Bristen Bourque - Photo Blog

Early morning June 2013 walk

2013-06-23T18:02:00.000-07:00

Took an hour-long walk around the house very early recently and took pictures of plants and flowers. Here are a few shots of that walk:

Marsh at Sunset - June 2013

2013-06-21T18:28:00.001-07:00

I went to this marsh during sunset, hoping for great lighting. Unfortunately, by the time the kids were in bed and by the time I got there, I literally only have a few shots with the correct lighting and nothing came our particularly nice. Low light made it near impossible to have anything good that was in movement (I think there was a muskrat swimming in the water, a duck later showed up, etc). I also got hit hard by the mosquitoes - hanging around a marsh/pond after sunset is asking for trouble! Oh well, maybe I'll try again another day. For now here are a few shots, including some more abstract type images taken at the marsh/pond. Can you see the two eyes and almost a face in the last image?

Lunch walk at ponds near office

2013-06-17T17:54:00.001-07:00

From the office, I can take a 5-minute walk (or a 1-minute drive) and get to a few ponds that are now bursting with life. When they were first made, there was little there other than muddy water - but I still liked to hang out there. But since then, over the last 10 years or so, life has discovered this little spot. I'm not exactly sure why they were built, but they sure provide a nice spot for lunch photography walks. Here are a few shots from a recent walk, in June 2013. All shots taken with my 70 - 300mm lens. It's a slow lens, but does "ok" when there is enough light - like this bright sunny day!

Bubbles (June 2013)

2013-06-15T17:52:00.004-07:00

The kids were making bubbles the other day, so I decided to try and catch a few images with the camera. Proved to be a bit challenging to photograph, but managed to get a few that turned out. What's interesting is that there were reflections in the bubbles and a few of them had my house reflected in the bubble along with the sunset. It was a fun experience, but I only had about 10 minutes of shots, so happy I got the settings right for a few decent pictures.

Spring 2013 Images - Part 4

2013-06-12T17:54:00.002-07:00

Here are the last images for May 2013 :)

Spring 2013 Images - Part 3

2013-06-11T18:07:00.000-07:00

Here are a few more images from some Spring images... getting close to summer now I suppose, but "officially" these were taken in Spring :)

Spring 2013 Images - Part 2

2013-06-02T18:24:00.001-07:00

Here are a few bird pictures taken this Spring... notice the pair of geese in my driveway - they are just as noisy as the domestic kind! Also, the single goose was sitting on a nest. I have gone back to see if the eggs hatched yet, but I'm hoping for some baby Canada geese soon as I know where that one was found (easy access too).

February 2013

2013-06-02T18:19:00.003-07:00

Here are a few images I took in February, but never ended up posting them... as always, with just my Nikon D60 and the basic 18 - 55mm lens... Actually, in February I got a 70 - 300mm lens with some birthday money (thanks to the generous family members that made that happen!!). It's only a f5.6, but still quite reasonable with good lighting and helps blur out backgrounds if you take flower closeups using max zoom. Cheap way around not having macro gear, but works for the moment. I will post more Spring pictures soon which will display that well.

Spring 2013 Images - Part 1

2013-06-01T18:08:00.000-07:00

I have not posted in the longest time, but have not stopped taking pictures. Not as much during the winter, but Spring definitely gave me an urge to go spend time with nature and my humble Nikon D60. I will post more Spring images, but I will start with these first.

Here is the entrance gate and the road on which I tend to take walks on my father's wood lot (basically behind my house) on a foggy morning:

On that foggy morning I also got some interesting spider web shots because of the droplets on the webs. Here is one of my favorite ones:

And to close this post, I also got a decent shot of a dragon fly recently (not the same foggy morning though, this was a lunch walk!):

Historic Acadian Village in New Brunswick - Part 4

2012-08-28T18:23:00.000-07:00

This is my fourth post from my visit at the Historic Acadian Village this summer (www.villagehistoriqueacadien.com). I'll eventually run out of pictures and move on to something else :)

Historic Acadian Village in New Brunswick - Part 3

2012-08-18T18:57:00.000-07:00

This is my third post from my visit at the Historic Acadian Village this summer (www.villagehistoriqueacadien.com). I have not even gone through all my pictures yet, but here are a few images I took of people working there. They have to live essentially as Acadians lived a few hundred years ago. They have to pump their water by hand, pick their food from the gardens, fix fish nets by hand, clean sheep wool to make clothing, and the list goes on.

