So it’s been a while…

Posted by Mike on January 25, 2012

… and I don’t seem to have many new images.

I used to worry that I wasn’t making myself get out there and shoot – that I was missing out on opportunities.

I realize now that forcing myself to go out might be good for my photography, but it isn’t good for me. I have priorities in life that don’t always allow me to go out, and sometimes I don’t even want to (this happens a lot in the winter).

But I don’t worry about it as much anymore. This isn’t a short term pursuit – I won’t run out of things to say, of opportunities to shoot. Years from now I will still have a camera in hand. The world will be there – in some way or another, and so will I.

I am enjoying other things. But I am getting antsy to get out soon.

For now here’s one from way back. I took this on a cloudy morning in Victoria Lake Park near my house. I was never quite happy with the original, but recently I came across it and decided to play with it a bit. I cropped it a little and played around with the contrast and saturation in Photoshop to give it a bit more punch. I also added a warming filter to make it more inviting – the original felt cold and empty.

I normally try to avoid a lot of manipulation, but in this case I think I kept the tweaks fairly subtle, while bringing out something that I just didn’t have the skill to capture quite right at the time.

Let me know what you think. Too much?

©Michael D. Pereira

Uptown

Posted by Mike on January 14, 2012

Back in October my friend Brendan and I had a lot of free time on our hands. We’d both been laid off back in the summer (don’t worry, we’re both gainfully employed again), and were enjoying some time to do things we felt were important to us.

I was spending a lot of time with Malcolm and Brendan was taking a class and planning a trip to Turkey.

We talked a lot about getting out and taking pictures, and finally, one afternoon we headed to uptown with the cameras and spent a few hours talking and shooting.

Brendan had a passion for this community that was infectious. He is incredibly civic minded and he was very active in trying to make Kitchener-Waterloo a better place to live. It was inspiring just to be out in the town with him, hearing his perspective on what was changing.

He has since moved to Toronto and while we still keep in touch regularly, uptown doesn’t quite feel the same for me now.

Here are a few of my favourites from that day.

©Michael D. Pereira

The 2011 Top … images.

Posted by Mike on January 3, 2012

Something happened last year that hadn’t happened in a century – the year ended with the number 10.

No big deal, right?

Except it meant that photographers the world over, myself included, wound up making clever year end blog posts like “Ten out of ’10“.

Again, no problem right?

Until the end of 2011 and suddenly many have felt compelled to make it “11 out of 11″. Carry this trend forward 15 years and you can see what an unwieldy problem we’ve created for ourselves.

I was determined, nay compelled, to nip this sucker in the proverbial bud.

Until…

…

… I, quite embarrassingly, couldn’t narrow down my 2011 favourites to just 10 photos.

I thought it would be easy!! I didn’t even feel like I had a good year really, at least in terms of quantity. But looking back I found a startling number of images that I am quite fond of – and several I am quite proud of.

It was supposed to be easy. I was supposed to put my foot down, be stalwart. I – nevermind.

Here are my top 11 images for 2011:

©Michael D. Pereira

Christmas time

Posted by Mike on December 29, 2011

Each Christmas my wife and her siblings draw names to determine who will buy a gift for who. With four of them it was somewhat unrealistic for each of them to buy gifts for all the others, especially when some are in school.

My name was added into the draw about 4 years ago, about a year after Kim and I had started dating. Since then, more significant others have been added and the draw is now split between seven of us.

It’s a fun tradition and it helps bind us as a family I think.

This year, I drew Blair, my sister-in-law’s boyfriend. I really had no idea what to get him until my sister-in-law noted how sparse his new apartment was.

I thought maybe I could frame one of my images for him. Even better, I thought, I could photograph the farm where he grew up and frame it for him. So I called his parents.

Now I have never spoken to his parents before, but they were very nice about the complete stranger claiming to be their son’s girlfriend’s sister’s husband who wanted to take pictures of their house. They welcomed me in and suggested where I should shoot from. It worked out quite well I think.

And Blair seemed to really like the result.

©Michael D. Pereira

The Black Hole

Posted by Mike on December 2, 2011

I mentioned briefly in my previous post that I had finally broken down and invested in Adobe Photoshop. The purchase was a combination of both personal and professional interests – in my field of communications it’s definitely beneficial to broaden your software experience.

