White crested waves and Long exposure

This images was taken in Abraham Lake, Alberta in this summer. I guess I arrived the area evening. The sun was already gone. Kootenay plains area is usually very windy. This day was also windy and the Abraham lake was white with form. Actually, this was the condition I had been waiting for. When attempting long exposure to white crested waves, the surface of lake or sea turns white, rather than black …kind of surreal. I used LEE Bigstopper and achieved 362 sec (6 min) of exposure time.

By the way, I recently discovered Capture one, excellent Raw converter and photo management software. I have being using Adobe Lightroom for long time. When opening Raw file to Photoshop from Lightroom I noticed many color spots of long-exposure noise was quite visible. On the other hand, the file from Capture one is cleaner. I could see some tiny white spots but they are not so significant. One day, I would to write a more thorough report.

Fall photographic workshop by Jeff Bingham and Hiro in Kootenay Plains

In this year, many wonderful things have already happened to me. Pretty successful solo gallery show, winning 1st place of national photo competition, and 2nd place for image of Japan photo contest. Now, I would like to announce something big happening in this fall.

Jeff Bingham and myself will be hosting a Landscape Photography workshop in the Kootenay Plains on September 26-28. The workshop is titled “Golden Hour Golden Season” since Kootenay plains is covered by beautiful yellow leaves of aspen trees at the end of September. Also Abraham Lake is never be bluer. 

I like visiting Kootenay plains since scenery on Highway 11 from Saskatchewan River Crossing to the end of Abraham Lake is full of variety, from marsh along at eh beginning of  Saskatchewan river, forest renewal after old wildfire, (some areas have been totally destroyed by recent wild fire, we should not access these areas), dynamic cliff showing intriguing lines and curves of stratum. Then typical view of rocky mountains along the Abraham lake. I always find something new to photograph. I never be tired of Kootenay plains.   

In this workshop, Jeff and I will help develop your artistic vision. This is our main focus but also we will demonstrate HDR, long exposure photography, panorama and tilt and shift techniques. Also you can try out some high-end Nikon and Canon lenses including 300mm f2.8 and Tilt and shift lenses. Thank you for the Camera Store. Sheets are limited to only 8 people. If you are interested, please check out our webpage for more details and register. Hope see you in the gem of Canadian Rockies.

Golden Hour Golden Season workshop in Kootenay Plains

 

One of my winning images  – PPOC national photo competition 2014

Award winning – Photographic Artist of the year 2014!!!

Professional Photographers of Canada (PPOC) holds image competition, called Image Salon every year. This year, the winners were announced in Winnipeg in May. Trophies are awarded to 4 categories including Portrait, commercial, wedding photographer and photographic artist. Winners have to achieve high quality images from all technical and artistic view point of photography for all 4 submissions.

And…..I am a winner of Photographic artist of the year. This is exiting. I received a magazine, yesterday, from PPOC、carrying  an article featuring the 4 winners. Please take a look the article. I mentioned about my attitude toward landscape and portrait photography, and how I found my styles of horse images.

I should’ve written about the award earlier, but the reason is I did not have good a selphie. I knew this magazine is coming so I waited a photo of myself taken by a professional. I like photograph people, but no way myself! However, I would like to photograph trophies made of acrylic. This is challenging. I will post how it goes. Following is the winning images.

Please click images for large sizes

Sunrise on Abraham lake

 

Touching you, Touching me

 

 

Lights on Green

Sunrise in the Abraham Lake,

I have been going through landscape photos I have taken since 2009. I have to select some images for my upcoming exhibition in February, 2014 and hopefully, I am planning to publish a book at the same time. Then I realized the images I think interesting were taken in bad weather….can be cloudy, raining, snowing or very cold.

When I took this photo, it was warmer day, -6C! But it was windy and cold enough to have made my camera stop working. (I had to keep camera batteries warm and switch them frequently). But when the moment comes like this scene, adrenaline is pumping in, and I just keep clicking a shutter.

Sunrise in the Abraham Lake
by
Hiroaki Kobayashi

I like this photo but I don’t think I will put this one for the exhibition in February. This image is a little too dramatic to meet the title of the gallery show, which is “Wabi-sabi Wanderlust”. The photos at the show will be more melancholic and kind of spiritual. They could be said “Oriental mood”.  More details will be announced. Stay tuned.