Author: johnmeadowsphotography

An amateur photographer in Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Manipulation Monday?

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I was tempted to make the theme of Monday images digital manipulation, but the jury is still out on that one. The image below is an example of a photo that is digital from start to finish; digital camera, manipulated with an HDR plug-in from Nik software. Both “digital” and “HDR” are red flags these days in these eyes of certain purists (and I am guilty of dissing HDR as over used).  Scott Bourne once wrote that the only thing that matters is the image. A very simple statement, but a very profound one. Does the image, however produced, deliver on what the photographer was trying to do? This is the only metric that matters.

I took the image below last week in Cologne. The image is looking up at the Cathedral in Cologne. This structure is large and imposing, and dominates its space, in a not entirely positive way in my opinion. I joked with some folks (perhaps unfairly) that this massive structure would not out of place at the gates of Mordor. This image, with some HDR added, captures this feeling I had, better than the straight image does. And that is the only justification I need.

The Cathedral in Cologne

In the Mood For Medium Format

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I’m heading out this morning to the Beaches in Toronto with my Mamiya 645 medium format film camera, so to get in the mood here’s an image I shot with my Mamiya a few weeks back on a photo-walk with a bunch of great folks in Hamilton, Ontario. I had no idea there were so many beautiful and delicate waterfalls in the Hamilton area.

Waterfall in Hamilton, Ontario

Sometimes It’s About What You Don’t See

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Normally, Tuesdays on this blog are reserved for “Time-warps”, pictures taken some time ago, as opposed to recent images. Today things will be different; since it’s my birthday, I will indulge in a break from routine and post an image I captured a couple of hours ago. As I write this, it is a beautiful sunny morning in Cologne, but the day started out with the city wrapped in a dense, swirling fog. I grabbed my camera and ran out outside the hotel to capture it before it burned off. My favourite image is below.

Fog and Bridge, Cologne

There is a symbolism here; the bridge shows the direction of travel, but the destination is a shrouded mystery; I won’t be able to see it until I get there. The bridge is life, and the destination is the future, and getting there is half the fun.

Another Cathedral Catches the Light

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I am in Cologne, Germany on business this week, and of course I am taking advantage of the location to do some photography. This morning the light was amazing for a brief interval, and it was breathtaking to see the Cathedral across the Rhine take on the ruddy colours of a red-sky morning.

Bridge and Cathedral

Tripping the Light Fantasticks

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The other night I had fun shooting stills for The Alexander Singers (a Toronto community theatre group) production of The Fantasticks. It was a challenging shoot: no flash allowed, so I had to shoot at ISO 3200 wide-open and hope that the VR (vibration reduction) on my D90 would give me at least some non-blurry shots.  I was quite happy with how things turned out; after a busy evening of “spray and pray” shooting, I had over 150 usable pictures, including the image below of the character “Henry”: an actor well past his prime, hired to take part in an abduction. If you are looking for something to do over the next few nights, I’d recommend checking out this show; a very strong cast makes it a most enjoyable production.

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Time Warp Tuesday: Quebec City 2007

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I think Quebec City is my favourite city in Canada; it’s a close to being in Europe without crossing the Atlantic. It’s also a photographer’s dream.

I took the photo below in 2007, taking advantage of a non-crowded moment. It is slightly underexposed on purpose, to de-emphasize the benches, and emphasize the lines and texture in the wood. It also makes it a challenge to determine the time of day this image was created, and I like that mystery.

Outside Citidal

Emancipation and Alchemy

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I shot this Toronto street image below on Kodak Tri-X film, one of the all time classic black and white films. I shot a lot of this in the 1970’s, and a few weeks ago I decided to step back in time and shoot it again. Then it sat on the shelf until I finally got a developer tank and some chemicals. I finally got around to doing so, and yesterday developed my first roll of film in about thirty years.

Smiling Pedestrian

The ritual came back fairly easily; loading the developer tank in complete darkness, then putting the lid on, turning on the light and “souping” the film in the various chemicals. My “darkroom” (actually our basement bathroom) soon took on the smell of acetic acid (vinegar), but at the end of it all the negatives came out fine; I let the film dry, and a few hours later I had scans of the negatives, including this image. It wasn’t as fast as snapping a photo and looking at the LCD panel on the back of my DSLR, but it will do just fine.

It’s neat to be doing my own processing again, and the alchemy has its own magic. 🙂

Gentle Decay

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While many of my autumn pictures are either focused on splashes of colour, or are black and white texture studies, sometimes I feel the need to explore the space in-between. The image below is one I captured a couple of weeks ago in the Don Valley in Toronto; the paint on the bridge is faded and blotchy, and the taggers have been busy. The image did not work in either full colour or black and white, so I turned the colour down quite a bit, and that captured the mood of gentle decay for me.

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