Layout Changes, Site Redesign Imminent!

Wow, two posts in one month! Things are looking up :)

As you can tell, I am changing the look of a few things around here. I figure a little revamping is in order. I was never really happy with the layout of my gallery, so over the next little while, I will be rearranging things and generally playing around with a bunch of stuff. Mostly, I think the structure/organization needs to be simplified. I think I have too many categories for images. When I set out to make all those categories, I thought it would aid people in finding what they want, but instead I find it segregates my images to much, and breaks up the flow of the site.

So there you have it, just wanted to keep you all informed. If you have any suggestions or comments, I would love to hear them! Drop me a line in the comments or in email.

ps; the gallery may be inaccessible for short periods if doing some major overhauls is in order. Also, some of my links in the blog may cease to work after I am done moving things around. I will try to keep up with that though.

C

Butterfly Bracket

So having read 'Closeups in Nature' and 'Landscape Photography Field Guide' both by John Shaw, I decided to have a go at his macro flash bracket, dubbed the 'Butterfly Bracket' (because he uses it to shoot butterflies). It is a simple construction requiring some aluminum strapping (1/8" by 1" wide) and a small ballhead, and some nuts and bolts. I was unsure of where to obtain the aluminum and I eventually found a source online, but shipping was expensive, so I put the idea on the back burner for a bit. The other day at work, I got to thinking about it again, and decided to ask on of the guys in our maintenance department where I could get some aluminum locally, and explained what I needed etc. He, funny enough, used to work in an Aluminum Foundry, so he knew some spots. So, my luck got better then next day though! I am at work again, and the fellow I spoke to earlier called me into the maintenance shop, and promptly handed me a 7 ft long piece of 1/8" by 1" aluminum strap! One of my coworkers had bought it by accident thinking it was stainless steel, but discovered otherwise when they tried to weld it and it melted under the heat. So he didn't need it anymore and I offered to take it off his hands for $5!! What luck!!

So, now I am set up, I already had a small ballhead that I purchased last year when I first wanted to make the butterfly bracket, so all I needed was to cut and drill the aluminum. All in all, it was pretty straightforward. The only issue is with the flash arm, I didn't have the tools to make a slot for the flash to move up and down, so all it has is a series of holes. I have some leftover strap, so I will make version 2 at some point!

Here are some shots of it, it may not be pretty, but it works! I think the SB-600 is a little heavy for it, so I am going to look into an alternative at some point, maybe the SB-400, or a cheaper non-Nikon brand. I don't need anything too crazy.







And here it is fully loaded!







Alright, that's it for the write up. It is now 2:11am and I am tired. Tomorrow I will post a few shots of the results. There was nothing really interesting around the immediate area, I did find a small spider hiding in my basement though, so check back!

Thanks for tuning in :)
C

Happy New Year!

Well hello everyone,

It's almost 2011! This year has flown by. I hope everyone is enjoying their holidays and has a safe and happy new year!

Just wanted to give an update on the big gift I received this year! My wonderful (and slightly insane :P) wife bought me my long coveted Nikon 10-24mm lens!! I was in shock, and still am when I see it on my camera! It is a beautiful lens and from what I have shot with it so far, it takes amazing shots, really sharp! I am super stoked to get out in the field and test it out. I also got a few other goodies, including a Really Right Stuff 'L' Bracket, a Really Right Stuff Quick Release Plate for the tripod, a hotshoe bubble level, 4 rolls of Ilford 50ISO B&W 35mm film, and my fathers Vivitar 2x Teleconverter for my Nikon F. So it was a good haul for me! How about you?

Well, I am quite caught up with getting things ready for my son's 3rd birthday party this weekend, so I will post pics up after sunday with shots of the lens and the other stuff! Hopefully some test shots from the lens as well :)

Happy New Year everyone! Be safe out there!

C

Happy Holidays!!

Hello there, long time no see!

So I want to give a quick update before the New Year on what's been happening over here at Craig Gosling Photography. As of November 25, I am now a father of 2 awesome little boys. The new addition is named Cooper. Also the oldest one turns three in a few days. They grow up so fast! So as you may have figured out, me and my wife have our hands full. It is a little difficult at the moment to maintain a blog, gallery, facebook fan page, twitter account, and find time to actually go take photos, then post process them etc! Phew.. So needless to say, I haven't been doing too much of anything like that. But, the New Year is just that, a new year (obviously, but you know what I mean :) I think Santa (my wife) is bringing me something special this year, I guess I have been a good boy? Expect some news in the next few days with regards to that :) So my plan is to get out some more in the New Year, to finally get my printer that I wrote about a long time ago up and working, to post process my backlog of shots! That's the plan as it stands right now with regards to photography stuff. So thanks for being patient, if people are still reading this blog, stay tuned!

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Years to everyone!

C

A CGP update

Hey everyone!
So again, I am starting off my post with a "it's been awhile but...."

