So ...hi?

Its been a long time since I posted. It strange how the longer I go without posting the more I feel guilty about not posting and the harder it is to actually post something. Its like I've waited so long to post something it now needs to be monumental. But I also think it ties into how my brain works at this time of year. Its like the movie Groundhog Day where there's this repetition. For me the scene goes like this: The leaves fall off the trees. Everything turns brown. I go into a funk. I get a bit of snow and cold and I hunker down for winter waiting for a shot to magically appear in the warmth of my home. So I don't shoot as much. The quality goes down. My confidence wanes. It gets tough. Its this time of year when I am glad I don't pay my rent with a camera because I'd probably be homeless and hungry if I did. I've probably plugged this Zack Arias video a few times on this blog (edit: Hmm..just once). Zack pretty much describes how I feel but gives me hope at the same time.
 I know I'll get out of the funk but it isn't going to be easy.

So here I am. The beginning of December and the funk is here with me. But I haven't been entirely idle and I have made shots I have some pride in.

I had one idea for a photojournalism shot involving coffee beans for a while and I finally accomplished it.  Fun idea and I am pretty happy with how it turned out. I'm also happy I learned a few things during the process.

My wife and I also went to Vancouver for a quick vacation. Its hard to believe that was over a month ago. I'm happy to say that I got a few shots. I still haven't really looked at all of them but I'm happy with a couple I took.

Not too shabby I'd say. Maybe not my best work but it certainly isn't my worst either. I guess I can shoot and weather be damned I can take some pictures.  I guess that's the thing with these funks. They really are all in your head.

Turn around

My wife and went to Banff the weekend of September 24 -25 for her half-marathon. It was a beautiful fall weekend and we had incredible weather. You really couldn't have asked for a better weekend. I would have like to go out shooting more but I was there to support my wife in her run. However, we were staying over night in the town so it created an opportunity for me to get out for some sunrise shots.

Moraine Lake is one of the most photographed lakes in the Canadian Rockies. (Probably only second to Lake Louise).  I've shot it a few times but never at sunrise. I got there plenty early, climbing up the rock piles in the gray pre-dawn light. I set up my tripod and took a few shots. Ho-hum. Not a lot of color or dramatic lighting. I took down my tripod and was going to leave when I began a conversation with another photographer who was shooting there. She said that her best shots the day before came after sunrise. (Which somehow seemed counter-intuitive to me but anyways...) I was just about to put my tripod back up when another photographer asked if he could setup right in front of me. I said that I was about to put my tripod there. He decided to use the spot anyways. I firmly but politely indicated that I was going to shoot there. He moved on and I finished setting up.

The light show I had hoped for didn't quite happen. The light was nice enough and there was a bit of color in the sky. I got my shot. Just like everyone else does.

Moraine Lake - Banff National ParkThe "Iconic" shot

Then I turned around and looked the opposite direction. The skies were a lot more dramatic. The vista was incredible. Added bonus? Though I am probably not the first to take this shot, it would be a lot harder to find one to compare mine to.

Moraine Lake RockpilesThe "Other" Way

 
The first shot? They're a dime a dozen. Heck, here's the Flickr search if you want to compare.There's a lot that look like that first shot.


Maybe the next time someone wants to take my spot to get their iconic shot I should let them do me the favor.

Ethereal Photographic Art Show

Sometime this spring, Hiroaki Kobayashi asked if I'd be interested in submitting some prints for a gallery. Naturally I said yes (I mean why not right?). Well its crunch time now and I'm getting prints made, canvasses stretched and basically getting everything together. Sure, the gallery is a few weeks away but like any event the last few weeks are always the most stressful. I've also had a couple of bumps that have added to my stress. I uploaded the wrong version of the one image I wanted to print 16" X 24".  It was grossly undersized for a print this large. Fortunately, this mistake didn't cost me as much as I thought it would and oddly enough the print turned out quite well considering how undersized it was. Still, it was something that stressed me out for a couple of days. Hopefully everything else goes smoothly from here on.

The Ethereal Photographic Art show will be held at the Resolution Art Gallery in Calgary from October 11th though 29th. The opening reception is on Saturday, October 15th from 5 pm to 9pm. Its going to be a great display of emerging and top photographers in Southern Alberta.

