photography « The Blue Brick | Photography and Handcrafts by Shireen Nadir

Posts Tagged 'photography'

Photo-Take-Outter Friday #8 – Macro Photography 101

Macro photography is a great love of mine, and a very fun hobby. The best part is that whether it’s spring buds, yarn fibres, glaze details or critters – there is always something to shoot. Bored? Go on out and do some macro. There’s a great shot waiting right in your backyard.

Some of my favourite shots are up there because they capture something that you don’t normally get to see; the tilt of the stars, a birds wings frozen in motion etc. The cool thing about macro is that you’ll always get something that people normally wouldn’t get to see. So, at the least, it’s a fascinating shot every time.

For macro, I use Canon’s 100mm prime f2.8 macro lens. It’s also a fantastic long-range lens and I’ve done a lot of wildlife work with it. It’s not a cheap lens; but it’s worth every penny. It is, without question, the sharpest lens in my kit.

On top of that I use Kenko extension tubes. I bought mine at Henrys, used, for $100. Extension tubes have no glass, but lengthen the distance between your lens and your camera. This enables a lens to focus closer than it’s normal set minimum focusing distance. Kenko tubes come in sets of 3, which you can use together, or individually, depending on the effect you’re going for.

Here is an example of my 100mm lens, with just one Kenko tube on:

Here it is with 2 Kenkos:

And finally, with all 3:

Quite a dramatic change, right? Here it is again:

My tiger lilies with only one extension tube.

With 2 extension tubes

... and with the whole kit n kaboodle.

I’ve done some great critter photography with this set up:

Tips for the actual shooting part:

This lens set up weighs a lot, so a tripod is a good option.
The extension tubes compromise your exposure and you’ll need a longer shutter speed than normal – so bright light is essential if your subject is a moving one.
It can also be difficult to focus when you’re trying to get as close as possible, so what I do is lock my focus as tight as I can get it and then physically move the camera toward and away from my subject until I find that sweet spot for the shot.
Be ready to be patient – shooting outdoors means wind and that means your subject may not stay where you want them, even in a gentle breeze – but when you do get that perfect shot it’s that much more rewarding :)

Just a shot

Published March 28, 2012 Photography 5 Comments
Tags: astronomy, photography

For the next few nights you can see the crescent moon, Jupiter and Venus in a beautiful triangle – just look to the west, right after sunset :)

Creepy Killer Fog & the Price of Good Weather

Published March 21, 2012 Photography 4 Comments
Tags: Fog, photography, toronto, weather

It’s March 21st and a whopping 23 degrees in Toronto. I kept thinking winter might be lurking around the corner waiting to pounce on us, but no, that really was it. It’s nice out and yet it’s kind of freaky.

One sort of B-movie side effect is a thick and persistent fog that’s been coming in off the lake in the evenings and sticking around until well into the morning. I apologize for the image-heavy post, but this was just too beautiful to short-change you on the shots. Behold, my normal western view:

And, the view yesterday evening:

And again, at 5 am this morning – check out the sharp cutoff line on top of the fog.

Here’s the normal eastern view:

And here it was yesterday evening:

It’s like someone filled Lake Ontario with dry ice. Here it is at 5 am:

And just before dawn:

The detail shots are insane. In this one it looks like the fog looks is wrapping it’s tentacles around this unfortunate condo.

And yet a few minutes earlier, that entire building was gone:

The Canada Malting Co. building faded in and out of existence:

Here’s another western view of those condos. Very Blade Runner. I took this just before dawn as well.

It pays to put yourself out there at weird hours. I didn’t even set an alarm, my body woke up at 5 am and said ‘get your camera!’.

I’m pretty sure it’s a result of the dramatic temperatures, which I think are setting a record for March. Beautiful, but disconcerting.

Photo-take-outter Friday #6 – Get the shot you weren’t looking for.

Published March 16, 2012 Photo-Take-Outter Friday! 3 Comments
Tags: night, photography, planets

When I go out shooting I often have an idea in my head of the photo I am hoping to take. The danger is that sometimes I can get so caught up in the shot I want that I miss the beautiful shots around me. It’s like photographer’s tunnel vision. So today’s tip is easy: Keep an eye out for the shot you weren’t looking for.

Last night was a perfect example. I went out at dusk to photograph Venus and Jupiter. Wherever you are in the world, you can see these 2 beautiful worlds, only 3 degrees apart, for the next few weeks. It’s a gorgeous sight. Just look to the west, just after sundown.

I decided to head out to a park just west of my place where I knew I’d get a clear view. The park is an interesting space because with the right camera angle you can make the shot look like it was taken in an isolated area, when really, it’s right in the middle of a condo complex.

I got my shot, and I was thrilled with it :) Then I packed up my camera for the short walk home. As soon as I turned around I saw what I had missed – 180 degrees from this beautiful, isolated shot of the sky was a veritable forest of condominiums, one of which is my home, framing the CN tower perfectly. All I had to do was turn around and look.

