douglas farmer photography

Sunset Beach & The Burrard St. Bridge Vancouver Apr 20 2012

2012-05-12T23:41:00.001-07:00

Sunset Beach & The Burrard St. Bridge Vancouver Apr 20 2012, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

I love this shot. I'm going to get a 24"x36" copy of this and put it on the wall above my TV. Pure IR.

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 00a

2012-05-12T23:30:00.001-07:00

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 00a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 05a

2012-05-12T22:36:00.001-07:00

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 05a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

I love this shot. Since a High Dynamic Range image is itself a collection of images it naturally follows that the images have to happen over time. A very short period of time mind you but still over a discrete period of time. With the new HDR software (I use Photomatix Pro) you can tell the software areas that move (over time) and areas that don't. It then adjusts its computed image accordingly. If you then go one step further and purposely NOT tell it about certain parts that you know do actually move ... it's a nice fugue. Sort of a 21st century motion pan shot.

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 04a

2012-05-12T22:10:00.001-07:00

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 04a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

An eagle eye perspective on English Bay Vancouver a few minutes post sunset May 12 2012. Summer's early.

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 03a

2012-05-12T21:32:00.001-07:00

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 03a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Thurlow and Drake looking south towards English Bay. And yes, the bottom left corner of this shot totally confuses the visual / spatial part of my brain. I've stopped trying to figure it out and now mostly just go with it. :)

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 01a

2012-05-12T20:59:00.001-07:00

West End HDR Fish Eye May 12 2012 01a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Time to play with the expensive lens. :) An hour before high-noon in Vancouver here's the 179' view from the edge of the shadows just north of 1011 Beach and the Vancouver Aquatic Centre.

English Bay HDR May 09 2012 02a

2012-05-12T15:04:00.001-07:00

English Bay HDR May 09 2012 02a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Clouds - we grow 'em big on the west coast.

Burrard St. Bridge Looking South - West End HDR May 06 2012 11a

2012-05-12T09:58:00.001-07:00

Burrard St. Bridge Looking South - West End HDR May 06 2012 11a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Built between 1930 and 1932 the Burrard Street Bridge connects downtown Vancouver to the Kitsilano residential area. Recently redesigned to support bike traffic with one southbound lane and the eastern sidewalk devoted exclusively to two-wheeled transportation.

Entrance to False Creek Vancouver - West End HDR May 06 2012 10a

2012-05-10T18:27:00.001-07:00

Entrance to False Creek Vancouver - West End HDR May 06 2012 10a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

It's been a mostly soggy spring for us here in Vancouver so when that great yellow ball of warmth and good feelings (something which most call 'the sun') appears we all get busy all at once. It's great to watch and be a part of and it's like I live in two cities - a wet one with perhaps 50,000 people in it and then a dry one with 2.3 million, all going for a walk or bike or cruise, all at once. Very cute. :)

Here's the view from one the observation balcony on the Burrard Street Bridge on a sunny and bustling Sunday May 6 2012. In the foreground is Vanier Park and the 'Bard on the Beach' summer home being assembled. In the background is English, the far western tip of West Van and the start of the Sunshine Coast.

West End HDR May 06 2012 06a

2012-05-08T18:33:00.001-07:00

West End HDR May 06 2012 06a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Sunset Beach, West End Vancouver. I love the detail near the ferry terminal at the bottom of this shot. Light turned into molten gold.

West End HDR May 06 2012 05a

2012-05-08T18:06:00.001-07:00

West End HDR May 06 2012 05a, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

The corner of Beach and Thurlow with the Vancouver Aquatic Centre and its mutant trees from Venus foilage in the foreground. .... Looking all '60s and such thanks to high dynamic range. Once you go HDR you never go back.

West End HDR May 06 2012 01a.jpg

2012-05-06T17:27:00.001-07:00

West End HDR May 06 2012 01a.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

I'd like to nominate the Vancouver city workers who came up with the epic idea of promoting gardening in what used to be ugly mounds of mud for the prize of "Awesome Vancouveritte(s) of the decade". Over the past few years citizen run gardens like this have been popping up all over Vancouver and personally I love them. Big time. They add color, fresh air and turn what would be a urban dead-zones (in this case the area underneath the Burrard Street Bridge) into a pleasant oasis. Two green thumbs up!

