Month: August 2022

Categories
Photography

Saint-Nicolas blueberries.

Blueberries and macrophotography
Blueberries and macrophotography

Saint-Nicolas is full of quality blueberry fields. While the family is having fun picking the delicious berries, I take the opportunity to do a little photography and try to create something other than a traditional photo of a blueberry plant. The right light and a Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 USM macro lens are a good start to maximize the chances of success.

Arriving at the time of the season when the blueberries are not all mature makes it possible to capture several colors. The next step is to choose a plant with healthy flowers and fruit, because in macro photography a damaged plant is magnified several times and the defects become distracting.

Finally, it is necessary to take several pictures with different apertures. We must find the right balance. A bush with too much detail may become conventional, while too many blurred areas lose interest because the eye does not know where and what to look at.

Click on the link for more pictures of Quebec City and surroundings in summer on my blog.

Categories
Photos of Quebec

Flower and Bee on Île d’Orléans

A bee approaches a flower on the beach in Île d'Orléans
A bee approaches a flower on the beach in Île d’Orléans

Near the Saint-Jean de l’île d’Orléans church, there is an easily accessible beach. One can observe mostly rocks with interesting colors and some plants beaten by the wind. If you look carefully, you may find tiny pink flowers at the end of the beach. As I was about to take a picture, a bee approached the flower.

To counteract the effect of the strong winds, I opted for a high shutter speed, which at the same time helped to freeze the moment when the insect suddenly appeared in the viewfinder. Because of the very small size of the flower, a lot of cropping was required to enlarge the details.

Click on the link for more pictures of Quebec City and Île d’Orléans Island on my blog.

Categories
Street photography

Street photography: the delivery man.

On his knees he could have carried on more box in the grocery store.
On his knees he could have carried on more box in the grocery store.

The deliveryman above avoids unnecessary trips by carrying a stack of boxes so high that he can barely fit through the door of the St-Olivier grocery store in the St-Jean-Baptiste neighborhood in Quebec City. He could have added another box to the pile, but he would have had to enter the establishment on his knees. We don’t ask for that much…

Scenes like this feed street photography, which requires the photographer to be ready to capture ephemeral situations. The time allowed to camera settings is reduced to a minimum. Sometimes a photo is taken without looking through the viewfinder, hoping to have captured the essential.

This is the case of the scene above. I had just parked in the area and was getting out of the car with the camera still in the bottom of my backpack. Across the street, a delivery man was walking with a stack of boxes taller than him. In a few seconds he would be in the establishment, if the stack didn’t collapse after catching the top of the door frame.

To capture the scene and gain speed, I pulled the camera out of the bag with its preset settings adjusted for street photography and shoot without taking the time to make sure the subject was captured.

Just looking through the viewfinder to frame perfectly would have taken a few extra seconds and been enough to ruin the scene, as in the absence of the delivery man, only the man holding the door would have appeared in the photo. And it is obvious that he is not the main subject. He is very kind to hold the door (it’s the least he can do), but apart from the fact that he seems to have a white support stocking on his left leg (because of the sun), he was the secondary subject from the beginning…

Click on the link for more street photography on my blog.