I will leave out all the details, but suffice it to say, things are a little crazy around here. My wife is 2 months away from having another baby! Haven't had much time for anything other than getting the house ready, nursery etc, and preparing for the little guys arrival.

I have taken a few photos here and there. Haven't had a chance to process them yet due to moving my office to another location. But there is some macro ones and a few landscapes in there. I tried out a new rig for my close ups, reconstituting a Stroboframe Camera flip bracket. It worked out pretty well, once I get to the shots I took using this I will post a shot of the setup as well.

I also have been researching a bit about night sky photography, including shots of the Milky Way. I have been scouting locations online and found this handy site that will give you an idea of light pollution in your area: The Dark Sky Finder

I found a few places I would like to go to check out, probably next year though. I need a faster wide angle lens as well, which I do not have at this time :)

I have been playing with an old Nikon F1 as well. I love it. I have some shots developed, but not scanned. I am looking into investing in a negative scanner, as getting them printed in a lab is far too expensive.

Let's see, what else is new. The new season of Fringe is starting in a few days. That is exciting! If you don't watch it, I suggest you check it out! Also, Dexter is back this coming Sunday. And a new show is premiering on halloween that I am really excited for, AMC's "The Walking Dead"!!

So good stuff is going on all around! Stay tuned for those shots I talked about and more updates later on!

Take care,
C

Here are a few shots I have been working on

Hey folks, so I finally got around to getting some processing done, here are 3 new shots I have uploaded to the gallery


'Braided Branch'



'Daydream'

and

'Heavy Sky'

I recently was fortunate enough to inherit my fathers Nikon F1 with 2 lenses (thanks Dad!), so I have been playing around with that. I have some film that needs to go get developed (4 rolls from my Diana camera, 2 rolls from the Nikon F1, and 1 roll that I found that is really old and have no idea whats on it). I will scan any good shots and post them up.

My lovely wife also bought me a Zone IV modified Soligor digital spot meter off eBay! It is awesome and I have been using that as well to apply Ansel Adam's Zone System to my pictures. Really fun stuff :)

I am going to write about going back to a film camera soon, and also include a little blurb about the spot meter! Until next time

Craig

Life

Hey everyone,
So, my last post was awhile ago, and before that, well, that was awhile ago too :)

Right now there is a lot of crazy stuff going on. I would love to sit at home and just blog and do photography stuff all day! I am sure a lot of you would like that. But in reality, I have an intense job, I work 12 hour shifts, 2 weeks overnights and 2 weeks day shift 7am-7pm. I have a two and a half year old son, and me and my wife are expecting our second child!! She is around 13 weeks along at this point, we have no idea what it will be (maybe a girl?? shhh).

All this stuff (aka, LIFE) got me thinking. I am trying to do too much at once. Who can balance working shift work, spending time with my family, photography, kung fu, etc? It's too much sometimes! I read a great series over at Thom Hogan's site about getting back to basics (article here, a great read for every photographer!). He talks about all these new cameras, with auto everything, lenses with VR, autofocus, auto exposure, auto flash, etc etc etc etc. He also mentions (not sure if it's in the same article, but relevant) the emails he gets from people saying they are going on vacation next week, whats the best lens to bring?

So this boils down to people getting "lazy" for want of a better word, with the whole photography process, and getting hung up on gear. I am guilty of this too, I have spend countless hours online, researching, pixel peeping high res shots from various lenses I was interested in, looking at specs of cameras, tripods, MTF charts, distortion characteristics, whatever. I think we need to step back and focus on why we are doing all this stuff, a love for photography! Some of the best photographic memories I have are wandering around my old hometown with a friend, armed with our Olympus OM-1's, and our 50mm lens, taking shots of whatever caught our eyes. There was no auto exposure, no matrix metering, no aperture priority mode, no auto focus. I am starting to ramble here, but the whole gist of this article by Thom Hogan was get out there and grab your camera, grab a 50mm lens (or your favourite prime lens for that matter), set everything to manual and get back to basics.

Well, that article really hit me close to home, sometimes I need to do that with my life! Don't worry about all the other stuff, spend time with my family, play trucks with my son, relax and watch a movie with my wife. Sometimes I think I need to do everything, that I won't have a chance later, or that I need to process those images right away. The majority of the time that stuff can wait. Unless you are a pro photographer, life usually gets in between you and your hobbies. But as long as you can set aside some time for them, to keep sane so to speak, then worry about the really important things.

Anyways, that was quite a rant. It's late, I have been painting my living room and need to go to sleep. But head over to Thom's website and read that article (and all the others on there, lots of great information, especially for us Nikon guys :P).

Hopefully, I will be reorganizing my gallery soon. It is a little too complicated with all the different categories I have going on. When I do that, I will hopefully have a few new images to share with you all. I also have an exciting piece of gear coming to me, courtesy of my lovely wife. Stay tuned for more info on that. I will give you a hint, it is not a lens, it was used, and it came from ebay!

