A New Day, A Different Way The creative and photographic endeavours of a woman trying to add color and beauty to her world.

These are a few random shots I took over the last week as I went about my life, it is amazing what you can find to photograph if you just keep your eyes open.  I came out of the art supply store the other day and noticed the little old tractor sitting in the corner of the parking lot.  They are using it to plow the winter snow.  It was old and decrepit but somehow it appealed to me.  When I finished taking a few shots I turned around to walk back to my car and saw the two little birds having a wonderful bath in the puddle on top of the dumpster.  I know that I could have made the color of the birds brighter with Lightroom but since I won't have access to it again until the end of the month I can't right now and I thought they were too cute just as they are not to share. 

Downtown Vernon boast one of the largest outdoor public art galleries in Canada.  Twenty-five amazing murals, some as large as 300 feet long and 40 feet high, depict the history, culture, scenery and folklore of Vernon.  They are on a number of large civic buildings such as the post office, the side of the big box office supply store and some are even hidden in back alleys and are hard to find.

I could probably do three or four posts on these murals alone there are so many and I will likely do more in the future but yesterday I drove around town looking for some of the hidden gems, the ones on the sides of parking lots, hiding in the back alleys and even on the side of one of the local tattoo shops.  A lot of these photos are taken at quite an angle because they are in alley's and that is the only way I could get a large part of the mural in the photo. I didn't edit these pictures at all so they show piles of snow and cars parked next to them.  I wanted people to see them how we as residents see them as just part of the local scenery.  Although truth be told us locals get so used to seeing them we don't even notice them half the time.  It wasn't until I went looking for them yesterday that I actually noticed how many are out there and how beautifully they are done, of course the photos don't actually do them justic.

 

These are photos from an afternoon drive I took a week ago.  The lighting was perfect, there was a lot of blue sky but the sun was covered by a thin cloud layer making it a lot easier to get good lighting in my photos. 

I have edited all of these photos by adding texture and a couple other effects using Photoshop and Picnik.  I know the first shot has a little too much texture but I kind of like the way it turned out anyway.  I particularly like the last shot, for some reason I am drawn to shots taken on railways, maybe it is the linear lines I'm not sure but for some reason they seem to grab me.  This is actually the railway that services one of the local lumber mills. 

Every February here in town we have the Vernon Winter Carnival and accompanying that is the Balloon Fiesta.  I am not entirely sure what convinces these people to go up in these balloons in the middle of winter because it must be so cold up there but they do and I just happened to be driving with my camera beside me when they took off mid afternoon last Friday.  In case anyone is wondering yes, I did stop the car to take these photos.  The last photo wasn't edited in any way it just looks so much different than the others due to the sun being right behind the balloons.

These photos definitely did not turn out how I was hoping.  I had been trying out an OM Zuiko50mm macro legacy glass lens on my camera.  Basically these lenses were developed for the old Olympus OM film cameras but with an adapter can be used on the Olympus Evolt SLR cameras.  The only issue is that you have to shoot completely manual.  That is definitely a challenge for me.  When I looked at each of these shots in the display on my camera after taking them each one of them was in focus but when I downloaded them sadly the truth showed.

I was kind of drawn to the ethereal feeling of the photos so instead of just deleting the images I decided to try adding some film grain to them to see if I could make look like they were out of focus on purpose.  I used this really easy tutorial and altered the images.  I have to say I do kind of like the images that I ended up with, the soft, grainy look of them does appeal to me.  That I think is one of the wonders of photography, with all of today's technology we can make something of almost any photo.

This is St. James Catholic Church, it is a beautiful, old building that was built in 1908.  I just took these photos on Friday but I edited them to try to make the photos look like they were old and worn and somewhat stained.  I am not sure if I completely accomplished that but I tried.  The last photo shows what the church looks like in full color, warm and inviting which it really is, although perhaps not quite as interesting.

By the way I do realize the building is slightly crooked in all of these photos and I could have fixed that in Lightroom but my 30 day Lightroom trial has expired and I spent this months photography budget on a Polariod SX-70 and film from The Impossible Project for it so I will have to wait until next month for Lightroom so please bear with me.