Category: Photos

Last week I got my hair cut. My hair­dress­er, like me, is an ama­teur pho­tog­ra­ph­er. We got talk­ing lens­es, and she said she had a Lens­ba­by but had no idea how to use it. She offered to lend it to me.

I said “Sure!” I’ve been curi­ous to try one out, to see what it could do, but not curi­ous enough to buy my own.

I did some exper­i­ment­ing. It’s not like any lens I’d used before; you focus with two fin­gers, and you can maneu­ver it so that you’ve got a sharp focal point, and the rest of the image is blurred—almost motion blurred, real­ly. It was inter­est­ing to use, but not some­thing I’d prob­a­bly buy for myself. Cer­tain­ly not at full price.

Then last night—Hallowe’en night, no less—I glanced out the win­dow as I was get­ting my stuff togeth­er for judo. After a day of unbro­ken clouds, I saw that the sun had bro­ken through, and was throw­ing gold­en light every­where. I raced upstairs with my cam­era (which still had the Lens­ba­by attached) and snapped the above pho­to, of the trees in my front yard.

I like it. I think it turned out pret­ty good.

Now I think I need to do some more learn­ing with the Lens­ba­by.

On the way home from Win­nipeg, I pulled over and snapped a few pho­tos of this pho­to­genic lit­tle creek.

I think this one might end up being a sub­mis­sion for McNal­ly Robinson’s Man­i­to­ba by Man­i­to­ba pho­to book.

I went up to Rid­ing Moun­tain for the Lights Out event.

My friend Tim was camp­ing up there, too, so I went up a bit ear­ly and stopped in to see him. We went elk bugling—a birth­day tra­di­tion of his—but the elks weren’t hav­ing any of it. Oh well.

After that I went to the park in Clear Lake, where the lights were well and tru­ly out. It was dark enough that, more than once, I near­ly stepped on some­one because I couldn’t see them. Per­fect con­di­tions!

First I snapped some Milky Way shots. This one’s my favourite:

Then I set up for some star trails. I set my timer for an hour, set my cam­era to take 15-sec­ond expo­sures, and sat down on a bench to lis­ten to my shut­ter click.

After sev­en min­utes, the lights came back on. Sodi­um lights, too, so it washed out every­thing, mak­ing the trees and the beach look orange.

So the head­er pho­to is 7 min­utes’ worth of Earth’s rota­tion, instead of the hour I was hop­ing for. Oh well. It still turned out pret­ty good, I think.

Prints are avail­able. Con­tact me for details.