Historic Acadian Village in New Brunswick - Part 2

2012-08-15T19:23:00.000-07:00

This is a second post from the gazillion pictures I took while my family and I visited the Historic Acadian Village in northern New Brunswick (www.villagehistoriqueacadien.com). Mostly about buildings this time, but a few other things too!

Naomi is the only one in the family that doesn't mind my camera too much :)

We thought we were going to lose Caleb in the barrels of nails... he wouldn't leave them and had to examine each one of them!

Here's an example of why a flash can be very useful even in the harsh mid-day light. This image has an over exposed background so that we can see Duke (a 34 year old horse, as tame and friendly as a puppy!).

This image was taken using my external flash. Background can be properly exposed and subject light up with the flash. I did not have any softbox and completely off-camera lighting, so there are a few shadows there. But still, to me, it's a better image than the previous one...

Historic Acadian Village in New Brunswick - Part 1

2012-08-09T19:54:00.000-07:00

My family and I visited the Historic Acadian Village in northern New Brunswick (www.villagehistoriqueacadien.com). We spent two days there and still did not manage to get through everything. We simply love it there! It's a great spot for photography, without a doubt. I recently received an old external flash for my camera too (Vivitar 880AFNi). It fires correctly, but the TTL component doesn't appear to work - so I'm full manual when I use it! It however proved to be very useful despite this. The very dark antique houses needed extra lighting. Bouncing the light off the ceilings usually provided extra light without appearing to be too artificial. I messed up many shots messing around with the exposure and flash, but overall had a blast anyways - and still ended up with a few pictures I kind of liked.

Here are a few selected images of the over 750 images I took over two days. Hopefully I will be able to post more soon.

Magnetic Hill Zoo - Summer 2012

2012-08-01T17:27:00.001-07:00

We had an interesting day at the zoo with friends this summer. Frustrating being at a zoo in some ways. You can't easily shoot the animals when they are in deep sleep. Lots of caging in the way for shooting, backgrounds are not always the best either. Then you can't spend 15 hours in front of a cage for the animal to wake up or look at you, at some point the family (and/or friends!) will get impatient and you have to move along. I however managed to get a few decent animal shots out of the afternoon. Having my father's 300mm lens was critical as I could not of gotten close enough to any of them with the basic kit lens on my tiny Nikon D60 (18 - 55mm). So here are a few selected images...

Fundy Trail 2012

2012-08-01T17:18:00.000-07:00

We had a nice trip to St-Martins, New Brunswick this summer and visited the Fundy Trail. Beautiful place that has expanded so much that you almost need more than a day to do everything now. My father came along with us on this trip and it was a lot of fun!

Had many great shots, but selected a few for the photo blog. I shoot in Manual mode almost all the time and I'm noticing that I'm messing up fewer pictures now. I sometimes will get a few over or under exposed images, or sometimes the depth-of-field is not exactly what I would like, but getting closer to getting it right the first time as time goes on. It's all about practicing - so happy shooting! :)

Neth & Rocky's Wedding

2012-07-13T19:42:00.001-07:00

This is the first wedding I've attended since I got my first dSLR (the used Nikon D60). I didn't have any special lens (only the basic 18 - 55mm lens that came with the camera). With this lens, it is challenging (not really possible for the most part) to properly blur out backgrounds, even with largest aperture possible (bokeh). I also did not have liberty to move around, as I was not the assigned photographer. So I did what I could from where I was. I am posting a few of the pictures that came out decently well (in my humble, uneducated opinion anyways!) This was a very simple and small wedding, but a very special and happy day for the couple in question nonetheless!

Fundy National Park - June 2012 (Part 2)

2012-06-25T17:55:00.000-07:00

A few more shots from the trip... this time all processed with Picasa though (quicker for me at the moment)... I'm over-using the "vignette" effect, I know - I'll be working on getting away from that, but for now, these images were already processed, please forgive the redundant vignette effect :) It's all about the kids today! Please provide feedback of what you think...

This is typical for my son :)

Nice view of the bay behind them...

Taken on Dickson Falls trail.

Sitting on a big rock in the middle of the little brook

My daughter peaking through an old rotten tree... the thing was leaning towards me and hanging over my head... I quickly took a few shots and got out of there, didn't feel very comfortable there - my daughter was on the correct side of the tree, I would of got it if anything went wrong...

I think my daughter is a tree huger!

Fundy National Park - June 2012 (Part 1)

2012-06-24T19:24:00.002-07:00

I'm drowning in pictures! My family and I spent a week in Fundy National Park (amazing park, one that I still greatly enjoy after 20 years). Came back with 12GB of pictures and videos. Birds woke me up real early in the morning (5:30am), so I got many sunrise and quiet time exploring the park and taking many pictures. The only problem with this trip is that it didn't last longer!

