'tis the season...

This certainly is the season for outdoor photography. Birds, wildlife, landscapes, flowers, people coming out of hibernation. So get out there and enjoy it.

I need to take my own advice. I've been terribly one-dimensional lately but I have to admit that I'm fascinated by bird photography. I'll make an effort to include other genres in this blog so I'm not boring everyone and I'm also going to get out and shoot other stuff. Since I got the Tamron 150-600mm lens, I don't think my Nikon 70-200 has been on the camera more than a couple of times. Gawd, it's the sharpest lens I own! That and my 105mm macro. So I will make the effort. Stick around!

Photo Fads

If you hang out on Social Media at all, especially the Photoshop groups, you'll have noticed how there are fads in photography. For example, there was the "Twirl" — someone figured out how to do a kaleidoscope-like manipulation in Photoshop and suddenly dozens of people were doing it (to the point where some were calling for a ban in the Photoshop and Lightroom group!). "Frequency Separation" is suddenly THE technique for skin softening, everyone's trying it. Lately there's been "Big Eyes", now everyone's doing that (use the Liquify tool in Photoshop. Reminds me of people painting Elvis on black velvet 50 years ago!).

It's also what happened in the nature groups. Last year, a couple of people posted pictures of Snowy Owls, now everyone says, "me too!". Then it was foxes. And Pine Martens. And moose. Aurora Borealis. The Milky Way. Star trails. It's hard not to follow suit: nothing wrong with it, you see a technique, want to try it and show the results. But how do you avoid just being a sheep? I wonder what the next fad will be?

"WOW" image

I follow Vincent Versace on Facebook. He is a photographer and a teacher extraordinaire and a Nikon Ambassador (come on, Canon people, I admire great Canon photographers like, um, like... I'll get back to you on that!). Search for him on FB and look on his timeline for the picture of the raging waters coming over the road in Havana, Cuba from April 26th. [I won't post other people's pictures on my blog, certainly not without specific permission]. It has every "wow" element I strive for in my landscapes. Come on folks, you don't expect ME to do all the work! Research it.

Oh, all right. Here's the link: https://goo.gl/NVmvUG

I do want to quote what he said about the Nikon D5, four days into shooting with it:

'There is no image I cannot capture. The ability of this camera to shoot in lighting conditions so dark that you have to [imagine] that there is light to provide illumination. Spot on color, speed touch screen focus in live view. Whoa.....' 

The D5 can shoot up in the millions range of ISO, which is, I suspect, not what most people will do but by derivation allows it to shoot ridiculous quality at ISO's like 6400 or more. Imagine being able to do an exhibition quality hummingbird shot at 1/8000 sec @ f/8 on a cloudy day...

Last week, I said my first stop after picking up my lottery winnings would be the Swarovski store for that outstanding spotting scope, my second stop would be the Nikon store for a D5. Imagine that optic on that camera! Sadly, the probability that will happen has too many zeroes between the decimal point and the first significant digit.

...musings

As I read about the Nikon D5 and muse about better and better lenses and optics, I wonder when enough is enough. I remember when I bought the D800, I said that would be the end of the line for me. I thought the same when I got my Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 VR. I discovered that wasn't good enough for birding, so I added the Tamron 150-600. It does the job. National Geographic quality? No, but good enough. The other day, I found something that I could not do with it: I couldn't take a sharp picture of a Loggerhead Shrike on a bush 200 or 300 meters away. I wanted that 500mm f/4.

That's what happens when you push the edge of the envelope. I have to ask myself, "would having all that new stuff make me a better photographer?" No it won't. It would enable me to shoot in situations that I can't right now but it won't make me better at what I do. If I were a portrait photographer, would a D5, with its crazy 3 Million ISO and 12 fps give me better results? No, not really. What would? Understanding lighting better and how to relate to people.