Check out the web gallery at http://www.widebrightpass.com/GalleryExhibition/Ethereal-Photographic-show The gallery's website can be found at http://www.resolutionartgallery.com/welcome.php (our exhibit isn't on their site yet but should show up in the coming days).

Lots of stuff happening!

Its been "Go! Go! Go!" for me over the last few weeks. Last weekend I went to Dinosaur Provincial Park and got some great shots. The badlands are rugged but also so beautiful.

This weekend I hope to get out hiking somewhere. If I don't for some reason, I still have Lake O'Hara to look forward to. Andrew Petti, a friend from the Foothills Camera Club, had the foresight to get us into the hostel in Lake Louis on Thursday then we're off to Lake O'hara early Friday morning. We'll hopefully get two and a bit days of good shooting there. I had a lot of fun last year and I hope that I can get some great images.

I am also excited to say that I have a link to a great series of e-books on this site now. How to Photograph the Canadian Rockies was one of the best photography /guide books I have ever purchased. The newly updated e-books have more information including GPS locations.  By clicking on the link above and buying you'll help support this website and little ole me AND get some great information in the process. Everyone wins!

More film fun - Ilford HP Plus

I have been waiting to get my roll of Ilford HP5 Plus back from London Drugs so I could share my images and talk about the experience of shooting with it. I got it back on Monday after almost three weeks. In fact, let's maybe talk about the more negative part of the whole experience first before going to the fun. (Pun not intended).

So yes.  Almost three weeks to get my film developed. I wasn't expecting one hour or anything like that but I was expecting it to be sooner than that. Alright, its film so I can probably overlook that. When I got the call and picked up my package however, I was floored by the price. Developing, printing, scanning and the CD for the images with tax was a grand total of $52.42. If I include the price of the film ($7.65 with tax) this takes me to over 60 bucks. I am pretty sure a mistake was made because rolls I have had developed in the past were around half of that. 34.95 of that total is for the prints which they apparently charged 99 cents per image for. I am not sure why they asked if I wanted 1 or 2 prints and failed to mention that each would cost my 99 cents.

Then I had a look at the images and it appears that a) they made their prints from the scans and NOT the negatives b) they made contrast adjustments to the images. I can kinda see why they would make contrast adjustments but I am really angry that they made the prints from the scans and not the negatives. Had I known this I would have elected to get no prints and just go with the scanned images. If there was anything I wanted to be printed I'd do it myself or send it in at that point.  On this point, I may go in and raise a ruckus and get it done right.  Suffice to say I won't be getting them to do any more rolls for me.

Update (July 29th, 2011): I went in today to raise my ruckus. It wasn't much of a ruckus I have to admit and I did learn a bit. Am I doing a retraction? Nope. However I cleared up a few things that I'll put in here. First off the prints were from the negatives. Secondly the cost for the prints was indeed 99 cents per print. They used to be 79 cents so London Drugs was kind enough to credit me the difference.  I should have realized this before but London Drugs has another company do their black and white prints and processing - Custom  Care in Vancouver. What I found interesting is London Drugs charges me 99 cents per print. Custom care will develop my roll for $5.50 a roll and prints appear to be $10.75 for a roll of 36. I'll have to look into this some more.


Which brings me to one more point before I carry on to the happier part of this post. I am going to have to learn how to develop my own film. The only thing stopping me before was a fear of messing up a roll of good shots. However, if I can do it faster and cheaper myself and have control over the process why the heck wouldn't I? If I botch a couple of rolls learning how to develop my film so be it. I guess I need to give myself more credit and know that I can probably figure it out and not botch any too.  In fact I think there's a link on this very page to the section of Ilford's website that talks about this very thing.  And on that note...I'll put my happy face on again. :)


Shooting black and white is a little challenging in that you have to try to see your subject in monochrome. Some subjects work well in black and white. Others do not. I find that landscapes and architecture work really well while portraits have a nice classic look to them when shot with black and white film.  For all of my shots I used my Nikon N8008S for the body and used my 50 mm f/1.8 (as opposed to my 50 mm f/1.4 I did with my last batch of slide film).   For a lot of my shots I used a red filter to try to achieve greater contrast in the skies.

The results are far more subtle than my digital images converted to black and white. These two images are of the Alberta Art Gallery in Edmonton. There is a slightly different perspective but you can definitely see a difference between the two images.