With my limited equipment, I think I still got some great shots (at least some that I like!). Here are a few (kids processed in Picasa, but other two processed in LightRoom). Let me know what you think!

Bennett Lake was incredible that first morning. I returned many times again throughout the week and couldn't get anything like the first morning. Glad I was there and didn't miss that amazing morning!

Many sunrises were amazing in the park. Some were more dramatic with clouds or fog. However, without a gradual neutral density filter, there's only so much I could do. My cheap eBay circular polarization filter ($8 CAD!) seemed to help in some cases. For the most part, I didn't like longer exposures using my decent Hoya ND8 filter .

The kids had a blast, and I'm happy they enjoy the same things as I do. We hope to return again at some point!

2012-05-27

2012-05-27T18:14:00.000-07:00

My father and I decided to take a few hours for a photo expedition. This is the first time we do that - take time just to take pictures. It was a lot of fun. It was very windy when we got there, which made long exposures just about impossible (tripod or no tripod). We however managed to get quite a few shots in the few hours we were there. Hope we get to do something like that again at some point.

The following images are a selection of the many I took. There were all edited in Google Picasa 3: so quality is not great. I really have to learn Adobe LightRoom 3 (which I already have purchased and own), because the resulting images are of much higher quality. But for now, because of time constraints, Picasa will have to do. I may post some of the same images below processed in LightRoom at some point - it's interesting to compare the difference (it's obvious!). The one big thing with LightRoom is "noise control" - there is nothing like that to my knowledge in Picasa, which really affects end results.

Anyways, let me know what you think! This is very low budget... images taken with my Nikon D60 and all of them were taken with either my father's 100mm lens or 300mm lens. Thanks again dad! :)

2012-05-26

2012-05-26T17:37:00.000-07:00

Ode to dandelions! Not sure why people don't like them... If you research their nutritional strengths, you may be surprised how healthy these little plants are! Not only that, but they are very valuable for insects as well. Since it was the season for dandelions, I took a few pictures now and then. Depth of focus is not always 100% accurate, but I didn't find these too bad. What do you think? One of these pictures is NOT a dandelion... do you know which one?

2012-05-09

2012-05-09T17:05:00.001-07:00

This image was in the previous post, but I did post processing in Lightroom instead of Picasa. So much better, it's incredible! Notice the detail in the bird (white were blown out in other image). I assume in capable hands, this image could be even better. Lessons to be learned: don't trust automatic camera settings, but shoot RAW so you can fix things somewhere when they are not perfect. Also, use good post-processing software! I love Picasa for quick edits/processing, but it's obvious that Lightroom is far superior with regards to image quality!

2012-05-08

2012-05-08T18:18:00.000-07:00

Today, it's all about birds. Went to a local park with the family, while I still had my father's 300mm lens. So I managed to take quite a few bird pictures. The biggest challenge I had (as always!) was low light. At 300mm, there is much less light coming in than at 70mm. I cheated this time, I just set the camera to "sports mode". Bad idea for the most part! Many pictures had some areas that were blown out. Lesson learned: never trust the machine! I should of chose a specific ISO, maxed out aperture, used a fast shutter speed and lightly under-expose. I seem to find fixing an under-exposed image always easier than fixing an over-exposed image. Still learning as I go... having the extra toys really helps though - this is a nice lens! (http://www.nikonusa.com/Nikon-Products/Product/Camera-Lenses/2161/AF-S-VR-Zoom-NIKKOR-70-300mm-f%252F4.5-5.6G-IF-ED.html)

2012-05-07

2012-05-07T18:26:00.000-07:00

Last night I spent an hour trying to get some moon pictures. Thanks to my generous father lending me his Nikon 70 - 300mm (67mm dia.) lens! It was challenging enough as it is. The raising moon was more challenging than when it is higher. Less light and more movement. Important to have a camera that produces good results at high ISO (my Nikon D60 is not the greatest in this department). Fairly satisfied with the end results - but I still have lots to learn it seems!

2012-04-30

2012-04-30T18:03:00.000-07:00

A few pictures of my kids for today... No description required I think :)

2012-04-25

2012-04-25T16:47:00.002-07:00

Friends and family having a spring walk on my father's wood lot, behind my house...

The challenge here is taking a nice picture even though everything is still bare... I find it quite challenging this time of year (unless you do macros of new plants and tree buds, etc?)

The moon on the kids' play outhouse door (yes, they have a play outhouse, accompanying their playhouse built by their father-in-law)