Ask yourself the same questions but substitute the genre you prefer to shoot. What would make me a better [landscape, wildlife, street, macro, travel, astro, studio...] photographer? Sure. You have to have a certain minimum set of equipment. And no, your iPhone or point-and-shoot isn't going to do that for you, unless all you aspire to is to be a snapshot photographer. So it comes down to deciding what you want to be when you grow up.

My problem is, I want to be able to do it all. Two years ago, I shot landscapes. Now I'm kinda into birding (for which, I admit, you really do need one of those $5digit lenses). And astrophotography. To do either of those things and stand shoulder to shoulder with the experts, I would need some specialized equipment. At what point do I have to say, "Enough!"? How about stretching to learn more about how to shoot those genres with what I have?

I can't carry all the equipment I have even now. My gear is divided into 3 bags. When I go out, I have to ask myself, "what should I take with me today?". And as I get older and more arthritic and more out of shape, everything gets heavier and heavier. Can you say "mirrorless"? Not yet...

So I've decided that the D800 is enough for me. Unless it breaks, of course, at which point I have to decide what to replace it with. Maybe that's when I'll go mirrorless. It's time to learn how to use what I already have, to take better pictures by using my eye and my mind, not new hardware. So I won't shoot motion-compensated photographs of obscure galaxies. I'm just going to get better at what I already do.

Algonquin Park

I decided to head up to the Park last Tuesday, well, just "because". People have been posting pictures of moose and I wanted to get my share! I got to wear the camo's I bought at Cabela's a couple of months ago (I wear them at Carden Plain as well; the pants are Goretex and tick-proof!)

The Pine Martens didn't show up at Mew Lake so I killed time shooting a couple of "selfie's". 

I had two moose encounters, one on the way into the park and the other on the way out later in the afternoon.

This young bull was enjoying the salty runoff water beside Highway 60.

This cow was accompanied by a calf. Her coat was rather scruffy, you can see some winter ticks still in position. Her coat looks like that partly because she scraped it off to rid herself of the ticks and partly because moose shed their winter coats and grow summer ones in the spring. She was a bit more shy; or had been driven away from the roadside by a seemingly endless gaggle of tourists. I was amazed by the people who took iPhone or iPad pictures from the roadside and expected them to come out. This shot was at 600mm and cropped to about half the frame.

There are birds in Algonquin Park too. Here's a yellow-rumped warbler and a great blue heron that I saw.

It's not all wildlife, though. Here's the Costello Creek pond on Opeongo Road. Only thing missing was a red canoe! Actually there was a yellow one there, but they were behind the rock and headed the other way.

You don't have to go so far, though...

I shot these pictures at my feeder a couple of days later. I saw at least half a dozen species! I had just installed the "Merlin" birding app on my phone and just for fun, started playing some of the songs of different species. I started with the Rose-breasted grosbeak and about 2 minutes later, this guy and his family showed up!

Rose-breasted grosbeak with attitude! 

American Goldfinch. A whole flock of these showed up and they seem to like the calls on my iPhone. Whenever I stepped outside to shoot them, they'd fly away. Playing the calls made them stick around long enough for a photo. There were so many of them that they emptied my feeder all by themselves in a couple of hours. Must have been a dozen or more!

Pretty sure it's a white-throated sparrow 

Chipping Sparrow. 

Carden Plain

I was there again on Friday morning. Kathy met me there and loves the place. Somehow she sees birds that I can't!

The Eastern Loggerhead Shrike was there again. A little closer this time but we couldn't get him to turn around for a portrait:

Here's a Meadowlark singing on a rock. I think the iPhone call helped bring him in closer. 

Normally they sit further away. This guy was about 200m away and this is cropped from a 600mm shot. I like it because it says something about the environment in which the bird lives. 

Same thing is true of this Savannah Sparrow. I could have cropped it vertically but I like the story the branches tell. I couldn't get him to turn around and look the other way, but that's OK: (1) rules are made to be broken and (2) I like the light on his face. 

As I continued along Rte. 6, just before crossing the Trent-Severn Canal, I saw this Osprey eating a fish on top of a hydro pole. I have a few shots with the fish, but none as compelling as this closeup! 

