Merry Christmas to me! Merry Christmas to me!

Today Sox and I were out, and I bought my new lens, a Canon 70-200 F4.0L IS.

The above picture is a crop of the first picture. Nice and sharp.

I’ve taken a few pictures with it so far, and I like it a lot. It seems lighter than the 28-135 I already have, and the focus seems quick. Most shots were of Sprout, and strangely enough, he was asking me to take pictures of him and his Bopp (blanket).

Now I can’t wait to use it on a real photo shoot.

I call this one “Spidey has a fling”.

Last night for dinner Sox and I did takeout. Bad parents. The end result was that we finished dinner early, and the sun was still setting. I wasn’t sure if the sunset was going to be brilliant or not, but we thought we would take a chance and head to Saxe Point park to take a peek. Yoshi needed a bit of a walk so it all seemed to work out.

The sunset wasn’t as brilliant as I had hoped, but I still managed to get some good shots.

The rest of the pics are here.

Thursday evening Sprout and I took Yoshi for a walk that allowed Sox to make dinner without interruption. Us boys are good at interrupting.

Yoshi had a great run in the park, and I got lots of nice sunset pictures. Sprout insisted on walking a large loop, so he also had a great walk. It was a little chilly, and arriving home to a warm house that smelled like freshly cooked stew was a treat.

Last weekend Yoshi and I did a bit of a walk through Oak Bay. It is such a gorgeous time of year. I know we don’t get the same type of color in our trees as the Ottawa area, but it is still beautiful in its own way. The sun was out, the sky was blue, and we had an hour to spend just wandering aimlessly.

We stopped for a coffee in the village and sat outside and enjoyed the sun. Wonderful and relaxing.

A classic line from one of the Austin Powers movies is right after taking a bunch of pictures he tosses the camera and says …. “And … I’m spent”.  That could have been me yesterday.

I signed on to shoot a wedding yesterday, and with the rainy weather, it turned out to be pretty difficult shooting conditions.  The ceremony was inside a tent, and it was pretty cramped quarters meaning I couldn’t get to the locations I wanted to be to get the shots I wanted.  The guests were all seated too, which meant that I would be in their way while I was standing for taking my shots.

The family and wedding party shots had to be done indoors due to the rain, and I did OK with that, but was definitely out of my element.  I need more use with the flash before I do more shoots like that.

In the end though I got some good shots that I am proud of, but
I certainly lost my creativity when I started to get tired.  That is something about the photoclub, is that I never have to push myself.  When I am done taking shots, I can stop.  I couldn’t stop yesterday until I had my list of shots done.

I also underestimated how long things would take, and didn’t get enough time with just the bride and groom.

On the upside, it was a very valuable learning experience.  The location was gorgeous (Cowichan Bay), the people were wonderful, and the ceremony was beautiful.  I am going to take some notes and squirrel those away in case I shoot any more weddings.

Sunday was the Bastion Square Grand Prix Criterium. This is the big race in Victoria for roadies. Unfortunately the weather was not co-operating, and it was cold, a little windy, and rainy. Not good for road bikes trying to go fast.

Todd raced here as well, unfortunately crashed out with 2 laps to go. The last pic below shows the outcome of that.

The rest of my Bastion Square Grand Prix pictures are here.

Last weekend was the Victoria Cycling Festival. I got out Saturday and Sunday to watch the racing, and to cheer on Todd who was racing. I also managed to take a few pictures 😉

Action photography is hard. Everything is happening so quickly that you really need to visualize what is going to happen, plan for that, then be lucky enough to trip the shutter at the exact right time to capture what you had intended. It also helps to have the correct settings on the camera too. I messed up some of my flash photography because I was in the right mode, just the wrong setting.

Below are my favorite shots from the Cops for Cancer Criterium. The rest of my shots from this race are here.