Reflections
Welcome to another instalment, this one will be short. I think I’m getting pickier, which is probably a good thing.
Fall has begun, somewhat early in my estimation. The extremely dry summer seems to have encouraged the trees to turn sooner, and even a shift to damp and rainy weather hasn’t slowed the progress. I’m hoping I still have at least a couple weeks to capture what I can.
On the technical side of things, my wide-angle focus mechanism failed, so that’s in the shop. It seems like bad timing for the fall season, but in some ways it’s a good thing, forcing me to focus on other aspects of photography, such as tighter telephoto shots and reflections. These are from a recent foray downtown, on a quiet Sunday evening:
I love the order of the brick and the hypnotic swirls in the window screens in the next one. However, I need to frame it better. I’m not too worried about always keeping the lines straight, but how much space to include around the subjects still confuses me:
For this one, I liked the reflection of the legislative building in the bottom left window, but in retrospect I should have just excluded the other windows, they don’t really add much:
In keeping with the urban telephoto theme, on a wet rainy morning I went down to The Forks, where the maintenance crews were just starting the day. This shot I don’t think I either framed nor exposed it effectively. It should have been tighter (a consistent issue with me), and brighter, and unfortunately at 2 second exposure the blur of the street sweeper is almost lost in the clutter of the scene, but it’s a learning experience:
Later on, between thunderstorms, I managed to spot the next shot, which is probably one of my favourite shots this year:
Without the wide angle lens the other focus is macro photography. The bees are busy gathering from the last blooming flowers, which are usually meadow blazing star, then goldenrod, followed by new england aster:
Scrounging for aphids…
For this shot, most of the cluster was in shadow, and only one was lit by the sun, I thought it made an interesting contrast:
Finally, I believe the leaves here are from columbines, some of them turn a fascinating shade of purple. Behind them, the ivy turns red:
That wraps up late August and early September. I’m lucky to be going to a cabin near Kenora next weekend, the same one I filled this blog entry with: https://www.jonsphotoblog.com/blog/2017/8/29/minaki-reflections
Hopefully I’ll be able to be up early and improve on last year’s results.
Cheers!
