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The Streets of Lisbon #5
This image was selected to represent Canada in the Four Nations Photo Competition 2021.
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Home, Sweet Home
“Urban Colour” series.
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An Idyllic Retreat
“Urban Colour” series.
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Rouge
“Urban Colour” series.
This image was accepted at the 125th Toronto International Salon of Photography.
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Blue in the City
“Urban Colour” series.
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Dahlia Pink
Just playing with a gorgeous specimen of dahlia.
This image was accepted at the International Salon New York 2021
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Ornamental Grass
I strained and tip-toed, trying to get a good look through the viewfinder. My camera was set up really high on the tripod as I needed to have a clear view of my subject over bushes in the foreground. A passerby looked hard at the direction my camera was pointing at, trying to figure out what the crazy photographer was shooting … nothing, there’s nothing interesting there. Just a bunch of messy bushes and clumps of grass in the garden. These guys with big lenses are weird, he must have been thinking.
What caught my eyes was a cluster of ornamental grass in shades of silvery green. I loved how they grew out of the slope and leaned slightly. I loved the flow and the elegance of the blades. I loved how there’s order in chaos. Chaos really was the right word for it, as the background was … well, messy. Bright highlights, dark shadows, it’s got everything.
It took me a few iterations to transform the photograph into what I think captures the natural beauty. The high key look and the sketch treatment simplifies the complex scene, as is removing most of the colour, leaving just a few blades coloured with the palette of my choice.
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Helix Nebula
The Helix Nebula is a planetary nebula. It sits about 700 lightyears from Earth in the constellation of Aquarius, and spans about 3 lightyears across. As viewed from Earth, it is about half a full moon across.
Planetary nebulae, despite the name, have nothing to do with planets. They are formed at the end of life of a low to medium mass star, when all its fuel for nuclear fusion has been exhausted. The material in the outer layer of the star is ejected into space, while the core collapses into a white dwarf. The white dwarf continues to emit intense radiation, ionizing the ejected material and causing it to glow – hydrogen glows in red, while oxygen glows in blue-green.
Captured with my Skywatcher Quattro 8” telescope and QHY268M camera, with a total exposure time of 4 hours. Processed in HOO palette with RGB stars.
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In the Vastness of Space (NGC 2403)
How big is the universe? Every star in this image is within the Milky Way, our home galaxy. Through this star field we can see NGC2403, a spiral galaxy about 50,000 lightyears in diameter, half the size of Milky Way. The photons from NGC2403 travelled for 10 million years, before falling on the camera sensor to create this image. Yet, Milky Way and NGC2403 are just two of the estimated 2 trillion galaxies in the universe.
This image was captured in RGB and H-alpha with a total exposure time of 8.5 hours, using a SkyWatcher Quattro 8-inch f/4 Newtonian telescope on an equatorial mount.
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Starlight Textures (the Pleiades)
The Pleiades, or Seven Sisters, is probably the best-known star clusters. At only 400 lightyears away, its six brightest stars are easily visible to the naked eye as a tight, dipper-shaped cluster.
The Pleiades are traveling through an area in space rich in interstellar dust. In astrophotography, the Pleiades are surrounded by blue nebulosity with intricate texture. The blue colour is due to dust preferentially reflecting the blue light from the stars, the same physics that make the sky blue on Earth.
This image was captured in RGB with a total exposure time of 7.5 hours, using a Canon 300mm f/4 L telephoto lens on a star tracker.
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Rosette Nebula
Like a red rose in the night sky, the Rosette Nebula is a favourite of astrophotographers. The Rosette Nebula is 130 light-years across and 5000 light-years from Earth. It is an H-II region where the hydrogen gas is undergoing active star formation. The hot young stars formed emit intense radiation that ionizes the hydrogen, creating the characteristic red glow of the nebula. The strong stellar winds from these stars also blow a hole in the gas cloud, and will eventually disperse the gas leaving an open cluster of stars at the centre.
This image was captured with 3 hours of exposure with an astro-modified DSLR and narrowband astrophotography filter.
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Andromeda Galaxy
At a distance of 2.5 million lightyears, the Andromeda Galaxy is one of the closest neighbours of the Milky Way. It is also one of the furthest light sources visible to the unaided eye as a fuzzy grayish patch of light. Astrophotography allows Andromeda to be rendered in colour and great details, showing the dust lanes and blue outer regions of young, hot stars. Andromeda is estimated to contain one trillion stars. Two satellite galaxies, M32 (above Andromeda) and M110 (below) is also seen in this image. Andromeda and Milky Way are expected to collide and merge in about 4 to 5 billion years to form a giant single galaxy.
This image was captured with 1.5 hours of exposure under the dark skies of Northern Ontario.
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The Beginning of Totality
This composite image shows the stages of the solar eclipse on April 8, 2024. From left: 1. 50% partial eclipse, 2. 90% partial eclipse 5 minutes from start of totality, 3. diamond ring, 7 seconds from start of totality, 4. Bailey’s beads, 1 second from start of totality, 5. totality.
The drastic change in brightness during a total solar eclipse requires the use of protective equipment and a wide range of exposure settings. The first two images were taken with a solar filter, placed in front of the lens, that allowed only 1/100000 of the light through. Images 3 and 4 were taken at similar exposure settings, but without the solar filter. The last image was taken with 4 stops of additional exposure to capture the details of the corona.
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Bailey’s Beads, 2024
Bailey’s Beads, signifying the beginning of totality during the April 8, 2024 total solar eclipse. The last rays of sunlight shone through depressions on the lunar surface – valleys or craters – forming the Bailey’s Beads on the top of the eclipsed sun.
