Tag Archives: photography

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.

Light Paintings

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I decided to call my blog “Light Paintings”. For me, these two simple words perfectly describe the art of photography. A photograph is nothing more than a blank canvas painted on with light – the photographer’s tool equivalent of a paint brush or crayons.

In fact there is an entire technique in photography dedicated to light painting using a variety of artificial light sources such as a flashlights, LED lights etc. The technique is simple – position yourself in a dark room, set up your tripod mounted camera for long shutter speeds (e.g. by setting your camera to Bulb Mode), trigger the shutter open, use a light source to paint your picture, then close the shutter. Simple as pie, but the results can be astonishing and the creative possibilities are endless.

Last night, was the first night in over a week with no Euro football matches on TV. Being bored to death and seeing that I could not get over the beer addiction I had developed in the previous days, I decided to set up the following shot. It’s by no means a work of art, but given that it took me just under 5 mins to compose, execute and process, I believe it proves my point.

Taken with my tripod mounted Canon 60D and Canon 24-70 F2.8L lens, in Manual mode, ISO 100, F11 with a 20″ exposure. Only adjustment made in Photoshop was to increase the Blacks slider to darken the background.

Chicago skyline

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Back in September 2008, myself and a few friends decided to take a flight from Toronto and spend the long weekend in Chicago. This was the view from the balcony of the condo that we had rented.

Luckily I had my gorilla pod, which I ended up fastening on the balcony rail (a bit scary but it worked). Taken with my Canon Rebel XTi and my Canon F1.8 50mm prime lens, at F10, ISO 100, bracketed at -2/0/+2.

Surfboards

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This past December, Daria and I spent a weekend in Drousha, near the Akamas Peninsula on the western part of the island. Being so close to Latsi, we decided to head there on Sunday for some fresh fish. After stuffing ourselves with large quantities of food, we decided to take a stroll around the area, when I luckily stumbled upon a bunch of surfboards on the beach side.

This is a High Dynamic Range (HDR) picture, which is essentially a composite of 3 separate pictures taken at different exposure levels (normal, underexposed, overexposed) and then merged in post-production. I used this technique to exaggerate the boldness of the clouds without sacrificing the detail of my subject. In my mind, I was trying to produce a single image emphasizing the contrast between summer and winter.

Shot handheld with my Canon 60D, Sigma 18-200 F3.5-6.3 lens at 18mm, ISO 100, F9 and bracketed at -2/0/+2.