It's Trillium Time

A little later than usual but they are here. Not in full force yet, but they're out at the Minden Wildwater Preserve. 

The other day I learned something new about my flash. A while ago my Nikon SB-600 flash died and I replaced it with a Yongnuo YN568EX. Reading the manual (and interpreting the transliterated English!) I learned that it will sync with any shutter speed. Interesting: the Nikon flash only went to 1/320 second with the D800. 

What's the significance? When you use the flash, you are mixing two light sources: the strobe and the ambient light. There are a bunch of ways of controlling the effect of the strobe light (normally aperture, but when you're in iTTL mode it's really exposure compensation), but the way to control the ambient light is with shutter speed (or sometimes ISO). 

This is a normal image that uses both ambient and flash light 

And this shot was taken at 1/1600 second, effectively eliminating the ambient.
 

The other advantage of high shutter speed is to stop motion, for example, hummingbird wings. I'll be experimenting with this feature.

This is a complex image. Four exposures were focus-stacked to produce the sharp Trillium, and then I swapped out the background with the texture from a nearby rock. Finally, Topaz Impression was used to create the painterly effect. 

And finally, here's the shot I liked best from today. 

The flash made the petals translucent so you can see the leaf through them.  

By the way, all of these trillium pictures were taken from ground level. It's worth the effort to get down and dirty.

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One Swell Foop (Not)

Sometimes I like writing this blog all in one swell foop. But occasionally I'll start writing an article, then revisit it a few days later when something interesting happens that I can add in. Doing it this way (a bit at a time) makes it more topical for me and hopefully for you. But it does make it somewhat disjointed, with a bunch of non-related topics! Sort of a stream-of-consciousness kind of thing. Hope that floats your boat!

Last week, I showed you a picture of a bunch of ice huts teetering on the edge of falling through the ice on Mountain Lake, because we had several days of unseasonably warm temperatures and two days of rain. Not to worry, they didn't fall through. Today is a whole other thing.

Country Living Challenges (part 2)

Last night, we reached -33°C with a wind chill of 44 below. My sump pump line froze up (it does every year) so I had to run a temporary line (I have two of them; when one freezes, I bring it in to defrost in the bathtub!). I'm hoping I got it right this time: if it has a continuous downhill slope, the water should just flush out of the hose and not stay in there to freeze.

This is the setup. I think I solved it: I was just out there (next day) and it isn't frozen up. By the way, this is a pano created using Lightroom CC 2015.4 in about 5 seconds! Four shots, and the new boundary warp feature is awesome!

if anyone is interested, here are the details.  The pipe at left is the problem: it runs underground across my driveway and even though there's a heatline connection (not sure it works) it freezes every year. I think it's because it comes up at the other end and water sitting in the pipe freezes. The connection in the house goes to the sump pump in the crawlspace. I attached the flexible hose and ran it up further to the hook you see (the check valve will let water drain back down into the sump).

Then I used this old metal frame to stretch the hose downhill. The logs are there to help support it when the water is running, and there's a bungee cord holding it in position where it drops on the right. 

Then I used an old piece of eavestroughing to keep it straight and a couple of logs to keep the end of the hose out of the frozen water on the ground. 

Pretty ugly, but it works (I hope!). I'm going to have a skating rink behind my house but I just use that area to turn the car around so I can back it into the garage.

PS: It's two days later and yesterday's temperatures were well above freezing. Water everywhere and the lake ice is dangerous. Such a weird winter!

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FWIW, this is how I transport my firewood into the house. Beats carrying armloads! I generally split the wood this small, I find it burns more easily. 

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When I woke up this morning, it was still 27 below. I had posted that I was planning to stay inside today but I had to go out to fix the sump pump line, so I bundled up and went out. Wool longjohns, snow pants, thinsulate jacket liner, down jacket, sheepskin hat, insulated mittens, the whole works. You know what? It was a beautiful day! So I hopped on the 4-wheeler and took a run out on the ice. No spectacular pictures (I had to take my glove off to shoot. THAT was cold). Then my face got cold. I headed back in. But just to prove I was there:

It doesn't really look that cold. Trust me. It was. 

