Tales from Gales

Again, the last blog was some time ago. Life has a way of getting in the way sometimes! As a retired old guy, I can't claim I've been too busy, but as age slows you down, somehow you achieve less and less every day! So what's new and exciting?

As I said last time, Subaru is being really accommodating! My new engine is going in in a few weeks, the appointment is scheduled for the first week of December. When that's done, I think I'm going to find someone to do a detail job on the interior of the car... it's showing its 200K km age and I haven't been one to get it cleaned regularly. Almost like getting a new car!

My D800 is back in the shop. Something is wrong with how it recognizes the connection with a "D" lens (you're supposed to set it to minimum aperture when mounting. It's giving me an error and won't let me shoot with it).  Sun Camera, again: they're very good and very accommodating. I should get it back next week when I come in for Ron Goodlin's Antarctica presentation in Thornhill. If you're in the area, you should come!

Boat's safely tucked away in the garage, ATV is prepped for winter (except I haven't mounted the plow yet), sump pump line is freshly repaired, firewood is stacked and ready... bring it on. For those of you hating me right now, hey! We live in Canada. If we didn't love winter we wouldn't live here. Right? Right?

You'd think this was a picture from last year... but you'd be wrong! Keep reading. 

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I have a list of subscribers to this blog. Whenever I put up a new post, I send them a heads-up email via MailChimp. In that email I always include a photo that I have not posted anywhere before. So they get to see stuff nobody else sees.

You can get on this list by clicking the "Newsletter" button over on the top right of the blog. No spam, and you can unsubscribe with one click at any time.

 Here's the picture I sent them last week:

I was sitting at the computer composing the MailChimp email on October 19 when I looked up and saw this AMAZING sunset. I grabbed the only camera within reach (my iPhone) and ran out to the dock. It took me about 3 minutes to get there and the sunset had DEGRADED to this. I shot a pano, uploaded it to LR and then opened it in Topaz Studio. I applied the "van Gogh" preset in Impression, dialed back the effect a little and this was the result.

People ask me why I live up here...

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The big thing is the successful conclusion of the Gales of November 2017 workshop up in Wawa. With travel and some other appointments along the way, it was a bit more than a week's trip for me. I came back with a head cold which slowed me down a bit last week, but I'm back in the swing.

I promised the group, "there will be weather". There was. Not what we expected, mind you. No wind, no waves, but we got SNOW! Interestingly, it's as if someone drew a line about halfway between the Soo and Wawa: snow to the north, none to the south. The photo above was taken on the way home on Sunday.

I can't say enough about David and the staff at Rock Island Lodge. They made it comfortable and friendly for everyone. And Judy shared her recipe for her homemade granola which I made a few days ago with some success!

Smallish batch in a big mixing bowl. I have some idea now about how to make it, so I'll play more with the next batch. More dried fruit and seeds for one thing! Someone called me "Mr. Suzy Homemaker", but hey, I like to eat!

Since we had more people than the lodge could accommodate, many of us stayed at High Falls Cabins which was a great place to stay as well. Anna and Zen really know the area too!

What I didn't talk about yet is Ben Eby. He came up and joined me as co-instructor. As ever I'm impressed by his talents and knowledge. He brought with him a set of complementary teaching skills: while I claim to be "right-brained" I realize that I'm really not, but he is! I know he spent a lot of time biting his tongue listening to me go on and on, and then he turned it around to easy learning sessions for people. And he has the energy of a younger man...

So we agreed that next year, Gales is going the be the "Ben" show, not the "Glenn" show. Hopefully health and other things will let me come up and be his assistant in 2018.  Bookmark www.photography.to/gales for a heads-up on next year's encore!

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I didn't shoot a lot of pictures, my role was to facilitate the workshop not take pictures for myself. Here are a few... admittedly there are more I haven't gone through yet, watch for them here or on my Facebook page (you're my friend, right? facebook.com/faczen is where you'll find me. Oh, and a special offer for those interested in Gales if you're a subscriber to this blog.

