And as wonderful as they are for shooting scenes about the house or capturing business-related images, they do not have the capability to do extreme stuff well. Take the example above.  I recently purchased an iPhone 15 Pro that comes with 3 cameras (0.5x, 1x, and 3x) and decided to photograph some birds in my back yard.  The 3x zoom is a mere 77mm relative, which in my books makes it equal to about a 1.5x zoom relative to a 50mm lens shooting a normal perspective.  You can, however, zoom in from there, and the phone boasts a seemingly impressive 15x magnification ability which relates to a 404 mm focal length on a full-frame camera body. As you can tell though, the digital zoom capacity is no...

A simple light box setup to photograph gear to sell online. If you have ever sold stuff on eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, Kigigi, or other such online buy-and-sell sites, this will sound familiar to you. You take one or more photos of your item to sell and plug them into a favoured online sales site.  The photos may not be great, but does it really matter?  You took them with your cellphone or perhaps a stand-alone digital camera and then did the work to post them.   The answer is, yes, it matters. I used the above setup to photograph some camera equipment I am selling (in order to buy more stuff - yes, I'm a camera addict).  It is certainly not a professional setup, but its simplicity is outstanding and it produces acceptable results. Better yet is the fact that you can use the setup with your smartphone or tablet; there is no need for a flash, on-camera or otherwise. In this case I used a lightbox I have had for many years and a ring-light made for ce...

Red mite photographed at 1:1 reproduction ratio (RR) on an APS-C Nikon camera with a 20 mm extension tube. There are a number of ways to calculate image size and magnification, but all of them rely on using math.  One of the problems is on viewing the final image because its size will ultimately determine the degree of magnification.  This, however, plays no part in determining the subject's actual physical size.  That process is a much simpler one. In the above photo, we know that the horizontal distance across the image is 24 mm.  We can set up a simple cross-multiplication scheme to determine its actual size.  We need to know three values:  distance across the sensor (24mm), distance across the image (measure in = 508 mm) and the image distance of the subject (36 mm).   Calculating the size of the mite using cross multiplication. The mite's body is 1.7 mm long.  We could also determine the overall distance, distance with legs spread out, a...

I used the boulder as a foreground subject to add depth to the image. Whenever I come upon a lovely scene, something that calls my inner being to photograph, I always look for a foreground subject that will add extra appeal, meaning, or depth to an image.  It could be almost anything, but usually it is something of nature or people visiting the area.  If you want to go for a contrasting scene, you can pick a foreground/background combination that are antagonistic. In the case above, I drove along the short escarpment road until I found a favourable subject.  The rock was perfect as it complimented the rugged nature of the area and the mountainous backdrop.  The trick was to position myself and choose a focal length that would not make the rock either too small or too big in the shot.  In this case, the focal length was 70 mm on a full-frame body. Depth of field can be a little touchy at 70 mm, so I had to use a small aperture and alter the point of focus to exte...

My son Josh and his daughter, Nora. Communication between people, especially those who care about each other, is an important component of maintaining good and healthy relationships.  The problem is that it is difficult to be a good communicator.  Not because we can't find the words, but rather because of the demons and fears that fill each and every one of us.  After all, we are only human. A good example of this occurred when my son's family came to visit us for Kathryn's birthday.  I tend to be a bit of an authoritarian and will try to help them in child rearing by directing their children how to behave.  It has been a sore point between us in the past and it was deja vous all over again on this visit.  And the correction that I received for interfering made me angry. The problem was that I took the reprimand personally, not that I did something wrong but rather that it was my son's personal dislike towards me as a person (stemming from conflicts we had ...

Josh, Nora, Emma, and Chanelle photographed with and without flash. While I firmly believe that fill flash in outdoor portraits improves the final image, it can be said that it is not always needed.  The above photos demonstrates this, as the image quality of both photos colour, contrast, and saturation is good.  The top image was taken without flash while the bottom was. If you look closely, you can see where flash made a difference.  The shadows are filled (look at the necks of both adults), there is a catchlight in the eyes where flash was used, and the clothing isn't quite as dark.  However, if you were to see both photos independently of each other, there would be little cause for criticism, aside from the position of the members. Most of the time fill flash makes more of a difference than this.  Sunny days, bright backgrounds, flat lighting, and shooting in a shaded area all tend to produce better results when fill flash is used.  Nine times out of te...

Kathryn with her two grandchildren on her birthday. I can keep a secret, but not from my wife.  That is, until yesterday, when my son and his family showed up at our house to the complete and utter shock to my wife, whose birthday is today. He had planned this for months, and I was in on it.  "We're coming out," he said, "On November 6, for Mom's birthday on the 7th."  So, I had to prepare for this surprise and not let her in on it.  I had to guard my every word to make sure that I didn't betray the trust I was given.  Months of communication with each utterance being carefully examined before the words were on my lips.  And then there were the actions. Clean the house, floors, rooms, bathrooms, all done without letting on that company was coming.  Shopping, buying goods for the celebration and making sure that none of the contents tipped my hat to the upcoming festivities.  And doing everything a bit at a time so that there was no sense of urgenc...