There are people whom I know TENT-CAMPING in Algonquin Park this weekend. I submit that they must be of a different species. Even when I was young I wasn't that foolish! 

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That was yesterday. Today is crispy cold beautiful again.

A chickadee trying to keep warm at -25°C. This was shot with my 70-200 f/2.8 shooting at f/8, 1/320 sec, ISO 640 and cropped. I was right to send back that cheap 500mm mirror lens. Have to find a way to get a Nikon 400mm lens. A lot of people are telling me that using black-and-white for nature shots isn't really appropriate: but I thought in this case, the detail comes out better. 

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OK, I did buy a new lens

Well, mint condition used. I bought a Tamron SP 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD lens because I can't afford the one I really want, the Nikon 200-400 f/4 which is only $7000 at B&H (but it's backordered, so I guess I have to pass on it!).

I took a couple of test shots with it. I was hoping to see a pine marten attacking a rabbit on the side of Hwy 118 on the way home, but no such luck! Maybe tomorrow, when we're going looking for bald eagles. In the meantime...

I shot this at 1/1000 second, f/8, ISO 1100, 600mm handheld. After seeing this picture on my camera LCD, I agreed to buy the lens.The blowup isn't quite 100% but you get the picture. Stay tuned...

I think notwithstanding the shake reduction (Tamron calls it "Vibration Compensation") I'm going to try to stick to  the 1/focal length rule until I can test how effective it is. That means, 1/1000 at f/8 is going to be my go-to setting when shooting handheld at 600mm.

I did go out in search of telephoto subjects on Friday. Larry and I went to the Scotch Line landfill (euphemism for "garbage dump"!) because there be bald eagles there. So here's the 600mm doing its thing:

This was cropped a bit, it's about half-a-frame. However it took a fair bit of post-processing to get it looking this sharp. Shutter speed was a bit low – 1/400 sec – but I was on a tripod. The lens does autofocus pretty quickly.

"Mom and Dad and little Eddie" (you know — 'Eddie the Eagle'...). Rico suggested another name for this image: "Family Tree". Again it took a lot of work to get it this sharp. I've had a lot of good comments on it in Facebook. Same shutter speed, shooting at f/8, ISO 2000. Technically, not the greatest image: it's quite noisy if you blow it up.

So how do I feel about this lens? It's not a $10,000 piece of Nikon glass. But I think with some practice and work, it will do a good job for me, especially at places like Carden Plain in the Spring.

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From the sporadic musings department...

 1. Do as I say, not as I do

I'm typing on a new keyboard and have a new mouse too. Both wireless, both from Logitech. My old one more-or-less died last week, they've been working sporadically so I dug out an old wired set for the time being.

I should learn not to eat at the keyboard. You would not believe all the crumbs that came out of both of the older keyboards when I turned them upside down and shook them. Unbelievable. 

Oh, by the way, I'm sitting here enjoying some cranberry-almond thins, they're like tasty crunchy baguettes. There are already a couple of crumbs on the new keyboard! {sigh}

2. Like a kid in a candy store

On my way home yesterday, via the 400/11/118 (I went that way to meet Mike with the Tamron lens) I stopped at Cabela's in Barrie, at Missy Mandel's suggestion. I had told her I was planning to go to Bass Pro to buy some camo's for bird shooting and she suggested I try Cabela's instead. Good call, Missy.

They're both about the same size – huge – with similar products and selection, but I think Cabela's might be a bit higher end. I've dealt with Cabela's before, by mail order from Nebraska. I still have a Goretex duck hunting shell from 25 years ago; the Goretex isn't completely waterproof any more, it was time to replace it, but the quality is great and it lasted forever.

