DTK on a Wednesday

Vacation + [2 new lenses with which I need to practise] + Kitchener’s King Street Art Market == a welcome relief from the kitchen plumbing work of Wednesday morning.

This is King Street.

Click through for some walk-around pics from DTK…

Shooting the 12-24mm f2.8 lens here, in the harsh light of mid-day.  This lens is a challenge as you go toward the widest angle and get a lot of distortion.  Not too bad here at 24mm.

Tanks for sale on the street.

Agnes is everywhere.  Here at 14mm on this lens you see the distortion of the dude at left (I cropped the right side), which is the price of the wide angle.  Earlier in the week, I was out in the country in the middle of the night following a storm and trying to get some shots with the 14-24mm lens.  Despite having a sturdy tripod, remote trigger, exposure delay, and manual focus set to infinity, I ended up getting a lot of fuzzy captures.  Hence, more practice required.  Need to figure out the right balance of aperture, shutter, and ISO.  For the record, 2.8/20s/100 ain’t it.  Oh, and exposures longer than 20 seconds produce some very obvious star trails due to the rotation of the earth.  Cool if that’s what you’re going for.  Not cool, otherwise.

Alley bear.  At 17mm/f11/ISO100.

I wandered into Pam’s store, Flourish Florals on Ontario St, to say hello and change to the 24-70mm f2.8 lens.  I think this is going to be a really useful lens, once I get the hang of it.  Shooting here was a challenge due to the mix of overhead artificial light and sunlight from the front window.  Different light sources have different “temperatures” and for each light source, you can adjust white balance so a neutral grey or white appear… balanced, which is to say not on the cool blue side, nor on the warm yellow side.  More than one light source means more than one neutral point, so your options are to favour one of the light sources or try for some compromise between the neutral points as I’ve attempted here.  Ideally, you could shut off overhead lights or screen out the sunlight, but it’s not always feasible for a walk-around shoot.

Love the texture of this table top.  And always love shooting glass that is like a lens outside the lens.

Here’s something I’ve been trying out this year: a blown-out highlight that merges with the blog post background white.  It’s interesting to mess with the otherwise razor-sharp edges of these tidy rectangles.

Back out on the sidewalk…

I found the geometry of King and Ontario…

and under-pinnings of the Art Market.

This juggler was very helpful, throwing high (thanks, dude).  I tried to compose with a reasonably solid background and also include the lamp post at left which looks like the juggling balls.  I think that worked.  Not intended, but serendipitously captured, is the lamp post as volleyball for the background figures.

See, this is my kind of chalk writing: seriously grinding the lines into the pavement.

Grew up working in the garage.  I know exactly how this sounds and smells.  Just awesome.

DW