Dogs with adamantium skeletons

Notice the "adamantium" nails on Rookie's feet (lower right) - a born digger.

Think "Wolverine meets Pluto" and merges into one beast; a dog with an adamantium skeleton and claws which are harder than rock, resist wear, and are sharper than any razor blade.  Well, I can tell you it won't be sitting on my lap for starters.  Of course, when it wanted a cookie treat, you can bet it wouldn't have to do a string of tricks like "sit" and "roll over" first.  And to make its own bed, it wouldn't have to run in circles twenty or thirty times to make it comfy; it would simple paw a couple of times on a couch and voila; instant shredded mattress.  Meals would be taken when desired; in fact meals would be whatever it desired.  Who needs a can opener?  Tins would melt on demand and boxes would be a mere formality.  Then there are trees; do you think a dog as such would be thwarted by wood, made out of soft fibrous cells?  Regular claws might fail it but the adamantium ones would work like crampons on an ice climber's boots.  Cats all over the world would pay homage to their canine foes and take up duties such as facilitating exercise, making even more cat videos, or playing a dog's favourite music on piano.

What we should be really impressed at though is the capacity for work.  We call dogs "man's best friend" for a reason; they are loyal to a fault and have served us in phenomenal ways.  Traditional roles played by our furry friends would be enhanced.  Blind users wouldn't have to worry about traffic any more; the dog could cut through traffic easily.  In fact, it could cut through cars, bikes, trucks, trains, - whatever got in the way.  And the whole time it would wag it's tail and the "master" would just follow along as it left carnage in its wake.

Another example of enhanced doggy duties include drug and explosive detection.  These adamantium assisted hounds would still have their acute sniffing abilities, only now when it found something it would just tear through whatever was about.  I can just imagine the conversations between border guards and those crossing.  "Sorry about your motor home, sir, but you really shouldn't have had illegal substances stored in it.  Please pick up the pieces first before we arrest you."

Then there are all the new things these beasts could do; jobs we never thought up for them before.  Mining could be a whole new industry.  Sniff, sniff, sniff.  OK, that's what gold smells like.  Next thing you know a dog sized hole is burrowed into a cliff face straight to a seam.  Imagine jobs with lumber or pulp; tree climbing was just for starters.  A dog could shred any tree into powder which could then be turned into paper of whatever variety.  Want big pieces; get a doberman to do it.  Little ones; bring the shiatsu in.  The same is true for recycling, making gravel, and so on.  

Thankfully our adamantium assisted assets would become even more helpful to its owner.  Man and beast working together to make a better world.  OK, cats would take back stage, but what if they developed the ability to make people do what they wanted?  Oh wait, they already do.

Depth of field in the field

Point of focus and depth of field choices will change how you look at an image.

Take a minute to examine the three above photos.  They were all shot from the same position with the same amount of available light.  In each one though there is something different.  In the first one (far left) you can see that the pillars are in focus but the church windows are not.  The middle one is reversed with the pillars being out of focus and the church being in focus.  The last one (far right) has both in focus at the same time.  There was no photoshop magic going on here; it all has to do with how the camera is set up.

There are three different parameters which were altered to create the different images.  The first involves aperture setting; that's the "iris and pupil" of the camera lens.  Once it is set the second parameter, shutter speed, falls into place.  In the case of the first two images that is f/5 at 1/200th of a second (ISO was constant in all three being set at 100).  The third image used an aperture of f/14 at 1/20th of a second.

Both the aperture and shutter speed (including ISO, but don't worry about that now) are responsible for the exposure component of the shot.  The f/5 aperture setting lets in a lot of light but also gives very little depth of field.  Since the aperture is open so wide, the shutter speed has to be faster to give the correct exposure.  The f/14 aperture is much smaller, letting in much less light; at the same time though it gives more depth of focus to the photo.  Since there is so much less light a longer shutter speed is needed to provide the same exposure, which is why the last shot has a shutter speed of 1/20th of a second.

The third parameter is point of focus.  Since the first two shots use low apertures causing little depth of field, the lens is focused on the pillars (first) or the church (second) causing the other components of the shot to be blurry.  It is interesting how focus will help draw your eye; the way you look at an image is partly based on what is in focus.  In the third photo the point of focus is about a third of the way to the church from the pillars.  Greater depth of field means there is more in focus in the shot; in this case it is just barely enough to allow both parts of the scene to be in focus.

Playing with aperture, shutter speed, and point of focus will allow you to develop an understanding of how these things work.  As you play with them more and more you will get better at it.  The basis of this is one of the cornerstones of photography.

