Apple eating kid

Last weekend I made it out with the photo walks group. We lunched at a Vietnamese restaurant on Gerrard near Broadview. After the meal we all congregated outside the restaurant, preparing for the afternoon portion of the walk. This little girl was watching us from her parent’s car window while munching on an apple. I noticed her and figured there’d be no way she’d sit still for a photo, so I just swung around and raised my camera and snapped off a quick shot. Sure enough, she squealed with delight and slipped back into the darkness of the car. I would have liked to have captured her in better light but you take what you can get, right. She was cute as a button.

So I’m off this week but really that’s only on paper. I’ve been busy as hell since Sunday. Looks like tomorrow I’ll finally get the last of the stuff I need to get done, done. Then I can finally begin to enjoy my vacation. There’s something to be said for taking off two weeks at once, since you can invest a bunch of days to chores and still have a bunch left to relax. Right now it’s looking like I’ll have Friday through Sunday — three out of ten days off with nothing to do. That’s the most time off I’ve had in a very looong time.

Sunbrella Day

I too this shot this time last year, when I was on vacation. This is from Chinatown. The ladies selling their veggies on the street aren’t too keen about being photographed so you have to be a bit sneaky about it.

Old City Hall reflected

That’s Old City Hall in the background, with the reflecting pool out front of our current City Hall in the foreground. I took this near the end of April when it was still cold out. Thank baby Jesus those days are over now.

I haven’t posted in a couple of days because someone from my past started following my blog a week back and I am absolutely not comfortable with that. I don’t really know what to do. I thought I had control over who follows me and who does not, but apparently I don’t. I can’t cut her from the list. The problem now is that I do not feel comfortable writing anything personal anymore. I’m still trying to decide what to do but I think I might have to say goodbye to The Lazy Photographer. It’s a big decision since I’ve been doing this for coming on four years, but there’s no fun in it if I feel self conscious every time I post something. Worse yet is I had someone I do not know try to friend my on Facebook a few days ago and I had to decline that, since I am now paranoid it might be this person. She was told years ago — like ten — that I didn’t want anything to do with her and I thought that was the end of it until she tried to contact me through this blog on Mother’s Day. If I am forced to start another blog I will have to take far greater care with hiding my identity. In the meantime I may not be posting regularly anymore.

Square vs rectangle composition

I took this shot down in Chinatown last summer. The first photo is uncropped, while the second one has been cropped to a 1 x 1 frame, which is basically the frame size commonly used with medium format cameras. Personally, I feel the second image works best. The reason is that the man and his bike are not centred and instead the composition uses the rule of thirds. What’s that, you ask? If I were to divide the frame into three equally spaced columns I’d end up with two vertical division lines in the photo, right? Now, if I then divided the frame into three equally spaced rows, I’d end up with two horizontal division lines, right? The photo would be divided into nine squares. However, there would be four points where the vertical and horizontal lines intersected in the photo. You can draw this on a piece of paper to get the idea, if you like. Well, when composing a scene, it’s common to try to place your subject into one of those intersections, like I have in the second shot. If you look at any of the portraits I’ve done, and think about the rule of thirds, you’ll often notice my subject’s eye lines up with one of the two upper intersections. That’s not by accident.

Anyway, if it’s a tad confusing, please forgive me. It’s late and I’m tired. Here’s a link to a better explanation. Next time you’re out shooting, even with your iPhone, think about the rule of thirds when composing the shot. Better yet, try centring your subject in the first shot and then recompose and apply the rule of thirds to the second shot and see which is more pleasing to the eye.

Moose lamp at F1.4

I have a 50mm F1.4 prime lens that I’ve only used a couple of times. I keep meaning to take it out on a walk one day but I hate being limited to that focal length. For those not in the know, a prime lens means there’s no zoom to it. You want to zoom in, you do so by walking closer to your subject. Wanna zoom out, walk backwards. All you got is a 50mm lens. My street lens is a zoom with a range of 24mm on the wide end to 105mm on the zoomed end. Anyway, this is a shot of the base of a small moose lamp in my living room. At F1.4 (the widest aperture) the depth of field (amount in focus) is very narrow. I was trying to focus on the moose’s eye but missed by a tad. I should have stopped down to F2.0 or F2.8. The image would have been sharper and a the depth of field (DoF) wider (meaning more of the moose’s head would have been in focus). But I was interested in seeing just how narrow the DoF would be at F1.4. It’s pretty darn narrow.

