New Website - Photoblog

I finally decided that I should actually try to fix up my website which was, until this morning, a disaster.

After about an hour of work I had something I was pleasantly surprised with. Alas, you can imagine that this means that my synapticparadox blog will not be as active as it usually is if at all... All of my blog entries from Synaptic paradox have been imported there along with comments people have made. Unfortunately not all my existing blog entries fit the photoblog concept so in some cases there will be pictures ('601' - the Go Train picture) to replace missing images.

The site is currently a work in progress and I plan on having more content on the site than just my photoblog.
Please come visit my new site and let me know what you think:
>> http://www.moniquebaril.net <<

Cheers!
Monique.

and then there was photojournalism...

3:30am, Toronto - The sky is very dark.

I went to a lecture tonight by a photojournalist... I think it convinced me that courses can be unnecessary...

I wish I could sleep or write right now... but I'm wide awake and my mind is all over the place.

to school or not to school...

I've been debating all week whether I should sign up for some photography classes. I've talked to a few people to get their thoughts on it... I'm not completely convinced either way. I think taking courses would force me to accelerate my learning but at the same time could potentially be a waste of money (money that could be spent traveling or buying / replacing equipment and books.)

I've been trying to ask myself what it is that I would hope to gain from taking photography courses... aside from the obvious (becoming a better photographer...) I keep asking myself this question and getting nothing in response.

I think I could learn a lot from taking courses... I could also learn a lot from reading. And I hate the thought that taking photography courses could potentially interfere with my studying Japanese (yes, I'm still studying... I don't give up that easily!)

decisions decisions...


As I was out walking tonight, listening to music, camera hanging off my hand I realized that maybe I like photography because it allows me to see things clearer. This all sounds very philosophical - it isn't. I should probably wear my glasses more often because I've gotten used to everything having somewhat fuzzy edges.

_______________

From last night's late night sleeplessness:

i finally found her...

I wonder what year? 1985? I should really find out. I'm sure I'd stumbled on this page before when I was trying to figure out exactly what this lens was.

for future reference: Nikon Lens Serial Nos - if ever you wanted to know how many of that lens you have are out there and when they were manufactured (and where...)

Black & White Photoshop CS3 Actions

I've put together three sets of CS3 b&w actions. You can download them here. If you do download and try them please let me know what you think... The first two are pretty basic. My favourite is the third. Both in the samples below and overall on other black & white pictures I've post processed, I've found the third one to be the most interesting black and white workflow I have. (The picture used below was selected somewhat randomly for the purpose of comparison of the different actions. Original can be found in my flickr photostream for reference.)

Action 1:
1. Desaturate to black & white
2. Convert to Lab color mode
3. Create a duplicate background layer
4. High pass filter on the duplicate layer
5. Set the duplicate layer's opacity to 30%
6. Set the duplicate layer to Hard Light
7. Apply a curve to the background layer.


___________________

Action 2: (most simple, most disappointing)
1. Desaturate to black & white


___________________

Action 3:
1. Add a Black & White adjustment layer.
2. Add a gradient map (black to white)
3. Add a curve
4. Duplicate the background layer
5. Set the duplicate layer to overlay mode with opacity of 30%
6. (not included - add a hint of gaussian blur to duplicate layer)


___________________

Alas, other than the pictures above I have no b&w pictures for you today... I'm not feeling daring enough right now to post the better of the b&w shots I have.
So instead here's some random DOF fun I had over the weekend.

more bokeh panos

After last night's discovery I've had an itch all day.
I headed to the park tonight to see if I could find anything to shoot.

I didn't find much...



It's really meant to be seen quite large. (A larger version is available if you click through to my flicker page and click the 'bigger' link below the picture.) There are a few other bokeh panos from the park on my flickr page as well.

It's definitely an interesting effect. I like it but I don't know what to do with it just yet. As you can probably tell I'm struggling to find a good subject - at least I'm not taking pictures of my dirty dishes again. I'm on the fence as to whether tonight's are better than the ones I posted here last night... maybe marginally. Still a very high boring factor though. My favourite so far is probably the one posted above.

Alrighty, back to your regularly scheduled surfing.

miniaturizing my kitchen

I just had a moment... it resulted in this:




wide-angle narrow DOF... [These really need to be viewed larger, click through to see.]