Perspective on a church

Perspective change from varying focal length and position

One of the great things I love about traveling is the opportunity to go to new places and see things I have not previously had the opportunity to enjoy.  The word "travel" is a very broad term and means many things to many different people.  It could be taken in the simplest of concepts through just leaving your house or it could encompass global relocations by car, plane, train, bike, or even foot (and any combination thereof).  There is one thing I have learned though, and that is your photographs tend to improve as you broaden your whereabouts. 
In photography, the term perspective has a specific connotation.  It refers to how the camera sees the world in front of it.  Although our eyes are built to see things in one specific way, the camera lens has the ability to change its focal length, thus altering perspective.  Focal lengths (the millimeter value that you alter on the lens to go from wide angle to telephoto) affect perspective.  A wide angle lens allows you to perceive a scene differently than a telephoto.  Most of us are really aware of how a wide angle lets you see more of something while a telephoto "zooms in" to reveal less of it but in greater detail.  What most of us don't recognize is how it affects perspective.
While mulling about in Alberta we came across this great church.  Not only was the building itself interesting, there was a small duplicate of it positioned just in front of it and off to the side.  I saw it as an opportunity to not only shoot an interesting subject, but to play with perspective.  The photo on the left was taken quite a distance from the buildings using a mild zoom lens (65 mm on a full frame camera); the one on the right with a wide angle lens (28 mm) fairly close to them.  The results speak for themselves.
Telephoto lenses cause an effect called "compression".  Backgrounds are brought up relative to foregrounds.  Notice the how the trees on the left image appear larger and closer to the buildings than the trees on the right.  The small church is clearly much smaller than the large one.  Telephotos also narrow how much background you see; the right shot indicates that another building is present whereas there is no such suggestion on the left.  Look at the large church itself.  Notice how the dome is about the same size as the front entrance on the left but is clearly smaller than on the right.
Wide angle lenses cause "distortion".  Foregrounds are made to look larger than backgrounds and distances between the two are exaggerated.  This is why portrait photographers use mild telephotos lenses to do close ups of people instead of wide angles - faces end up looking strange with large eyes and noses if low focal length values are chosen.  Notice how the larger church looks stretched out on the right; the foreground (entrance) looks larger than the tower.  The small church in front also looks larger than the one in the left photo.
I use these properties of wide and telephoto lenses when shooting to capture relationships between foregrounds and backgrounds.  Want to exaggerate a foreground feature?  Move close to it and use a wide angle lens.  Need to bring the background up relative to the foreground?  Back up and zoom in.  Playing with focal length and your subject's relationship to what is around it brings an entirely new way of thinking about what will make a shot work.  Play with your zoom lens; move around as you shoot, and discover a new perspective on the world.

Lori and Howard on Caribbean Cruise - Before and after fill flash

Lori and Howard - with and without fill flash

Cell phones are all the rage now, their powerful chips driving screens with everything from global communications to intense gaming.  The cell phone housing also contains a camera.  Snapping selfies or shots of friends has also taken off, with those images being posted on social media sites by the thousands each second.  No wonder compact digital camera sales are down.  Why buy a camera that is larger and heavier than your cell phone which does the same thing.  Or does it?
It is true that cell phone cameras are convenient, and that they can take a good picture.  More people are carrying cameras than ever before; enough evidence of that is on You-tube anywhere you look.  But those images, both video and still, are not what they could be.
There are a myriad of features which compact and larger cameras have over cell phones ones.  One of those is the flash.  Now, many of you will tell me that your cellular device has a "flash" built into it, but in truth it is little more than a bright flashlight.  It helps reduce red eye and can augment an exposure in perfect dark, but really that's where the similarities end.  When dutifully put to the task of illuminating a subject at any modest distance, especially is the sun is up in any manner, those built in so called flashes fail miserably.
Case in point is the above photographs of our friends, Lori and Howard Allan.  We had the pleasure of joining them on an adventurous cruise to the southern Caribbean earlier this year (March, 2018).  There were lost of walking and talking and exploring, not to mention card playing and eating,  There were evening shows and musical events to enjoy too.  And then there was the scenery.  It was spectacular.
I captured a good many images, some of which I may eventually post, but I wanted to talk today about the benefit of flash.  My cameras are DSLRs and as such have the capacity to use a powerful external flash unit.  The allow me to do something special called a fill flash photograph.  It is really simple to do, and compact cameras are capable of doing them too, but you won't get a shot like this out of a cell phone.
The first thing to notice is that the background is properly exposed.  The first rule about doing fill flash shots is to make sure the background comes out looking good; I usually set my controls to manual, although aperture or shutter priority can work.  Once I know the background is taken care of I turn on the flash.  The tricky part here is convincing the camera to use the flash, because if it can take a photo of the background it should also do the foreground.  The trouble is that the lighting on the foreground may be different or it may have only part of the same lighting.  This is where things like hats block part of the face.  Fill flash takes care of those problems.
The first shot is without flash; the background is properly exposed.  Yes, you could ignore the background and just expose for the people, but then you loose all details of where you are.  The shot could come from your front lawn or balcony and you wouldn't know the difference.  It turns out this is pretty much what a cell phone shot would look like, even with flash turned on.  That is because there is just not enough light to compete with the light shining behind the subjects.
Camera flashes, especially external units, have much more power and can illuminate their subjects much more completely.  The second shot uses the same settings as the first, but then has the light from a flash filling in the dark front shadows.  The difference is amazing.
Certainly, by all means, continue shooting with your cell phones, because they capture those moments of life which would otherwise go unregistered.  However, if you want something more demanding which your device can't do well, turn to a proper camera.