I was coming home the other night, and a storm was brewing. The cloud formations were amazing and a lightning storm seemed to be taking place, seemingly, behind the clouds...the best vantage spot I could find was my roof, so that's where I went...while there and after many misses at trying to actually get the lightning, I got this shot. The white edifice is the top of the Port Colborne City Hall. Though of doing this in black and white, but there's something ominous about the colour, so I decided to leave it.

More pictures of Emerson coming...also pictures of a nest with eggs, mom and birdies, waiting for the eggs to hatch.

Well after all the false labour and after making the last one, the hardest of all DeFreitas' births. Emerson Ayerton Willik DeFreitas is home.

Emerson was born yesterday morning, 22nd of May, 2008 at 5:15AM. Emerson was stuck for the longest time not being able to go into the birth canal. I'll spare you the story. Long story short, after a very painful night for my beautiful, although very tired wife, Emerson was born. Contractions started at 8AM the previous day.

We're all happy to have Emerson home. You can see more photos of Emerson by linking to the photo above.

Tomorrow (21st) is d-day. We'll see.

You can link from the above photo to the rest of our pregnancy shots at our flicker site.

Vania's been saying like she's feeling like it's going to be different with this kid. Well, so far this is proving to be true. We started the day with the onset of labour. And went through the whole affair until about 6PM and then, it all just stopped. No more contractions, just stopped.

Now, false labour is not unheard of, however, it's never happened to us. So doing that for a whole day kind of brings you to a place of expectancy, and when it just stops, it leaves you, well, not knowing what to do, say, think...it leaves you wondering if baby's ok?

Anyway, baby seems to be ok, although a lot less active, but if I'd gone through what he went through today, I probably would be inactive as well. And so, now, we wait. Vania's trying to keep herself busy cleaning this and that...

It could be that we might still make it to the hospital tonight, but who knows. Okay, God does.

Don't know what it is about this shot, but I really like it.

So, the photo show is over. All in all I was pleased with the results. It was financially profitable and it's lead to two photography assignments (two family shoots)...which scare me to death, but have me excited at the same time. I'll keep you updated.

Last week, Ashlee, a friend from church, threw a 70's themed party/dance/fundraiser. We all got to dress up in 70's garb, have some good food, boogie and have an all around great time. Funds raised went to bring freedom to a Dalit woman in India. The Dalit are at the very bottom of the Indian social ladder. And just so you know, it's such a long ladder, they are not even considered people in the Indian system.

We decided to have everyone take a photo with a cutout of Austin Powers and then I had some fun in photoshop. There are many different ways of extracting people away from backgrounds. I tried out as many as I could find and figure out. Only advice I'll give here, is be patient when you first start.

We're doing another one of these in the Fall, so we're going to sell the photography to raise money for whatever charity then. What I'll be doing then, is create some backgrounds people can see and choose from and I'll shoot them in front of a sheet backdrop...I'm going to have a black sheet up and a white sheet up...that'll make it really easy to extract people later in photoshop. I might need a third sheet of some weird color, just in case someone comes in black and white :)

Anyway, just thought I'd show you something else done in photoshop. Sky's the limit.

Learning to do some fun things with photoshop. Will probably create one of these for each of our kids. This is easier than it looks.

If you want details on how to do this in photoshop, I can probably help.

Having said that, simply put, you set up your camera on a tripod to a smaller f/stop, f/16 and up. You don't want your camera to move and you don't want to zoom in and out or you'll mess up the background. Then you get your subject to move around and you take pictures, lots of pictures.

Next you import all your pictures into Photoshop and set them all up as individual layers in one file.

For each of the layers you have to add a layer mask. And then you use the eraser and the brush to remove/reveal what you want. This is a little more complicated than it sounds, but lots of good tutorials online. And practice makes perfect.

If you want more details I can probably help.

More playing with "extreme depth of field" - I think I've figured it out now. Having lots of fun with it.

Last night was the opening night for my photo show at the Studio West Cafe. The cool thing about it was having not just people that I know from the church, but a bunch of my neighbours drop in. Sold a few pieces and lots of picture cards. It was a lot of fun. Still feels weird though, but fun never the less.

You can drop by my facebook page to see the photo album with the pictures that are up. For some reason I lost some quality and color in uploading the photos, and am not sure why, but you'll get the idea. I also have another 70 pictures I'm using as photo cards. Which I've not uploaded.

I know I haven't been posting too many pictures in the midst of getting ready for this photo show etc. But I have been taking them, so, as per your request, Ian, here's one I took last week. Yes, early last week we had, what I think was the last storm of the year, I'll try to post some of the other pictures from that day over the next few days.

This is also me fooling around with extreme depth of field (see last post). What I've realized is that the charts you download are a good starting point. But different lenses are, well, different. And as a result, the results you get using the charts might be less than perfect (much less in the case of my first tries). So, I've had to sit down with my wide angle lens in front of a landscape and take many pictures of the same landscape at different distances at each f/stop to discover the sweet spots at those distances and f/stops. It's tedious but you end up with the right measurements for your particular lens. There are some sites that allow you to find your own brand if you're willing to look. I've enjoyed the process though, because it allowed me to actually see the results.

Since getting back into photography, nothing has given me more grief than "Maximum Depth of Field." This is when, as in the example above (sort of), you take an image and are able to get the majority of the picture in maximum focus, including objects both near and far. You don't always want this, but if you know how to do it, especially in landscape photography, the effect can be breathtaking. By the way, I did it above completely by accident, and it's not as good as it could be.