Without further ado, some pictures, but these are just the ones before the weekend workshop! We traveled up a day early to do some scouting and for a chance to enjoy the splendour of Lake Superior's North Shore.

Ben and Dave and Amin and I were convoying up on Wednesday and we all had to stop for this shot. Do you wonder why I like to spend the better part of a day getting from the Soo to Wawa? 

another stop at a little beach just North of Agawa. I like to add a sketch texture to these rock pictures but this is really how they looked to my mental eye. 

Pretty well the only waves we saw the whole weekend. Also at that little rocky beach

Same spot. Ben, Amin and Dave, from near to far. 

If you stop at Katherine Cove and take the little trail through the woods to the next cove south, you might see this...

We stopped at a few other places, like the Sand River and Chippewa Falls, but I don't want to take the fun out of finding these views yourself and discouraging people from coming up to the Algoma District.

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During the weekend itself we modified the schedule to try to take advantage of the weather and lighting conditions. For instance, we headed over to the badlands a day early because of the heavy snowfall, figuring it would lead to some interesting textures and landscapes.

A winter wonderland? I think if I posted this a few weeks from now (or you're reading it and it's getting closer to Christmas), this picture wouldn't have the appeal it does now. Later, I expect people to think, "I hate winter"! But since this was the first snowfall of the year... this was taken on the way out of the Badlands.

Pretty well everyone took pictures of these snow-covered berries. The only spot of colour anywhere
 

Faced with a monochromatic landscape, what do you shoot? Karen Young contemplating that very question!

Here's what I shot. Not distant mountains, snow-covered piles of rock with trees in the background, not sky. I liked it enough to use it as the header on this blog. 

The next day we headed out to High Falls. They had turned off the water (closed the dam) but there were still some spectacular cascades down the rock face.

 

Later in the day we found a bald eagle but he was quite distant (I saw eagles three times during this trip. I got pictures but nothing worth sharing). Later, we went up to White Sand beach on the First Nations Reserve. 

I did a high resolution pano of this island then decided to paint it with an impressionist vision. 

The sun peeked out at sunset but I used Topaz to enhance the colours and add the star effect on the light. (PS: I had to include this photo of "The most photographed Michipicoten River Light in the world"!)

In the evening, we shot burning steel wool. This image by Amin Shivji was so different from the usual 'ring of fire' shot that I asked his permission to reproduce it here.  

Unexpectedly, the stars came out for a short visit later. I did a short seminar on how to shoot it, then a number of us went outside to try our luck. Ben Eby was particularly good at coaching people and from what I saw on the backs of cameras and on our dedicated Facebook page, many had considerable success. 

Here's my view of the lodge from the beach down below. At least two other people had similar shots (Dave and Ben) because we were all standing in the same spot! 

On the way home I stopped in the Agawa Bay area and found this image of leaves frozen in a puddle skimmed with ice. 

Gales this year was challenging. We were hoping for wind and waves and got none of that, but each and every one of our participants told us that they succeeded in finding ways to express their creativity and find quality images. A dozen people in a sharing and learning and catered environment. That's what it was all about. For some, it was their first exposure to Lake Superior's North Shore and several echoed the same sentiment: "we'll be back"!

As I said above, if you're interested in perhaps joining us, bookmark the web page or email me or Ben and we'll give you more information when the dates are firmed up for 2018.

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Thou Hypocrite

musings...

Do you want some cheese with that whine?

I get criticized a lot for the amount of post-processing that goes into my images. This might be construed as defensive justification, but I'm slowly coming to grips with why. It has to do with accepting my limitations.

I have friends who travel to exotic places and take pictures of awesome things. Penguins and Polar Bears and tracking moose and rare birds, come to mind. Or street photography in New Orleans, the Milky Way from remote hike-in locations in Arizona and Nepal, seascapes from the seat of a kayak, waterfalls from Iceland and the Northern Lights from Alaska.

I'm 70 now. I can't do that stuff (any more). I put "any more" in brackets because I never really did... I'm not a great physical specimen and I never really was. I've gotten old, and very lazy.

