More vacation shots

[plonq]

When, through repeated iteration the truth becomes self-obvious, I find myself in a position where I am forced to acknowledge something which I have always known; I am a lousy photographer. My quick estimate is that as few as 3-5% of the pictures I take ever make it past getting downloaded to my computer from the camera. They are all sitting there on my hard drive - once I copy them over from the memory card they never get deleted - but all except for the tiny handful that make it up to my Flickr page are just gathering digital dust.

Even the ones on Flickr seldom get there without some serious editing; some colour correction here, a straightened horizon there, and some selective cropping to remove the extraneous stuff that I couldn't bother to frame out of the picture when I was taking it. At one time the purist in me cringed at the thought of modifying anything before I posted it. Now nothing escapes the butcher knife before it goes up. I fear that my digital camera and Photoshop have made me lazy. My philosophy lately has been to go with quantity over quality. If I can shoot 100 quick pictures and salvage 5% of them through digital manipulation then why bother to try and compose the perfect shot every time?

On the other hand, is this any worse than when I was shooting film? Back then, I would shoot 60 shots instead of 250, and I would keep 20% of them instead of 5%.

Anyway, enough whinging - on with the pictures.

Before I get into position with my camera, the otters were being very playful and cute. Arguably they were still being cute in this shot, but in a more low-key "swimming around on our backs rather than wrestling and playing in the water" kind of way.



Another shot of a dolphin surfacing for breath. If I am feeling ambitious tonight I will process a couple of the underwater shots I took of these guys. I took about 130 pictures at the Aquarium, but I am disappointed with how all but a few turned out. Most were blurry or grainy because of the fast action and generally poor lighting, and all of them had a big spot in the upper right. I thought I had fixed that after the first day of pictures, but apparently it was dust on the sensor, rather than the lens.

When I bought this camera, I had asked the salesman about some of the other models available that have self-cleaning sensors. He handed me one of those lens-cleaning brushes with the air bulb and said, "Trust me, they're not that hard to clean." He was right.

"Do your worst, wind! Ouch! Ow! Okay, how about your second worst..." If this tree continues to survive it will be really double-take worthy in a few more years. Here and there we could see some of the devastation caused by the winds that tore through Stanley Park awhile back, but we never got to the worst hit parts of the park.


Green on green, the bridge is almost lost against the backdrop of the north shore mountains. There are few structures more elegant than a suspension bridge. The Lions' Gate Bridge does not get nearly the coverage of the larger one in San Francisco, but it is a very striking structure none the less. I wish I'd had a chance to get a couple of night shots of the bridge as well.


Does anybody know what kind of plant this is? We spotted it down on Granville Island, and I convinced atara to pose in front of it for scale. (One of my co-workers says that it looks like oversized rhubarb).


We took a tour of the tiny Granville Island brewery, where I got to learn all of the stuff that I already knew about beer making. At the end of the tour, we sat down at a table and they served us samples of the beer that they make. I liked all of the beers - I have met very few beers that I don't like.


The Hope slide is home to multiple tragedies. Not only did a good portion of the mountain break away, killing a few people, but there have also been two fatal plane crashes on the mountain. We decided that the place was unlucky, and chose not to tarry there any longer than needed (well, that and we were anxious to get to our destination).


There were some interesting curves on the approach to Osoyoos. I think that it is safe to say that I had a lot more fun navigating these turns as a driver, than atara had being a passenger around them. It will take awhile for us to get the finger indentations out of the dashboard.


The Hotel Vancouver was a very nice, and very fancy place. While the service there was very good for the most part, we encountered a bit of snobbery in the staff when we dressed down too much for the locale. One thing that made me a bit sad was how appreciative our housekeeping staff were over the modest tips we left because it led me to think that they are not used to being receiving gratuities for their service. Why is it that people who are the best able to afford a modest tip are often the least likely to leave them?


Here is another angle angle on our first room at the B&B. I wish that I had snapped a picture of the bathroom - it was a thing of beauty. I am glad that we spent a little extra to get a nice place, since it looks like the next couple of years may find us living a bit more frugally. We are a bit overdue in reigning ourselves in, so this is not a bad thing in my opinion.


Baker is a very photogenic mountain, and on a clear day Victoria has a very nice view of it. Often people do not appreciate what they had until it is gone, but that was not my case with Victoria. I was heartbroken when I moved away. I knew exactly what I was leaving behind. Considering this one was shot from a moving bus, I am pleased by how it turned out.


Hey, it's the world's tallest totem pole! Well, the world's tallest free-standing totem pole carved from a single tree by a left-handed artisan wielding a butter knife. If you include enough disclaimers you can always claim the #1 title at something. Whether or not it is the world's tallest pole, it is still an impressive sight.

Comments

[pierrekrahn.livejournal.com]

Photography is all about trial and error (and luck).
I'd be surprised if I used more than 1% of the photos I take.
But that's the big advantage of digital photography: snap a picture and worry about it later.

[kfops.livejournal.com]

I honestly think there're a couple different styles of photography out there, and very rarely will the image pop out of your camera perfectly framed and lit as is.

I do quite like documentary-style photography, but when someone isn't going for that motif I think it is all part of the process to crop, colour correct, and manipulate the image to get the result you're looking for. It's all about the end result that you want to present to folks, and not the process.

Looking at a lot of the photos that you shoot, I've always thought to myself that I should be more proactive trying to reframe and "correct" images once I've downloaded them. Of course, I also tend to be rather lazy and just keep punching the "upload" button instead!

[pfcottontail.livejournal.com]

There's two things that differentiate a good artist and a bad artist. The first is having high standards. The second is remembering the first when it comes time to put stuff on the internet. Feel free to check Elfwood or anything involving Rule 34, as a reference!