Total Lunar Eclipse: 3 March 2025
What makes the Moon so alluring? And, why is a lunar eclipse even more so? I’m not sure, but it was alluring enough to get me up at 4am on a very cold March morning!
1353 words; 11 photographs; 7-minute read
It just so happened that the eclipse would occur during our first night/morning away on a winter retreat—a last fling with what has been one of the best (read ‘snowiest and coldest’) winters in recent memory.
Yes, I like winter. We like winter. Especially when it’s a good winter lie this year with lots of snow and temperatures to keep the snow. To us, even an average winter is preferred to the heat and humidity of summer. I know, Crazy Canucks, though most Canadians do not seem to share our views on winter.
But this is about the eclipse. It’s not uncommon to have clear skies in southern Ontario, but it can also be iffy. This time should be different, as with a cold front comes clear skies. I don’t know how many times in the past, eclipses have been a wash out due to cloud. Not last year’s, and hopefully, not this year, either.
I described my first successful lunar eclipse photo session from a year ago with this result:
Thinking ahead
Planning began in late February, when I first heard the eclipse would happen. I generally use The Photographers Ephemeris for celestial events. I find it intuitive and faster to use than PhotoPills, which is very popular amongst night sky and astrophotographers.
On Site
I began by making some landscape images that could be used for a composite, the eclipse conditions would allow. So, before heading to bed on the night of 2 March, I went down to the frozen lake and made a few Tripod HR images of the view across the lake at night, lit only by the moon. I could drop in any landscape from anywhere, but I prefer to maintain some authenticity to my experience, and to the actual scene in front of me.
It was a beautifully clear night with a good number of stars visible, though not right to the horizon. Could it be the glow of Huntsville to the west or simply some haze, moisture in the atmosphere leftover from a day of sunshine on the mounds of snow around here? Though there wasn’t a lot of melting, sublimation is always happening, especially on sunny days.
I would have preferred a feature in the foreground, a stand of those classic Ontario trees, white pines, would have been perfect, but without driving somewhere, the area around us didn’t work out. Again, the ideal would be to position them and still have lots of sky, but they were simply too dense for that to work. Oh well.
The Eclipse
The earliest phase of the eclipse began at 3:46am. From past experience, I knew there was virtually no change in the moon until a bit later, so i set me alarm for 4am. After putting on layer after layer of base, middle and outer layers—it was only –17°C, but I would be standing around—I was out on site for my first photo at 4:23am. Just a hint of shadow was showing.
Earth’s Penumbra begins its journey across the Moon
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 400mm • ƒ8 @ 1/640 • ISO 400 • Lightroom
The previous night, I had set up the camera for spot metering. This is critical for correct exposure of what is a distant reflective disk surrounded by the black of night. Initially, I left ‘Night Vision’ off until the moon grew very dark. Night Vision increases the gain on the electronic viewfinder (EVF) to see more clearly in dark situations.
From the first exposure, I set a schedule of photos, timing them relatively evenly throughout the event.
The night/morning was still and very quiet. No hoots, nor howls, not even any dogs barking; only the odd vehicle on Highway 60, a hundred metres behind me. It was a clear sky above, though I noticed some haze towards the horizon.
I had a great view across the frozen lake, once I found a gap in the trees, with a path clear of branches right down to the horizon.
Unfortunately, with each successive photo, with the moon sinking lower and lower, the effects of the haze increased. At the same time, the brightness of the moon dipped, forcing higher and higher ISOs. The last few photos were made at ISO 12,800, ƒ8 and shutter speeds as low at ½ second to 2 seconds. While a faster lens would be nice, like the big white, with the TC 1.25x in place, it would only be a 1 EV gain in aperture (ƒ5.6) which will either reduce the ISO to 6400 OR increase shutter speed to ¼ sec. to 1 second. Is a one-stop gain worth $10,000?
As time progressed, of course, the sky became lighter with the approach of sunrise. This was a known limiting factor as TPE clearly showed sunrise at 6:51am. However, before that came Nautical Twilight at 5:47am and Civil Twilight at 6:21am. Sadly, between the brightening sky and the atmospheric haze, ‘my Moon’ disappeared from view shortly after the last photo, made at 6:03am, just two minutes before Totality. Oh well; time to come in out of the cold.
