How important are your photos to you? What would the impact be if you were to lose all the photos stored on your PC?

For professional (and serious amateur) photographers, there could be a financial impact, and for all photographers, losing all your photo memories could be devastating!



Do you backup your photos regularly? If your only copy of photos is on the hard drive of your computer, there are many ways in which they could be lost, including:

• the hard drive in your computer could crash or fail
• a virus can delete or corrupt photos
• your PC could be stolen
• someone could accidently over-write or delete the photos

You might think the chance of one of the above is so small that it will never happen to you. That is being a bit naive - people do lose important data regularly, and it could happen to you when you least expect it!

A Silver Gull (commonly referred to as "seagull" in Australia) casts a long shadow on the concrete path, while keeping a close eye on the photographer.

Silver Gull and shadow

Crawley, Western Australia
Canon EOS 350D, 17-85mm IS @85mm, 1/1000 sec, f/5.6, ISO100

This photo is from a while ago, but I am still finding some photos in my archives that I think are worth posting.

Boulder Rock is a great place to visit. It's located in Karragullen, in the eastern corner of Midgegoroo National Park (formerly Canning National Park), right next to Brookton Highway. It's a huge granite rock outcrop, with various large boulders scattered over the top, and provides lots of interesting angles for photography. There's also plenty of wild flowers and scrub in the bush around the rock.

Unfortunately, the carpark and picnic area has been closed, so you'll need to park on the side of the road when visiting the rock.

Here's a selection of photos from my recent visit.

huge boulders that look precariously balanced

Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @24mm, 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO200

As far as Canon lenses go, the 50mm f/1.8 is probably the cheapest, smallest and lightest (130gr) lens in the Canon range. However, that doesn't mean it's not worth looking at!

It's a prime lens (ie, fixed focal length lens), with a maximum aperture of f/1.8. This makes it a great lens for low light situations, due to the large amount of light it'll let in at its maximum aperture.

This large aperture also provides a very short depth-of-field, which is great for portraits, allowing you to have the subject in focus, but the background blurred.



Here's some photos of the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens.

side view

front view

Taken in May, in Banff National Park, somewhere near Saskatchewan Crossing, after a snowfall covered the area in fluffy white snow.

white outlook

Saskatchewan Crossing, Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 24-70mm f/2.8L @34mm, 1/1250 sec, f/8, ISO200

I still haven't finished processing all the photos I took while in Canada in May. Here's one I processed recently, of a ground squirrel (aka gopher) in the snow.

gopher in the snow

Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 70-200mm f/4L @200mm, 1/3200 sec, f/4, ISO160

Many parts of Banff National Park were still covered in snow last month. These two photos were taken at Mosquito Creek, in the Banff National Park in Alberta.

The raw photos didn't have much colour, primarily due to the large amounts of snow and overcast sky, but I was quite happy with the results of a black and white conversion on both these photos.

snow-covered picnic table

Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @17mm, 1/64 sec, f/8, ISO200

After light snow fell for a few hours, everything is covered in white, including the picnick table, rocks, and trees.

snowy banks of Mosquito Creek

Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
Canon EOS 50D, 10-22mm @10mm, 1/500 sec, f/8, ISO200