Working Late

Today I decided to take my camera to work with me, armed only with my 35mm 1.8. Last night I tried shopping in the Eaton's Center and it was insane, so I escaped outside for fresh air and saw how fantastically colorful Dundas Square is, complete with its holiday trimmings. I vowed to go back tonight and shoot it.

Now, it seems to me I have a short memory and should know better. I *know* I won't take good night shots without a tripod, but I didn't bring mine. I decided to do some guerrilla high ISO handheld shots. It was cold, and that helped keep me moving.

The night started with me killing time waiting for a phone call that didn't come. I vowed to wait until 6 p.m., which is late for a Friday before a working weekend, imHo.

I basically walked in circles around the office looking for stuff to shoot. This is a great exercise (not physical, I'm not in that bad of shape yet), as it gets the creative juices flowing, and gets you looking.

I was happy to take this photo because every time I walk to and from the washroom, I look out this window and say to myself, man, I really have to shoot that alley one day. Done and done!

This is a row of fake flowers on a window sill. They do not belong to us, and are likely the long lost remains of someone's trinkets and trash marketing spend. I got lucky that the light reflection kind of highlights the subject. The reflections are a little wonky, though.

I'm a bit of a fanatic about white board cleanliness, so this photo makes me chuckle.

Six p.m. hit and I wasn't sticking around any longer. I grabbed my coat and scarf and left.

Across the road.

Towers of banking power.

I took this one because of the photography in-joke. Those are not sunstars from a carefully stopped down long exposure shot, but light patterns created by lampshades cut to cast the star pattern. Cheating! That, and 'I went to the big city and all I saw was a fake snowman' t-shirts.

This was fun. A tree of light reaching for the moon. The moon blew out and I was really wishing for a wider lens so I could do more with it. Regardless, the illusion created by the leading lines to the dot is neat.

A well lit building on the way to Yonge St. via the shortcut to the King subway entrance.

Other pedestrians don't respond well to someone stopping in the middle of the road to take photos. In this photo it's possible to get a sense of how much visual confusion is created by the Christmas decorations combined with other lights.

A beautifully lit building.

More pseudo-jaywalking.

More visual confusion.

It's at its worst here in the (relatively) recently renovated Dundas Square. I liked the guy in the ad and how he interacts with the woman walking into my shot. He looks upset!

I had to leave some color shots in just to give an idea of how wild the colors are. I'm sure they're something to see all year, but add in Christmas and it's ka-razy!

These color photos are shot at ISO 200, and the camera's auto white balance hit daylight/flash temp (5500) all by itself. I managed to catch this race between three fake polar bears and a street car. The bears won. That's a little TTC joke for my streetcar riding friends.

I'm fairly confident I'll never know how to control light in a shot like this.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.

Studio Messin'

I'm sneaking in photos whenever I can between a busy work schedule and bad weather. We decided today that there will be a lot of working from home between Christmas and New Years, so I need to think of some cool stuff to shoot in the three hours of commuting time I win back every day.

Yet another behind the camera self portrait. This time I'm hiding behind the 77mm front end of the 70-200mm at f/2.8. It's blurry because I shot at 1/6th of a second and I shake like a leaf. But the bokeh is always fantastic with this lens.

This is why I'm inside and not out shooting. The weather was wet on the weekend, and now it's really cold. I'm already starting to plan my spring/summer/fall of shooting.

I've been watching training videos on lighting, and this isn't exactly what they're about. I hauled out my 105mm macro for this shot, and shot at 1/8000th of a second at f/11. Fun.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.

New Lens, Dry Run

It's a rare thing when I buy something that makes me feel like an idiot for doing so. It's even more rare when I buy something and it makes me feel like an idiot for not having done so sooner. This post represents my first day out with my 70-200 f/2.8, and it's a fantastic lens. If you ever read that 'it's not the camera, it's the lens, and it's not the lens, it's the photographer', I can vouch for the truth in it. This lens makes me want to be better just so I can see what awesomeness I can unleash.