Screen Time
Back in our cabin, I worked on the images, but not right away. While the camera slowly warmed under a cloth bag, we put on the coffee and began warming a nice Chelsea bun.
A half hour later, images were imported into Lightroom and the fun began. Following denoising and sharpening, each image was tweaked for consistency in colour (5100°K) and exposure. I increased Contrast and Whites; slightly reduced the Highlights; and provided a boost in local contrast by increasing Clarity.
Cropping was the most time consuming. With the Moon moving across the sky, I had to reposition the camera-lens set-up on the tripod each time. This meant inconsistency in positioning in the frame. In Lightroom, I changed the Crop Overlay from Thirds to Fifths, then used the 1:1 crop tool to crop right to the edge of the Moon in each frame. Once they were consistent from frame to frame, I expanded the cropped area of each. It would be nice to have an auto-crop, but, so be it.
Compositing
After exporting full-size JPEGs, I used Affinity Photo to assemble the composite. Matching the sky of the landscape and the sky behind the each successive Moon required some bit of trial and error combined with learning new techniques with Affinity, an app I rarely use for photography, other than for compositing.
Each Moon photo was placed and resized to look natural in the sky (okay, maybe a bit large 🙂 ). I dropped the background out then used a combination of erasing and reducing transparency to blend each moon into the existing sky.
From here, I will live with the image for a few days before creating a final work. I find it helpful to put away the work for a while then reflect on it after a few days or a week. I know this is counter to the ‘modern’ notion of expediency and immediacy, ‘getting it out there’, but I honestly don’t care. To me, this kind of work goes beyond the timelines demanded of social media. I’m in it for the long game.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to continue the discussion by adding your COMMENTS, questions or observations and feel free to SHARE this post with others.
NOTE: This blog is completely free and does not include commercial affiliate links. To help keep it free, consider buying me a coffee . . .
Culling, Cold and Birds-in-Flight
Winter bird photography on the shores of Lake Ontario
13 photographs; 2127 words; 11 minute read
How can these three impossibly disparate concepts synthesize themselves into the perfect storm? Take a hundred or so waterfowl, concentrate them into a small area, then photograph them as they zoom overhead. But that’s just the beginning . . .
Artificial Intelligence has been demonized in photography, and for good reason. Not only is it eliminating jobs, it has changed the whole perception of photography to the point where truly compelling images, ones that seems unlikely or too good to be true, are instantly labelled as AI. It’s one of the reasons I am advocating for #RealWorldPhotography, but that’s a different post for a different day.
Olympus OM-1i w/M. Zuiko ED 100-400mm IS i at 400mm • ƒ8 @ 1/3200 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
The mallards were often flying in pairs; capturing two in the same plane of focus took many attempts.
In the last 25 years, photography has undergone two fundamental and very rapid upheavals—digital capture and AI. Unprecedented doesn’t begin to describe them. To encounter similar disrupters, we need to go back 100 years to the advent of the 35mm camera in 1925, and the various iterations of colour film through the 1930s, both of which took decades to be ‘normalized’. From an historical perspective digital and AI have been instantaneous. Fnding the sweet spot in using AI to assist rather than generate is an important step.
Cold
Digital photography allows photographers to make, quite literally, hundreds to thousands of images in a hour. This is what happened earlier this week when I met up with Tom Stirr of SmallSensorPhotography.com for some bird-in-flight photography. The brutal cold of the last few weeks created unique ice conditions along the shore of Lake Ontario, concentrating hundreds of waterfowl in a small area. Tom first noted this phenomenon 5 or 6 years ago and emailed me earlier in the month when the conditions appeared again.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 400mm • ƒ8 @ 1/3200 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
The morning was another chilly one, but by 10:30am when we met, the temperature had risen to –9°C. We spent our time sitting on stools in the ice and snow, allowing the birds to come to us, so staying warm was important. I pretty much followed the recommendation in my post Gearing up for Winter Photography. Double gloving was essential for keeping my hands warm, yet still being able to access all camera settings.
