"On the road again..."

"sporadic musing"

On The Big Bang Theory, Penny says to Howard, "...you know a lot of doctors".

You should see my address book. As I get older and with accumulating medical issues...
That said, I have several friends and relatives who are entitled to that honorific too. They can be distinguished by the fact that I call them by their first names (Dr. Ron or just Steve or Gary). I'm on first name terms with most of them but I refer to the medical ones by their full names or functions (my radiation oncologist...).

Gone are the days when the only doctors you knew were your GP and your dentist.

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Here's the same Loon I posted in the last blog. This time I shot it with the D800 instead of the Z7 — same lens, the 200-400 at roughly the same settings — to show the nesting box and to try to compare quality between the camera bodies. I can't see a ton of difference but the Z has the edge.

If I'm patient and the timing is right, I'm hoping to see some activity when the eggs hatch and the chicks are visible.

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So here we are a few days later and my hopes have been fulfilled!

Well, one chick anyway. These were really difficult shots to render due to the bright sunlight. It took a lot of post-processing work to produce some acceptable shots. 

Skip forward a few days: the second egg never hatched and — I'm told this is normal behaviour — the loons have abandoned the nest and the remaining egg and moved off to rear the chick in more open water.

Family portrait. This one isn't the best quality but I like the story that the pose tells! 

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Newfoundland trip update

It's less than a week before I leave and I really should be packing! I am, sort of: I've sorted my camera gear (major undertaking!), done my computer backup and prepared my travel hard drives, and I've updated the Excel file that details what I'm going to pack and how the containers will be organized. I always bring too much, only use half the stuff, but better to have it than not and there's room in the car, and I have the rooftop cargo carrier.

Last year I had some specific photographic goals. I achieved some of those, hence fewer specific goals for this year.  I do have some, though:

• Icebergs. I'll be up on the Western Peninsula, at "Iceberg Alley" between Newfoundland and Labrador. I did get some good 'bergs in 2017, this time I want to try to get more dramatic shots, whether by finding unusual lighting or composition, or both. I'm a little unfocused here, hopefully it will 'just happen' when I'm there.
• Whales! I still want to see a full breach. But they're addictive, these massive beasts are spectacular. I'm planning to take the family out whalewatching when we get together in the Bonavista area.
• Puffins, of course, in Elliston. My son and family will be with me and (weather permitting!) my granddaughters will love seeing these birds when we go there.
• Photo friends: Ron and Ricki will be in Twillingate at the same time as me for a few days, and I'll see Trudy and Jeff there too. I'd like to visit with Ray Mackey and Sheldon Hicks and maybe Darrell Heath and other local photographer and artist friends while I'm there.
• Some long exposure oceanscape shots. I'm not satisfied with most of what I have so far and want to try harder. As you'll see below, I've got some new equipment to try to make that happen
• Stars. Again, I have some new hardware and I'm hoping for some more dramatic images. Wouldn't it be great if there was an Aurora event? 
• People. I say this every year: I want to make more images with people in them, tell some stories. I have to force myself to do this, it's not one of my strengths!

I also just booked 3 nights in Westport, NS — actually, past Digby — on the far western tip of Nova Scotia on the way home, August 19-22. A friend recommended this place for outstanding whale watching and it's a major birding area, including bird banding and migration centres (prime time, apparently!). Lighthouses, etc. 

One challenge: "Digby Scallops" come from there. But I was told there are only two remaining eating establishments within a couple of hundred km — a restaurant and a café. Apparently there used to be a famous restaurant a ferry-ride away but they have closed! I'm sure I won't starve...

Should be great. Have a look at their website: https://www.novascotiawhalewatching.ca/

I'm writing this post over time. It's now Tuesday, June 25 and I'm leaving on Monday. Lots to do before I go... and some snags have come up. Let's just say that I have an appointment tomorrow for another probable root canal (I don't want ti be stuck out there in pain...) and yesterday, I had some car trouble where the "Check Engine Light" and others came on and I had no throttle. I got the car to Subaru but their diagnosis was, "we can't reproduce the problem". Great. It better not happen in the boonies in Newfoundland! The car's going back in on Thursday for brakes and another pass with the diagnostic computer. Initially they thought it was the catalytic converter, now they think something to do with the 'throttle body sensor'. Wish me luck! I renewed my CAA Plus membership...