Anyway, put me in a store like that and I'm a kid in a candy store. It's like going to Costco, you know, "just to pick up one item"... so I now have a set of waterproof camo pants and parka, both on sale, plus some other stuff. Don't ask.

They also carry camo ground blinds that would be great for bird shooting. They weren't on sale so no hurry, but I'm tempted.

This one's a folding chair surrounded by a camo shell, which you can easily carry, then pop it open and sit down. The sales guy told me he also uses it for ice fishing (don't look at me. I'm not sitting out there in the cold!) Only about $100. There's another one that's tall, designed for archery shooters, but I could easily stand up in it. And bigger ones for more than one person. Hmmm.  By the way, doesn't that look like a Pine Marten crawling into the blind? It's not, but it sure looks like it in this picture!

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PS: re Gales of November

I have expressions of interest from enough people to fill up the second session. But they're sitting back, not committing yet. Folks, if you want to attend this, you need to get booked or you might be disappointed. There is still space available October 27-30.  October 20-23 is technically full, but a couple of people have said they could do either weekend, so we might be able to shuffle.

www.photography.to/gales in case you lost the address.

Several people have said they'd like to find someone to (a) car pool with and/or (b) share a room with. If that's you, contact me. I can probably help.

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The day before (nobody said this had to be in chronological order!), the weather was also exciting. We had huge snow squalls, to the point where visibility was down to zero on the highway. In-between, there were some great photo ops.

I want to preface this by adding that I've been re-reading Freeman Patterson's "Photography and the Art of Seeing", and improving my visual thinking was in my mind as I was driving home. I stopped by the roadside because the patterns of the trees and the dead hanging leaves caught my eye. Here's one result:

This is what I saw. Not only the red leaves, but also the pastel, charcoal-like trees half-hidden in the blowing snow. That's what I wanted to capture. 

Instead of driving straight home, I headed down Pleasant Point Road. I had something in mind:

I viewed this scene through a painter's eye. I plan to put oil paint on canvas, using this image as a source. Stay tuned. 

There was also this scene:

No doubt you've seen images like this one: the technique is not new, it involves moving the camera while the shutter is open. I've done many of these over time but this one seems to capture the depth and the textures the way I saw them. By the way, the magic of this image is that it is 100% "Straight out of Camera". Nothing was done to it, not even a crop or exposure adjustment. A departure for me.

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Busy, Busy weekend!

New Header Photo

Every couple of months I like to change the header picture on the blog to reflect the season. Today's new header is wishful thinking, I think! Last night it was almost 30°C below and we have a ton of snow on the ground. The theory is, "if you think it, it will happen". Think warm thoughts!

The new header is actually an old photo that I took with my D70 back in 2006 on the Cabot Trail, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. It's amazing what quality a 6Mp camera delivers, even in today's terms. I enhanced it within Lightroom and Photoshop, then I applied the excellent "Paper Textures" extension in Photoshop CC. It's free, and if you install it, note that there are TWO versions, "Paper Textures" and  "Pro". Install both.

When I replace the header photo, I put the old one here for reference or it's gone! So here's the header picture that was up to the end of February.

The ongoing New Laptop saga

Strictly speaking, not a new laptop, just a new boot drive. The old one gave up the ghost, so I had a new drive installed. We put in a 256Gb SSD drive and loaded the operating system and programs on it. Data resides as it always had, on a second internal drive, backed up to various plugged in external drives.

By the way when I say "we" I mean I paid for it, and James Keller did it. He really knows what he's doing and is starting a fresh computer services business in Haliburton. He has my vote.

So my data was safe but I have to reinstall all of my programs. There are probably 20 of them that I use regularly, and a bunch of others that are more sporadically required and lots of support stuff. Today I discovered that I didn't have a PDF reader installed, for instance, or Dropbox. I've got the critical ones done but there are 7 or 8 of the main programs left to do and who knows how many of the utilities. What a pain.

I also discovered that I was missing some important pieces of the puzzle. For example, my Lightroom and Photoshop preferences and presets! So if I were you, I'd go look for those and make sure you have a backup somewhere. Also your Outlook file if you use that client. It's usually in some obscure location!