In the meantime, remember: SIMPLICITY

Craig

Finally uploaded a new shot

Hey folks,
So as the title says, I uploaded a new shot to my gallery. It's nothing too crazy, but I was testing out that new B+W Neutral Density (1000x) that I got awhile back.



This is at the same place I have some other shots of from last year. It was kind of a gloomy day, but I like the way it came out in black and white. This filter allowed me to hold the shutter open for 77 seconds in the middle of the day :) It gave a nice effect on the water and the locks in the background. I am anxious to try this out on some cloud movement as well!

BTW, I just looked on my computer, and I have a ton of images I have to process. It seems I have been falling behind! I am still shooting when I can, but just not getting around to going through them on the computer. I will slowly get through them, and will update here when I post up new (ish) ones.

Oh, and I caught a bit of a documentary on Ansel Adams on TVO the other day. Really interesting stuff! I am going to try to track it down to watch the rest, you should look out for it if you want to hear some of the back story on a legend!

See you around!
C

An Update and some sunny weather!

Hey everyone!

Just wanted to give a brief update as to whats going on in my world recently.
Well, the weather is finally turning for the better. I think we are done with the snow (fingers crossed).

I think this summer I am going to be focusing a lot on getting my prints displayed in local venues, small coffee shops etc. I am going to look into local galleries too. I plan on going out some more and exploring the local scenery, I already have a few places in mind and a few visions that I want to see realized on "film" so to speak :)

Hopefully I will get more opportunities to have fun with my Diana camera as well. I have about 3 rolls of film I have yet to develop from awhile back. I like waiting a long time because then its a surprise when you get the shots back! So keep your eyes out for those in the next little while!

I am contributing two prints to be auctioned off to support the Cancer research of an Ottawa doctor, Dr. John Bell (read a bio here). The prints will be sold to support Pedaling Feat. Pedaling Feat are 2 women who are biking across Canada to raise money and awareness for Cancer research. On their journey they will be holding a silent auction where my print will be up for grabs. They have already held one auction on March 27 in Calgary, where my first print was sold and apparently received a lot of positive feedback! Read more on the first silent auction here, (in the first picture, you can see my print in the background! It is "Unlonely" in case you are wondering). Regardless, this is a very worthy cause and one (as you know) that hits close to home! So I encourage you to pop over to their site and have a look through what they are all about, and donate :)!

Okay, let's see, what else is happening. I finally got to experiment with my focusing rail. I put my dead dragonfly to good use and shot a lot of focus stacked shots at high magnifications. I believe they turned out quite well, I have not processed them yet, but I will do so soon and post the shots here for all to see! I don't generally like shots of a dead bug, but this little guy afforded me the opportunity to get some good practice in a controlled environment.

Tomorrow morning I will be making a trip out to some local waterfalls to try out my neutral density filter that cuts out an enormous 10 stops of light!! So we should be seeing some creamy foggy waterfalls.

Well, that's all for right now! Hope you all have a good weekend, and Easter and all that.
Take care
C

Happy Olympics! and other stuff :)

Hi everyone!
So its almost March, the Olympics are in full swing, and hopefully the snow is on its way out.

Just wanted to give everyone a quick update on whats happening in my world. Hmm, where to start...hah! There really is nothing too much going on right now! Busy with the family as usual. Work as well.

I have gotten some of my films back from the developer from my Diana camera, you can see them here: link

I also received as a gift, a B+W ND 1000x filter! Which is a neutral density filter that cuts out 10 (yes thats right!!) stops of light. So what this means, is that I can take super long exposures in the brightest of days if I want to smooth out water or cloud movement, or even make a busy street seem devoid of life! I got this filter in 77mm thread size, I do not have a lens with that large of threads (yet) so I had to get an adapter off ebay that would allow me to attach the filter onto my 52mm threaded 18-55 lens. The reason I did this was because in the near future, I plan on purchasing the Nikkor 10-24mm or the Tokina 11-16f2.8 lens. I am still on the fence about which one I want. But they both have 77mm filter threads.

I also got a focusing rail! I am really looking forward to trying that out soon on my test subject, a dead dragonfly :) I am going to use it to hone my focus stacking skills and for taking technical shots at high magnifications of tiny things!

I recently did a job for a client where I needed to take pictures for a brochure for a fitness machine the client had invented. It forced me out of my comfort zone of nature photography and threw me headfirst into shooting a model and controlling light sources and all that exciting stuff. It was really interesting, and I enjoyed it, the pictures turned out great as well! I learned a lot from the Strobist website in my preparation for this assignment. Thanks for making all that valuable info available to everyone! http://strobist.blogspot.com/

Well, I am still planning on doing that write up of my Diana camera (I know, I know, I said that a month ago). Bear with me here, it will get done soon. Maybe now that I have written about doing it twice now, it will make less prone to forgetting about it again. Whoops!

Take care everyone, talk to you soon!
C