Anyway my packing list is complete, I just have to get the stuff into travel bins and loaded in the car. I have to call Bell today to suspend services for the summer (why pay if I'm not here?) and finish up some house arrangements. Basically ready to go, though!

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Raptors yeah!

Look at me. As I said last time, you KNOW I love basketball. I'm 4'20", I outweigh most NBA players and when I jump, I sometimes can ALMOST get my toes off the ground! What's not to love about that game! 

 Kawhi, if you're reading this, you know we want you to stay! Marc, Kyle, Pascal and everyone else, "Good Job", guys! And Nick: "Kudo's, man"! 

 Congratulations, NBA Champions, Toronto Raptors!

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House still for sale

It hasn't sold yet, despite being an exceptional value for an very attractive property. People buy houses for various reasons, but in my mind, the ideal buyer would be a senior couple looking to get out of the GTA to a year-round or recreational home within a two hour or so driving distance from the city. The quiet and meticulously maintained Inn across the road makes it not-so-isolated location and it's steps away from the dock on the lake. It's a one-storey bungalow which could become wheelchair friendly if needed, it's high and dry, the road is the first one cleared after a snow, and there's a huge 3-car garage for vehicles and toys! Because it's not directly on the water, taxes are less than half, as is the asking price.

If you know someone who might be interested, please have them contact Anthony at Royal Lepage, 705-457 2414 or info@trilliumteam.ca. Here's the link to the actual listing.

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Pictures

It's been a while, so I have a number of shots you haven't seen before. Here are some, and I'll be working on my portfolio site in the next little while as well. The main portfolio page is here, with a myriad of navigational options. For what it's worth, since I work under "Creative Commons", feel free to screen grab a shot if you want, but just for personal use, no modifying anything and be sure to credit me. Pretty well anything on the portfolio site is available as a high resolution large scale print at very reasonable cost, just ask!

I plan to post weekly or at least bi-weekly from Newfoundland, so be sure to subscribe by clicking the "Newsletter" button (or here) to get a heads-up.

Without further ado...

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Prairie Smoke at Carden Plain. Before the flowers opened, and after a rain shower. The last shot is a focus stack done in the Z7

Here's another 20-image focus stack done in the Z7 and post-processed with Helicon Focus. I'm working my way through the learning curve on this technique. 

Some Carden Plain birds. A bluebird, a hard-to-find and very shy Sora, the pretty little yellow warbler and a song sparrow in the rain. 

This tree-swallow favoured us with his song!

Upland Sandpoper. The D800 and 200-400 Nikkor combination autofocuses on Birds-in-flight like a dream, The fourth picture is actually a different bird, shot at a different spot about half and hour later.

Wilson't Snipe and a Virginia Rail (the Rail was on Prospect Road)

Experimenting with the iOptron Sky Tracker. I'm anxious to try it again in Newfoundland in a dark sky spot. There's a bit of aurora borealis in this shot of the Northern end of the Milky Way. 

A 10-stop ND filter combined with the Nikkor-S 14-30mm f/4 and then some post-processing with Topaz Studio yielded this shot on 12-Mile Lake. The same combination was used for this slo-mo shot of the White Water.

All right! See you from Newfoundland. Don't forget to drop in or subscribe and I'll remind you. I dare you!

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But soft! What light from yonder window breaks?

North-Facing Window Light
A random thought about lighting

In response to a question on Facebook, I used Yousuf Karsh as an example of who I'd like to emulate when I grow up. So I leafed through some of his famous portraits and came across one of my favourites, his shot of Albert Einstein (someone else I'd like to be like, and of course never will!).

Because it's someone else's picture, I won't reproduce it here. But please click this link to see the photo I'm talking about.

Photographers spend a lot of money on studio lighting. I get it, if you want to have predictable results all the time but, and I've said this before, all they're doing is trying to emulate natural lighting. For me, the best light is "north facing window light". The window doesn't actually have to face North, it just means that there's no direct sunlight and the window serves as a source of soft light, like the huge reflectors and softboxes most studios prefer.

I remembered this picture I made a few years ago of my ex-girlfriend Rosa's friend Valeria, sitting at her kitchen table. It  was placed in a kind of bay window alcove so light came from the huge windows to her left. It was a freezing cold winter day (I remember it was one of the few days that actually reached 40°C below) in Bancroft, there had been a fresh fall of snow so the world was bright white and all the light came through the window.