FWIW, the laptop sure boots up quick now! And since the swap files are on the SSD, I imagine Photoshop will fly much faster when working on some of those huge D800 files!

How's this for an HDR location?

I came across this old building last week. The sign on it says "Ontario's Coolest Building".What an awesome HDR site, especially if we can get inside (which we might be able to do after the winter). And across the road is a larger structure that had collapsed, so there's just some brick walls and framework left. Ill try to set up a shoot there!

This is a 5-shot HDR, then I added a Topaz Simplify layer.  

This is the yellow sign on the building (click to blow it up if you can't read it), shot through my car window. Hey, it was cold, OK? 

It was a busy weekend

It started with Ron Goodlin's wildlife presentation on Friday night, attended by almost 50 people. A wonderful program, turns on the 'envy' genes, both about his skills as a photographer and speaker, and his ability to travel and his great equipment.

Forgive the lousy iPhone photo! 

We went to the dogsled races on Saturday. It was a snowy, flat day, that got even worse later on. Sunday was clear but Saturday was a long day and I didn't get there the next day until much too late (someone told me the 8-dog race STARTED at 3pm. In fact it ENDED at 3pm. {sad face}.

It took a bunch of editing to make a useable shot out of this one. Really flat lighting and snow falling made it a difficult capture, especially since it was with my 400 mm lens. By the way, that looks like a GoPro camera on her chest: they're really ubiquitous. This was the 6-dog race on Saturday afternoon. 

This is an 11-week-old puppy. I tried to steal her to take her home, but couldn't get away with it. This has to be one of the cutest puppies I've ever seen. Her name is Nyx, after (Νύξ), the Greek primeval goddess of night. Apparently she will be bred in 18 months, so I gave her my card and said to call me in 18 months and 8 weeks! Do you think she bought the jacket to match the dog's eyes?

Dr. Ron, lying down on the job as usual! Ron, your camo isn't working! I SEE YOU!
I tried getting down on the ground too. It took 3 people to help me get up. {sigh}. 

The lighting was MUCH better on Sunday. This shot is only lightly edited. Could have used a touch more depth of field... 

But that's not all. I decided to drive home via Bethel Church Road, which leads to the white water venue on Horseshoe Lake Road. First thing that made me put on the brakes and grab the camera was this seasonal home.

It's a log building, boarded up for the winter, with a fastidiously applied coat of pastel blue and green paint. I thought it lends itself well to this painterly treatment. I had to climb up a snowbank to get this vantage point. Then one more step and I was in up to my hips. I didn't expect that, and didn't bother to take gloves with me, and couldn't use my healing right hand to help get up... you should have seen me floundering around!

That's still not all! As I got to Horseshoe Lake Road, I saw a herd of deer at a house on the right. I quietly got out, changed lenses, walked over to the driveway... and they ran off. I went to the white water, scouted around a bit, nothing doing, headed back. The deer were back again. This time I managed to get some shots. Even better, this one youngster was too curious to be frightened and I got to within about 15 feet!

Love his expression and the pink tongue sticking out! Notice his ears aren't even up! He's going to have to learn some caution or he won't make it through hunting season next year! He was trying to wind me, but I was cross-wind to him. 

An eyeball shot.Told you I was close! 400mm and cropped, but hey... 

...and you thought I was done for the day! When I got home, I saw these great clouds, the sun was about to set... I thought I'd get that colourful sunset I had missed last week. Again it didn't materialize. By the time the sun went down, it was cloudless. I spend two hours waiting for it out on the ice, to no avail. I sat in a fishing hut (no heat, but out of the wind) for an hour or so. Anyway, I took this burst while setting up the camera for later.

7-shot HDR and I painted in the lights. Then I added the stars. If those clouds had hung around for another hour it would have been more spectacular! I'll get one yet! 

So I figure that's enough for one weekend. Until next time!

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