This week I made a quick trip to David Thompson country, near Abraham Lake in Alberta, Canada. I hadn't been there with my camera for some time. I arrived early in the evening, just as the sun was setting, and made my way to the Bighorn River, above Crescent waterfall. I took this shot just after the sun was below the horizon, with my new Summicron 25 mm lens on my Leica M9. There was quite a bit of contrast between the trees and the sky, and I was a bit worried that I would not be able to capture the complete spectrum of light, but my histogram on the camera showed that I did capture it all. The picture that resulted straight out of the camera did display the sharp contrast that the LCD  showed. I used a very useful tool in Photoshop called Shadows/highlights, and it allowed my to cut down the contrast very nicely, yet still maintain the complete spectrum of tones available. The shot was taken as a DNG file, and this kind of file captures much more information than a jpeg does. As a result, the file is quite large, but that is manageable. A few other adjustments brought out the wonderful colours that were captured, and the result is what we see here. I hadn't taken a colour landscape for some time, and thoroughly enjoyed getting back into it again. I will post some more images from the same trip in the coming days.

28 mm Summicron F2

Got a new Leica lens: a 28 mm Summicron F2. The shot above was taken late in the evening during a full moon. This doesn't really highlight the great characteristics of this lens, but I couldn't wait to put it up. The shot exhibits a kind of sinister feeling that is determined by the pose of my dog Max. Night shots give quite different feelings that those taken during daylight, and I think it might be fun to explore this a bit.

The 28 mm Summicron  has a very good reputation as a reportage lens. It is a favourite of street photographers and journalist photographers as well. This is an area that I have not explored in any great detail, but I do like to photograph the streets in major cities like Toronto, and recently in Philadelphia. The Philadelphia shots were taken with my 50 mm Summicron.

25 mm Zeiss on M9

I love shooting black and white with my Leica M9. I've almost given up shooting colour, but I guess its just a personal choice. Maybe it stems from my Monochrome days when I was still shooting film. Here I was shooting in the shadows on a very sunny day. So there naturally was a lot of contrast. Being a 25 mm wide angle lens, it naturally projects a fairly deep depth of field, even at wide open. The aperture was set at F4.0, so good depth resulted. But had I been shooting with say, a 50 mm lens, with the same aperture, the depth of field would have been shallower. And had I taken the picture with a 90 mm at F 4.0, the depth of field would have been even more shallow. This is the way lenses work. Many point and shoot cameras do not project nice Bokeh, which results from out of focus background when shooting wide open. These point and shoot cameras do not have the wide aperture option that a prime lens on a DSLR or rangefinder camera permits, nor the quality of glass. But they can take nice landscape pictures. The subject matter in the above shot needs a greater depth of field, and that is why wide angle lenses are a good choice for landscape photography.

My Favourite Camera and Lens

The Leica 50 mm Summicron-M lens and the Leica M9 camera are a wonderful combination. A pleasing characteristic of Leica lenses is the Bokeh, which is a pleasing out of focus background obtained when shooting with the lens wide open. This shot was taken at the Ontario Art Gallery, and the subject is my wife. One of my favourite photographers is Thorsten Overgaard, and he uses Leica cameras for most of his professional work, and usually with the M9. He always shoots with the aperture wide open. Leica lenses are designed to be used this way. I love this camera and have almost totally replaced my Nikon D700 with this camera. The M9 is light, it feels very comfortable in my hands, and is not overly obvious to unsuspecting subjects. My Nikon is quite a bit heavier than my Leica, and would be very obvious when shooting people in public places. I can take my Leica with me everywhere, without it becoming a burden. I have also started using it for my landscape work. Of course one drawback of the Leica cameras and lenses is affordability, since they are quite expensive. But once you own one, and get used to using it, you never want to go back.

Rock Formation Page Arizona

As I continue to work on my technique with the ink and brush, I am beginning to feel more comfortable with the tools I am working with. The paper I have used here is a non-smearing rice paper, which is more ideal for this kind of subject matter. With the Chinese style of painting, one starts with dark ink on the brush, and the goal is to exhaust the brush before applying any more ink to the brush. Water is applied to the brush, as the ink gets depleted, and again exhausted from the brush. Colour is applied after most of the ink work has been laid down.The Chinese water colours are more muted than the western water colours, which I prefer. This painting is from a photo I took near page Arizona last year. Complementary colours were applied, those being the reds and green, as well as the triad of yellow, blue and the green, giving the whole painting a unifying look. The complementary colour scheme also results in a visual vibration, for instance, the red and green.  Below is the photo I used as a reference.

A recent painting of a photo I took of the Grand Canyon from last year.I used more colour in this painting than I have done before with the chinese brush painting. The base is done with the black ink. Then I slowly worked over the image with a colour triad, red, yellow and blue. This combination of colours works good together, and the ink helps to define the outlines.I managed to create a focal point in the centre of the painting, where the eye is drawn to the river in the far distance by the high contrast in value. The separation in the foreground between the two ridges also helps to create interest in the foreground, thus the eye is drawn back and forth between foreground and far distance.

Pine Tree

A quick effort done recently, my version of a traditional Chinese subject: pine tree. Flowers, fruits, and trees are representative of of various aspects of life in Chinese culture. The pine tree represents longevity, steadfastness, self discipline, endurance, and long life. I have to admit that these aspects of life were not in the forefront of my thoughts as I constructed this piece, since I am still trying to master the craft of Chinese brush painting. I had hoped to achieve a free flowing style in this effort, and I think I approach that here. The brush work is  done with calligraphy ink, using a stiff brush. The paper is a rice paper, which tends to bleed unless the ink has been modified with a few drops of peach sap glue. Not the perfect effort, but I am happy with it.