I don't think I consciously emulated Karsh's lighting but you have to admit there is a great deal of similarity between this image and his (if you didn't click the link above, please do now).

The only thing I did in terms of light setup was to spread a newspaper on the table in front of her to reflect some of that beautiful light upwards to fill in under her chin.

As I look back in my archives I realize that I love using natural window lighting for portraits. The best example is this one:

This was a digital painting that won me the top portrait prize in the GTCCC some years ago. George was a groundskeeper at a place called "Deep Gorge" in upstate New York and I had asked him to stand by a window. FWIW, I tried to contact him later to get a model release, only to discover that he had died. His co-workers had dedicated a cabin to his memory and I provided a print for the cabin.

My son-in-law preparing my grandson for his graduation dance from 8th grade some years ago. He's now a Seneca College student, preparing for entry to a Canadian Forces program that will hopefully lead to him flying fighter jets. He's also a little taller now, towering over me! 

My neighbour, Vic, in the living room of his house on 12-Mile Lake, illuminated by, you guessed it, North-Facing Window Light. In hindsight, this one emulates the Karsh lighting best, don't you think?

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Topaz Labs Spring sale!


Topaz Labs has announced a huge spring sale: 40% off everything in their stores from now until May 7th! That's 40% off their already discounted prices, best prices ever!

Note: if you already own some of the Topaz products, their smart website will calculate a top-up price once you log in. This is an opportunity to get these amazing tools at a huge savings.

If you're not familiar with Topaz, they started with some great plug-in tools for most photoediting apps (my favourite is "Impression" which turns your images into painterly art. Second favourite is DeNoise which quietly does exactly what you think it does!). 

Then they introduced "Studio" which is a FREE standalone photoediting platform on its own (although it can be run out of other apps too: my usual workflow is to call it out of Lightroom). It comes with a number of totally free adjustment tools but they have some premium ones where you can play with them for free but to get full access, you need to buy them. They have a bundle called the "Pro Pack" which gives you everything all in one shot.

You can also get a 30-day free trial of anything through the links below.

Here's the link to Topaz Lab's new FREE "Studio" platform.You can also use this link to access any of the "Pro"-adjustments, plug-ins and special discounts currently in effect. 

https://web.topazlabs.com/ref/32/

For the original plug-ins, here's the link:

http://www.topazlabs.com/505-0-1-69.html

No need to enter a coupon code, Topaz will apply the 40% discount automatically.

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Steel Wool fun

The other night, the camera club went out to shoot steel wool again. We've done it a few times before, and I ran a session up in Wawa as well— something to do at night if the weatherman wasn't going to cooperate and give us stars to shoot.

What you do is take a bit of steel wool (half a clump?), stick it in a household whisk (the thing you use to beat eggs into submission), tether it with some kind of rope like a dog leash, set it on fire (easy to do with a lighter or even the spark from a 9v battery) and swing it around to paint with light, being really careful not to hit yourself with it or to set the forest on fire. Leave your shutter open for a while. You'll get pictures like this:

This was a 12 second exposure at f/11, ISO 100. 

If you work at it, you can get pictures like this one:

This was about 4 seconds. I zoomed the lens while the shutter was open and I added texture using Topaz Studio. 

or this one:

I edited this in Lightroom. I increased the exposure dramatically and used the "Guided Transform" tool to straighten up the perspective. This image was very well received on Facebook. I did get some comments about the post which  I left in because it adds depth, perspective and tension to the image. Some liked it others didn't. You? 

Now for those of you who don't understand why you need to shoot in RAW...

... here's the "before" shot, straight out of the camera.

If you expose for the burning steel wool, the rest of the image is going to be dark.  

In this case, I increased the exposure by 2½ stops for the overall image. But I wanted the stone fountain to be even more visible so I painted it with the adjustment brush in LR and added another 4 full stops. That's a total of 6½ stops! Try that with a Jpeg.

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House still for sale!

Hurry before someone grabs it up! I'm still waiting for those multiple offers they promised me! LOL

Dining Room 

Kitchen

Almost time to put on a bathing suit, your boat in the water, or relax in the gazebo with good company and a good book!

