An Adam Gopnik-inspired afternoon in the park

Ottawa is a city of hidden gems, I have discovered. Having arrived here almost four years ago (somewhat skeptically) from my beloved Montreal via a short lay-over in my hometown of southern New Brunswick, I had my own preconceived notions of what life in Ottawa would be like. A staid city of stuffy government workers and politicians and extreme athletes with no artistic sensibility, no doubt. The antithesis to Montreal. Well, I wasn’t entirely wrong about the existence of some stuffy government people and extreme athletes, but Ottawa is (surprisingly) so much more than that. Among its many attributes, including a vibrant arts community and flourishing food scene, it boasts some lovely green spaces, particularly urban parks. Happily for this nature-loving, ex-pat Maritimer, many of  these parks also include waterways where all manner of paddling activities can be enjoyed either through direct participation or on-shore observation.

One one recent, sunny, hot Saturday afternoon, I was invited to join my aunt and my cousin’s toddler (=my first cousin once removed?) at ‘their’ park. Knowing I was taking a photography course, my aunt thought it would be an opportunity for me to hone my skills in shooting some action or unposed portrait photography with my (borrowed) DSLR Nikon (D40) camera. At the same time, I would be able to capture some of those precious, fleeting moments shared between a devoted nanna and her wide-eyed, energetic granddaughter.

This park was their urban oasis or ‘secret garden’ to which they ventured every day to play since the apartment building in which they resided only had minimal green space, a trade-off that many urban-dwellers accept in order to live in the city instead of the outlying suburbs. I had not spent any amount of time in this park, other than enjoying a lovely, crisp, winter walk along the snowy river paths with my aunt one late January afternoon. Even then with its bare trees and frozen ground, the park was beautiful, and so I did not hesitate to join them on this summer July day.

Below are a selection of pictures that I took, originally shot in color, but which I transformed into black & white using Photoshop. (I have a real penchant for the artistry of black & white photography.) I shot well over 200 pictures, wanting to ensure I ended up with some good pictures in the bunch. A mid-afternoon outing, it was challenging at times adjusting the exposure to fit the changing light conditions. I also should have increased my shutter speed to freeze the motion on the swings and capture the elusive, parsimonious smiles instead of slowing my shutter speed in a bid to show motion through a blur; these pictures did not turn out, unfortunately. However, there were (thankfully) quite a few others I did like; among them a couple of color photos that just had to be retained as color images in order to appreciate their full effect.  Throughout my largely successful attempts at being the unobtrusive, roving photographer, I was struck by how the scenes playing out before me kept reminding me of the wonderful imagery described so eloquently by Adam Gopnik in his highly acclaimed memoir — Paris to the Moon — of his years spent living in Paris with his family and raising his young son. Ottawa is definitely not Paris but this park had a certain charm to it, perhaps not unlike that of the famous Jardin du Luxembourg, where Adam Gopnik would take his son to play.

Getting set to tame the teeter-totter

Contemplating the stairs to the slide

Hunting for her rock in the sandbox

Passionate about balls, a budding young striker develops her dribbling skills

Giving her beloved soccer ball some love

Exchanging a handful of flowers

Seeking comfort from Nanna

Getting a closer look at the curious case of the blue chair in the pond

Making their way home after another long, warm, sunny afternoon in their favorite park

Experimenting with still life and portrait DSLR photography

Well, my intro class in digital SLR photography at the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa will soon be finishing (sigh). I have really enjoyed this class and am grateful for the DSLR Nikon D40 camera that a friend of mine loaned me so that I could take this class and see if photography was an art form I would enjoy prior to going out and purchasing my own DSLR camera (which can be quite an investment).

It’s clear to me that I still need a lot more time to work on the mechanics or technical aspects of shooting, but at least I think I have pretty good natural instincts for composition and story-telling. It’s figuring out those exact settings (the specs) I will need for a given shot that still seems to trip me up. You can always tell a seasoned photographer from a newbie by the former’s facility with rattling off the expected shutter speed, F-stop and ISO that will be needed for a shot. I guess I just need to be patient and practise, practise, practise. And, perhaps invest in a Dummies book for some remedial training.