I need to try this outside!


Okay, time to take out that trash and eat something.

calibrated = pictures!

I think the computer's pretty close to being calibrated now, still a little over-saturated but not half as bad as it was before. And I didn't have to drop any money to get it set up [just a little time and patience...]

I really like these two candid portraits...






I have to say this weekend I took my time, I only took a few shots and surprisingly they worked really well. I think about 1 in 3 pictures actually turned out okay. I think that's pretty good.


And I just found out that it's photography month on TVO! [Oh TVO, how I love thee!] I'm a little disappointed that I missed last week's shows but now I have a full 3 weeks of TVO to look forward to. [I'm not a huge tv person... but I think this will be good.] They're mostly documentaries I've already seen but it's been about a year since I last saw them so I think it would be really interesting to watch them again. I'll try to hook up my computer to record a few docs... hopefully I can get it set up in time for tonight's show.

photography set-up

I spent about an hour last night doing some basic post on a bunch of pictures I took over the weekend. I was preparing them for printing (someone else will be printing them, not me - I don't print pictures - I don't think my pictures are really meant to be printed... unless they're printed large. I can't actually imagine any of my pictures in a photo album - I think it would be weird - they're just not photo album photos.) Anyway, after I was done I uploaded them to a site and started looking through them on my second computer. They looked okay... but the lights were out in the room and it was very dark. I always wonder how much light I should have in a room when I'm looking at pictures on a screen... I know that when I was at a printing studio they had the lights out and I was sitting in a dark room - not sure if that was because they didn't want to turn on the lights or if they had done that on purpose... (my printed pictures ended up printing darker than I would've liked.)

I came into work this morning and realized that the colour was completely wrong and that they were overall all very dark and unsaturated (and not in a good way.)

I have this problem every time I post process on my main computer. I usually have to run from one computer to the next at home checking what the pictures look like and then re-working them. I can't quite seem to get the calibration right. It's really frustrating.

So I started looking at hardware to help me do screen calibration. It's ridiculous... it seems like such a waste to spend $200+ on something to help me calibrate my screen. But at the same time, this whole running from computer to laptop to computer to my processing computer and re-working pictures is just not reasonable. I've been doing a lot of photography lately and spending quite a bit of time in front of the computer trying to post process pictures... It would be a much more enjoyable process if I didn't have to go through all this running around every time I process a picture. So maybe it's time to invest in this? *sigh*

I'll try re-calibrating it yet again when I get home tonight. Hopefully I can save myself some money by spending some time recalibrating using software and my eyes. Once I'm done I'll post 2 pictures I took this weekend (I'm quite pleasantly surprised with these.)


I'm also in the process of working on making myself a few different sets of black & white post-processing workflows. I have 2 so far - they're pretty basic ones. I had another one that I was quite fond of (and was using exclusively a few months ago but I haven't done it in a while so short of remembering that there was a duplicate layer with some gaussian blur on the second layer I'm lost.) I'll work on trying to remember that one and maybe post all three workflows here once I'm done (both descriptions and CS3 actions). They could probably be useful to someone out there. Stay tuned...

high park from a new angle

I used to train in high park - it was a 5 minute ride from my place. I'd grab my bike, run out the door and ride laps of intervals, racing cars, infuriating cars, trying to beat my best time, trying to keep up with the roadies, getting annoyed at cars that were going twice the speed limit and slowly gaining on me (the smoothest part of that road was where all the right car tires would tread repeatedly... the bike lane was by far the worst.) Going up and down the same hill over and over, knowing its exact distance, my best time, and exactly what it would take to beat it.

I spent a good two summers in that park - riding at least 3 days a week... and I have to say that for once this weekend I saw it in a very different light. I hadn't been there in over two years. It was busy, full of people enjoying the fresh air and the beauty of the park. I don't remember ever seeing so many people out just to enjoy the park. It always felt like people were there with a purpose. Maybe it's just that I was there with a purpose and so I felt others should too...











I've finally had an idea for a project I want to work on. It's completely different than anything else I've ever done and maybe a little abstract. I think I'll work on it for a bit and if I ever finish it I may post it here...