Here's the link to the MLS listing

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Carden Plain: too early

With the weird spring (I'm still looking out on remnants of snow from last week!) it was too early to visit Carden Plain and see a wide variety of birds. But it was a nice day yesterday and I made the trek. Nothing exotic but always interesting... I had also intended to head down to the Lindsay area where, I heard, there were meadowlarks in the fields off highway 35. Never made it. I got to Carden a little before noon, and didn't leave there until well after 5, headed to Fenelon Falls for some groceries (I figured there'd be a bigger variety there in the Sobey's — yes but their prices are even higher than here!), then made it home a little before 8. A nice day.

Here are some pix:

I started in Minden and found one of the ubiquitous RWBB's coming in for a one-point landing. Can't resist shooting these guys (until later when there are thousands around!).

Ruffed Grouse crossing Deep Bay Road 

He headed for the base of a tree where he figured I couldn't see him. Almost... 

The bluebirds are back! Only a few of them and they stayed well away, this guy was sitting in a Hawthorne quite some distance away (cropped!) 

 

A pair of Northern Flickers showed up for a quick look. As did this European Starling.

I ran into a couple of people: first, a team of Conservation Officers out making sure that turkey hunters (season opened the day before) were following the rules... nice folks out of Minden. By the way, unless you have a good AWD vehicle and know how to use it, don't go into the wetland portion of Wylie Road beyond the bridge. Them thar puddles are deep, y'hea?

On the way out, I met a couple of birders who told me they had seen  some Loggerhead Shrikes at the Cameron Ranch. And meadowlarks. So guess where I went? Nope. Not around. There were a couple of small sparrows at a distant Hawthorne, and I heard the meadowlarks, but no joy.

However I managed to convince a couple of Wilson's Snipes to pay me a visit, investigating the sounds my iPhone was making! They posed for a couple of pictures!

 

One of my favourite birds. 

And so it begins! Next time...

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Sleeping like a Baby

sporadic musings...

Good News! I'm younger than I thought!

I hadn't taken exchange into account: 70 Canadian is less than 54 US! So I'm actually younger than I thought.

Consider this, though: my sister, who's two years younger than me, has lived in the US for more than half her life. I think she moved around '75 so 40 years in the US is like 52 Canadian so she's actually considerably older than me in Canadian years. I always knew it, Barbi!

I don't want to harp on the fact that I feel old: driven by both the number and how I feel and my habits. There's a litany of physical things... and the daily habits... wait! I typed them then realized that's "TMI" (too much information)! Let's just say that one day you wake up and discover that you ARE your father! They announced the iPhone7 today – who cares? Every day my current phone nags me about upgrading the O/S and every day I say, "leave me alone. Later". I can still make phone calls. I can listen to music and read my emails. Go away.

I have never played "World of Warcraft" and never have and never will look for a Pokemon, whatever that is. I tried FaceTime once, don't remember how, don't care. I am my Father!

By the way, where did the expression "sleep like a baby" come from? I sleep like a baby. I wake up at 2 and again at 4am. I get up because I have to go to the bathroom or something hurts. My father used to say, "everything hurts. Except the stuff that doesn't work any more". I know how he felt.

But I still know how to write, although I'm at a loss for some words I can't remember from time to time, and I know how to make pictures, and I know how to share my knowledge with others.

If I start rambling about my age after this, call me on it. Stop me. You're not interested, dwelling on it just makes me feel ancient. Life goes on.

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Gales of November: we had a cancellation from the first weekend (October 20-23) so there are two spaces available AND a lodge room has opened up. Also there are still 4 spaces on the second weekend. Jump on it, folks! This is going to fill up. 

Visit www.photography.to/gales for details and if you want the first weekend, email me directly. The October 27-30 session can be booked online. 

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I bought a boat!

If you read my last blog, you already knew that.

Photo credit: Jack March. It's a 16' Starcraft with an 85hp Evinrude outboard.

It's  quick, it's stable, it runs well... thanks to Bob Sully who brought the motor back to life after some preemptive tries. No thanks to me, I told him I'm his customer from Hell. Anything I touch with a motor in it... he had to visit at least twice before I could figure out how to start the damned thing! The electrical stuff isn't in that good a shape, I (ok "We") are going to have to work on that.

And today, I realized that I need to address something else. I muddled up throwing a tarp over it because it was going to rain last night and this morning. But I need to figure out a way to make a "tent" because now the tarp, sagging in the middle, is full of water! And one of the electrical things that doesn't work is the bilge pump... going to have to look at that!