As you may have noted from my previous posts, landscape photography is a passion. So is black & white photography. I also find people fascinating and would really like to learn to shoot portraits both in a studio (posed) and non-studio/street (unposed) setting. I find studio photography trickier though, since you require a fair amount of equipment, and importantly, you need to understand how to adjust/manipulate light and shadow. Studio is a lot less forgiving than outdoor photography, with the former requiring more technical skill, in my opinion.

We did two classes in studio: one with still life (objects) and one with human subjects (portraits). I preferred the portrait session probably because I’m generally more interested in human subject matter than inanimate objects. (Not surprisingly, any past career testing I had done revealed I was not someone who would be terribly well suited to engineering or related fields.)

This wine glass was deceptively tricky to shoot and get the rim lighting just right. I tried to do some correction in Photoshop, but still couldn’t bring the stem outline out. The background is also too dark. (Argghh!)

As I listened to my enthusiastic photography teacher’s tips during our two studio sessions, I couldn’t help but think how much more interesting and less intimidating high school Physics classes would’ve been had the teachers used real-life ‘case studies’ (like is routinely done in problem-based learning curricula in the health sciences). An illustration of how the principles of Physics are applied to real-life problems would’ve made learning Physics easier for people like me, who are stimulated by story-telling and who don’t visualize well in 3-D and are also mechanically-challenged.

For example, studio photography could easily double as a lesson in Physics (with the manipulation of light and shadow) or Mathematics (especially Geometry with the calculation of angles) — and Shop class, if you have a MacGyver-like inventor/photography teacher like I do! 🙂 There are also potential teachable moments for Biology, if you do macro-photography (e.g., use of a magnifying lens to make bugs look big and allow one to study nature up close) and Chemistry, if you do food photography (e.g., adding drops of glycerin to an aqueous liquid to simulate water drops or adding effervescent tablets to make beer look frothy).

This still life set-up was kind of random, but it was a team effort. I threw my watch into the scene and declared it a re-interpretation of Salvador Dali‘s “Persistence of Memory” painting.

So, all in all, I found the evening of shooting still life kind of frustrating. Fortunately, when we did portraits the following week, everyone shot the same models, so we had some real-time group-think on what shutter speed and F-stop to try. (ISO remained constant.) I was generally more pleased with the portraits I had taken, but still had some trouble toning down the shiny slot box in the background of photo # 2 (below) in Photoshop. Again, I guess it’s just a matter of practice and getting more familiar with Photoshop…

Historic street detail and vintage fashion: the marriage of sepia and conte

After a heavy 2 days of mind-numbing data-crunching and technical writing, I inevitably had to have an artistic release…

The photo below was taken at dusk in the Byward Market in Ottawa and transformed into a sepia monochrome in Photoshop while leaving the restaurant’s red door and sign intact. I’m hoping to use it in a larger drawing/mixed media project for a good friend’s upcoming wedding.

Along Sussex Drive, Ottawa

Since the aforementioned technical report had a tight deadline, I had to reluctantly forego my lifedrawing class this week. To make up for the loss of this focused evening of drawing, I thought I’d pick up my conté crayons (which we don’t use in this class; rather, just charcoal) and attempt a more loosely sketched interpretation of a vintage, early 20th century black & white fashion photo (I just loved the overall ethereal feel to this fairy-like photo) from my go-to drawing companion, Style Book. I applied various dilutions of an India ink wash for the background shadowing effects.

“Fantail feathers, a silk and lace strapless dress with a very large fan for effect, New York City, 1918.” [ref: Style Book by Elizabeth Walker]

 Now, on to the next technical report!..

Good Friday – A Day of Quiet Reflection…

A Day of Quiet Reflection…

[Above: Black & white acrylic study of the Virgin Mary – first painting assignment in Introduction to Oils & Acrylics class at Ottawa School of Art, 2010.]

[Below: Black & white conté sketch of Mia Wasikowska as the title character in the film adaptation of Charlotte Brontë’s classic book, Jane Eyre; from a newspaper photo, 2012.]