Diamonds in the Rough
BIF photography is not my forté, nor is it a style of wildlife photography I normally pursue, so this would be a challenge. I must admit to not looking forward to wading through several hundred images at a time, of mostly the same subject, each showing small, iterative differences in focus, head position, wing beats, feet, etc. to find those diamonds in the rough.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 400mm • ƒ8 @ 1/3200 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
In almost two hours, I made 906 images, for me a record. My settings were AF-C and Bird Tracking with Sequential Shooting at SH2, 25fps. The OM-1 is so fast, the camera would AF and AE for each image in a burst. With an ISO of 1600 and an aperture of ƒ8 (mostly), my shutter speeds were in the 1/1250 to 1/8000 range. I also set my Exposure Compensation to +1 EV to partially compensate for the very bright snowy background.
Birds-in-Flight (BIF)
At one point, when someone showed up to feed the birds, we had dozens of mallards and Canada geese flying straight toward us. ‘Like shooting fish in a barrel’, as Tom described it. To me, it was reminiscent of Battle of Britain footage, except these birds weren’t dropping any ‘bombs’ (thank goodness!). Later on, a dog walker arrived which scared the birds into flight away from us. This was fortuitous—as Tom correctly predicted, 10 to 15 minutes later, the birds flew back directly toward us to the near shore, individually, in pairs and small groups, which made for a great many photo ops.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 123mm • ƒ8 @ 1/4000 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
In comparison to my ’meagre’ 906 images, Tom made 5629. He was using the M.Zuiko 150-600mm, which extended his range over my 100-400, and he dedicated a good portion of his shooting to specifically using 600mm (1200mm efov) for his blog post Ducks in Flight at 1200mm efov. Tom also photographed using ProCapture Low (SH2) for virtually all of his photography, which explains the greater number of files. ProCapture is something I have yet to master. While I have had success with it each time I’ve used it, I do not relish the culling, which brings me to . . .
Culling
How do you possibly wade through hundreds or thousands of images in a reasonable amount of time? For me, that’s where Assistive AI comes in—and a good time to try Adobe’s Assisted Culling (AC) once again. It’s available on Lightroom Desktop and Classic, though not the iPad version, and surprisingly, not in Adobe Camera Raw (ACR). AC is an ‘Early Access’ feature, meaning it is still in development. It has been trained, through machine learning, to ‘look for’ sharp subjects, sharp eyes, and eyes open—all helpful in wildlife photography, but . . .
Given the needs of the industry, AC was initially developed for portrait photography. Interestingly, portraits, at least corporate head shots, are a type of commercial photography that AI is rapidly replacing. However, high end fashion portraiture and haute couture photography is still very much in vogue.
But I’m photographing a different kind of bird—the wild kind, the unpredictable kind, the #RealWorldPhotography kind. How well would AC handle the wild side?
I set the parameters of Subject Focus to 70% and Eye Focus to 100% as it is most critical for the eye to be sharp. After a few minutes, my 906 images were narrowed down to 242 ‘Selects’, most of which matched the parameters set, though it was far from perfect. I still had to cull based on body, head, and wing position, as that was too much to ask of AC at this stage.
However, in scrolling through the 664 that were ‘Rejects’, there were 6 that I felt should have been ‘Selects’. That’s 1%, so it is efficient, though I did not scrutinize every photo. I ignored photos that may have met the criteria of AC but, due to head, wings or body position, I didn’t pursue. A few of the ‘good’ Rejects I passed on to Adobe through their ‘Feedback’ portal within the panel.
I also tried different parameters and came up with, predictably, different results. Raising the Subject Focus to 90% reduced the number of Selects to 74. However, it also greatly increased the number of perfectly fine Rejects to 26. I’m not sure what all this means other than until Assisted Culling is refined, I will need to keep an eye on the Rejects for any that might actually be perfectly fine.
So is Assisted Culling helpful? Yes, but be warned. Check your Rejects, especially if your parameters are too weak. I suggest starting from tighter parameters and working from there. After all, you only need a few of “best”. For me, it turned out that of the 906 images, I rated 51 at 3* or higher with 35 being in the 4* category. No 5* as of yet, but that usually comes after walking away from them for a few days before reviewing them again.
The question now becomes, what do I do with the 855 out-takes? Given that I have at least one decent photograph of each of the different species present—mallard drake, mallard hen, ring-billed gull, and Canada goose—I will delete the 855. No use taking up Adobe Cloud space for sub-optimal photos!
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 100mm • ƒ8 @ 1/3200 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
Often called sky rats, for good reason, gulls are an elegant bird in flight. In this case, I caught him/her looking at me—always a bonus when photographing wildlife.
