Hagia Sophia by night

Istanbul, Turkey The Hagia Sophia (or ayasofya) is a place so rich in history I can merely scratch the surface of this ancient centre of religiosity. Originally conceived as a greek cathedral of constantinople in 360AD this monolith has shifted theological allegiances numerous times, lastly becoming a mosque in 1453 which was finally converted to a museum in 1931.

One of the coolest things about the building is it’s restoration, and with it’s long history of being both a church and a mosque a careful extraction of the newer islamic art reveals the ancient christian mosaics behind them. The resulting experience is a beautiful mix of both cultures in one breathtaking monument to architecture and history.

Photographic details: This building being the largest cathedral in the world for nearly a thousand years is certainly deserving to look as grand as possible. Believe it or not once you get close to this building, most of it’s minarets, great architecture, and city behind it is blocked by it’s surrounding buildings. I really wanted to show the context of this building as it stood the test of time in the ever changing city landscape around it.

I decided to climb the roof of some hotels nearby to get a view of the city lights. With a tripod I shot a 2 second exposure at 70mm to zoom in enough to get details, while also keeping enough foreground and background. This is another great example of landscape shots being taken with a telephoto lens.

2s f/3.5 ISO100 70mm

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Bird Cliffs Alight

Coburg island, Canadian Arctic These steep cliffs are completely inaccessible for any person on foot and out of reach for any land dwelling animals. For this reason these cliffs make the perfect place for a bird to build a home. Free from the prying eyes and jaws of Arctic fox, Polar bears and anything that could take home an egg as a prize, birds have been nesting in places like this for millions of years. Hundreds of thousands of birds swarm the cliffs, changing the colour of the rock with their guano and filling the air with their calls.

Photographic Details: Waiting for a glimpse of sun to come out of the clouds I wanted the cliffs to be highlighted by the light. The rare sight of fog on the cliffs adds enormous amounts of texture and depth to the already dramatic scene. Look closely at the image you will see white dots peppering the image, as the sun lit birds show up against the darker shadowy cliffs.

1/250s f/6.3 ISO50 135mm

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Viburnum opulus berries

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada This plant was something that was hard to ignore. While walking along the snowy park with my family the landscape was mostly devoid of colour until a flourish of red caught my eye with a patch of bushes carrying these beautiful red berries.

Many of them were covered in bits of ice and snow, and I had to shoot quickly as the sun was setting. After marveling over the wonderful colour we couldn’t help but see if the berries were frozen too. I suspect they must have a natural anti-freeze in them like many plants fish and amphibians have in them because they exploded in my hand in the -10 degree weather like any berry would on a warm summers day. To me and my brother’s discontent, the berries had a very unpleasant smell to them, we nicknamed them “stink-berries”, and postulated why a plant would want to emit such a fetid aroma.

Photographic Details: Using my macro lens I was able to get very close to these berries. Mere centimeters away from my lens I had a very shallow depth of field so there was not much in focus at any given time, this makes for a very soft feel to the image. I decided to centre my subject and give it a square crop, as the near symmetry of this subject calls for this compositional arrangement.

ISO 640 100mm F2.8 1/60SEC

Also what is my new years resolution? it's: Do more, do it faster, do it better, and inspire as many people as possible!

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World's top travel blog gadling interviews me

I've been featured on one if the biggest travel blogs in the world, a blog from the Huffington post no less! It talks about my travel philosophy and much more, I think it's worth a read:

Gadling: Travel the world through the photography of Kyle Marquardt

Podcast interview on my career in Photography

I've had the absolute pleasure and privilege to be interviewed by social media, photographic and culinary aficionado KyleWith! Check it out! KyleWith: Photographer Kyle Marquardt

Get festive outdoor photos with light painting!

Wheeler Hut, B.C. CanadaMake sure you look at all three photos in this post to see the before/after

It was a cool festive evening at wheeler hut as the moon rose in the foggy night sky. A long day of backcountry skiing was well rewarded with hot chocolate, and a delicious meal. Even though we were “in the sticks” I couldn’t help but cook a hearty meal with turkey stuffing, asparagus and boursin stuffed chicken breast, can you tell I love food? A game of jenga on the dinner table brings bouts of laughter as we tell stories by the cozy wooden fireplace.