While I could have chosen any number of programs, I picked Photoshop because it’s more useful than many programs and, frankly, I was getting tired of not having a lot of the functionality I wanted for my photo processing.

Photoshop is not cheap – and I can see why. The complexity and depth of the program is hard to wrap your mind around. One professor I spoke to described it as a black hole – you can just keep going and going without end. That seems pretty accurate.

Since I didn’t really know where to begin, I decided to take a course to show me the ropes. It’s been pretty awesome so far – I’ve discovered brushes, gradients, layers (sort of), and of course dodging and burning.

I’m just past the halfway point and I thought I’d post a couple of my assignments for kicks.

First up is a shot from the fall fair. I converted to a sepia shot and then selectively coloured parts of the image:

: Michael D. Pereira

You can see the original here.

I also learned how to create a brush from an existing image and turn it into a stamp. Using that tool, I created this fun Warhol-esque image of Malcolm:

: Michael D. Pereira

This one is based on this image I posted previosuly.

Monthly Photo Challenge – November 2011

Posted by Mike on November 28, 2011

We hit a few setbacks with this challenge. In the end neither of us was really able to get out to meet the challenge to it’s fullest possibilities, so it became more about pressing on with what we had available.

The theme for this month was “low light” – Dave’ suggestion, and a damn good one at that. So good in fact that I think we’ll come back to it soon and do it properly.

But as I said, life intervened and we pressed on with what we had. So here it is:

©Dave Joyce

Dave took one of his days off to visit a bird sanctuary that housed some Golden Eagles. A small group of photographers was allowed to come in and meet the birds, take some photos and see them fly. Dave took a tonne of images, almost all of which are amazing, but this was my favourite.

©Michael D. Pereira

For me, I headed out around sunset one afternoon to this amazing little spot called Rocky Saugeen. The Saugeen river runs along here, and someone built a mill on the river just down from the highway. The location is nearly impossible to filter, so I decided to make this my first test of blending exposures in Photoshop (yep, I finally broke down and bought the sucker). I’m not totally in love with how my blend worked, but for a first attempt I think it was okay. I’ll definitely be back to try again!

Enjoy!

A Malcolm slideshow.

Posted by Mike on November 7, 2011

More shots of our little fella – though he’s really not so little anymore. It’s been quite an adventure for us – some of it has been tough, but most of it has been awesome. He’s developed so much personality already – smiling, laughing, harassing the cats. He’s lots of fun to play with these days and he is also getting to be really independent. As my good friend Paul remarked about his daughter: I can’t remember life without him.

These photos were all taken over the last 2 months. There’s about 14 images in total here.

Enjoy!

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Photo of the day

Posted by Mike on November 4, 2011

I took this shot the other afternoon when Kim and I took Malcolm on a hike in the Laurel Creek Conservation Area. This was just a quick handheld shot along the path that I really liked.

I also scouted some other opportunities while I was there – planning to head back soon!

Grey County Waterfalls, pt. III – Inglis Falls

Posted by Mike on November 2, 2011

A personal favourite of mine, I never seem to tire of visiting Inglis Falls. The waterfall is pretty close to the farm, which might be part of why I go so often, but while it’s easy to get to, it’s a challenge to photograph.

The trail is difficult and getting down to the bottom is frankly treacherous.

It had been raining a lot in the last few weeks before this little trip so the rocks on the trial were slippery and soggy fallen leaves made seeing trip hazards a real challenge. It also meant that there was more water going over the falls then I had ever seen – even in spring.

It was impossible to get any closer than I did due to the volume of water – but I still managed to get a few that I liked.

Enjoy!

Classics!

Posted by Mike on October 26, 2011

On the Sunday after the Fall Fair in Chatsworth there is a classic car show held on the grounds.

I am not actually one for cars – I’d prefer to bike or walk whenever possible.

But, there is something really special about old cars (though I can’t bring myself to call an 80s Trans Am a classic).

I love the look of a ’65 Mustang or a 57 Chev. I really love the look of an old Model A like the one at the Grey Roots Museum.

So that afternoon, Malcolm and I took a walk around the grounds and looked all the old cars. Good father son time – even if he mostly slept in the stroller.