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Cat Eyes Before & After

Published August 26th, 2012

The cats were in a pretty loving mood when we returned from our week-long trip to the Maritimes. I managed to get a few captures of them before they returned to their usual, troublesome selves.

This one is my favourite shot; they don't tend to sleep on the bed at the same time. I did a lot of work in Photoshop to bring out the eyes and face of the black and white one.

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Playing with Fire

Published August 26th, 2012

During my recent trip to New Brunswick, I was looking forward to try and reproduce this shot of a campfire, one of my favourite shots on 500px. There is not exactly a lot of space to make a fire in Toronto, let alone photograph it before being cited for having no campfire permit, so I was really looking forward to my first attempt at photographing flame.

I took dozens of captures and was pretty pleased with them at the time. When I finally got them onto a computer, I wasn't as happy. Again, what I was trying to get in focus was a little too fuzzy for what I was going for. This lead to some creative use of the crop tool.

This is my favourite capture so far. I've used two different processing approaches and I'd like feedback on them both.

At first, I tried cropping out all but the embers, which I liked. Adam pointed out, however, that he would have liked to see where the fire was going. I liked this idea, too, and went on to remove some background distractions. Since I was removing di ...

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Getting better at Photoshop

Published August 2nd, 2012

I've been trying to improve my processing and photoshop skills lately, and the videos by Aaron Nace of Phlearn on the 500px blog are helping a lot. I tried the most recent tutorial this morning, and in about two minutes of photoshop, I was able to dramatically improve one of my photos.

This took a very little amount of effort, but I just didn't know what I was doing. And now I do :)

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Honest Ed's Photo Walk

Published July 29th, 2012

My friend Debbie and I did a photo walk through Honest Ed's last week. We got some froyo afterwards (necessary to recover from the sheer existential horror of all those amazing deals) and were joined by my wife for some nighttime shots of the outside of the building.

Honest Ed's markets itself as a "World-Famous Bargain Centre", though I hadn't heard of it prior to Toronto. I live a few blocks away from the store. It's been a part of Toronto for over sixty years, and the late owners were very philanthropic to the city.

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Pushing Things Further

Published July 15th, 2012

I've begun playing around with Black and White effects on my photos. My friend Tom has suggested pushing things even further, and has given me some tips on how to achieve certain effects in Photoshop.

What I like about Black and White is the ability to draw attention to certain aspects of a photo by removing unnecessary details (like, say, colour). Roland Shainidze has also been doing some amazing work in removing details from photos.

I am experimenting with taking things further than I have - to push the boundaries of what it means to be a photograph versus what it means to be art. I'm not terribly interested in keeping my photographs "pure" or anything, since I'm using photography as a means of creative expression.

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