Capturing Covid 19....

            We are living, and hopefully surviving, a very strange period. Something the that will mark down 2020 as a year for the history books. The personal and financial trauma of Covid 19 is not over yet and while we are all hopeful that it will be resolved as result of the measures that governments and populations around the world have taken to isolate, we have to be aware that until an effective vaccine is developed, we could experience serious & potentially deadly flareups. It has always been easy as John Q. Citizen to barrack the policy makers and political leaders from the sidelines with criticisms sans the need to offer any real alternative suggestions. I have to admit that I have been very impressed with the quality of  various national crisis managements and the ability of political competitors to suppress their natural inclinations to score cheap points and, in general, to pull together for the common good.
              With all that said, I decided to walk the neighbourhood to try and capture evidence photographically, something of this great 2020 Covid 19 event before it dissipates. Already the (Canadian) government, as are others, are beginning to relax some of the most stringent epidemic lock-down regulations and I am sensing that vehicular and pedestrian street traffic is slowly, very slowly, returning to more normal levels.
                       I live near a major hospital and from just observing from the front exterior it is clear that major changes have been enacted so that it can function effectively in the Covid world. All  hospital entrances are controlled by security guards who efficiently turn away unnecessary visitors and limit access only to those unfortunate enough to require services. I noted all the masks and gloves that litter the grounds of the public areas around the hospital. I find it very difficult to understand the mentality it requires to jettison (infected?) safety gear so haphazardly and without thought for folks who eventually have the job to pickup this discarded rubbish.
       On the hospital lawn some one, some organization, has erected a memorial area of uniform small white crosses commemorating local victims of Covids. With two large old folks residences abutting the hospital, I can only guess whom the crosses mark. A nice touch--- while I was stooped down trying for an interesting angle, I was joined by a video photographer from a local TV network clearly working on a project along similar lines.
This city, with so much superficial wealth, has many citizens who are clearly having major difficulty feeding themselves & their families.
               The Canadian national unemployment has shot up from a low 4 to 14% + in the space of just 8 weeks. Much of the poverty in this city is hidden away behind the walls of smart condo apartments and the estates of private family homes. My photo above depicts a food table that appeared and note that just half an hour later when I returned, the table was bare.

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What are you smokin'....?

Not sure what the neighbours thought of the scented pale blue smoke drifting their way through open windows, as I completed my set-up for my attempt to capture lazy whirls of smoke arising from the burning incense sticks (were n't these called josh sticks back in the sixties?) As part of my ongoing photography education, I had spotted some beautiful studies in smoke and felt it was time for me to attempt a reasonable capture.
I felt that a set up with pure black background would work best as it effectively contrasted with the pale blue smoke. The trick I discovered with much trial & error was to illuminate only the smoke with a speedlight flash, being very careful that the light from the flash did not escape & light up the black background---otherwise  the effect of the pure black back-drop would be lost. To achieve this with material on hand, I placed the light in front of the back-drop and wrapped a cone of black paper around the flash to concentrate the light spread only onto the rising smoke swirls. I also quickly identified the need to make sure that all the air in my studio was 100% calm to avoid chaotic breakup of the smoke streams. This included closing all windows, doors and switching off the forced air heating system. Such is the delicacy of the smoke whirl that even any movement by myself in the room made the smoke rise chaotically and break up in a manner that I did not feel was compositionally what I was seeking.
              I set the camera, my Nikon D610 DSLR, to 1/200th, and a moderate f 9, ISO 200, with speedlight at 100% power. The burning incense sticks pulled out in stages to about 4ft. in front of the black back-drop. These settings were arrived at of, course, after some considerable trial and error.
Smoke from the incense sticks has little native colour and photographs as a light grey when illuminated from slightly below & behind the smoke. This is where the physical constraints of photography intersect with creative licence. In the top picture, I painted the three different zones of the smoke swirl using large soft brushes in Lightroom set with tones of green, blue and yellow (top). In the image to the lower left I toyed with the white balance in Lightroom to accentuate the blue aspects captured by the camera.
Capturing attractive smoke swirls is a numbers game. The  smoke formations come together and dissipate in a flash. I spent the best part of 3 mornings on this project with the camera and later refining selected images on the computer. I estimate that in total I took more than 300 shots.

READERS: To make most sense of the continuity of this blog, it is suggested that you commence reading entries with the earliest posting date.