Photographic Details: I found the angle and composition I was looking for to show the front of this beautiful hut with the moon shining behind it but the hut itself was dark in the photograph. I had to add some light if I wanted the logs and the white fluffy trees to be visible. I knew I would be getting shots like this so I planned ahead to bring my massive maglite, it’s my favourite light painting tools as I can focus the beam of light and it’s bright enough to be very useful photographically.

Before Photo:

You can see the first photo is atmospheric but I had a vision for more detail in this photo.

So I set my camera on a timer on a tripod stuck in the snow and frantically ran to the right of the camera with my maglite (not easy in deep snow). Once I heard the click of my shutter set at 15 seconds I shined the light on every part of the photo that I wanted illuminated. I made sure to light up the part of the tree by the moon to help draw the eye toward the sky, I wiggled my flashlight all over the skiis, snow and front of the cabin. After 15 seconds my camera finished it’s exposure and the light that I shone in that timespan was “painted” onto the surface of everything it touched.

After Photo:

You can see the result is dramatically different and the image has a much brighter feel. Be sure to try standing in different places and avoid light painting from behind the camera, a light source too close to the camera may look too much like an in camera flash which doesn’t produce flattering results. light painting is a great way of illuminating subjects at night, the beauty of it is that you don’t have to be exact, and it’s easy enough to have a flashlight handy in your kit!

Lighting Diagram:

15s f/2.8 ISO800 50mm

Inuit boy portrait

Grise Fjord, Ellesmere Island, Canadian ArcticA continuation of this post: http://www.kylefoto.com/2011/12/inuit-boy-in-seal-skin/

In continuation with one of my other shots here is a more detailed close up of this inuit boy. This has much more details on the bone slit eyewear to prevent snow blindness. A very effective solution to cut out all the radiation in the arctic that I would most definitely use if I wasn’t privy to adequate sunglasses.

1/200s f/5.6 ISO50 400mm

Explorer's silhouette

Svalbard, Norwegian ArcticFrom the photo of the day at http://www.kylefoto.com

Exploring the arctic tundra is somewhat of a contemplative activity. Mostly bare rocks will seem uneventful to the inattentive eye, but if you take your time you will become aware of the subtle flora that populates the land. As guides, we establish a perimeter where it’s safe for us to explore, investigating the land for polar bears and keeping armed guides within view of everyone and everything just in case. This group was looking out into the horizon to our expedition vessel, the Akadamik Sergey Vavilov.

Click for larger image

Photographic details: I noticed how at this moment everything seemed to just fit together. I often use the “rule of thirds” to line my subjects up and this is a great example. I split the image into thirds and my subjects are placed in the intersections of these divisions. The silhouette of the group and the ship are both important parts of the image but they are both 1 third of the way into the image. In addition the sky takes up the top third, the ocean the middle third and the land on the bottom third. The eye has a lot of paths to follow, from one subject to the other. The centre of the image has nothing in it, it forces the viewer to look around and linger a little longer on the photograph.

The original full colour photograph was interesting but I wanted more drama, it had a lot more details and I could even see the faces of the silhouettes. In lightroom I shifted to black and white and increased the blacks, this gave me the the contrasty look I wanted.

1/400s f/8.0 ISO100 100mm

Original colour version: Click for larger image

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Breaking through the sea ice

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic, Ship: Akademik Sergey Vavilov Navigating open water is a great experience, but winding through big pans of sea ice, pushing them out of the way and slicing through other chunks is a past time I will never get tired of. Some chunks bounce off the hull making way for us with a thud, while others split right before our eyes with a very satisfying crunch and scraping sound. Thumps and bonks echo throughout the ship while mild tremors wiggle their way through the hull, making me smile as I watch my green tea on the table tremor with excitement. Having no worries about danger with the adept crew in the bridge and the ice strengthened hull I enjoy a day that is full of these little events as this landscape of little icy continents drift past.