Sequence of gulls.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 307mm • ƒ8 @ 1/5000 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
Click on a gallery image to scroll through.
Processing the Best
Now, how to efficiently process these images? My work began with Detail. If an image wasn’t sharp, the eyes in particular, there was no use in spending time editing. I tend to be very conservative in my sharpening, but for these, I found a little more aggressive sharpening helpful. This included:
- increasing Clarity (under Effects) to 20; then
- Denoise at 65;
- Sharpening 100;
- Radius 1.5;
- Detail 60; and
- Masking 30.
Under Optics, I also added Remove Chromatic Aberration. For some images, particularly those that required more cropping, I increased Denoise to 75. With each tweak, I inspected the results at 200% and 100%.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 285mm • ƒ8 @ 1/2500 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
These setting were applied to the whole image. As i live with the images, I may find that I switch things around to apply less aggressive sharpening to the whole image and more aggressive sharpening to the subject, using a mask. For now, they seem fine. Once the Detail settings were nailed down, I created my own profile called ‘BIF-Feb2026’. Only once did I try an image in DxO PureRAW and found I was getting better results in Lr, so I stayed with that.
For Lighting (exposure), I began with ‘Auto’, but made a great many changes from there. Lightroom often underexposed images due to the bright sky and snow. It also mis-read the Whites, often lowering them into negative territory when, after manual adjustment, I found +35 to +50 to be the norm. I prefer snow to be white, but I also toggled on highlight clipping to avoid losing detail and made good use of the Highlights adjustment, which was often in the -50 to -90 range.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 276mm • ƒ8 @ 1/5000 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
I found Lr often reduced the Black adjustment to -50 which was far too aggressive. Most of the time, Blacks were around 0 with Shadows at +50 to +80 to brighten up the heads of, especially, male mallards. I rarely changed contrast from +7 and had no need to alter white balance—the colours seemed bang on.
Workflow
I worked on each series of similar images at a time. Once the Light settings were nailed down for the first image in a series, including cropping when needed, I made use of ‘Copy Edit Settings’ and applied them to the others in the same series. After all, why re-invent the wheel? There were tweaks after that, but for the most part Copy Edit Settings was a very helpful tool. I would select ‘Modified’, then de-select Effects, Detail and Optics as they had already been set using the Preset I had created..
OM-1 w/100-400mm @ 400mm • ƒ8 @ 1/5000 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
With Colour, I found the veiled sunlight didn’t change much through the morning, creating fairly consistent white balance from photo to photo—all around 5750°K, give or take. In fact, I really didn’t need to alter the Colour except to standardize it for all photos to 5500°K and +6 Tint, which cooled them slightly; it is winter, after all. Again, I copied and pasted just the colour settings to the entire group of photos.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 244mm • ƒ8 @ 1/5000 • ISO 1600 • +1 EV • Lightroom
My last additional tweak, which was only slightly laborious, but made simpler with AI masking, was to warm each bird slightly (Temp +5) and cool the background slightly (–10 Temp). To me, this brought out the colours of the birds while maintaining the impression of it being a cold wintery day., which it was! It’s nit-picking, but to me worth it to create a consistent look across the set of images.
OM-1 w/100-400mm at 276mm • ƒ8 @ 1/2000 • ISO 800 • +1 EV • Lightroom
So, that’s a wrap. A successful morning of photography—thanks Tom—and great learning and practice with BIF, culling and processing.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to continue the discussion by adding your COMMENTS, questions or observations and feel free to SHARE with others.
NOTE: This blog is completely free and does not include commercial affiliate links. To help keep it free, consider buying me a coffee . . .
Winter Photography on the Saugeen-Bruce Peninsula
12 photographs; 1040 words; 6-minute read
This collection of photographs celebrates winter. Real winter. Winter away from the dreariness of cities. Winter that is blue and white with snow, not grey and brown with slush.
The settler name for this area is the Bruce Peninsula, but long before that it was the home of the Saugeen First Nation, hence the re-introduction of a more traditional name. About 90km long and between 10km and 25km wide, the Saugeen Peninsula juts northwards from southern Ontario, splitting Lake Huron into its main body and that of Georgian Bay. It is part of the same feature that creates Manitoulin Island to the north and the Saginaw Peninsula in Lake Michigan to the west. The Niagara Escarpment runs along the peninsula’s east coast creating the dramatic headlands and cliffs of limestone that plunge into the cold, blue-green waters of Georgian Bay.
