I was over at a friend's house this weekend when my fiance told me the lights were out. I ran home (thank goodness he lives just a couple doors down) grabbed my camera and went down to the lake to grab these shots of the lights. I love how they're reflected on the water. It's a shame the mosquitoes were devouring me alive, or I might have stayed a little longer before retreating back inside.

For what seems like the first time all winter, there were finally some northern lights worth bundling up and braving the cold over. Unfortunately, they were shortlived, so I only got a couple pictures, and the light cloud cover interfered a little, but overall, I'm just happy to be back outside taking some pictures.

A Little Internet Birdie told me that there was going to be some Aurora Activity tonight, so I bundled up, and ventured out onto the frozen Nelson river to try and capture it. Unfortunately, between the almost full moon and the fact that the aurora was really faint, I didn't really get anything worth writing home about. So, Instead, I set the WB to Tungsten (Tungsten or incandescent white balance gives you some beautiful blue skies at night or dusk) opened the aperture on my 35mm f/2.0 all the way up, cranked the shutter speed, (These were all taken at a range between 30 seconds and a minute+) and captured some stars and a little bit of night scenery just to justify the multitude of layers I have to bundle into in order to venture out into the frozen December nights.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays Etcetera!

This picture is a HDR created from eight different exposures. I bundled up against the cold winter night, and trekked out into the forest with two strings of Christmas lights and the UPS battery backup from my computer. After setting up the lights, I took a variety of exposures at f/4.0 ranging from 1/8 of a second up to a full 30 seconds. I then combined them using FDR Tools, cloned out the lights leading to the UPS (hidden behind that stump next to the tree) and then did a little contrast/color correction in Lightroom.  I'm pretty pleased with how well it turned out - hope you enjoy it!

Strobist Info:

Sunpak 333 Full power gelled with #368 (Winkler Blue) zoomed to 35mm - Camera Left, directed at subject and background.
SB-600 1/2 power gelled with #325 (Henna Sky) zoomed to 24mm - Inside Pumpkin

Happy Halloween Everyone!

For the final day of shooting, I went really close and low, angling up to really make Mr. O'Lantern loom over the scene. Before the shoot, I also tested about half a dozen different blue gels to try and get the right shade of dusk.

I positioned the Sunpak to camera left, and blasted it at full power to define the scarecrow's outfit and illuminate some of the background, then adjusted the shutter speed until I was happy with the ambient lighting of the scene. I went with an blue lighting scheme this time to give it a twilight vibe. I also tried a much darker red gel inside Jack's head, since on the previous nights, I noticed that when that light starts bouncing around inside the pumpkin it seems to sap all the color out and come out of his face yellow (still does, but, the darker the gel, the deeper the orange of the pumpkin) I suppose if I had masked the inside of his head with some white paper, I might have been able to capture the red a little better.

After three days of shooting, Jack's head had started going a little soft, so in order to make it sit properly on his shoulders, I had to cut it out in Photoshop, rotate it slightly, and give it a slight enlargement to cover up the rotation.

I wish we had Target up here in Canada, I would have loved to have a fog machine for this shoot.