Of course I had to unpack the camera and set up again, but I’m glad that I did :) Always keep an eye out for the shot you weren’t looking for!

Studio lights? No… livingroom window.

Published March 13, 2012 Photography 2 Comments
Tags: lighting techniques, maternity, photography, studio

When you don’t have studio lighting, but need to take really great shots of someone, I can’t overstate the usefulness of using a big window. If you’ve got a white room, this can be like putting your subject inside a human sized lightbox.

I needed to do a headshot series for a friend, and also to get my FO shots for “Put a Little Love Out”. We didn’t have a studio space to work in, so I rigged something using the windows in my bedroom and the white sliding doors on my closet.

Jeanette is standing in front of my closet, facing the bedroom window. I have a camera mounted flash, with a softbox on the flash head, pointed up at the white ceiling instead of towards her face. On the bed in front of her is a reflector (read: tinfoil) which prevents any hard shadows underneath her features from the flash.

The results were perfect. The only retouching I really had to do was removing a slight shadow between Jeanette and the closet. It’s a good solution for quickie model photography on the cheap!

You can put that big window to use in other ways as well – here my girlfriend Lynn is posing in front of the window, and I’m using it as a giant lightbox behind her. I’m using a flash in the front with a softbox mounted directly to the flash to prevent her from becoming a silhouette.

In this case, when you use the window behind instead of in front, you get a nice light halo effect around your subject. In soft photography like maternity work this can work out really well for you.

So there you have it – whether you’re doing portraits or just need to get a good FO shot – you might not need to go far to have a great ‘studio’ set up!

The Artful Life

Published March 12, 2012 Glass , Photography , Pottery 5 Comments
Tags: instagram, photography, pottery, yarn bell, yarn bowl

Here are a few photos of my works in progress over at the studio – life has been such a bubble of busyness that making studio time has been next to impossible! I had to get in there though – I promised the Purple Purl a bunch of yarn bowls in time for the knitters frolic next month.

This one is a yarn bell for someone who ordered one from me, oh, forever ago. I’m using the shellac technique described here for the filigree detail.

Next up is a froggie yarn bowl that’s being sent to a convent in Boston. Normally I don’t ship pottery anymore, but honestly, how could I refuse nuns? The lady I dealt with was so sweet I decided to make an exception for her, and what her Mother Superior wanted was a froggie yarn bowl. I’m actually quite flattered by this.

Incidentally, all these photos are being taken with my new instagram app, with which I am hopelessly obsessed. I mean, I’m a graphics professional, you’d think an app with built-in filters and false bokeh would feel cheesy to me, right? But seriously, I love this app. I think the photos are lovely. Of course the baby ferret is my favourite subject matter :)

Other happenings in the artful life include a new series of resin jewellery that’s curing now, a print series I’m doing out of my recent aurora photography and the fact that tonight I’m finally getting in some lamp working studio time after a very long wait.

Tuckered Out

Tito and I are debating about another late night photo shoot tonight to see if we can catch more aurora but after 5 nights in a row of 3am shooting I’m totally burnt out. And it’s a work night. When I was a kid sleep was like bank overdraft; you paid it back once and you were good to go. Now sleep is like a high interest loan, and recovering from too many late nights takes me at least a week ;)

However I’ve got to say that on top of all the other great artsty stuff we’ve got going on those late night trips have been fun. I love living creatively!

Random things concerning the sky

Published March 5, 2012 Photography 2 Comments
Tags: aurora, night photography, photography, skies

First, and perhaps most importantly, check out spaceweather.com. Looks like a decent chance of aurora tonight, so if you live in a northern latitude, keep your eyes on the sky for the next few days! If it stays clear I think Tito and I will head north tonight. Perhaps we’ll luck out again like we did with this gem:

Secondly – there was a stunning halo around the moon last night here in Toronto. Did anyone else catch this beauty?

Here’s what wikipedia has to say about moon halos:

A halo from Greek ἅλως; also known as a nimbus, icebow or gloriole) is an optical phenomenon produced by ice crystals creating colored or white arcs and spots in the sky. Many are near the sun or moon but others are elsewhere and even in the opposite part of the sky. They can also form around artificial lights in very cold weather when ice crystals called diamond dust are floating in the nearby air.

Pretty cool, huh?

Thirdly, I had the silliest nightmare. I dreamt that Tito and I were out on the town without my camera. I looked up and there was the CN tower, during the blue hour, with the milky way glowing behind it, and the northern lights on the horizon. I panicked and needed to run home and get my camera but thing after silly thing prevented me from getting there before the entire phenomenon had faded away. I even woke up mad.

To make myself feel better I photoshopped together an image of what my dream might have looked like in the impossible event of