An Old Hanger On
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These balconies were quite popular for a time and a favoured spot for making your own wine.
Window Reflections
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I tried a bookmark format for these narrow windows.
Modern
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Modern art and an over designed park.
Allegory (Two Photographs)
My e-Book Nature Photography: Making Photographs with Impact is for sale, just click on the title.
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These are photos of elements of the Arthur Erickson extension to the Bank of Canada (it used to be publicly accessible but no longer). I think the photos make a great allegory for the state of the world economy and its complexity.
Mailboxes (Three Photographs)
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It seems my catalogue has a significant number of photographs of mailboxes. I am not sure why I take so many but very often the boxes have some unique style or special lighting. As I weed through them I will post more.
Modern (Two Photographs)
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On this blog I have said that I am no fan of the modern glass and concrete towers that increasingly dominate the skyline. This is mostly because looked at straight on there is not much to them. It takes reflections, clouds and a view from a certain angle to make them interesting.
City Landscape
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I wanted to try my HDR technique on modern buildings. It worked well, with a few issues concerning very tiny details I decided to remove. There is still a school for the wild HDR that focuses on colour tones. But I think that going a more natural route works nicely for the things I like to shoot in town.
Windows (Two Photographs)
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I came across this wooden house just off the downtown core of the city. From my perspective the place looked western and to best capture that I shot a portion of the side of the building where the trellis and windows were the highlights. A piece of the whole telling a larger story.
Modern (Two Photographs)
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I saw something like this in a magazine. I suspect they used a tilt-shift lens to make sure everything lined up ( special manual lens that allows you to change perspective in camera). But I doubt, from experience, that anything lines up these days. Perfect lines just don’t exist. Just as no two balconies mirror one another. It struck me as an interesting view on life.
Homes (Two Photographs)
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Shooting houses is an interesting opportunity to learn what a difference angle of view and other framing options provide. Years ago I was asked to shoot a house that might be rented for an exterior in a TV commercial. I was told they wanted it to look odd and a bit creepy. Great assignment for a teenager just getting into photography. I shot 12 sites I thought might work. I was amused when the people I was working for had a hard time choosing among three of the locations. From that and other experiments, I learned a bit about moody architecture shots, e.g. that the results depend as much on the foreground as the subject.
Beating the Photo Blues (Two Photographs)
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Every so often you get out with your camera and for one reason or another see nothing worth shooting. It happens to us all. One way out is to decide to shoot something plain and simple, mundane and ordinary. This is about as normal a house as I can imagine, candy striped awnings etc. Like finding the perfect flower, finding something generic may prove a challenge but that’s the point; as is getting a good shot. Two of the most expensive photographs in the world are of supermarket aisles and a child’s bike. My intention is not to make a million dollars but to do what I set out to do, in this case architectural photography.
Sidewalk Chairs (Three Photographs)
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I am always surprised by what I find on the sidewalk. Over a few days I came across these chairs and thought they made a great series. You can see earlier posts this week as to how they were processed. I would add that the camera angles I chose were purposeful and intended to add a bit of oddity to the shots.
Brutalism or Compromise (Three Photographs)
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Brutalist architecture, like art nouveau or Bauhaus are loved by some hated by others. I am sure cost is a reason why glass and concrete are so widely used and more complex approaches are history. Of these the standing pipe is a favourite of mine, the brutal windows are simply a bad example of modern architecture, and the wall etching too mechanical to be real art and just a distraction from glass and steel construction.
Doors (Three Photographs)
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On my walks I cannot resist doors, few of which end up meriting processing but a few stand out for their creativity, style texture etc. My fascination probably lies more with the quirky designs than what might be behind the doors.
Another Example of Contrast (Two Photographs)
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They built a modern glass and steel high-rise condo beside an old store. Age is one of the contrasting features. The second contrast is in the colour version between the new grey and old brick. The third is in the detail and texture between the buildings in black and white. Both photos were processed the same but one was converted to black and white with a green filter. What I like about this is that given all the different kinds of contrast, the eye tends to linger on photos like these.
Architectural Detail (Two Photographs)
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This is the ramp at the Ottawa train station. The golden colour caught my eye, and the potential for a great black and white shot came to mind. A bit abstract but interesting. I used a set of bracketed shots to get all the detail I wanted as well as to be able to control the shadows. I am very pleased that it is possible to do realistic shots with the new versions of HDR software.
Logo (Two Photographs)
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Trying something new with back and white using Luminar 2018. Tonality CK now being a legacy application I need to find an alternative. for when I can no longer use it, As I have Luminar 2018 it’s the obvious place to start. Here you can see the image I started with and the final in black and white.
Building (Two Photographs)
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If you read yesterday’s post you will know I am exploring Luminar 2018 and Aurora HDR 2018. These photographs came out just as I expected. The part I worked on the most was exposure. I find in both programs a light hand on the adjustments is much better than big moves. The results are very natural and true to the original scene, with a just a touch more nuance in the light and detail.
Minimalist (Three Photographs)
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I took these wandering around town with my Fuji: the window of a municipal museum that have seen better days, a parking lot wall after a local “Glowfair”, and the corner of a newly finished condo high-rise. This is what happens when I am absorbed by photography, the ordinary looks different.
Stairs and Doors (Three Photographs)
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Montreal has a thing for wonky stairs and doors, making for a lot of great photography opportunities. In the first shot you are looking through a spiral staircase, in the second you see a traditional set of stairs leading to the upper story apartments. In the final colour shot you can see two homes were merged and this lead to an interesting adjustment to the door.
Montreal Doors and Street Photography (Three Photographs)
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Quebec has strict laws on photography and privacy. You can’t photograph people without permission unless they are a very minor and unimportant element of the photograph. I am sure not everyone in Quebec would know the law or wish to enforce it but it’s not worth the trouble to mess with local laws. So in Montreal I have basically stuck to photographing the urban environment and enjoying myself. I’ll be going back for more and shooting in another neighborhood as soon as I can.
Montreal Doorways (Three Photographs)
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Doors are endlessly fascinating and I note a number of groups on the internet share photos of doors on a regular basis. I like the way doors age, break up the geometry and are slightly mysteriouswhen one tries to guess what is just beyond them.
Wall Art (Two Photographs)
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More from Montreal. These pieces of art stand alone and speak for themselves. In photographing them, I left a margin of context in both, and transformed one into black and white. Conceivably next week they may be painted over as wall art tends to be transitory. So from my perspective these photos are a sort of record.
Straight Lines (Three Photographs)
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These are more in my post boxes and numbers series. The issue I wanted to raise is that with all the fancy transform and upright tools in editing programs, they only go so far. One thing about most buildings is that if you look closely enough there are no straight lines. I do battle with this every time and there are always anomalies, sometimes interesting in and of themselves, but often just plain annoying. Worth giving the problem a good go and get as much right as possible. But I would not warp reality to fix it.
Victor Rakmil Photography 