To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.comThe Heron only had to do one thing, stay awake. Yet over the course of a few seconds he went to sleep. I am not sure if he found me boring, had been fishing too long or had flown from a great distance, but still it was rude!
To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.comI took this in the early fall when the weather was still agreeable. Everyone has complained about the relentless cold and snow. Spring cannot come soon enough. While last year we could put on cold weather gear and double bag our cameras, it has been, for the most part too cold even for that.
To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.comCities are not static, they change; commerce changes and even major name stores go out of business. Montrealers might recognize this as a former Steinberg’s grocery store (and yes I put the apostrophe back just to be politically incorrect). This background will be meaningless to most who see this photograph, which opens up an interesting area for discussion. I contend that even if a photograph tells a story it may not be the same for everyone; the photograph needs to stand on its own with its own internal story of color, texture and composition. If I am successful my photo is of interest to two audiences: those who know the history and those who do not. Either way I will have succeeded and be very pleased.
To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.comI read an article about respecting the nature we photograph and I could not agree more. For those of you who have seen my work, I prefer a natural setting. I do most of my shooting in protected nature reserves. I like to shoot my subjects in context. Getting the lighting, texture and composition right is more difficult when your subject is not enticed, corralled or otherwise affected by significant human impact. That being said my presence directly in front of my subject changes their perspective, attitude and actions. Putting aside Heisenberg’s Principle of Uncertainty and Quantum Mechanics, both of which teach that seeing something changes it, this is as close to natural as I can get and I believe as respectful of nature as I can achieve.
To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.comIn the nature reserve where I spend most of my time there is one spot where everyone stops, it’s at a bridge crossing a small inlet. One map calls it Turtle Bay but it’s about 50 to 75 meters across, so I doubt international law would permit calling this a bay, let alone an inlet. It’s a great place for photographers to meet and for a large part of the year there are things to shoot. This heron’s youth made it fearless enough to ignore us. This series of photographs was a bit difficult. I was worried about the background, the camera’s focus being confused and getting a good exposure. Most of the frames I shot suffered from issues in one or more of these areas. It is easy to get color castes shooting birds under these conditions. As well it’s hard to get sharp images while trying to keep the background as much as possible out of focus. Most nature photographers will tell you to take a lot of shots, recalibrate, take even more and then do it over again. It’s good advice.
To view more of my photography please click on www.rakmilphotography.comBees are not entirely single-minded and are busy as the saying goes. They don’t usually follow a set pattern, but will work a flower for quite some time. Bees have predators like ambush bugs, but for the most part when you see a bee collecting pollen, it will be there for a while and you can wait for it to get into the best position. Their eyes are unique. I like to get some catch lights in their eyes, otherwise their faces lose definition. This is my last bee of 2014, I hope the season this year is a fruitful one.
To view the gallery of Urban Details please click on: Urban DetailsI am an avid reader of everything photographic; I take a lot of it with a grain of salt, especially when the aim is to sell something. Many articles write about what to do if you cannot think of anything to photograph. It’s often described like writer’s block. I think many of the suggestions to cure the problem are excellent like going for a walk and taking pictures of anything of a specific color, or a photo every twenty feet. Photography is about seeing things and being curious and some days you will see nothing worth the effort. Photographs are inspired, something catches our eye and we work with it. That is not going to happen every day. Some days we just hit a wall.