Photographic details: Standing up along the wing bridge, I can get a grand view of the ship and the ice below. With an ultra wide 16-35mm lens I can capture a lot in just one view at 16mm. Positioning the bow of the ship as it pokes into the middle of the photo gives it a sense of motion as it travels towards the centre of the image. Having the ship take up less than a quarter of the image helps express the grand view presented in a scene like this. I love seeing the passengers looking out at the ice, they add a human element and help express that travelling in such a desolate looking place doesn’t have to be a lonely affair. I’m not some lone photographer who disappears to the edge of the earth while taking photos in complete isolation to magically appear with great images, I’m a social person and believe me I can’t do what I do completely on my own; everything I do in some part is a team effort.

1/160s f/8.0 ISO100 16mm

230 degree Arctic vista

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic In the hopes of pursuing a polar bear a great place to look is the very platform that bears depend upon for hunting: sea ice. Our vessel being ice strengthened we have very little to worry about when navigating around frozen areas like this. In fact given that we had some time and wanted to scan the horizon for bears, we end up ramming into the sea ice to park the ship, with no need of an anchor we can rest here and take a look at the view.

Photographic Details: I was admiring this view when I thought I would have fun with a panorama. Taking multiple photos with my wide angle lens I was able to capture over a 230 degree view, which as a photo tends to play with the mind. It looks like two ships are right beside each other when in reality it’s just the left and right side of the main deck I was standing on. Each photo was automatically stitched together by photoshop after being processes in lightroom.

1/125s f/9.0 ISO100 16mm

Click for full image

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Glowing sea ice

Ellesmere island, Canadian ArcticFrom the photo of the day at http://ww.kylefoto.com

The sea ice in the arctic is usually quite featureless, but after a while it piles up on top of itself into large conglomerates. The tides are still prevalent in the arctic and can ground the sea ice by the shore, revealing interesting features that would normally be underwater. I waited until the kittiwake that was flapping around above me was in the patch of sky exposed, just to give the photo an extra element.

Photographic details: Back lighting situations are usually thought of as a disadvantage by photographic enthusiasts, but I have found that more difficult situations provide unique opportunities. Instead of just lighting the surface of the ice, now the light is travelling through it, making it glow! Walking through this little cavern of abandoned sea ice felt like having my own personal fantasy land, as I knew in a short time the tide would come and take it all away, never to be seen exactly like this again.

1/50s f/4.5 ISO50 16mm

An iceberg’s past

Canadian Arctic The history of an iceberg is always etched into the ice. But rarely is hard evidence of it’s birth so glaringly obvious the way it is in this detail shot of a piece of ice.

As I’m sure you’ve heard me say, an iceberg starts of as a glacier. A glacier starts off as layers of snow building up over hundreds or thousands of years along the mountain side. The tremendous weight of the snow on itself squeezes air out of the compacting ice and it becomes more clear and blue. So imagine a massive glacier slowly moving down a mountain side, the deepest part of the glacier is grinding away at the mountain, carving out U shaped valleys and pulverizing rock into dirt and silt. The ice at the bottom of the glacier is underneath hundreds of meters of ice, thus it’s the clearest, but it will also be exposed to the rock and dirt. When the glacier finally dumps itself into the ocean these ancient pieces of ice will carry remnants of the mountain with it.

That’s what you’re looking at here. A piece of a glacier that was actively carving away at the mountain that has made it’s way across the canadian arctic.

Photographic details: I had to poke my camera through a dark hole in an iceberg to get this, so it was relatively dark. I couldn’t shoot like I normally do, I just stuck my arms out with my camera and hoped for the best. Yeah professional photographers blindly shoot and do guesswork too! I think I would have made it easier on myself if I used a higher ISO of 400 or so instead of 100.

1/50s f/5.6 ISO100 260mm

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Inuit boy in seal skin

Grise Fjord, Ellesmere Island, Canadian ArcticFrom the kylefoto of the day at http://www.kylefoto.com

Grise Fjord in Inuktitut is Aujuittuq (ᐊᐅᔪᐃᑦᑐᖅ), meaning "place that never thaws". What a fitting name for a hamlet that is often seen surrounded by ice even in the summer months on the northernmost island in Canada. We were arriving from our expedition ship and were greeted by the locals after we navigated a maze of sea ice grounded on the shore by the tide. Among them was an RCMP officer who was originally born in the Grenadines in the Caribbean, we joked about the stark contrast of his previous life and now. Even though the people here are mainly inuit, they are also canadians, and for the most part they dress just like me. But for the sake of preserving history and traditions, for special occasions they will put on traditional clothing.

