New year, new plans

Hello Everyone,

Wish you a very happy new year! I hope that the first week has been enjoyable and as good as you hoped.

I am starting this new year with some different ideas and approach towards 'Lenses of I'. With your help and some dedication on my part we can make the new plans a success. As all businesses need plans to move forward and keep working towards learning, I am going to post an image of the week on every Monday of 2019. It will include a story behind the image and how I captured it. This will also be a fun way to document how I progress as a creative individual.

Lets begin this journey with my first image.

Snowy owl east of Calgary

I had attended a workshop on photographing snowy owls at the end of last year. Honestly, till 2017 I was just daydreaming of capturing owl images. So I decided to venture out with my partner to find more owls, we left home in afternoon and for 3 hours we just drove around the country roads without success. As the sun was almost setting, we stopped for a sunset shot and as I got out of the car, we were given a golden opportunity to take picture with this white beauty. This image was taken with a canon at ISO: 1250 ,F: 8.0, Shutter speed: 1/500 sec and focal length: 562 mm. Slightly edited in Lightroom.

The owl was out ready for hunting and dinner and it stayed on this wire for few minutes. It was amazing to see it swoop down and move to a post closer to ground.

Snowy owl on a post enjoying sunset

These amazing birds are just visiting us for winter, however they are decreasing in numbers so we must be respectful of their territories and hunting grounds. I look forward to exploring more snowy owls around Alberta in next few months.

Let me know what you think and if you have interesting stories of finding animals and birds in the wild from your bucket list, please share in comments. Thanks for spending time here.

My first print show / exhibition event

It is not easy to take a big step in life, without knowing what awaits ahead but I am trying something new. I signed up to participate in a group event in early August 2018 and it was getting bigger than I ever realized. I will be joining many talented artists and designers to exhibit my landscape photography work. This project took many weeks of preparation and certainly pushed me out of my comfort zone.

Idea: Getting accustomed to the idea of participating on a larger scale was overwhelming at first. I had repeated thoughts of quitting the plan. However with love and support of my partner I managed to stick to the idea. I know lots of thought and work goes into an exhibit. Having enough images, editing them and selecting the top few, prepping & printing them, frames, layout, pricing, display, payment and so much more was to be done.

Execution: I traveled around the mountains, sometimes alone and many occasions with other photographers to capture the images of my liking. I was fortunate enough to get the best of weather this season had to offer. It took a lot of brainstorming to figure out what would and wouldn't work out. Without a market research backing it is a big risk we have taken to launch my new business.

Results: Today is the day and I will find out how it goes. There will be an update with my experience and lessons learned.

I am nervous and excited at the same time. There were days when I tried promoting the event and people were warning me about scam and some were reluctant to buy tickets too. It is essential to have a support system in such scenario, as I didn't have local family members to back me up, friends were very kind.

Let's do this everyone!

Updates

It was a successful event. Sold few calendars and prints and got the word out about my photography work. It gave me so much joy and pride to see people admire and enjoy my work. Having friends comeby was an additional bonus. I am sharing a picture below. Cheers!

My booth at RAW Calgary Oct 2018

Bird photography is a challenge

If you live in Calgary, the word Chinook clouds would bring a warm happy feeling. Some people associate it with migraines and headaches too, but mostly it is a relief from the freezing arctic chills. The temperatures fell to the 0s and +5s in the last week and all the hibernating (hiding) humans got to hang outside.

This was exciting as I got my Canon T5 Rebel and the new 75-300mm lens to photograph some action. I noticed lots of birds out and about just like us, enjoying the sunshine. So I decided to take pictures of the birds in the city. The Pigeons are always easy to spot along the river.

The Mallard Ducks

It was quite the challenge to zoom-in the huge lens, especially when birds are flying. It is very heavy to handle for a newbie like me. But I enjoyed the process nonetheless. We spent about 2 hours walking around the Bow river near Kensington and saw few happy chirpers.

Finally, we also managed to spot the Hairy Woodpecker. It is very swift in its movement, but the bright day helped to spot the red feathers on its hood.

Flicker is a kind of woodpecker.

I am glad to have wandered around the river side to see and enjoy the beauty of nature.

I hope to indulge in more bird watching and walking around town for photography and share some more of the pictures in the future. Hope you enjoyed the pictures. Feel free to comment and offer your feedback so that I can improve.