Anyway, today was incredibly grey and overcast, as will 99% of the days between now and Spring, which can't come soon enough. It was not, however, overly cold. And that means I had a great time wandering around shooting and getting to know the lens.

This pic demonstrates a few things. The first is depth of field at f/2.8. It becomes tricky to manage focus on shots where you're close enough to your subject to have parts of your pictures at varying distances from the lens. This creates some areas that are in perfect focus and others that really aren't. If done right, it's great. If not, it creates an image that just doesn't make sense to your eye. This image also demonstrates that the standard corrective profile for this lens in Lightroom does some weird things to light in the bottom corners. Finally, remember not to turnip and leave your camera at -1 exposure compensation when you don't need it.

In this shot I got the depth of field right; look at the blur on the tree in the bottom left corner. I can replicate that effect in photoshop, but never to that level of perfection. This picture was taken with an unnecessary -1 exposure compensation. But look at the detail. It's almost as good as my 105mm Micro Nikkor and miles beyond what I came to expect from my 18-200mm.

The following shots are all taken at 200mm wide open at f/2.8. I couldn't move around much, and to be honest, the lens isn't long enough for these shots so I had to crop heavily. However, the detail is really good given the constraints and that if I moved forward, I would have fallen in the pond.

This shot is taken at 1/400th of a second, and I was almost able to freeze their movement as they landed. At 5.6 on my 18-200mm, they would be a grey smear.

It's too bad I'm so far away for this shot... I would like to print out the screaming goose but there's not enough resolution to do it. Anyway, a decent moment captured thanks to the Continuous Low shooting setting on the camera.

I thought it cool that there was enough light to cast shadows underneath the birds as they flew, when at this time day with a cloudless sky their shadows should have been behind them considerably. The cloud cover diffused the early morning light almost perfectly.

This is simultaneously the worst picture I took today, and the best. Taken at 1/60th of a second at f/2.8 while panning to follow the duck's rapid decent, I managed to catch its feathers spread for maximum braking, and great motion in the background. It works, even though it was taken at a shutter speed far slower than the minimum 1/1000th of a second required to freeze the duck's motion.

If I was the kind of photographer that names my photos, I would call this one 'Christmas Decorations'.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.

White on Grey on Grey

Haven't been shooting much lately due to time constraints and weather, but this weekend I'll be out to shoot my 70-200mm f/2.8. Very excited about it, although the 2x teleconverter I ordered was not in. So no winter zoo trip for me yet; perhaps a trip to Mill Pond, or, if I get adventurous and the weather holds, Phyllis Rawlinson Park.

Only four and a half months left!

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.

Mill Pond, First Snow

My day started trying to shoot this photo that I see every morning when I catch the GO bus downtown. Unfortunately, I catch the bus about 15 minutes earlier than when I got there today, and I missed the good light. These rushes practically glow gold when the sun hits them.

When I turned to swear at the sun (because that makes more sense than me getting up 15 minutes earlier, right?), I saw this flock of geese flying in front of it.

There was enough light to make cool reflections on some nearby condos.

A parking lot dusted with snow and recent tire tracks made for some cool texture.

A rare positive point about shooting in winter: You can wander around the empty playground with a camera and telephoto lens and no one calls the cops. A giant turquoise tongue.

Slide curve with fake bokeh.

Rings with real bokeh.

Where the net meets the line, and small mounds of snow.

Sara Conner's recurring nightmare, dusted with nuclear ash. Or snow. No skulls to be seen.

The old bell at the fire station.

I was certainly taking my time getting to the Mill Pond. Here's a blue door that caught my eye as I walked.

We have to be very detailed with our instructions in Richmond Hill.

My overexposed swan friends, caught here swimming in the Mill Pond's last remaining open water, when the sun made a brief appearance.

One day I'll figure out how to shoot shots like this. Today was not that day.

Radical snow grain and rock.

Fat bastard with big claws. Someone else fed it; I don't because I know eventually they'll be mugging people for peanuts.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.