Photos of a tin taken with iPhone 15 pro at 2x magnification The industry standard since 1992 has been the JPEG, a file format that allows large files to be compressed into smaller sizes.  The problem with jpegs is that they are lossy, meaning that the compression algorithm causes changes in the pixel patterns of the image.  The more compression, the more severe the artifacts.  Examine the image below to see an example of artifacts. In 2015 HEIF files were introduced and have been a popular file format in smart phones.  They are lossless, meaning that there are not artifacts, and is typically a better format for your camera images.  They are also fairly small; the JPEG above (using a compression ratio of 8:1) is about twice as large as the HEIF.   One of the problems with the HEIF format is that many computers cannot open them.  Mac computers all are equipped with the necessary software, but PCs (and probably Linex) do not have it.  However, ...

Mission Creek walkway in Kelowna, BC. Tom, my friend from school, and I were walking along our preferred trail yesterday and were enjoying the colours and falling leaves.  The predominant colour was yellow, but ahead of us was a small mountain ash boasting some wonderfully red shades.  The young tree was much taller than either of us, and its position did not warrant a photo.  However, if my walking buddy could bend the sapling over, it would be in a much more scenic position. The idea here is that backgrounds often provide the sense of where and when, it is the foreground that gives context or subject to an image.  The disappearing path and fall theme are nice, but somewhat empty without a strong foreground.  I could have used a person, a bench, or some other object to draw attention, but I found the contrasting leaves exceptional. Whenever I find an attractive background, I like to supplement it with a compelling foreground.  It often means moving about, ...

A few of the memorable kayak trips I have taken with Charles The center image was taken on Cedar Lake in the Sunshine Valley this year.  Other shots include being on Dutch Lake, the Fraser River, Jack Fish Lake, the Gulf Islands, and a few others I can't quite remember.  Besides all these enjoyable paddles, we have done the Broken Islands (twice), the Red Deer River (twice), a few other rivers in both BC and Alberta, and a host of others. I don't kayak as often as I used to, but every time I get out on one of my boats I am convinced it is the best place in the world to be.  I love the fresh air, the early morning energy, and the abundant wildlife I see.  Many of my best creature photos have come when on a kayak.   There is still a lot I want to do, and I have no doubt that much of it will be done with my buddy.  I do, on occasion, go out on my own.  This is especially true if we are camping near a body of water and I can just stroll down and hop i...

Nene photographed in Maui on a farmer's field. Nene is the local term for the Hawaiian goose.  They are an endemic species and the official state bird of Hawaii.  Like many other endemic species, its numbers were in drastic decline during the 1900s.  In 1952, there were only 30 surviving individuals.  Today there are approximately 2500 birds found throughout the Hawaiian Islands, although Oahu reported only a single pair in 2014. The closest relative to the Nene is the Canada goose.  It has been estimated that these forebearers first arrived on the archipelago about 500,000 years ago and produced a stable population.  In the 1700s there may have been as many as 25,000, ten times more than today.  Their numbers have declined because of predation, mostly from introduced species such as mongoose, owls, and stray cats.   An intense conservation effort and breeding program has helped to bring the birds back from the brink of extinction.  The ...

Common waxbills bathing in Kona, Hawaii. The common waxbill is a native of the African continent, being found mostly south of the equator.  They belong to old-world finches; there are 107 species of waxbill, the common waxbill is also called the St. Helena waxbill.  The name "common" comes from their native South Africa where they are indeed commonly found.  The term "waxbill" is for the bright red colouring of the face and fill which somewhat resembles sealing wax. They are highly social birds, rarely aggressive, and are heavy consumers of seeds.  They also take small insects and feed on greens such as grass, dandelion, and even cucumber.  They are easy to keep in captivity and will even breed. The common waxbill was introduced to Hawaii around 1970.  Since then it has spread throughout all the main islands.  They are not considered invasive as they do not compete with native species for food or nesting sites and are very docile.  I am including ...

Here, in North America, we have starlings.  They were introduced some 170 years ago and have pretty much spread across the continent.  We consider them to be an invasive species because of the negative effect they have on other bird species. While visiting Hawaii a few weeks ago, I noticed that there were populations of the common mynah bird on every island we visited.  I understand that they are an invasive species as well, arriving about 160 years ago by some well-meaning individuals.  In the same manner, they have spread across the land and are causing similar havoc. It turns out that these two bird species have more in common than just being invasive and released to the detriment of native species.  They belong to the Sturnidea, a group of birds that includes other starling and mynah species.   Both species share a number of characteristics.  They are noisy, use cavities to build nests, are gregarious, and aggressive towards other species....