OM-1 w/M.Zuiko 12-100mm PRO at 12mm • ƒ5.6 @ ⅕ • LiveND 16 • ISO 800 • Lightroom
Tropical turquoise contrasts with the cold snow and ice of a Canadian winter. Using LiveND allowed me to slow the shutter down to capture the wave action as motion.
OM-1 w/12-100mm at 75mm • ƒ11 @ ⅕ • ISO 800 • LiveND 8 • Lightroom
Yes, the ice really is that blue! Even our ski tracks and footprints turned the snow electric blue.
With over 80% of Canadians living in cities, it’s no wonder so many hate winter. I’d hate it too if all I saw were people in over-stuffed, drab coats, cars white-washed with salt, and sidewalks, parking lots and roads slathered in slush.
OM-1 w/12-100mm at 16mm • ƒ8 @ 1/250 • ISO 200 • Lightroom
Winter really comes into its own when you get away from that. Even a short drive out of the city puts you into a different world. A world where the colours of spring, summer, and autumn have been erased and replaced with shades of blue into white. Ochre grasses and grey-brown trees stand tall through the blanket of white creating a mysterious world of shapes and shadows.
This is winter as it’s meant to be!
OM-1 w/12-100mm at 12mm • ƒ11 @ 1/60 • HHHR • ISO 200 • Lightroom
Handheld High Resolution mode (HHHR) creates files 50 MP in size, reducing noise and retaining more shadow detail in addition to the extra detail of a larger image file.
OM-1 w/12-100mm at 12mm • ƒ8 @ 1/800 • ISO 200 • HHHR • Lightroom
Most of our time up here on the Saugeen Peninsula was spent at Bruce National Park, the crown jewel of the peninsula. Parks Canada are piloting winter activities there with the hope of expanding as more people are attracted to coming up in winter. We rented an AirBnB cottage on Dorcas Bay, which was a good move as, for now, there is only one restaurant open in Tobermory (though a few more in and around Lion’s Head). Being in our place also gave us the chance to enjoy aprés-outdoors charcuterie and meals at our own pace.
OM-1 w/12-100mm at 12mm • ƒ8 @ 1/250 • HHHR • ISO 200 • Lightroom
Ice blue is so distinct, more true blue with no cyan or green.
My daughter was great at dragging me out early—one morning for sunrise along Dyer’s Bay. Though the sun didn’t shine through the cloud, we had an amazing ski on 25cm of fresh snow. I let her break the trail along the former Cabot Head Road, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten very far!
OM-1 w/12-100mm at 12mm • ƒ8 @ 1/125 • ISO 800 • HHHR • Lightroom
In Lightroom’s black-and-white mode, I use Colour Grading applied to the shadows to introduce a subtle warm tone which, to me, takes the edge off the starkness of neutral tones.
Twice, I tromped down the Georgian Bay Trail at Cypress Lake to Indian Head Cove. The water of Georgian Bay was, as ever, a beautiful Mediterranean tourquise.
OM-1 w/12-100mm at 100mm • ƒ8 @ ⅕ • ISO 200 • HHHR • Lightroom
And twice we tromped and skied at Singing Sands, each time with some great photo ops. The Lake Huron side with its gentle slope is a compete contrast to the Georgian Bay side. The sun made an appearance, which made for some great lighting. On both occasions we saw a Great Grey Owl. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my telephoto zoom with me, so missed the photo op.
iPhone 17 Pro • 24mm (efov) • ƒ1.8 @ 1/600 • ISO 80 • Apple ProRAW DNG • Lightroom
Having a sharp, 24mm lens producing 48 MP raw files is a distinct bonus of the 17 Pro, though the large aperture limits depth-of-field for sweeping near-far landscapes.
I really encourage you to get out to spend some time in winter—at a local park, natural area, conservation area, for a rural road trip, or to a provincial park nearby. Today, many are celebrating the 10°C ‘heat wave’ we’re experiencing. But hopefully, winter will soon return to southern Ontario!
iPhone 17 Pro • 35mm (efov) • ƒ1.8 @ 1/43000 • ISO 64 • Apple ProRAW DNG • Lightroom
iPhone 17 Pro • 24mm (efov) • ƒ1.8 @ 1/390 • ISO 64 • Apple ProRAW DNG • Lightroom
Stay tuned for my review of the cameras, their various focal lengths and formats, as well as the Apple ProRAW DNG output from the iPhone 17 PRO.