さくら

I have trouble sleeping in the morning... I wake up and then can't fall back asleep. No matter how tired I am, once the sun is up so am I. I can usually fall back asleep after reading a bit... so I shall go try that momentarily...

But first, here is a picture I took in yesterday evening's unpredictable weather - I got to the park and it started raining, I left the park and it cleared right up!



Panic struck earlier in the week when I realized that this was well underway in High Park. I'd been thinking about going to see them (the cherry blossoms) for a long time now and was really scared that with the warm weather I may not get to see them before they were gone. I'm going back on Sunday and hoping to get better pictures.

5.10-

I tried a 5.10- last night. It wasn't particularly hard and if I had better endurance I'm sure I could've on-sighted it. I made it though - after stopping about 2/3s up and then again near the top. It felt good to realize that I'm almost back at where I was before. My fingers hurt today. I've been having problems with my thumb ever since the rubik's cube incident in December...

I also witnessed someone 'drop' their climbing partner a good 15 feet of free fall before realizing what was about to happen. It was pretty horrible and I think the girl who had been belaying was right to say "let's just go sit for a bit" after that climb. Wow. Come on people! If you have someone 30-feet above you and you're belaying them PAY ATTENTION!

I realized last night as I sat at the top of the 5.10-, 3 moves from the top waiting for the guy lead climbing next to me to pass that my fear of heights is completely gone. I think it comes and goes - the less I climb, the more anxious I feel at the tops of climbs... the more I climb, the more I trust the rope and my belayer.

I really trust the people I climb with. Don't worry Mom & Dad - I don't think any of them would ever drop me. And my friend Earl who we've been climbing with is a paramedic anyway. ;)

edit: I got pooped on by a bird this morning. I hear that's good luck.

more on photography, books and flickr

I finally received my copy of The Mind's Eye (Henri Cartier-Bresson) in the mail today!

Exciting! I know! I very quickly - not wanting to cheat on my other books - looked through it just to see what kind of read it would be. It looks promising - very short and hopefully I will learn something from it. It looks like the meat of it will be in his essay "The Decisive Moment" (which is why I bought this book!)



Yes, I'm much too excited about this. This will definitely be my next read after I'm done my current book.


I realized tonight as I was trying to pick my favourite of my group's 5 pictures for the TPMG event that I've actually made a lot of progress since I first started with this camera. I feel like I know the camera fairly well now - I still have some stuff to learn but I definitely don't find myself struggling anymore. I still remember the night I got home with this camera and started trying to take pictures - I was horrified! I didn't remember it ever being that hard with my old SLR!

Anyway, it kind of made me happy to realize that I've in fact made some progress.

That being said I'm having serious second doubts about my post-processing lately and am in dire need of someone telling me frankly what they think of it. I think I'm going to post my 'best' picture from the TPMG event to their forum, ask for some feedback and hope that someone will be honest with me... I found myself looking at other people's pictures from the same event and trying to find what I didn't like about the pictures - too much post-processing here, not enough sharpening there, not enough post processing, etc, etc... and I think it would be really helpful if someone were to tell me this exact thing when it comes to my pictures.


Somewhat related to this - I recently stumbled upon yet another photographer on flickr that I really like: Alfie - I really like his non-studio stuff. I started looking through his stuff again tonight and it really made me want to go outside and start shooting... I have to say I really appreciate that someone else's pictures could make me feel inspired to go and try some stuff of my own. His pictures made me want to become a better photographer, made me want to set goals for my myself and my camera... [I felt the need to blog about this random stranger just to show my gratitude.]

the weekend: photography, food, books

I spent most of this morning reading a book I received for my birthday - Photography: A very short introduction.

It's actually a really interesting read.

Reading about the history of photography has made me question why photography wasn't covered in my inter-disciplinary fine arts course in University. [This was a required course for all Fine Arts students.] We covered painting, sculpture, dance, music, architecture and film... but photography was completely omitted from the course.

To me this seems like a pretty big oversight. It could be that my University didn't have a strong photography prof? That could have been the case. I'd be highly surprised though - we had a very strong Fine Arts program... I'm pretty sure there were photography courses too... And so I really can't help but wonder why it wasn't a topic in the class? Could it be that they didn't regard this medium as having made a significant contribution to the rest of the art world? [I think the whole question about the course I took stems from photography not being recognized as an art form for a long time - most people thinking of photographers as people who push a button and the camera doing all the work.]