The intricacy and beauty of this traditional wear is stunning. Made entirely of seal skin, every piece of the animal has been used for something. A close look at the crafting and stitching reveals how much work has gone into the making of these. Thousands of years of trial, error and inuit ingenuity has gone into the design of these beautiful, functional and life preserving attire. Another danger out here is the harsh glare of the arctic sun, it’s magnified by the amount of high albedo snow and ice of this landscape. The inuit have developed visors made of bone, with tiny slits letting in just enough light to see but not so much to get snow blindness.

Photographic details: We had the opportunity to photograph these people indoors inside the community hall, but we preferred a much more fitting environment. Mere meters from the hall we had the shore line covered in grounded sea ice. The harsh sunlight would have been too much for this shot so we put him in the shade of this ice. In hindsight the extreme brightness of the ice in the background would have been better off if I had gone the HDR route. Over exposed highlights in the background aren’t ideal, although not important. Despite those shortcomings this photograph isn’t about getting perfect technical photographic statistics, it’s about the subject, this amazing inuit child and the grand history that his garments represent, and that’s what the exposure is geared for, at the very least he is perfectly exposed.

1/200s f/5.0 ISO50 100mm

90 Degree iceberg

Canadian Arctic What am I talking about with this 90 degree iceberg? I’m not talking about temperature, I’m talking about angles.

Look at the striations on the iceberg, how the lines in the ice are going straight up and down. Those are the layers of snow that have been compacted into ice while this ice was still being formed on a mountainside as a glacier. Over hundreds, even thousands of years each layer of snow is piled on top of each other until the tremendous pressure compresses it into ice.

Because the ice normally stays more or less upright while it’s still a glacier, these lines should normally be horizontal. Once the glacier ends up dumping itself into the ocean the ice will bob around, melt, break apart, and in doing so this newly formed iceberg will rotate and change orientation. Thus the ice is now shifted 90 degrees from it’s original orientation.

Now go into my master collection of photos and look at every other iceberg and you will obsessively look at these striations and assess the history of the iceberg, you will never be able to unsee it, muahaha!

Photographic details: Nothing special is going on here for camera settings, I was more looking for unique and interesting shapes and this one caught my eye. Sometimes I don’t look at a subject as a whole and I just focus on the interesting detailed portions.

1/160s f/5.0 ISO50 170mm

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Everything is now 50% off with the coupon: WELOVEWINTER

Heavenly arctic rays

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic It was a grey day up in the norwegian arctic as we tromped around the snow and rocks in search of arctic enlightenment. It was nice to stretch my legs and explore the contemplative landscape of the north, but I still felt like I was holding my breath, like I was waiting for something to happen. I didn’t know what I was expecting but I was going to be ready for it.

As our group walked between a valley towards an old hut the view of the mountains in the distance greeted us. This is when the sky opened up to reveal these beautiful rays of light pouring out of the grey clouds. Everyone just stopped to look in.

This is where I was glad to have other people in this photograph. The woman in purple on the right is also taking a picture, further expressing this is a scene worth photographing as her shadow is cast behind her like a spectator of a nuclear explosion.

Photographic details: Shot in raw I was able to get all the details I wanted in this scene with one exposure. I had to darken down the brighter portions of the image, and brighten up others to get the photograph to look much more like how I saw it. The magic with shooting and processing in raw with lightroom is that I can correct the mistakes that my camera makes. It’s nowhere near as intelligent and advanced as the human brain and eye; a photograph needs human direction to be a human photograph. Sure it’s nice when a photo comes out looking perfect without a bit of processing, but most of the time an untouched photograph is something that is just done by a robot. I am not a robot.

I shot this at f16 to make sure everything is as sharp as can be for this landscape photo.

Canon 5D Mark II 1/80s f/16.0 ISO100 16mm

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Polar Bear in the mist

Svalbard, Norwegian Arctic Scooting around in the fog in our zodiacs we were slicing through very thin sea ice up in the arctic. Always cognizant that a polar bear could be anywhere we were keeping a careful eye out. The best thing about travelling with other people is that what would be one pair of eyes is now 10 pairs scouring the misty veil that surrounds us. I was more concentrating on not hitting a large iceberg while driving the zodiac when someone exclaimed “I saw a blob move over there!” It took nearly a minute to fully locate this figure until it popped up from the surrounding white and stood out like an anvil on the horizon.

