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Helicopter ride over Niagara Falls

20120908-000433.jpgThe Niagara Falls is one of the most photographed tourist attractions. This means that taking pictures of the Falls is very easy, but finding a somewhat unique perspective is quite challenging. On both the Canadian and the US side of The Niagara river downstream of the Horseshoe Falls are multiple viewpoints that would yield a descent photo provided that the Sun is not shining directly into the lens and that the photographer can find a break in an endless stream of tourists taking their own photos in front of the backdrop of the Falls. From the standpoint of commercial or creative photography, the problem is that this photo would be nearly identical to thousands of other images taken by the tourists from the very same viewpoint.

20120908-000320.jpgIn the Sun Tzu’s spirit of turning a challenge into an advantage, the issue of uniqueness can be side-stepped by including the tourists in the frame and making them an integral, if not the main, feature of the photo. This adds a human element and can also add quite a bit of commercial value for a travel photo, particularly if the subjects are fit and of middle-to-advanced age (apparently, this is age group is the main target segment for the publishers of travel brochures).

In this image, I liked how the girl in a rainbow-colored dress and the actual rainbow could be captured in the same frame.

Ultimately, to take a unique, or at least not a cliché, photo of an iconic sight, one needs an uncommon vantage point. In the case of the Niagara Falls, one option is to take a helicopter tour, which provides an opportunity for some aerial photography. A company called Niagara Helicopters operates from a small airfield located approximately 15 minute by taxi from the Rainbow Bridge. A 15-minute ride over the falls costs about $115, including a discount offered through a hotel’s concierge.

During the tour, I took photos, including the one at the top of this post, with a 24-105 mm lens mounted on a Canon 5D Mark II. I also strapped a GoPro camera to my head and let it run continuously throughout the ride. The result is this movie:

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Clouds over Russia

5DM2_MG_2244_07-13-12-Edit-2.jpgAfter a week of brutal heat wave, when the temperature almost never dropped below 30 degrees Celsius, rain storms suddenly came over the Central European Russia. Svetlana and I shot this time lapse of the brooding clouds while taking our daughter for a walk during our trip to Voronezh. I attached the GoPro HD Hero 2 camera to a fence and set it to take 5 MP photos every 10 sec over approximately 30 minutes.

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Victoria to Dublin in three minutes

_MG_2858_01-17-10-Edit.jpgTravelling with our 8-months old daughter from the West Coast of Canada to Ireland turned out to be much easier than we expected. I think that from the title one’s standpoint, the day turned out great, because she was held by her mother or me most of the time. From our side, we were lucky that when the cabin pressure changed during takeoff and landing, she wanted to eat, and swallowing probably helped her equalize the pressure on the eardrums. Overall, she handled the trip beautifully.

Along the way, we shot little bits of video using an iPhone 4 and a GoPro HD Hero 2, which we attached to the stroller during our flight connection in Toronto.

Here is a 3-minute clip that starts with our daughter trying on her earmuffs at home and ends with us waiting for dinner at Bewley’s cafe on Grafton Street in Dublin:

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New technology, old habits

20120604-000526.jpgThe technology keeps developing, but old habits die hard: I noticed that I kept liking my finger before swiping a page in iBooks. While that is certainly a tribute to the realistic e-reading experience, I am afraid somebody will need to come up with a lick-mark resistant screen…

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Time lapse movie: an hour in a child’s day

20120530-185543.jpgAfter exchanging the Contour+ camera for the new GoPro HD Hero 2 (the push-button interface of the Contour+ was just too inconvenient), I set up a test, again using my daughter as a model. She was hanging out with her toys, while my wife and I did some housework. I aimed the camera at the baby and let it roll for an hour, taking a still picture every 1 sec. The camera was set to “wide” (170 deg field of view), and the image resolution corresponded to 5 megapixel sensor size.

To assemble the images into a movie, I created a new iPhoto library on my MacBook Pro and imported all pictures into it (about 3000 files altogether). After that, in iMovie, I imported the stills into a new project, setting the mode to “Fit”, disabling the default Ken Burns effect, and setting the duration of each still image to 0.1 sec.

The entire clip was initially 6.5 minutes-long, and I edited it down to about 3.5 minutes. I wanted to keep the final clip as short as possible, but found it very difficult to cut it down – as a parent, I find my daughter’s every smile and gesture adorable and just cannot get rid of the otherwise rather boring footage.

The result is this clip:


Note that the image above was not taken with the GoPro. It was shot with a Canon 5D Mark II with a 24-105 mm lens.

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POV video: sports or family movies?

20120525-015930.jpgA common advice for using point-of-view (POV) video cameras is to experiment with a variety of camera placements and angles. After all, the main advantage of the POV cams is their ability to be installed where the conventional cameras cannot fit and/or survive (helmets used in various sports, surfboards, motorbikes, etc.)