I should check to see if they've since revised the course outline for that course...
________________

And with this morning's reading in mind, my pictures today will be more from the vernacular genre than anything.

With the first signs of summer Ryan and I went out yesterday and spent most of the day walking around downtown, enjoying the sun. I took my wide-angle zoom with me - I really haven't been using much else than my 50mm lately! - and was quickly reminded of how much I love wide angle shots. We walked around and found various foods as we walked and had to try them all...


Wanda's Pie in the Sky in Kensington - amazing quiche! Better than the quiche I had in Paris and an amazing salad too (raspberry dressing with strawberries, avocado, walnuts, sprouts, peppers... mmmmm)


Ryan really wanted a miniature cupcake - I think it made him feel like a giant.


Poutine from Craft Burger - *drools* I love craft burger.

this isn't about photography

I went climbing tonight. I've been trying to go on a weekly basis lately. I miss it and I hate that the time I took off last year made my climbing deteriorate so much.

There was a slight sense of relief today when I finally red-pointed a 5.9. *sigh* It's been really slow getting back to this point. 5.7s and 5.8s have been no problem but the 5.9s were just killing my fingers. I can feel the 5.10s are getting closer finally too...

Apparently some of my friends that I've known for years used to climb so my getting back into it has sparked their interest and we've been climbing together.

Anyway, as I was there I was reminded of this little bouldering gym I went to when I was in Tokyo. I really liked that gym. It was tiny but full of people and had all kinds of bouldering problems. The people who worked there didn't speak a word of English but were really trying to help, trying to explain how the problems worked. I want to go back. If I make it to Japan at the end of the year, I plan on definitely going to a climbing gym. I actually still have the membership card for this one so I could potentially go back to this place (I also remember where it was and how to get there.) I have a few random business cards from places I went to in Japan in my wallet - odd, I never take business cards... let alone keep them... but for some reason it made sense when I was there and for some reason I now refuse to take them out of my wallet!

Back to the 5.9s... Story of my life right now. Come on, you can get better so much faster, you just need to try a little harder. Stop being so lazy about everything. I keep thinking that if I actually tried a little harder I could make some serious progress on a lot of stuff. But that sounds like work and I'm just not convinced that it's worth it... I'll get back to trying eventually... I'll get bored of this I'm sure...

Express yourself - TPMG

I finally forced myself to try a TPMG event (after lurking on their site for probably about a year now!)

Anyway. We did a challenge called "express yourself". Everyone was split into groups of 4 or 5 and given a list of 10 emotions that we have to capture. Group members had to be models in the photos. Some of the emotions had requirements such as "with prop" or "with X background".

This whole thing of making expressions on demand is not my thing - it usually turns into me laughing uncontrollably. Luckily 2 other members of my group seemed a little more serious about being models which worked out well. [There are pictures of me doing silly things too... unfortunately, they are on other people's cameras and may now be used against me.]

Here are the top 3 [i think?] pictures that I took:

Disgust


worry [not sure i get the emotion here...]


wonder



This event showed me one big thing - if you ask people if it's okay to take pictures, it's surprising what you'll get out of it. The Wonder picture was taken at BCE place where Katharine Harvey (artist who did the Waterfall at Nuit Blanche 2008) was setting up a chandelier made of recycled materials. We asked if we could maybe get one of our people in the middle and then could take pictures - they surprisingly agreed. Another instance involved an electric bike shop which was willing to wheel out bikes for us to use as props in some of our pictures. We stopped some random people to ask if we could take pictures of their dogs, everyone we asked were surprisingly very willing.

I can't wait to see what everyone else did with their pictures - I think it'll be interesting to see what everyone else 'saw' when they were taking the shots.

On a very unrelated side note: my floor hockey team won 3rd place in the finals on Friday. Pretty crazy! The last game was insanely close - going into overtime with a score of 9-9. We had 3 minutes of sudden death overtime and the players on the floor during the remaining minute would be in the shoot-out if no one scored. Luckily we scored within the first 2 minutes of overtime. It was pretty crazy.

Failed HDR

I tried again tonight. This time I was an hour later. I think I was a little too late because the light was fading quickly. Anyway. As I stood there, laptop in hand trying to get this shot I felt really ridiculous. I think I could've done a better job using just my remote and careful camera setting changes.

