I was invited out by a friend and fellow photographer to the Headingley area bright and early on our Louis Riel Day Monday to try our luck capturing some female snowy owls in the wild.  These birds are beautiful creatures and its really sad when you realize that the lack of snow we've had this winter, despite us rejoicing in our good fortune, has really had a negative impact on these birds being able to feed themselves.  That being said, we did have the good fortune to see quite a few throughout the morning and early afternoon... getting good photos of these fast, people-wary birds is a whole other challenge, however....

I had another opportunity to head out shooting the aurora borealis this week and this time, rather than being just green bands as we saw during Week 4 of my project 52, Mother Nature put on an unforgetable light show for us.  We had quite a turnout of photographers from the Manitoba Foto Friends...

This week's challenge was photographing the snow sculptures at Winnipeg's annual Festival du Voyageur.  Taking photos of snow can be a bit of a challenge as all cameras meter snow at 18% grey.  In order to get the true white of the snow on camera, you end up needing to over-expose your image by anywhere from 1/2 to 1.5 stops.  This will create a different challenge, however as overexposing for the snow tends to blow out the sky.  So how to expose properly for the snow and yet keep the blue sky?  The solution:  HDR (High Dynamic Range)  This is where you take multiple shots of the same scene at varying exposures (usually 3-5 images with 1 stop in between each) and combine all shots in post processing to acheive the photograph that matches the closest to what your eyes actually saw....

 

For week 6, I had the opportunity to try shooting "dancing paint."  What is dancing paint?  Exactly what it sounds like... liquid paint dancing to music! The setup for this type of shoot is actually more time consuming than the shoot itself but oh so worth it and so much fun! What you need: An old (but working) speaker removed from its case so the output is accessible, plugged into a stereo or other device that plays music Black garbage bags, clear plastic, white plastic......

My challenge for week 5 was supposed to be something completely different, but the plan must evolve to take advantage of opportunity.  Winnipeg and surrounding areas were completely transformed with an incredible display of hoar frost on absolutely everything.  Truly a photographer's dream conditions and the best part... it lasted for 3 full days rather than the usual few hours one morning! Along with the frost, came grey skies and foggy mornings and though I had a meeting with a client at 11:30...