"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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Left Brain Challenge

The Right Brain is considered the creative, artistic side.

The Left Brain is the calculating, scientific half.

Those who know me know that it's only in this part of my life — say for the last 15 or 20 years — that I've indulged my creative spirit and done my best to discard and ignore the old technical part. Without success, I might add. I moved over to Mac from PC, for example which is a source of never-ending frustration because I can't dive into the code like I used to. Not that I really want to, I just want to be a "user" and let others solve the technical issues. Which doesn't always work, but that's another story.

I 'play' guitar and keyboard (in quotes because I'm really a hacker) but I can't remember how to read music much, despite years of training in my youth. I 'paint' and 'sketch', also in quotes because I suck. I write: no quotes there, I do that, but the only way I'll finish my novel is if I have another 20 or 30 years ahead of me! And of course I photograph and digitally manipulate images.

I used to shoot guns and ride motorcycles but always with the left brain engaged, respect for the mechanics. No, I've really had enough of the cogitative life.

So WHY IN HEAVEN did I decide to get a star tracker? It's one of the most complicated contraptions I've tried since Rube Goldberg was a kitten.

Here's my camera mounted on an iOptron Skytracker Pro. The thing on top is my iPhone which runs TriggerTrap software to operate the camera shutter. I could use a remote, but hey, this is more complicated!

What does it do? Inside the red thing is a motor that turns the camera mount at the same speed as the earth rotates, ideally in the exact opposite direction, so the stars stay put in the frame. Note: if you're a "flat-earther" you can skip to the next article because this won't make sense to you. The camera is mounted on a ball head so you can point it where you want, and that's sitting on a counterweighted arm — which technically isn't needed with a wide angle lens, but I was trying to learn how to set it up.

Since everything rotates around the North Pole, you have to align the thing with the Pole which is close to (but not exactly on) the star Polaris.The thing on the right with the rubber band on it is a Polar Scope (the rubber band is to keep the lens caps from falling off), a little telescope you use to align the thing. Without boring you to death with detail, that's the hardest part: you roughly point it North, tilt it to the correct angle for your latitude (there's an app for that), look through the scope by bending over at an impossible angle and you should see Polaris. I saw A STAR, I think it might have been Polaris... then you use some clumsy controls to put it in the right place in the scope. Sure. When it's -2°C, windy, and the stupid ball head control gets in the way. Oh yeah, and you have to make sure the tripod is perfectly level (with a bubble level). Once it's aligned take care not to move anything or you have to start all over again. That's harder than you think.

OK, why? Well if you shoot the milky way, for instance, a typical exposure would be say 15 seconds at f/2.8, ISO 3200. If you know anything about digital photography, the high ISO generates lots of 'noise' which interferes with a sharp, clean image. Any longer, and the moving stars will leave tracks instead of being round dots (if you're in focus. Another issue...). So to get the ISO down, you need to keep the shutter open longer, hence the tracker to keep everything still in the picture. My go-to exposure would be 4 minutes at f/4, ISO 400, not too far off, I think.

With all of that said, I went out on Wednesday night to give it a try. The moon was too bright, there were clouds coming in, but I got a couple of shots.

This is a 4 minute shot with the tracker on. As I said, it wasn't perfect, but not a bad first attempt. You can see that the foreground is fuzzy because the camera was moving the whole time, but the stars were (reasonably) sharp. 

This is a shot with the tracker turned off.  You can see how much the stars moved during the exposure but the earth stood still. I turned on the inside light in the car for a bit at the beginning of the shot.

So what you do is blend those pictures together in Photoshop, then fiddle with it for an hour and this is what you get. Pretty cool, eh? 

Here's another one, facing ENE but I forgot to shoot a foreground shot so it's fuzzy. 

I'm looking forward to getting out on another clear (but WARMER!) night to try again, maybe with the Milky Way this time! Exercising those computational muscles on the left side of my brain!

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Newfoundland

Planning is well underway. I only have a few days left to book, I'd really like to find something around Greenspond for the end of July, but may have to settle for the Bay Roberts area (not that there's anything wrong with that, but I'd love the chance to roam around Greenspond for a few days). No available accommodations there that I've been able to find.

I booked the ferries: July 4th outbound, August 18th inbound. That gives me a couple of days on the Western shore on either end of the trip. I'm still open for people (photography or artist types) to share part of the time with me. 