And of course, as I was at this corner taking these pictures sirens started sounding all over the place and next thing I knew the building I was taking pictures of was surrounded by a firetruck, an ambulance and a police car. I decided that maybe I should just call it a night.

It was significantly busier than it was on Sunday... All around a poor night for doing this. I put together a few of the shots and they're littered with ghosts of cars and people. Not so good... (I'm also being lazy and doing my editing on my netbook instead of a real screen so it probably isn't fantastic looking).

From Random HDR

I also took a few random shots as I was setting up. Had this one been taken from a lower angle I think it could've been really interesting... I still like it though... (I definitely prefer it to the HDR shots!)

Camera Control

Why didn't someone tell me about this sooner? [oh wait, they did. I just didn't process the information until a month or so later...]

I finally installed Nikon's Camera Control on my laptop and tried it with my camera. Interesting...

It's pretty cool that you can control most of the camera settings remotely through the computer or you can just take pictures while plugged in and have them display right away on screen. I haven't played around with it too much - it looks pretty straight-forward but I wonder whether or not it can do what I would like it to do... I'm going to have to investigate some more...

I'm also wondering how useful a tool this would be... I think I can see myself mainly using it for HDR shots... I guess I could use it for time lapse or night sky shots too (not a huge fan of either of those... a time lapse might be interesting? maybe?) I can do pretty much everything else with my little remote. And even with HDR shots unless I'm at home am I really going to want to be standing on the street with my laptop, camera and tripod in hand?

I guess I could just take pictures of my ear while I sit at my computer.


Yep, I'm officially bored.

HDR

When I get bored I start taking HDR pictures... Also I've been thinking about a building that I've been wanting to HDR-up recently so tonight I ran out, took a handful of pictures and came back. Here's what I have:

Version 1: light is much more evenly distributed... kind of boring but more 'realistic'.

From Monique's Random HDR on Picasa

Version 2: more dramatic but harder to see detail in bottom right

From Monique's Random HDR on Picasa

Obviously, you have to click on them to see them in their true glory (ha!)

If the weather cooperates this week I may be able to actually get the shot I want. It's all about timing and patience. This isn't really the shot I wanted - I was about an hour too early.

Panoramas

I've finally gotten around to processing some of my Paris panoramas. I've been pleasantly surprised so far - having completely forgotten that I'd even taken these.

I meant to do some post processing of pictures today but this panorama thing has taken longer than anticipated - it's a very slow process, especially when you have more than 10 exposures... and yes, many of these have more than 10 exposures (a little excessive maybe).

The seams are a lot more visible when they're so small... also... these are pretty huge pictures (biggest is 11644 x 2487 pixels)







I spent Friday and Saturday scouring the city for something interesting to take pictures of... I couldn't find anything. The winter is lingering much longer than I would like and it's leaving me with this very uninspired feeling. People are still bundled up and hiding indoors. Here are a couple of pictures from Friday's walk.

Allan Gardens Conservatory


He's back with a whole new 'stage'


the most interesting thing I found

"I'm a street photographer not a terrorist"

This may be a little old news but I just found this image this morning and felt the need to post something about it. I've heard of photographers being arrested in London before and having their films / cards confiscated. This takes the cake though.

“Far too many people are carrying and using cameras in complete anonymity and absolutely nobody is keeping an eye on what they are doing with them. This is clearly a threat that makes it impossible for the public to feel safe, and PSICO will go a long way to protect them from dangerous and antisocial photography. We will know exactly who is photographing what, and if there is anything suspicious we can take them off the street.”



In an attempt to ease the street photography laws in London they are doing the following:
1) Forcing photographers to apply for registration to take pictures in a high traffic tourist area of London
2) Forcing them to then wear bright yellow vests with an electronic identifier / tracking device issued by the police.
3) Using CCTV cameras to identify 'illegal camera usage' - apparently the CCTV cameras in the area send out a signal that is reflected on camera lens coatings and can then be used to compare with locations of the electronic tracking devices of registered photographers to identify 'illegal use'.

Read the full article about what London is doing to try to control the epidemic of antisocial photography.

same old...