Alberta Art Gallery - Ilford HP 5 Plus

Alberta Art Gallery - Nikon D90 image converted to black and white in Silver Efex Prod

Interestingly enough (and I admit this grudgingly) London Drugs did rescue one or two of my shots. I had one of the falls at Big Hill Springs Provincial Park that I had grossly underexposed that they managed to get a decent enough image from the negative. It lacks a lot of contrast but aside from that it is a usable image.

A better exposed version of the same scene

A salvaged under exposed image

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this roll. On the one hand I got some pretty interesting shots. On the other hand, it cost me an arm and a leg and some of the results were skewed by London Drugs. I have another roll sitting in my fridge but I think I will wait until I am ready to develop it myself before shooting with it.

To check out all of the images on the roll check out the set on my Flickr Stream

iPhoneography

Like many photographers, I pack my camera with me pretty much everywhere I go. Great shots are all around us and you need to be prepared. Even so, there are times when I want to take a quick picture but I don't want to dig my camera out of my bag. For these occasions, my iPhone is perfect. At 4MP I can get a decent shot. Certainly it has a small sensor to stuff those pixels into which affects the quality but sometimes good enough is good enough.

The other thing I like is that it has integration with photosharing and social media websites like Twitter, Facebook and Flickr. My creations can be shared immediately but they can also easily add a visual element to what I am sharing.

Camera+ for the iPhone

The iPhone also has a lot of different apps so I edit my shots in creative and interesting ways that I may not even attempt with Lightroom or Photoshop. A lot of the effects tend to replicate old film but some of the effects are more modern. Camera+, Instagram, Hipstamatic, and Photoshop Express are a few of my favorites. 

High Contrast scenes like this one are difficult to capture with any camera.
The in-camera HDR option allowed me to successfully get this shot though

I also like the in-camera HDR that the native camera app allows me to use. The iPhone has limited dynamic range so high contrast scenes are hard to capture. The HDR option allows me to compensate for this to a certain extent.

One small feature, which actually made me decide to get the iPhone instead of the Google Android is the flash. Yes it's right beside the lens so it's not ideal but it does allow me to add a bit of fill light. One knock against the iPhone is how it performs in low light so the flash helps. I haven't tried triggering another flash with it so I am curious to try.

The iPhone isn't going to replace my dSLR however it's good enough to act as a point & shoot and give me another way of expressing myself photographically.

Check out my iPhone images on my Flickr steam

Shooting babies in front of their moms! Eeek!

Catchy title but not as bad as it sounds. Perhaps it would be better stated to say that I took pictures of baby geese instead but what the heck. I may as well go for the cheap laugh.

All kidding aside, this was a great shoot back in early June. The babies are a lot cuter in the beginning of May but I didn't get out at that time unfortunately. These guys were in their "tweens". Now that we are in July, they are definitely gangly teenagers and are starting to get their feathers so they look awkward and a little ugly. Kinda like human teenagers I would say.

The goslings are pretty much an annual event for me. To be honest, they all look the same but its hard to resist sitting down and watching them. There are certain subjects that I find interesting to shoot and the goslings are one of the big ones. I haven't tagged all of the shots I have taken of them but I probably have about a thousand or so frames of their fuzzy yellow cuteness.

Black and White is sometimes right

I've been shooting Ilford HP5 plus film for the past week or so. Naturally I haven't got any examples because the roll is still in the camera with eight or so frames left. This weekend, my wife and I went up to Edmonton for a run she was doing and it was a great opportunity to shoot some of the buildings in the capital city's downtown.

Naturally, I also brought my digital camera with me and I was pretty pleased with the images I got. For fun and because I was inspired by shooting black and white film,  I processed some of my favorites using Silver Efex Pro. The program does great monochrome conversions and can emulate a number of well known black and white films. While I didn't try the HP5 option I was pretty pleased with the results.

I always find it interesting how you can get different looks with monochrome by changing a few settings. I remember when I used to process image I would select grayscale if I wanted to do a black and white image. Heck I didn't even know about desaturating to get a black and white! I love the graphic look I get whether its via the channel mixer in Lightroom and Paint Shop Pro X2 or the filter options in Silver Efex Pro.


A great book to learn about digital black and white photography is Michael Freeman's Mastering Black and White Digital Photography. You can also check out the eBook The Power of Black and White over at Craft and Vision for $5.

Some of my other images from this weekend can be found here.

Velvia - I made a prediction but how did it turn out?