As recently as a year or two ago, if I read that the KP was high and there's a likelihood of aurora, or the sky is crisply clear and the stars shine like beacons, I'd be out the door. Admittedly by car, to where I don't have to walk much but I'd go out. Now? I'm chilled. Tired. Achy. I'll just throw another log on the fire and settle down in front of the computer and enjoy editing some pictures. Maybe just because it's February and it hasn't stopped snowing every day for seemingly weeks.

So when I get invited on a photo shoot, my first thought is, "how physically demanding is it"? I have two or three in mind for this year. NOT going is admitting defeat so I'm determined to do at least one. But I have to be careful.

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"Thou hypocrite"

On a related topic... baiting animals and birds. I'll tell you how this ties in at the end. There are many arguments against the practice and only a couple of cogent ones in favour. The idea that feeding wildlife will reduce the number of starvation-related deaths in our harsh winter environment seems to me to be contrived. I know people who feed deer and wild turkeys and ducks, and everyone I know has bird feeders hanging. Is that OK?

Why are they here? Why aren't they soaking up the sun on a beach in Miami 

Deer at the landfill. Are they eating our garbage? 

At the landfill. They certainly seem to be healthy and well-fed but is it right? 

We have bears that live in proximity to our landfills (garbage dumps). And crows and turkey vultures and gulls, they all live on our waste. Even herds of deer. I'm not proposing a solution to that issue, if it really needs a solution. I will say that the bald eagle population around here is surging, because the ducks that people are feeding provide easy meals for them, even winter long (remember when ducks and geese flew south for the winter? They are called "migratory birds". Lots of them hang out here all winter, wherever there's open water). That's not really a bad thing, is it? We have a new ecological balance.

Juvenile Bald Eagle returning to his roost overlooking a landfill site. 

But all that stuff is not what I'm leading up to. Foxes and pine martens and snowy owls. That's what I want to address.

In Algonquin Park, there is a family of foxes headed by the old patriarch that many people know as "Papa". You'll know him by the pink markings on his nose. He is so tame that he will walk along beside you like a dog. People feed him constantly and he's smart enough to pose for the cameras and put on a show for the herds of photographers who come to take his picture.

I love photographing him too. I've even printed pictures, tote bags, iPhone covers, etc with Papa's picture. We should really be asking him to sign a model release.  

Papa was waiting for us on a snowbank last time we visited. He knew we were going to have to turn the car around at that point because the road was impassable.  

I don't think he's forgotten how to hunt. But you have to wonder about his kits and his vixen who might have a harder time surviving without human handouts. By the way I'm not disclosing where to find him, although too many people know and it's hard to keep a secret with that many in the know. Is it right to bait him and his ilk, to pose for your pictures?

Yes, that's my car. No, that's not me. 

Pine Martens. Again, I'm not going to say where they hang out, but they live on our waste. And I've heard stories of people who spread cat food on photogenic tree branches to bring them out to pose for the cameras.

Is Algonquin Park just a big zoo without fences?

At the big bird feeder behind the Algonquin visitor's centre. Just some random shots, there were literally hundreds of birds there, from chickadees and blue jays to evening grosbeaks and American goldfinch. 

So is it OK to feed birds but not animals?

Now here's what triggered this essay. Yesterday, Larry and Ron and I trekked out in the aftermath of a huge snow event, in high winds and freezing temperatures, in search of Snowy owls. Again I'm not going to share where. We found some.

Female snowy owl surveying her realm from atop a hydro pole. 

We couldn't get close (except the one on the pole) but these people did:

They were on a guided workshop to shoot (pictures!) Snowy's and they got that close because the workshop leader brought live mice with him to bait the owls. 

Understand, I am NOT sitting in judgement. Nutritionally, the bait is actually good for the owls. Are the owls inured to human presence? You betcha. Do they hang out in those locations because they know they're going to get fed? Sure. Does that hurt their hunting ability? I doubt it. Come spring, these birds are going to migrate back to the far North where they'll subsist on voles and other small game. Just the fact that they come back year after year is proof that their survival is not affected.