Docking it is a challenge, since 12-Mile Lake is part of the reservoir system for the Trent-Severn waterway and the water levels are really low in fall. I'm docked for now at the Inn across the road because the water's only knee-deep at my dock. Also I've been warned to be careful, there are lots of rocks in the lake, it can be expensive hitting one with the prop!

Update: I've moved it to the Marina down the road. Makes more sense, although I have to drive to the boat instead of walking (well I could walk...). Very reasonable price and friendly folks.

As my friend Janie says, there's something about being out on the water. I'm only sorry I didn't do this sooner! I'm looking forward to Fall Colours!

Here's me in my Tilley hat. It's the only one that will stay on my head when I'm running in the wind... 

...and here's me fishing my Tilley hat out of the water. Guess I was wrong! 

 

Loons on 12-Mile Lake. Click to view larger!

Here are a couple of Loon pictures I took the other day on the water. I've shot better ones, but these were from my own boat!

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Night Skies

Last week there was an alert about high solar flare activity and a prediction of active Aurora Borealis. It's been many years since I saw a visible display of sheets of aurora... and I'm still waiting! The camera can see better than my eyes.

This little video will show you what we actually saw. It's not particularly enhanced. http://photography.to/video/aurora20160902.mp4. By the way, I did this with a program called "LRTimeLapse", straightforward but lots of steps... and since I didn't know what I was doing, I had to start over a few times! I'll play, and figure out how to add music, etc later.

Anyway, I went out and a couple of camera club friends joined me. There was some activity which I was able to capture, but it took some post-processing to enhance the images. Nothing like some of the stuff I've seen from Alaska or Iceland, but still impressive and pretty.

A couple of nights later, I stopped on the way home to see if there was any sign of Northern Lights, but there weren't. I did manage to get a few shots of the milky way (last of the season: the galactic core doesn't rise above the horizon in winter) and a couple of other star shots for your enjoyment.

This is a merge of a few shots to get a little extra detail

I was struck by the warm glow of the lit-up cottage and by the splendour of the starry sky.  

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Interesting free software

This is for PC people. You MAC guys have enough toys and good stuff to tantalize us with, so for once it's our turn. This one comes from Micro$oft themselves {gasp}!

This looks like an ordinary picture of a house under construction. If you look closely you can see some distortion, especially in the lower right corner.  But what makes it remarkable is that it's a composite of 25 separate pictures and it took me 2 minutes to assemble it. 

I wanted to document this new house being erected on our lake. Long story. But the short version is that I was there with one lens – my 105mm – and I could only get about 30' away from the  building. So here's the best I could do with a single shot:

What I did was to shoot 25 overlapping images, sweeping from side to side with 5 shots, then up a bit and 5 more, and so on. I tried to do a 'pano merge' in Lightroom but it didn't want to behave.

A few days later, I came across a picture of the Milky Way on Facebook produced by a 16 year old kid from Czechoslovakia. He said it was a merge of some 225 images, if I recall. Turns out he did it using a piece of software called "Microsoft Image Composition Editor" or "Microsoft ICE". MS calls it "an advanced panoramic image stitcher". It's for Windows, and it's brilliant. It even does RAW files, no need to convert to Jpeg first! It's fast, easy to use, it's not massive, and it's FREE. 

Rather than copy and paste what MS says about it, here's the link. I look forward to trying it for more exciting pano's. It says it will do Gigapixel images – the one I did is about 150 megapixels! In seconds. Brilliant. 

PS: I zoomed into the image and produced a 200% crop so you can see the potential.

This is detail from the same  composite image. Cropped really, really tight.

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Nothing doing on Carden Plain

Looks like the migration is well under way. The only birds I saw when I was there a few days ago were some crows in the distance. A "Murder of Crows", probably 25 or 30 of them making a racket in some far off trees. And a couple of Eastern Kingbirds. Flowers are still there but showing signs of fading for the fall. I caught a few pictures with my 105mm macro lens.

Fall's not far away! 

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Parting Shot

This was a 5-shot HDR which I then painted with Impression.  This one might get me back to my brushes and oil paints. I've been taking a sabbatical from painting for a while because I find it a lot easier to capture my vision with a Wacom stylus in my hand than with a paint brush. 

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