Last week I made a prediction about how my Velvia slide film shoot would go.  And in terms of what I wrote, all three predictions were correct. Sorta. The first 16 were indeed keepers. I did end up tossing a couple of shots that came after I wrote my prediction though. Apparently shooting 50 ISO film with a telephoto at dusk isn't really doable at least hand held. Despite this there were only 2 that didn't make the cut. You can check out the set on Flickr here.

My exposure did turn out to be pretty good and there weren't a lot of noticeable exposure problems which I am quite pleased with.The images did indeed have rich colors. I don't think the digital version actually does the slides justice but then again I got the low res scans. If you compare the image above to the one in the set you can somewhat see what I mean.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the results. The old 50 mm f/1.4 I used for most of my shots is pretty soft especially wide open but it seemed to suit the images I got. I think I am going to try using my 50 mm f/1.8 next time as it is far sharper and its only 1 f-stop slower.

Digital? I don't need no steenkin' digital!

Following a personal trend that I have been following the last few weeks, I went out shooting today. My wife was at the spa in Kensington and she suggested going to Riley park to photograph the flowers. What a great idea! I had a roll of slide film I wanted to use and bright colors tend to work well with slide film. Interestingly enough, though I packed my dSLR with me the whole time I did not shoot one frame with it. Every shot I took was with my film camera.  So right now I have nothing to show for today. Very sorry about that. I know it sucks coming to a photo blog and there's no pictures but they are coming. For now I want to predict what I got though.

First off, as mentioned previously, I think the slide film is really going to show off the colors well. I was using 50 ISO Fuji Velvia which is legendary for how much it makes colors pop. Of course, the subject matter doesn't hurt either.

Secondly, I think that despite the bright day, I handled the exposure well. There is no way of knowing until its developed but I was extra careful with the exposure. Certainly, slide film doesn't have the latitude of dynamic range that color negative film has but I made sure I didn't have any excessively contrasty situations. I shot in the shade when I could and made sure there wasn't anything overly bright or dark when I couldn't shoot in the shade.

Thirdly, I shot about 16 frames today and I think that I am not going to have to junk any of them. I got my exposure correctly and I careful with focus. There were a couple of frames I shot where the wind was moving my subject but I was patient and I waited for the wind to die down. I took my time to get interesting compositions too so they should definitely be more than snapshots.

Its interesting but when I shot film back in the days before I shot digital it was pretty much a crap shoot. I'd load a roll of film and snap until I ran out of film. Most of the time I got an OK shot but a lot of times it was just plain bad. There were even a few times where I hadn't even loaded the film right so I got nothing. It just goes to show that taking the skills I've developed with a digital camera are certainly applicable to the film world.

Commitment to the Shot

One of the photographer's in the Foothills Camera Club made reference to being committed to the shot - doing whatever it takes to bring your vision to life. It makes sense because that it is probably the biggest difference between a snapshot and a great image.

The best shots are the result of planning, preparation and committing to getting everything in place to give your camera the best chance it has to get the image the way you, the photographer, want it. And really is this much of a surprise? With any endeavour the more you put into it the more you get out. Whether its scouting a location or finding the perfect model or getting up with the sun you have to not only want to get the shot but you have to put effort into the getting it. Just because the actual exposure is often measured in tenths or hundredths of a second, doesn't mean you can't measure the effort of getting the shot in terms of hours, days or even weeks and months.

An example of this was a shoot I did yesterday. I have photographed Vermilion Lakes a number of times, at different times of day and at different times of the year. On one level its kinda "been there done that" but I still find I can get markably different and unique images so I keep heading out there. Thus far, for all the times I have been out there I haven't shot the lakes at sunrise.  The challenge, however, at this time of year is that sunrise is especially early. Try 5:29 am local time. Added to this is the fact that I am about an hour and a half or so from Banff and of course a sunrise isn't something you want to arrive "just in time" for.  So in light of this, my day started at about 2:50 am.

So my personal commitment to this shot meant getting up extremely early and driving a fairly long distance to get the shot. I even got my feet wet to get my tripod and camera in the position I wanted.  The image I wanted deserved this commitment though.

Yousuf Karsh: Regarding Heroes

I finally got to check out the Yousuf Karsh exhibit at the Glenbow Museum here in Calgary. I have to say I was amazed and its unfortunate I didn't get to see it sooner.  Like most people I have seen a number of his images but to see them in person, full sized on photo paper was unbelievable.