What I find even more impressive is how each garden I see smacks the urban-cynic in me up-side-the-head. At first I figured the evil anarchists that haunt the urban night would trash something so pretty simple because it's pretty. As it's turned out though (knock on concrete) I've yet to see any evidence of major trashing to any of the urban gardens I stroll past. Proof yet again that deep down inside, even in Vancouver, the vast majority of us are pretty decent people.

Mid Winter West Coast Sunset - Feb 02 2012 03a HDR

2012-05-06T11:02:00.001-07:00

Feb 02 2012 03a HDR.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Contrary to popular belief we do get a bit of sunshine during the winter here in Vancouver. Here's a mid-winter sunset looking out across the Straight of Georgia which separates the British Columbia mainland from Vancouver Islands. In the foreground is the Kitsilano region of Vancouver. In the background are Galiano and Mayne Islands which are just off the coast of Vancouver Island.

West End IRHDR 09a Apr 20 2012.jpg

2012-05-04T18:34:00.001-07:00

West End IRHDR 09a Apr 20 2012.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

The corner of Beach and Thurlow in Vancouver's West End.

This angle is special to me in that I took a shot from this angle with my first (finally) successful roll of Kodak's IR Film. We've come so far since that earlier shot I took 15 years back. Digital photography let's you get feedback from your shot instantly. You can look at it. You could not do this with 35mm film. Personally I totally love digital photography over the 20th century tech.

Sunset Beach HDR 09a Apr 30 2012.jpg

2012-05-03T17:25:00.001-07:00

Sunset Beach HDR 09a Apr 30 2012.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Can't see the forest for the jungle.

I sort of like the depth of field in this photo but know another 3cm or so front and back would have been awesome. Sigh. Since this was an HDR shoot speed of shot was a priority. Getting all five shots in under 500 ms would minimize motion in the series. On a windy day that meant 1/30s as the slowest shutter speed.

This in turn meant big aperture's (f/5.6 or so) and thus low depth of field. Grrr.

Maybe I should compare the downside of getting noise with a higher ISO vs the bigger depth of field. I used ISO 200 for these and the software I use could most likely handle any noise reduction up to ISO 640. Hmmmm.

Sunset Beach HDR 07a Apr 30 2012

2012-05-03T17:07:00.001-07:00

Sunset Beach HDR 07a Apr 30 2012, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

While the holiday is still many months away it's never to early to replenish the Christmas Greeting Card stock. :)

Sunset Beach HDR 06a Apr 30 2012.jpg

2012-05-01T18:35:00.001-07:00

Sunset Beach HDR 06a Apr 30 2012.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Is it just me or is that not the creature that tried to kill Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Predator? ..... What? .... He's a flower now? ;)

Sunset Beach HDR 04a Apr 30 2012.jpg

2012-05-01T18:03:00.001-07:00

Sunset Beach HDR 04a Apr 30 2012.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

I'm really warming to this series on a tech-art level. A nice fugue.
I shot these, on a blustery day on Sunset Beach in Vancouver as a 5 frame HDR series. Given the winds there was a near certainty that the shots would not align. High Dynamic Range software (Photomatix) to the rescue. The software allows me to tell the processing engine which areas of the image are full of movement. It can then set a better baseline for what should move and what should not and adjust the image as it see's fit. Digital stabilization taken to the next level.
The cooler part though is that what this feature really allows me as an artist is to use time (5 shots over 750ms or so) as a temporal palette. I can tell the software which parts are movement intense and which aren't. I could for example flag one section of the image as the absolute center of attention since it does not move. Quite cool when you think about it.
In this shot parts are in perfect focus while others are anything but. Hi Def Motion.

