Patrick Kavanagh isn’t your average photographer.
In fact, the 53-year-old hobbyist follows a time-honoured maxim when it comes to exploring new aspects of his photography: Lack of money is the mother of invention.
When Kavanagh decided he wanted to start taking macro pictures, he wasn’t willing to pay the hefty price for a new lens. He decided to build his own.
“This thing here, because I didn’t have a macro lens, I understood the technology behind it,” said Kavanagh, explaining the invention. “This is an old lens I had 30 years ago — that’s just part of it. I’m a bit of an inventor kind of guy, so I’ve got a few other invented things on here, like the eyepiece. I’ve got another lens that I’ve retrofitted for macro as well. This contraption is getting a lot of attention on the Flickr website — I’ve got all my pictures on that website. It cost me about $12 bucks to make, and if you find a $2,000 lens that shoots better pictures than that, I’d be surprised. Lack of money is the mother of invention.”
Kavanagh’s images are currently on display at the Taber Irrigation Impact Museum, and include extreme macros, landscapes, birds, animals, cars and trucks, as well as, “Just about anything that moves”.
Photography has been a long-time passion.
“Seriously, probably for the last year and half. But I did do photography back in the ’70s. It’s all strictly a hobby. I’ve learned Photoshop and some other photo-editing programs. So I’m trying to take it into another level which is more on the artsy side.”
Exploring all aspects of photography and photo editing is one of Kavanagh’s goals.
“I prefer to take pictures of things that don’t talk back to me, but I have done weddings. I recently did a wedding, and portraits as well. I try to do it all, just because I’m learning so much at the same time, and processing.”
Right now, his focus is on some of the revolutionary digital-editing software that is now available for experimentation.  
“I do a type of photography called HDR, or High Dynamic Range. Basically, what it is, is you set the camera up to take three or more pictures at a time. One is a normal exposure, one is really dark and one is really light. Then you put it through a photo-editing program called Photomatix, and it processes all the levels of tones, all into one picture. So you get incredible detail in the shadows, and detail in the right areas. That’s a lot of what I’m starting to do now. I do the macro stuff just because it’s the time of year — there’s a season to photography, that’s for sure.”
Kavanagh points out people often miss what is right in front of them.
“There’s beauty all around — some people don’t see the beauty around Taber, but I do. And there’s always opportunities of taking pictures and editing them in different ways.”
Kavanagh has always been interested in innovative methods of photography and digital editing.
“A lot of people comment that my photography is a lot like a painting when I’m done with it. I have developed another technique where I blend a black and white image into a colour. Basically, I’m bringing back the true blacks into a picture, as opposed to them being a muted grey. It adds a little more depth to the image — I don’t know of anybody else doing that. But I like to do things that nobody else has done. Every picture is like that, doing something nobody else has done.”
In finding time to pursue his passion, Kavanagh jokingly admits he must clear a few spousal hurdles first.
“It depends on how much time my wife will let me take. My wife actually bought me the camera. I probably spend about eight hours a week, easy. The Flickr website is a photo-sharing website. You meet people, local people. I’ve got contacts all over the world now, China, India, Canada and in the area as well. It’s a good way of sharing techniques — I’ve learned a lot just from that website.”
In the future, Kavanagh sees his photography moving in another direction.   
“It’s definitely going into photography/art. Just because I’m getting deeper into Photoshop, and starting to use some techniques that are probably unique to what I’m trying to accomplish. Right now, High Dynamic Range images are it for me right now. I’m very much a detail guy — I want details. Even if I just took one single picture, I’m going to adjust levels and curves and stuff like that in Photoshop, to bring out all of the details. I’m just trying to learn it all, so that when I sit down with an image I can go in any direction. Anybody can take a picture — anybody can hit a shutter. I’ve seen people just do that, and they don’t get into the photo editing side of it. So their pictures are just snapshots. That’s fine if that’s what you want to do, but if you want to go further, you need to learn editing.”
To view some of Kavanagh’s other images online, visit www.flikr.com/the_kav.