Karsh emigrated to Canada from Armenia as a teenager at the age of 17. After working for his uncle in his studio, Karsh  apprenticed to H. Garo  in Boston. In 1931, Yousuf Karsh opened his own studio in Ottawa and ten years later, he photographed Winston Churchill creating an image that truly ignited his career as a photographer.

Winston Churchill - Image from Wikipedia.org 

Karsh's images draw heavily on film noir atmosphere and dramatic lighting. Looking at his images online you see the deep shadows and the simple non-distracting backgrounds. Seeing it in person you get an even better appreciation of this.

I was also struck by the prominence of the subjects hands in his portraits. It was interesting how much importance he put on them and you really got a sense of the character of the person.

This exhibit is definitely worth checking out before it ends on June 15th.
http://www.glenbow.org/exhibitions/

Shooting for the Special Five

Each year the Foothills Camera Club here in Calgary has a competition called the Special Five. You are allowed to enter one picture for each of five themes. (You could theoretically enter one shot that conveys all five themes and though it has been suggested its never actually been done). I had some shots in my collection that could serve but I wanted to get something unique for the competition. Here are three images that I shot this weekend for the competition.

Abstract - "Lyrical Destruction"

This was probably the most interesting shot and despite the work, it was pretty easy. I took a dead CD and beat it with a hammer and cut and scratched it with a pair of scissors. Next I put a couple of drops of grenadine and olive oil on the reflection surface. My SB600 to camera right provided a flick of light which showed off the crazy colors. I got in nice and tight with my macro lens to (hopefully) disconnect the viewer from what the scene really is and transport them to this place.



Eye(s) - Mechanical Iris

Again, I had a macro in mind with this. This shot actually had a few incarnations in my head but eventually I decided to go off the beaten path and hope that the judges were open-minded enough for my interpretation.  To add to the idea I decided to color the aperture blades in Lightroom 2 to make them look more like an iris.

Isolated - "Inmate for a Day"

This was another quick setup. Hudson gets put into his kennel each day when my wife and I go to work.  Suffice to say he really doesn't like it. I wanted to convey his feeling of isolation in this shot and wanted to make it look prison like. (Now I feel guilty for putting him in his kennel.)

I put my SB600 to camera right near the kennel and more or less killed the ambient light I had in the room. In Lightroom I cooled the shot off and boosted the contrast to really give it an edgy look. I was going to remove the water dish but as soon as I opened the kennel Hudson made a run for it. My dog is nothing if he isn't smart.

My latest iStockphoto reject and what I (and you) can learn from it

I submitted an image to iStockphoto a few weeks ago that I thought would possibly be a good seller. Sad to say, it got rejected. I've shown the image to a few people and generally people wondered why it would get rejected. When you look at the image at around 25% there's not a lot wrong with it. At least not from the layman's perspective.

 

Reviewers look at images a 100% though. Unfortunately if there are any issues they will be glaringly obvious at 100%.  The first item they mention is artifacting. In the case of my image it was from digital noise. I believe I shot the image a 1600 ISO. If you click on the image below you can see that there is a fair bit of noise.

The other issue they had was with focus. I had to disagree a little with this one but once again when I viewed the image at 100% I could see that my focus was not on the candy or even the fingers but rather on the upper part of the hand. That being said, I recall that the writing on the candy itself was blurry which might explain why the reviewer thought the image was out of focus. Regardless of whether it was because of being out of focus or bad printing by the candy maker the bottom line is that the part that needed to be sharp was blurry.


The last issue was with the "overall composition" of the image. That I couldn't disagree with. Their explanation went more with the shadows and the overall exposure. I have to admit that while it wasn't bad it certainly wasn't great. I also think that the background, while not distracting also wasn't useful in most applications. It had a definite color cast to it (pumpkin orange - yuck) and  there was some odd shadows in the background that limited the image's usefulness. I also had my subject just below dead center in the image.

So naturally there is a lesson to be learned here. Simply stated I need to start thinking like a reviewer. Now in hindsight, I personally thought this was just an okay image and nothing more. I did however get a few hits for this image on my Flickr stream from Google searches which was a big reason I decided to upload it.  While it conceptually it was good, though,  the execution was suffering. All in all however it was a good image to learn from.