I realized at some point a few days ago that in order for me to do any kind of photography courses that are part of a program I would probably have to apply for said program and in most cases the application deadlines have passed - well at least for the programs I'm most interested in.

So now I'm not sure what to do.

Ryan has suggested that I just plain old go back to school and add another major to my Fine Arts degree. I hate this idea. I hate it because I know that I would spend forever learning about stuff that I may never use. I also hate it because I know he's right - if I look at many of my favourite photographers they went to school and studied art (surprisingly many of them were painters - I am not a painter. I have not painted anything since grade school and am not about to begin again.)

As I thought about this yesterday I started asking myself what my goals are when it comes to photography and whether or not it makes sense for me to go down this road. I know that I want to take courses - that I want to spend time learning about photography, learning to take better pictures... but I don't know that that's what I want to spend years doing (if I were to go back to University it would take many years as I would still have to work.)

And I think that's an important question.

In the meantime I will look at other options... I have tons to learn... and apparently a lot of time on my hands when I get home - a bad sign is that I've started playing on my Wii pretty regularly - oh no! I received a few photography (history) books for my birthday so I'm working through those along with my usual pop-science reading and attempts at studying Japanese. I wonder whether or not taking photography courses is necessary, whether I could learn more just on my own... (I could buy a lot of books for the price of a course!)
Also I've got another idea which I'm running with right now, more on this in a few weeks hopefully...

another published picture

Sunday 2 weeks ago one of my pictures appeared on Biking Toronto (woot woot!) - how very fitting I figure given that I was once addicted to all things with 2 wheels. [I still find myself checking people's bikes as they ride by and very often, if my camera is wrapped around my wrist will try to quickly snap a shot.]

Here's the link to a page that's now hosting the picture (I never actually got to see it on the actual day.)
Photo of the Day
Not my best picture - but probably one of my better 'back-shots'.

More to come later... [hopefully I'll finish that blog post I've been working on for the last 3 days at some point soon!]

Berlin Pictures

I finally got around to looking at these.

They aren't great. They're seems to be a theme of grey going through them. I've omitted my people pictures as I'm not sure what to do with them just yet. I'm not impressed. I thought they looked better when I was first looking at them but now... I don't know.

Here are a few, more of the same can be found on my flickr site.

Reichstag


Reichstag


The holocaust memorial


This is not an uncommon sight - this is actually one of the main public transportation lines and one of the bigger stations...


Jüdisches Museum


Holocaust tower


Shalechet (memory void) - Jüdisches Museum


Checkpoint Charlie - US Army Checkpoint


Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche


I found a little alley that was covered in graffiti. There were stores if you followed the crazy stairs hidden behind unmarked doorways. I ventured into one of the buildings (and took a few pictures - none posted here...)




there was a courtyard if you walked far enough into the alley


On my last day after going to see Annie Leibovitz's exhibit I went to Fernsehturm (the TV tower - there's a picture of it on my flickr stream). Oddly enough I took this picture quite randomly. Later that night I went out with a bunch of other travelers (none of which were from my hostel!) and we went into a bar in the basement of the pink building in this picture.


And the infamous "apartment alley" that my hostel was located in (I can actually see the hostel in this picture!)



Now comes to post processing... there are a few pictures that I can't wait to work on.

I guess I've been pretty busy this week. I think most of the time has been spent trying to figure out how to keep up the little Japanese I have (I'm back to studying on a daily basis again) - e-mailing various schools trying to find out if they have something available at my level. I'm going to try to find a language exchange partner again too.

I'm also toying with the idea of possibly taking some photography courses. I'm not sure how serious I want to be about this - whether I should be looking at one-off courses or if I should look at courses that fall within an actual program... I feel like I'm kind of plateau-ing with the photography - I need some fresh ideas... I've ordered Cartier-Bresson's book of essays on photography (I can't wait to get it - why is it that good books are always out of stock!?) I'm not sure how much this is going to help me. I have no intention of ever getting into "art photography", nor do I want to do event photography (unless it's an event like november's Movember Gala) but I do want to get better. I need someone to criticize my pictures and tell me how to make them better... what to look for... what I'm doing wrong... what I'm doing well... I have to admit - a lot of the pictures I posted above are pretty uninteresting to me - this is also not the type of photography I want to be doing.