Ok, if you're looking for a technical or detailed explanation for how to do this, you've come to the wrong place. There's lots of sites to go to for that, where you'll read about depth of field, hyperfocal distances and circles of confusion. Worthwhile to read, but I read them and still couldn't figure it out. Once I figured it out, then they made sense. This is a nuts and bolts, do this and you'll get the results! Then you can read up the technical stuff and find out why it happens.

First you're going to need a hyperfocal distance chart. This link gives you four different charts, two for 35mm cameras and two for digital slrs. (one in meters and one in feet for each. You'll want to print out whichever one applies to you and keep it in your camera bag at all times.) The hyperfocal distance is basically the sweet spot of your lens at any given distance and f/stop, and it's different at every aperture (f/stop) and distance (in the case of my wide angle lens from 18mm-50mm.) When you take a picture focused on the hyperfocal distance, sweet spot, you will get the maximum focus you could get in that instance. Most people cheat by focusing on infinity, or one third of the way into the picture or at the farthest point, which will give you decent, but hit and miss results, but nothing like focusing on the sweet spot.

Okay, making it happen, I promise this will be, at least, as clear as mud - might need to read the how to a few times...

First of all, for getting extreme or maximum depth of field. You'll need a wide angle lens. Mine is a 50mm lens which means that it starts at 18mm and goes up to 55mm.

The other thing for maximum depth of field is you need to be working with f/stops lower than f/11 (which is actually the reverse of what it sounds - from f/11 to f/36 let's say) the higher the number the more extreme the depth of field you can get. (for the sake of saying it, the higher f/stops f/4 etc. give you shallow/minimum depth of field - great for portraits for example or any time you want to draw the attention to one object.)

You should be well on the way to being confused by now. Now it gets really confusing.

So, looking to the chart on the left, here's what you need to know. The bottom numbers represent the different distances on your lens, as I said before, in the case of my wide angle lens from 18-55mm.

The diagonal lines in the body of the chart represent your f/stops. And these intersect the distance markers at different distances.

The numbers on either side of the chart represent the hyperfocal distance (the sweet spot), in feet, when a f/stop intersects a given distance. The point, when you focus on an object, in your picture, at that particular distance, you will get maximum depth of field or maximum focus throughout your entire composition. Even though when you look through the viewfinder, it will look like that object you focused on is the main thing in focus. I'd explain that, but just trust me on that one, what you see is not what you get. Okay, let's go to the chart.

The example on the chart shows that, when you set your distance ring at 50mm and the f/stop at f/16, the point where the two lines intersect is 17 feet. So here's how it all works.

With my distance ring set at 50mm and my f/stop set at f/16 if I focus on an object in my picture that is 17 feet away from me. I will get maximum depth of field/overall focus in my picture. That means, and don't worry about this too much, but that means that everything from 8.5 feet into infinity will be in the greatest possible focus you can get at 50mm at f/16. Why 8.5 feet? Things will start to look in focus at half the distance of the hyperfocal distance. In this case 17 feet and half of that is 8.5. Not that it's important for now, but eventually knowing this will help calculate things if you want to work this out by doing the calculation according to which point you want everything to begin in focus. Don't worry about it for now.

If you want to know whether you got it look at the chart and calculate; what would be the hyperfocal distance if I set my distance to 35mm at an f/22 f/stop?

If you said 6 feet. You got the hyperfocal distance (the sweet spot) of your lens at that distance and that f/stop. So, at those settings when your composing your picture, if you focus on an object that's 6 feet away from you. You will get maximum depth of field/overall focus when you take your picture at 35mm at f/22. Again, even though when you look through the viewfinder, it only looks like the object you just focused on is the main thing in focus. Freaky, but true. Using this method and the chart you downloaded, you can figure this out at any distance and any f/stop. Note again. For maximum focus you want to use the lower f/stops (which is actually the higher f/stop numbers.)

The last thing I will suggest for you to get the best shot/most in focus possible, use a tripod and use your timer so that no part of you touches the camera when you trip the shutter. You'll be amazed at the results. Remember, practice makes perfect. I've been trying to figure this out for months. Yesterday I finally got it. I hope I've saved you some time.

So how do you know how far an object is from you. First, work with the measurement you're most comfortable with, feet/meters. Next, I hope your good at eyeballing distance. Otherwise you can actually buy a distance measurer or whatever they're called. There's some tricks you can find online for calculating distance, but unless this is professional photography if you're good with estimating distance, it should serve you well.

There's a good chance the professionals would laugh at how I've laid this out. All I know is it works. And once you know it works then understanding how it works comes much, much easier. Enough of that. I'll leave you to a link of what this can lead to when done properly. Now I don't know how much post editing is done to these photos but forget that, and just look at how everything is in focus from the front all the way to the back of all the pictures Check it out.

Drove by the canal and saw three tugboats hanging around, but didn't have my camera with me. Rushed home and came back to get some pictures, this being my favourite.

Just received an e-mail from a supply teacher who's doing a photography class for grade 7 & 8's. In an attempt to look for a certain type of picture. Two students ended up at the same picture (above). Which is funny since I don't place tags on my pictures etc. That's all besides the point. I thought it was neat that this teacher would ask for permission to use my pictures in her class.

Anyway, just a fun happening in my day.

Marcelo had the chance at the very first ride down the hill with his brother. Something he was not happy about. Luckily, it was so cold, the bleeding stopped almost immediately. He had a nice bruise for a couple of days last week. It was a lot bloodier before he wiped his nose, but I didn't have a chance to take the shot quick enough, although you get the idea. Unfortunately, the fall ruined the rest of the morning for him, not a great first experience for him, although I doubt it'll stop him from trying next time, hopefully, not till next winter though.