Actually, my plan for the new Contour + camera is to use it on my motorcycle. The first experiment, however, was to let my 7-months-old daughter lay her hands on the camera. This was the maximum amount of extreme action that could be readily arranged in our living room. The result is this 1-minute clip.


Perhaps, documenting my daughters adventures will be the main use for the Contour + ? It is interesting how various projects often develop into something quite different from the original idea. For example, my wife recently pointed out, that our interest in travel and portrait photography stemmed from the interfacing an SLR camera with a telescope for astrophotography – something that we both wanted to do but never actually did.

P.S. The image above was not taken by the Contour +. I used a Canon 5D Mark II with a 100 mm macro lens.

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Zen and the art of iPad painting

Svetlana and I were walking with our daughter Anna in the Mount Doug Park on a typical Victoria afternoon (light rain interjected with sunshine) when I took a picture of a wall of cedar trees with my iPhone. The bright green leaves were catching the sunlight, and I thought it would be fun to play with layers in the Brushes app on my iPad to try to replicate this effect in a sketch. Transfer of the reference photo to the iPad happens automatically if the Photostream feature of the iCloud is enabled. Later that evening, I made the sketch, by creating separate layers for the inking, the background, the tree trunks, the dark leaves, and the highlights. I tried to complete the entire sketch quickly in order to preserve the spontaneous impression of the scene.

Actually, I find the ability to endlessly adjust a digital painting to be a double-edged sword. One needs to be able to decide when the painting is finished. In fact, the painting needs to be declared finished at a certain point. Otherwise, the perpetual process of refining it would become and infinite source of frustration.

The painting of the sakura was done using a neat app called ArtRage. This app also incorporates layers, similar to the Brushes app, but the distinguishing feature of the ArtRage is its ability to realistically simulate various watercolor and oil painting techniques, from dry strokes to wet-on-wet painting. Realistic rendering of watercolors is particularly challenging in a software, since the algorithm needs to take into account transient drying and wicking effects. The ArtRage simulates various paper textures and also keeps track of the amount of paint applied to a specific area, which allows for some very realistic effects. The downside of this is that the app uses a lot of memory, which sometimes causes it to crash. (Save often!). I was in the middle of a pointillism-inspired painting of the flowers, when the app crashed, and the layer with my beautiful sakura flowers was gone – a symbolic Zen experience, which was appropriate for the subject of the painting, but exceedingly frustrating at the same time. (Save often!!!)

Click on the images to see larger versions or visit my Art gallery.

 

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Spring at the Beacon Hill park

The Spring came to Victoria and we spent a great sunny afternoon at the Beacon Hill park. I really enjoy this park in the downtown Victoria since the first we came here in 2003. The horticultural significance of the gardens is in the way the hill that gives the park its name shelters the plants from the buffeting ocean breeze. This layout makes it possible to cultivate plants from drastically different climate zones, from tropical to alpine, in a single, compact park.

Anna was sleeping in here stroller, while we wondered around the petting zoo and photographed a freshly-painted totem pole that is claimed to be the tallest in the world (127.5 ft = 38.86 m). It was carved by Kwakwaka’wakw artists Mungo Martin, Henry Hunt and David Martin.

See our Victoria gallery.

 

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Cliffs of Moher – photography on the edge

The 100 m high cliffs of Moher are one of the most spectacular and most photographed sights in Ireland. Because they are located on the country’s West coast, choosing the ideal lighting for photography is somewhat challenging. In the morning, the face of the cliffs is in the shadow, and in the evening, the sun is facing the camera (assuming the photographer is standing on top of the cliffs). Still, evening lighting offers plenty of opportunities to photograph the cliffs if one is willing to walk along the edge outside of the official observation zone to create an angle between the camera viewing direction and the setting sun.

It should be mentioned that walking beyond the protected area can be really hazardous, especially in inclement weather. In fact, at the end of the observation area, there is a little memorial for those who lost their lives at the cliffs and an inscription urging people not to wonder around the edge.

The danger of falling off the cliffs is quite real. The path that follows the edge is narrow and slippery. Although it was neither rainy nor foggy on the day of our visit, the cliffs were buffeted by some of the strongest winds I have ever experienced. Once or twice, sudden gusts forced me to stumble a couple of steps towards the cliff’s edge – a very unnerving experience.

The gusty wind also has detrimental effects on the sharpness of photographs, as it causes the camera to shake, even of it is mounted on a tripod. This problem is easily remedied by using slightly shorter exposure times and taking multiple shots, hoping that at least some of them will be sharp.

Please follow the link to see our photographs of Cliffs of Moher.

Keywords: Moher.