Thanks for reading. Be sure to continue the discussion by adding your COMMENTS, questions or observations and feel free to SHARE with others.
This blog is completely free and does not include commercial affiliate links. To help keep it free, consider buying me a coffee . . .
iPhone 17 Pro • 35mm (efov) • ƒ1.8 @ 1/60 • ISO 100 • Apple ProRAW DNG • Lightroom
I wish the 48 MP raw format was available at all focal lengths. Sadly, it’s only for the 14mm, 24mm, and 100mm cameras. 28mm is captured at 34 MP, 35mm at 24 MP (both still respectable) and 48mm at a disappointing 12 MP, though all are very sharp. More to come!
New Page!
OM System Resource Page for OM-1, OM-1ii, OM-3, OM-5, OM-5ii and OM-D cameras
Look up—look waaay up—to the right corner. See the OM? That’s where you’ll find a page of curated links to resources to help you get the most from your OM System gear.
This blog is completely free and I do not include commercial affiliate links. To help keep it free, consider buying me a coffee.
12, 2025
Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop
–– Ansel Adams
18 photographs; 1700 words; 9-minute read
Taking the word of the master to heart, I have assembled what, to me, are my twelve most significant photographs for 2025. I wrote about this last year and encouraged readers to work through this exercise.
Have you begun narrowing down your 12 for this year? I find it to be an excellent exercise in seeing: seeing what is working for you and what techniques you might consider refining or getting more practice with. Are you seeing a lot of repetition of technique or vision or are you working beyond what you have traditionally photographed?
Being a nature photographer, this kind of image speaks volumes to me about life in the rainforest. No, it’s not one of the shiny green new leaves, but one that is rotting its way to become nutrients for the next generation.
The process
Narrowing down any body of work is a process, one I began a month ago by filtering all my 4- and 5-star rated photographs. But which ones are ‘significant’?
I define significant in a few ways. First of all, I want photographs that reflect a variety of locations and experiences I’ve had over the year. Each photograph must also have ‘nailed it’ in that they must work technically, aesthetically, and emotionally.
I wish still photos could capture sound. This year, I photographed dozens and dozens of birds, some of which were startling colourful, but only two made ‘the list’. This was not one of them, but is in my 25.
Significance
Technical significance means I have used the tools of photography to their best advantage in capturing the moment. To be aesthetically significant, a photograph must have that perfect blend of composition and movement to draw the viewer in, to have them ‘look again’, to tell a story, or evoke questions.
The most difficult aspect of photography is emotion. When I write of emotion, I don’t mean cutesy set-ups of babies or pets or couples walking on a beach at sunset. With nature and wildlife, this will often mean cute young fox kits or lambs gambolling or tender mother-young interactions. That is not what I want when I choose emotionally significant photographs. I want the photograph itself to be emotive, not the subject.
To me, emotive photographs cause the viewer to wonder and feel something beyond, “Oh, that’s cool.” They are drawn into the photograph on a level beyond the simple visual connection. Very few of my photographs ever achieve this level of engagement and certainly not all of my ‘12’ for this year have achieved it.
When I look at this photograph, I get a feeling of complete ease, tranquil as they say in Spanish. This was the morning of Canada Day, one I vowed to spend photographing—a few hours of complete Zen. That’s what I feel, anyway.
42 to 25
So, from all those 4- and 5-star photos, I selected 42 to begin my whittling down to 12. I looked for photographs that were successfully made using techniques new to me. Others speak to my dual desire of capturing ‘the essence of place’ and ‘the art inherent in nature’. Some are colour, others are black-and-white. Some portray movement and others are composite photographs—a technique I enjoyed exploring in 2025.
By carefully considering which duplicates and similar photographs to eliminate, I am managed to get that 42 down to 25; which is where the real work began. The process was simplified in Lightroom by creating albums: 2025-Best → 2025-25 → 2025-12.