The Challenger Disaster - 25 years later

Sometimes I find it amazing what events have occurred in my life time. One such event was the Challenger space shuttle disaster. I was in grade six at school at Ponoka Elementary  when  I learned about the shuttle explosion. I remember feeling stunned and shocked. Being a 12 year old boy I was fascinated by the space program and for some reason I thought that NASA was infallible, that there was no way a shuttle could simply blow up. But it did. The 7 crew members died that day on January 28th, 1986.

The Big Picture website as some pictures that really hit home for me.

Kauai Remembered

I was reminded today that my wife and I flew to Kauai one year ago. The island is so beautiful and the people are so friendly. I can't describe the connection I feel with the places we saw and the people we met there.

This image was taken right across the road from the condo we stayed at. If I could do the trip over again I would have stayed longer of course but I would have also gone snorkeling more because it was so much fun and we had a great location right here. 

Hot Wheels!

I had an idea for a fun little project and its been cool to have it evolve from the concept in my mind to an actual image. One of the upcoming competitions for the Foothills Camera Club is Digital Creative where not only is digital manipulation allowed its encouraged. My thought is, why not do the wild and crazy stuff in camera? Okay, so this idea I had wasn't that wild and crazy but for the folks at the FCC its certainly off the beaten path.

I had in mind taking a picture of a Hot Wheels car on a mirror with two parallel lines of flames extending from the tires. I wanted more of an orange flame so I had to come up with something that was flammable that would burn the color I wanted. I thought of using hand sanitizer but since it has a high alcohol content it would burn blue. (The gel itself, it turns out is quite conspicuous in the shot too.) Along my travels this weekend I came across a cleanser called "Goof Off" which is basically a alcohol and petroleum based solvent.

Sunday my wife and I went to the mall and I made a stop at Toys R' Us for my car - a 2010 Infiniti G37. (Sweet ride for a toy car!).

The mirror I had wasn't going to work so I bought a cheap door mirror from Wal-mart for about 7 bucks. I removed the frame from it that it wouldn't show up in the image. (The thing was practically falling apart so that part was easy).

The next part I had to think about a bit more. How the heck would I light it? I initially thought of just bouncing flash off my umbrella but I knew it would scatter all over and hit my background. I also wanted a fairly edgy looking light. I settled on going with a bare flash zoomed out and snooted to get the beam nice and tight on the car. I decided I wanted a blue look to the lighting on the car so I put a blue gel on it.

With everything setup (and my fire extinguisher handy) I did some test shots of just the car to get my lighting down. I noticed that the front side of my car was a little dark so I just used a small reflector to throw some fill light on that side. The results were pretty good. I was shooting at f/9 and everything looked like it was in focus when I did a depth of field preview. It turns out it wasn't...f/11 might have worked better but my flash was having troubles keeping up anyways which sucked.

Once I had my lighting down I played with different flame configurations. I quickly learned that the flammable liquid I had chosen was quite thin so I couldn't run the two parallel lines I had envisioned. It also burned quite quickly so I had really only one shot before it burnt out. Once it was out I had to clean the mirror and set everything back up again. Grrr....

I did try the hand sanitizer and while it burned slowly the flame was blue as I expected and as mentioned above, you could actually see the gel in the shot which wasn't going to do.

After a couple of tries to get even a single line of fire behind the car I realized that my original idea wasn't going to work so I decided to make an arc of fluid on the mirror behind the car and I was a bit more liberal with the application.  Bingo! Lots of good flames and I had a chance to shoot a couple of frames.

Hot Wheels!

You can check out the setup here.

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year! it's a new year and with that comes a period of reflection and looking foreword to how we want to make this year better than the last. As mentioned in the previous post I wanted to put up 10 shots on iStock. Naturally that didn't happen but I really didn't expect it to either. The whole point of that was to at least get me thinking of getting some submissions in.  In that I succeeded.

I also mentioned in my previous post that I hadn't been shooting. That actually isn't true. I've been using my iPhone and while it's not exactly my SLR my wife reminded me that it's just another format like shooting with my Holga so it certainly counts.

I plan on getting out to Banff in the next couple of weekends. The nice thing about this time of year is that you can get great sunrise light without being up at 3 am. The days are getting longer so that's one goal I best not put off for too long.

All in all I know I will improve as a photographer. To put this into a resolution I plan on getting out shooting more and sitting in front of a computer less.