Sunset Beach Genus Solenostemon (guess) Apr 30 2012

2012-04-30T17:38:00.001-07:00

Sunset Beach Genus Solenostemon (guess) Apr 30 2012, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

A new species has arrived at Sunset Beach here in Vancouver. A plant that's quite cute and not yet in bloom to the point that I can identify it. I'm pretty certain it's part of the same tribe as the Coleus plant (genus Solenostemon) which, as any bachelor knows, is the best plant to get for the first apartment. Coleus = looks good - tolerant of forgetful waterers and one that actually flowers.

It's also a species that's highly invasive and it will be interesting to see how long it takes the city to pick up on the invasion and, being a green city, what it does to ... err ... combat? ... it. Bottom line though - it's quite pretty and I can't wait to identify it.

And it's time for some color gosh darn it! Black and White is the power equation of photography, no question, but there is more than 10 to the 32 shades of IRHDR gray. :)

Sunset Beach & The Burrard St. Bridge Vancouver Apr 20 2012

2012-04-29T16:57:00.001-07:00

Sunset Beach & The Burrard St. Bridge Vancouver Apr 20 2012, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

This is one of my favorite composition spots on Sunset Beach Vancouver which is located at the corner of Beach Ave. and Thurlow St. in the city's West End. Pure urban with the tri-lane seawall walk/bike path (2 for bikes, one for us walkers), cute puffy trees caught in their spring bloom and the iconic Burrard St. Bridge.

West End IRHDR 15a Apr 20 2012.jpg

2012-04-27T17:14:00.001-07:00

West End IRHDR 15a Apr 20 2012.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

I love Vancouver's version of the Biennale sculpture exhibition. Being a tourist town having world class items of art scattered across the city makes for millions of photo ops. Being an urban residential area having world class items of art in our backyard gives a nice high class feel to where we live.

This is the sculpture 217.5 Arc x 13' located on Sunset Beach in downtown Vancouver. Crafted by Bernar Venet of France and so named for it's 217'5 degree art of 13 raw steel segments. As noted by the artist "Nature, the universe, and life are all interconnected and explainable mathematically." Well put.

In behind the sculpture are a collection of English Bay beach facing residential towers most if not all built during the late 1960's and early 1970's. And while it's hard to see in the shot there's a parking lot just to the left of the photo that, this year will get its first set of electric vehicle charging stations. Modern art, funky 1970's architecture and 21st personal transportation-pod charging stations. How cool is that? :)

English Bay Rain Storm HDR 06 Apr 18 2012

2012-04-26T18:58:00.001-07:00

English Bay Rain Storm HDR 06 Apr 18 2012, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

I love the 'zone-ness' of this shot. If you split the image into 3 vertical and then 3 horizontal sections you get (3 times 3) 9 zones. For me this shot shows that the more you have going on in each of the 9 zones the more engaged the viewer will be and the more engaging the photo. Bottom left to right I love the ripples in the water (HDR for the win) the rich green caught in the sun dead center and the urban residential area we call the West End. Mid row we get fleets of boats tacking with the wind from the storm just past and then the storm itself. Ka-boom. Then of course are the clouds - pure pretty.

West End IRHDR 11a Apr 20 2012

2012-04-24T17:28:00.001-07:00

West End IRHDR 11a Apr 20 2012, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

I love that as humans we love trees and I love that once we take root in a spot nature tends to return, adjust and coexists to help create something ... different but the same. Eventually an urban forest springs forth - concrete, glass and steel living within and around leaf, feathers and bark. Here's a view of Beach Avenue in Vancouver looking towards the iconic Burrard Street Bridge (right side) on a hazy and very much lazy 420 (April 20) afternoon.

Beach and Thurlow Vancouver Apr 20 2012 _DSC43602_3_4_tonemapped.jpg

2012-04-23T20:38:00.001-07:00

Beach and Thurlow Vancouver Apr 20 2012 _DSC43602_3_4_tonemapped.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

Spring's blush.

West End IRHDR 03a Apr 20 2012.jpg

2012-04-23T20:21:00.001-07:00

West End IRHDR 03a Apr 20 2012.jpg, a photo by VancouverDoug on Flickr.

West End Vancouver :: Sunset Beach :: Upper Mezzanine