The Final 12
In the final 12, I tried to preserve not just different photographic techniques, but also different perspectives, different ways of seeing and different experiences. You see, these are not my 12 ‘best’, but rather my 12 most significant. I could have chosen a dozen landscape scenes, or brilliantly coloured birds. The landscapes would simply be repetitions of landscapes; and for the bird photos, well, in many cases, it’s the bird that makes the photograph, not me, the photographer.
This happens a lot, as I alluded to above in the discussion about emotion. Over the course of each year, I see thousands of photographs across a variety of media, and I’m always conscious about whether it is the photograph that is significant or the subject.
I love the detail, tones and soft light of this photograph. It represents the intricate relationships found on the forest floor and reflects my personal interests in ecology, making it significant to me.
Is it the photograph or the subject?
Photographers are very proud of their work, and rightly so, but many of the photos we see are great because of what was captured, as opposed to what the photographer did to make the photograph. I respect that there is certainly a lot of grey area between what any two people may think regarding where a photograph is on that spectrum, but to me it’s an important consideration.
Every photograph must have a subject of some kind. When considering photographs, the question I try answering is this:
Is it the subject that is drawing me in to the photograph, or is it the photograph itself—that combination of technique and aesthetic that creates an emotive response?
The week I spent at Killarney as their Artist in Residence was very productive but in ways I wasn’t expecting. I was thinking astrophotography, but ended up down on Earth, literally, admiring the array of different mushrooms that proliferated with the rain.
It’s the reason why I’ve left out many of the bird photographs I made. They sharp and colourful, but that just makes them glorified textbook images. As a result, I have preciously few photographs that rise to beyond this. My problem is, I am not one to see the abstract or the concept in subjects or scenes. By nature, I am a realist devoted to #RealWorldPhotography—the pursuit of photography to accurately reflect the reality of the scene or subject in front of me.
In other words, I tend to shoot the obvious. I work hard at going beyond the obvious, but still have a ways to go.
I am always attracted to patterns and designs in nature. They remind me that in what often appears to be the chaos of nature, there is an underlying structure.
Conceptual Photography
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept. — Ansel Adams
As I review my photographs each year, I tell myself this, over and over again—look beyond the obvious to the conceptual, the abstract—and re-commit myself to that goal. Over the years, I’ve made some progress, but am still blinded by all the beautiful, exotic, and colourful patterns and designs, tones and hues of the world around me.
Okay, enough introspection . . . Now for the photographs. They are presented in a Gallery format, sorted by capture date. Click on any photo to start and it will open in full-screen view with arrows to take you back and forth through the twelve. There is also a small ‘ i ’ button for more information.
Finally! I have visualized this photograph for years, waiting for just the right combination of clear skies and personal time to prepare for the event, capture it, and assemble the photos into a composite.
I enjoy photographing street art in Paris and this juxtaposition of the fairy tail, the mobile phone and the mirror—not my creation—caught my eye. It was serendipity that brought the two Paris lovers together in a kiss.
I set myself the goal of capturing the essence of place within the Musée d’Orsay using LiveND and slow shutter speeds. This was one of the many photographs that resulted.
Pure simplicity captured using handheld focus stacking
For decades I’ve been startled by the sudden thump-thrump-thrump of a grouse wingbeat, so to watch it and photograph it was exhilarating!
Lunenburg is, well, Lunenburg: quaint and beautiful, but in a beautiful-for-tourists way. So I actively looked for something different. This composite photograph is the result.
This came out of nowhere—a casual evening walk with my daughter and her dog down to the beach. After 20 minutes, they left and I stayed, using LiveND to capture the. magic.
As the tide receded and the evening fog rolled in, I watched this photograph develop in front of me. What I needed was a foreground, and I found it.
My goal was to devote the whole of Canada Day to photography. That meant starting at 1:30am. The clear sky demanded an attempt at star trails. Little did I realize there would be hundreds of fireflies in attendance!
We always see mushrooms fully erupted from the Earth. To see this one still emerging, swaddled in leaf litter, was like capturing a slow-motion dance in mid-move.
I’m enjoying using the 60mm Macro lens—the sharpest lens I’ve ever owned. Getting close handheld with sharp focus has never been easier.
Hummingbirds are everywhere in Costa Rica, but capturing one doing something other than feeding, resting or hovering was the challenge.
So what do you think? Please continue the discussion by adding your COMMENTS, questions or experiences. And take a moment to SHARE this post with other photographers.
luxBorealis Blog 