Author Archives: Alexis Thomas

Rusty Truck

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Another rusty truck left abandoned in a field near Kalopanayiotis. Cars in such an advanced state of decomposition make great subjects for photography , and especially HDR photography. What is mind boggling in Cyprus however, is the sheer number of such cars that are simply dumped by their owners wherever they feel like, rather than being taken in for recycling.

Shot with my Canon 60D and Sigma 18-200mm F3.5-6.3 IS lens, at ISO 100, F5.0 and bracketed at -2/0/+2.

PS: I will be away on a business trip for the next two weeks and most likely unable to post on my blog. What I can say however, is that I have really high expectations from this trip photography-wise…stay tuned!

Gazing into the water

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Back from what seemed like a short vacation, where I had a great time catching up with old friends and enjoying large quantities of Asian food. My biggest confession from this trip is that I did exactly the opposite of what I said I would in my previous post. I did go overboard with my spending on camera accessories, and didn’t spend enough time walking out and about with my camera. I did manage to capture a couple of decent shots (stay tuned), but my camera didn’t get anywhere near the amount of use it usually gets on my vacation trips. In hindsight, I fell into the trap of believing that my creativity would be hindered due to the fact that my surroundings were so familiar to me – a struggle which I constantly and wrongfully face in Cyprus as well.

Today I decided to post another old time favourite. This is a picture of a young boy gazing into the water at Niagara on the Lake in Canada, taken back in August 2008.

Shot with my Canon Rebel XTi and Sigma F3.5-6.3 18-200mm lens, at ISO 200, F10, 1/125sec. B&W conversion processed in Photoshop.

Sunday breakfast

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Nothing like waking up on a Sunday morning, reading the newspaper over coffee and solving a puzzle or two.

This is my last post at least for the next couple of weeks, as I am heading to Toronto and NYC for my summer vacations. I was never good at packing, but one thing that is definitely in my carry-on is my camera. Definitely looking forward to taking some shots while I am there, and hopefully I can restrain myself from spending a lot of money on new camera accessories! See you all in September!

Shot using my tripod mounted Canon 60D and my Canon 100mm F2.8 Macro lens.

Havana Car

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This is relatively an oldie, but definitely a personal favourite. I took this picture while on vacation in Havana Cuba, back in February 2009. It’s one of those cases where the setup and conditions were perfect and all that was needed was a lucky passerby with a camera to capture the moment.

In many ways this picture sums up my entire experience of Havana. Everywhere you walk in the city, it seems that you are traveling back in time – the cars, architecture and people reminiscent of a 1950’s movie.

Shot with my Canon Rebel XTi and Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 lens at ISO 100, F16 at 1/80 sec.

St Nicholas – Kalopanayiotis

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My family owns a plot of land adjacent to the St Nicholas chapel just above the Kalopanayiotis dam. Since his retirement roughly four years ago, my dad has spent a lot of time up in the mountains cultivating the land, growing all sorts of fruit and vegetables. So much in fact, that most of the time we have to give away food to friends and neighbours!

A few months ago, I decided to join my dad in the field and take some pictures of him in his natural domain. I truly admire his hard work and dedication and at the same time I am disappointed in myself that I perhaps won’t match his zeal and passion to one day take over. My intent was to capture this passion, and through the magic of photography, freeze these memories I have of my dad being somewhere he truly feels happy.

Horsing around

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Last week my company organised an event at the horse racing track in Ayios Dometios. I must have been to this place only once before as a kid, though definitely not at an age where I had the chance (or the budget) to personally place a bet on a horse! Admittedly I am not much of a gambler myself, but I did appreciate the “science” of picking your horse based on its physique, training condition, upbringing and one hundred other variables that people meticulously study before placing their bets.

On this occassion, I decided to dig out one old photo that I took back in Aug 2008. Daria and I had decided to go for horseback riding on a Sunday afternoon just outside Toronto. While waiting for our turn to mount our horses, this fellow was minding his own business until I asked him to pose for a shot.

As for the horse races, I think I will return to the track very soon – only next time I’ll make sure I bring my camera to capture some action shots!

Shot with my Canon Rebel XTi, Canon 50mm lens at F2.2, ISO 200 and 1/1600 secs.

Camping in the Okanagan Valley

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Shortly after his retirement, my dad decided to hop onto a plane and fly to Canada for a short visit. At the time my brother was living in Vancouver so I decided to hop onto a flight from Toronto and meet them there for the weekend.