The more you stop down (make the opening of your lens smaller by increasing the F stop number), the wider your depth of field. When I shoot in the street I often shoot at F5.6 or F8, which gives me a good depth of field. If I want to ensure my entire scene if in focus (subject and background) I’ll shoot at F11 to F16. Landscape photographers often shoot at F22, since they are dealing with objects in the foreground as well as distant mountains and clouds. At F22 pretty much everything is in focus. For portraiture, you want to be shooting at a wider aperture (smaller F stop number). I’ll often shoot at F5.6 down to F2.8, depending on my distance to my subject and the focal length. I want my subject to be in sharp focus by the background behind him/her to be slightly or sometimes heavily out of focus.

So, the rule here is simple. The larger the f-stop number (F11-F22), the narrower the lens opening and the broader the depth of field (amount in focus). The smaller the f-stop number (F1.4-F5.6), the wider the lens opening and the narrower the depth of field.

Blanket Face Upside Down

This one dates back to last July. It was taken during a walk with the photo walks group out in the west end. Not sure why someone would see fit to leave a blanket draped over a railing like that, but there’s no guessing when it comes to the reasons people do the things they do. Me, I can’t imagine owning a blanket with a face on it; that’s just too creepy. Maybe that’s why it was discarded. Anyway, it’s a puzzler.

 

Skyscaper in wide angle

This shot date all the way back to 2011. I really have to get out with my wide angle lens again soon. It’s always a treat for me.  The tall building in the photo is the Scotia Tower (I think that’s what it’s called).

Well I didn’t get out with the camera this weekend, unfortunately. I did cook up a storm this afternoon, though. Had barbecued chicken over a quinoa salad, which was over baby spinach and field greens. Man it was tasty and filling.

Roof top sunset watchers

I recall this shot from last summer. I was out with the photo walks group and man was it a hot one. We’d finished walking through an Little India Street Fest and stopped at a local pub to cool down over some beers and eats. On my way out I noticed these four people on a roof watching the sun set (at least it seemed like that’s what they were doing). The hard part of composing a shot like this is deciding how to deal with all the negative space around your subject(s). I like to use my subjects in a couple of ways. Usually I like to have an odd number of things to look at, like three or five, but never too many. And of course I like the subjects to be interesting, that pretty much goes without saying. But during that moment when I’m composing the shot I like to look at the weight of each subject and object in the frame and try to set up the shot in a way where there’s a pleasing balance of weight to the eye. Sometimes that balance can make or break the shot. At the very least, it can take a good shot and make it great. In this case I had almost nothing to work with so I decided to sort of use the negative space of the sky as a backdrop. What else could I do, right? It was either going to be the sky or the wall and since they are sort of looking up I figured I’d give them something to look up into. Anyway, long story short, I hope you like it. Have a good weekend.

On another note, I am seriously considering another camera. Something small and good for street shooting. I might go for the Fujifilm XPro2 when it comes out (rumoured in June). The XPro1 was a terrific camera but plagued with a lot of issues. The thing about Fujifilm, though, it they tend to learn well from their mistakes and the next generation usually fixes most of the issues. The new X100s is vastly superior to last year’s X100. I’d even buy one except it’s a fixed focal length lens and I like the flexibility of a zoom. The thing about a fixed focal length lens, though, is you really learn about composition. In this case the X100 and the newer X100s are a 35mm focal length (in full frame terms). That’s not bad but also not great for portraiture. Anyway, the Xpro2 is an interchangeable camera system meaning that you have options around which lens to use. That for me is more appealing. We’ll see in a couple of months.