Photographic Details: It was relatively dark out there with the heavy fog obscuring a lot of the light. I bumped it up to ISO 200 to increase the sensitivity but used the slowest shutter speed and most open aperture I could. I knew I would have to process this image a lot to get the details back, and a higher ISO could present a bit of a problem in this regard as it degrades the image the higher I go

1/400s f/5.6 ISO200 400mm

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Winter Wonderland

Outside Waterton National Park, Alberta, Canada This beautiful sight was greeting me on a very special winter day. The air had enough moisture in it to form crystals of snow and ice on the trees. Later the snow fell so lightly that it all got stuck on everything it touched, making the tiniest twig expand to 10 times it’s normal size with the marshmallowy snow stuck on it. The tiniest breath of air or shake of a tree would dislodge any snow from this delicate landscape.

Photographic Details: The most important factor was setting the aperture at f/14 to get this landscape photo as crisp as possible. Everything is sharp but the simplicity of the image takes away from the distraction that a lot of detail might bring to it.

1/100s f/14.0 ISO100 35mm Every photo in my smugmug is now 50% off until Dec 25th with the code: WELOVEWINTER

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Two seasoned fox

Norwegian Arctic: Svalbard In the winter, the arctic is a veritable snowy world covered in white. And likewise many animals including the Arctic fox has a white coat to blend into their surroundings. In the summer months, the land returns to a brownish red hue, and so does the arctic fox! This little guy was photographed while he was in transition to his summer coat, with a patch of white lingering on his body and tail.

Photographic Details: It was such a joy to see such a different style on a fox. This guy popped up out of nowhere and was out of there before I could get a decent close up shot of him. The best I could do was line him up with the rule of thirds and incorporate the background to express that he was in this arctic environment. I kept him on the lower right hand corner to give him room to run into the photo; the white of the snow actually has minute details but I chose to leave them as inconspicuous as they are to make the fox pop out of the frame more.

Canon EOS 5D Mark II 1/500s f/8.0 ISO200 400mm

For #wildlifewednesday

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Skier by night

Outside Wheeler HutFrom the holiday collection at http://www.kylefoto.com

It was an epic day of backcountry skiing in the mountains of BC. The higher we climbed the bigger our ski down would be. This is where we made the mistake of not keeping together and not fully monitoring the energy of everyone in the group. We ended up taking much longer than we expected to get down. You have to think of the whole group as one person, and if anyone is tired you must only go at the pace and distance comfortable for them. This is where being prepared is handy, we had head lamps with us in case we ended up skiing in the night, and that’s just what happened. Lo and behold it was cool to see the skiiers with the lamps on their heads at night and I got someone to pose.

Photographic details: The light was quite dim, so I needed to let in as much light as possible. Shot hand held with a slow shutter speed of 1/30th of a second and f2.8 and a whopping iso of 12800. My camera was now sensitive enough to gather enough light from the lamps and and the last minute of blue hour. Drastic noise reduction was used in Lightroom to compensate for the distortion of using such a high iso but it comes out quite nice!

1/30s f/2.8 ISO12800 35mm Every photo in my smugmug is now 50% off until Dec 25th with the code: WELOVEWINTER

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Diddle Berry

Falkland IslandsFrom the holiday collection http://www.kylefoto.com

This bright red berry found in the Falkland Islands as well as all over Argentina and Chile always brings me a smile. One of the first times I came across this I was actually with my mother who loved the bright red colours. It’s called the Diddle Dee berry or the Red Crowberry and to be honest, I think it’s an acquired taste. I always thought it was funny how my mother skipped the “dee” and simply called it the “Diddle Berry”. Locals here often turn it into jam, most likely for their crumpets.

Photographic Details: Photos like this aren’t usually my style, I often prefer a sharper image with much more detail. But This image has appealed to my mother and many other people once they saw it. Sometimes it’s just about the splash of colour and the memories behind the image. And if people love it, I’m not going to complain!

Canon 5D 1/100s f/2.8 ISO200 100mm

Every photo in my smugmug is now 50% off until Dec 25th with the code: WELOVEWINTER

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