What better way for 3 guys to spend a weekend than head out to the Okanagan Valley for some wine tasting and camping out in the woods! The scenery in that area is truly breathtaking. Looking back, one of the great things I miss about Canada is the nature in British Columbia – it really is second to none.

This picture was taken somewhere near the town of Merritt. I remember we were driving around to find a campsite and came across this view. I yelled at my brother to stop the car, I jumped out with my camera and took a quick snap of the lake.

For anyone wondering – no it didn’t rain that night! Somehow we got really lucky!

Venice of the North

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Last summer I had the opportunity to visit Saint Petersburg, Russia. A few months prior to my visit, I got a chance to also travel to Moscow and based on that experience my expectations were somewhat reserved. Don’t get me wrong – Moscow is a great city with lots of historical sights, museums and a great nightlife, but its shear size, traffic and pollution don’t rank the city in my top ten list of so-called “exotic” destinations.

Upon arriving in Saint Petersburg I was pleasantly surprised. A beautiful city, full of parks, canals and bridges (342 to be exact!) – it truly lives up to its name as being the “Venice of the North”. Its position, so far north of the equator, means that roughly between the end of June and early July you experience the so-called “White Nights” where the sun does not descend enough for the sky to go dark. Unfortunately, I got there in August but even then, the sun would only set at roughly around 11pm.

This is a picture of the Church of the Savior on Blood – one of the many city landmarks. The picture was taken from one of the nearby bridges at around midnight.

Shot with my Canon Rebel XTi and my 50mm F1.8 prime lens at ISO 200, F13 and bracketed at -2/0/+2.

Rusty old bus

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This is a picture of an old Ford bus which has been left abandoned for years now on the side of a street in the village of Kalopanayiotis. As a kid I used to spend weeks at a time in the summer with my grandparents at our cottage in Kalopanayiotis. In fact on numerous occasions I had to take this type of bus (if not this actual one) to and from Nicosia. It definitely brings back old memories so every time I walked by it, I always felt that I had to return one day with my camera for a capture.

Rusty cars in general are best captured in HDR as the technique highly exaggerates the texture and creates somewhat of a surreal look which was what I was aiming for. It also worked really well with the texture of the tarmac, which I used as a leading line in my composition.

Taken with my tripod mounted Canon 60D, Sigma F3.5-6.3 18-200mm lens, at ISO 100, F22 and bracketed at -2/0/+2. Processed in Photomatix with some adjustments to levels and curves in Photoshop.

Sea Caves

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The most frequently photographed scenery on the eastern part of the island of Cyprus is without a doubt Cavo Greco. As a teenager I remember visiting the nearby Sea Caves with my friends, always competing to prove our manhood by jumping off the 20 meter cliff straight into the crystal clear waters. An exhilarating adrenaline pumping (and relatively stupid) act, but the bragging rights that followed made it all worthwhile!

This weekend, I had a chance to visit the Caves again but this time with a different agenda in mind. This time around I wanted to capture the scenery with my camera in a way that is different from all the “I love Cyprus” postcards you can buy at your local souvenir shop.

I got there about an hour before sunset and started scouting the area for a good vantage point. I “worked the scene” so to speak for a good 40 minutes, took a dozen pictures but to my dismay nothing seemed to pop out at me. I was just about to give up when I turned around and saw the following scene. I literally had to place my tripod inches from the edge of the cliff. I kneeled down and screwed on my ND4 filter, allowing me to slow down my shutter speed to almost 2 secs.

Taken with my Canon 60D and my Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 IS lens at 18mm, F22 (for max depth of field), ISO 100 and bracketed at -2/0/+2.

This is a good opportunity for me to share 3 tips that I find invaluable when taking pictures with a tripod-mounted camera in low light conditions:

1) If your lens supports Image Stabilization (a.k.a. Vibration Reduction or Optical Stabilisation) then you must turn it OFF. That feature is helpful in low light conditions when the camera is hand-held. When tripod mounted, the mechanism in fact introduces vibration as it tries to compensate for the non-existing vibrations that it assumes there might be.

2) If your camera allows you to lock your mirror, then go ahead and do so. The mirror is a moving part during shutter release and it does introduce vibration! Enabling Live View mode automatically locks the mirror too, otherwise you will need to disable it manually from the function settings.

3) Always, always use a remote cable release. If you don’t have one, then try setting the timer on your camera, press the button and move back.