Here's about the best I was able to do. But this was shot with a 600mm lens, then cropped, from a few hundred meters away. Ron probably did better with his superior lens but neither one of us would have been able to get our shots without the guy baiting the bird with mice. In fact, would the birds have been there at all? I've shot snowy's in the past in spots where they have not been baited, but not as easily as here.

Do people who judge this controversial practice do so out of jealousy? (it's not illegal, by the way) Or is there some effect on the birds that I have missed? Am I envious? Well I can't afford the workshop prices and somehow having pictures taken this way seem somewhat tainted. As do raptor images taken at the Raptor Conservancy or other guided sanctuary. How much more proud am I of this image of a Ruffed Grouse taken in Algonquin Park in its natural habitat?

Now here's the tie-in I promised you. I don't have the physical ability or stamina to go into the wild and seek out photos of wildlife in their true natural habitat. Or the wherewithal to afford catered first-class expeditions. As much as I want to, I'm not going to Africa any time soon, or in search of Grizzly bears in Alaska or Polar bears in the far North or Penguins in the Antarctic (although it's entirely possible I might be able to return to Newfoundland and shoot Gannets and Puffins and maybe whales and icebergs).

Northern Gannet colony at Cape St. Mary's in Newfoundland 

Atlantic Puffins near Elliston, NF 

So if I'm going to get pictures of wildlife, it's going to be along the Highway 60 corridor in Algonquin or in Carden Plain or at other accessible spots. My view is that if it doesn't hurt the animal or cause long term harm to the species, there's nothing wrong with it. What's your view?

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Beef with Micro$oft

I bought Office 365 for Mac because I'm used to Outlook as my email client, ditto Word and Excel and PowerPoint. I'm willing to give the Apple products a shot, but since I have a toe in both worlds, my documents have to work cross-platform.

So after installing it and cleaning all my stuff up, I decided not to bring the email archive over, just use the Mac as a backup and when traveling. After some struggles, I managed to copy my address book over, and my calendar (hint: it won't automatically go in the right places in 365. You have to copy them over then drag them into the built-in contacts and calendars). After all of that was done, I plugged in the iPhone, I had already configured iTunes to sync everything, and started it going.

Guess what? No contacts, no calendar. After some research, I discovered Microsoft Office 365 for Mac does not support syncing with the iPhone. You have to buy the upgraded industrial version for that to work and install an exchange server.

Nowhere on the Micro$oft site does it say that. Useless.

So I re-associated the iPhone with the PC laptop. All good except when I'm traveling: I'm going to have to figure out a workaround. 

That's the second time MS has done it to me. Last time involved upgrading XP to Win7: because I had a professional version of XP and wanted Win7 home, the upgrade I bought didn't work. After fruitless hours and a long conversation with their support, I was told, "there is no upgrade path for that". Fortunately I had bought the software at Costco and they took it back without any questions.

Microsoft is a pain in the royal ass. You can bet my next desktop will be a Mac, when and if I have to do it.

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Ben Eby's Pictures

I met Ben Eby back in 2010 up at the Gales of November workshop in Wawa on Lake Superior. We've met and shot together a few times since then. 

You know that I run the Gales of November workshop as facilitator now, right? As I write this, we have only 5 spaces left and there are people on the fence about signing up, so if you're interested, stop procrastinating! A weekend at a first class facility in an outstanding scenic area at a price that you can't beat. Check out www.photography.to/gales.

I remember remarking on how sharp and clear Ben's images were, right from day 1. And his photographer's eye, grasp of lighting and composition were also remarkable. Ben took some images at the Mountsberg Raptor Centre that impressed me so much, I asked him if I could post some here. Without further ado...

Barn Owl 

Great Horned Owl 

Peregrine Falcon 

Ben has traveled extensively (he's just come back from the Antarctic) and he runs workshops here and abroad. If you're as impressed with his images as I am, check out his gallery and site at http://www.benebyinc.ca/. Click on "Events" to see what he's got coming up.

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