Happy Canada Day 2011

Springtime, a Photo Essay...

High rise living doesn't give you this ability... However I was visiting my Mother-in-law's yard with a garden and was able to shoot this flora. Pentax 50mm f:4 manual focus Macro Lens, some with Pentax Auto-Bellows (extreme close-ups)

[caption id="attachment_446" align="alignleft" width="450"] Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) aka: Venus's car, Lady in a bath, Dutchman's trousers, or Lyre-flower.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_447" align="alignleft" width="450"] Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) aka: Venus's car, Lady in a bath, Dutchman's trousers, or Lyre-flower.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_448" align="alignleft" width="450"] Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) aka: Venus's car, Lady in a bath, Dutchman's trousers, or Lyre-flower.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_449" align="alignleft" width="450"] Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) aka: Venus's car, Lady in a bath, Dutchman's trousers, or Lyre-flower.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_451" align="alignleft" width="450"] Bleeding Heart (Lamprocapnos spectabilis) aka: Venus's car, Lady in a bath, Dutchman's trousers, or Lyre-flower.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_453" align="alignleft" width="450"] Wild Violet[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_454" align="alignleft" width="450"] Blue-eyed grass (Sisyrinchium montanum) it's 8-10mm across on a grass like stalk. Back yard. .75 life size on sensor.[/caption]

Even weeds, like the lowly Dandelion can exhibit beauty.

[caption id="attachment_455" align="alignleft" width="450"] Dandelion fluff[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_456" align="alignleft" width="450"] Dandelion fluff, closer.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_457" align="alignleft" width="450"] Dandelion fluff, back lit.[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_458" align="alignleft" width="450"] Dandelion fluff, extreme close-up, the stalks are acting like prisms.[/caption]

Darrell Larose

Clouds, a Photo Essay...

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Photo essays don't need words. All images were taken at the same location, within a one hour time frame.

Darrell Larose

Homage to Karsh of Ottawa

Selected by Ottawa's Harry Nowell, as his reader's Photo of the Month (April 2011)

“Inspired by Karsh’s famous, John F. Kennedy portrait.

I always liked this study (of Kennedy by Karsh), the fact reinforced when I held this original 11×14 photo in my hand. To see an original Karsh can’t be described. For a portrait photographer it is truly holding the Holy Grail. Karsh used very basic equipment, a 1956 8x10" Calumet view camera with a 1940's 14" (355mm) f:6.3 Kodak Commercial Ektar lens.

My self-portrait was inspired in terms of lighting and the profile. I opted not to be praying but I think I got the lighting close.



I opted to replicate Ilford FP-4 (my personal favourite B&W film), I added just a hint of brown-sepia to emulate Agfa Portriga warm tone FB photo paper.”

Darrell

Playing around with Photoshop

I tried the Photohop "Theshold" adjustment, and got these interesting results. In order of my preference.


My second choice would be,



And my final choice, of the three would be.



These are fun, as in the darkroom days we would have copied the image to Litho film, or made a paper negative and gone numerous generations to bump up the contrast. All time & materials.

Darrell

 

2011 Work

Pentax *ist D, smc Pentax-M 85mm f:2 manual focus lens. Single Bowens Bo-lite studio flash with honeycomb & grid to creat the spotlight effect, self-portrait. I liked the negative space and the tight crop.

So I laid a Fibonacci spiral on the image and noticed that the right eye (viewer's left) fit into the spiral. As seen here.

 

 

 



Divine Composition With Fibonacci’s Ratio (The Rule of Thirds on Steroids)

2010 in review

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here's a high level summary of its overall blog health:



The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

 

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 2,400 times in 2010. That's about 6 full 747s.

 

In 2010, there were 39 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 140 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 28mb. That's about 3 pictures per week.

The busiest day of the year was February 20th with 53 views. The most popular post that day was Sky Fire.

 

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were darrelllarose.ca, networkedblogs.com, digg.com, facebook.com, and slashingtongue.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for darell larose, darrell larose, stieglitz clouds, alfred stieglitz clouds, and darrelllarose.wordpress.com.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Sky Fire February 2010
1 comment

2

Human Form February 2010
5 comments

3

The Eyes Have It February 2010

4

Final Camera Club Slide Competition of 2009-2010 April 2010
1 comment

5

First Visit to Mud Lake May 2010
3 comments