If you want to see my Newfoundland pictures from 2017 and 2018, go to my Portfolio page, here:

https://glennspringer.myportfolio.com/newfoundland

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House Sale

I had an offer a couple of days ago, but it didn't work out. Still available, great location and house and price, perfect for someone from Toronto looking to move out of town or even to use as a cottage as a stepping stone to moving up here. 

Here's the listing site from my agent:

http://www.trilliumteam.ca/viewlisting.php?id=1344553

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Algonquin Park visit(s)

I was up in the park twice. Last week, Amin and I went for a drive up — we had a great day but didn't see much, other than the Pine Martens. We did run into a few friends, the "Susans" and we met Dave Nicholson who had never seen a Marten, so we sent him to "the spot" where he saw one for the first time.  


I grabbed this Canada Jay picture there, and turned it into a sketch:

Then Ron called and said, "let's go to Algonquin Park". "Sure, what time?" and I met them up there Saturday morning. He brought Rob Klein and Lil Schneidman with him, Lil is the outgoing president of the Richmond Hill Camera Club. We'd met before but with my memory for faces and names... sorry Lil!

That didn't go exactly as planned. As I was driving east on Highway 60 out of Dwight, a deer decided to remodel the front of my car. The insurance is covering everything but the deductible and I'm off in search of a body shop tomorrow.

Here's the deer. Not going far with a broken back half. I shot the picture while waiting for the police. The nice officer dispatched it with his Glock: I volunteered to do it but for some reason he wouldn't lend me the gun... We left it for the wolves and other critters in the bush. 

This is one of the shots I did for the insurance company. A lot of plastic to be replaced, a little sheet metal, and maybe a little internal damage to the A/C Condenser. We'll see. The plastic did its job, no damage to the frame or anything, I think. Subarus are tough! 

When I finally got to the Park, I met up with them and shot some pictures. Almost all were with the 200-400mm 'bazooka'. It's soooo sharp but it's soooo heavy... except as noted below. Enjoy.

The obligatory Pine Marten shots. See what I mean about sharp? This one is cropped quite tightly, too. 

I hate Grackles. They empty my feeders in half a day, chase all the other birds away and their call is annoying and noisy. But they do have pretty iridescent  feathers!

A common Redpoll 

A digital sketch of Turtle Rock up on Opeongo Road. More complicated than it looks because it was a composite of 12 separate images shot with the 70-200mm f/2.8 lens and edited in Topaz Studio. 

 Here's Lil, using a similar technique.

We stopped at the ice cave on Hwy 60 on the way back. Careful footing to get up to it, here's Lil trying not to fall.

And this is a merged-HDR pano shot from the entrance to the cave. With a little help from Topaz! 9 shots HDR merged in Lightroom, done with the 24-120 lens.

'til next time!

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Best time to be a wildlife photographer!

New header picture

I know it's just a robin but Carden Plain is such a great place and this gives me the feeling of being there.

Getting Excited!

Newfoundland's only a month away! I can't believe it. It's time to start prepping for the trip: figuring out what to pack, getting the car detailed and a final service, nailing down those last few reservations, making a list of the pictures i want to make!

I still have room in the houses I've rented if anyone wants to come visit. Look at previous blog posts for details: Twillingate, Coffee Cove, Bonavista, Torbay... the trip of a lifetime! Contact me!

Camera's in the shop...

Seems I must have been a little heavy handed. Somehow the little doohickey inside the bayonet mount of the D800 that holds the shutter open got bent. Maybe by the teleconverter, maybe by the extension tubes. I'll have to be a little more careful.

I suspect the TC. Amin came over and brought his computer with Fo-Cal software. We were trying to microadjust the focus of the TC/400mm combo and this happened right afterwards (it's your fault, Amin!... just kidding). It's weird, though. The TC with the 70-200 lens works fine. The 400mm without the TC works fine. The TC/400mm works fine on the D5500. But the TC is back focusing beyond the ability of the D800 to compensate for it.

Sun Camera Service has my body and the TC. They said they hope it's not the mirror box... I should have it back soon. Good thing I had the foresight to buy a backup camera last year. The D5500 is "OK" but it's not a D800. When I get it back, I'll send the TC to Nikon to see if they can fix it. I'd love to be able to use it with the 200-400mm lens, giving me 680mm...

Update: got it back. All working, reasonable price ($160 + tax & shipping). They cleaned the camera (including the sensor), adjusted the AF and replaced the bent part. They reset all my menu items, hope I got everything back the way it should be! Sun Camera Service is an outstanding place, they do factory service for both Nikon and Canon, expert with bodies, pretty good with lenses too. Fast, good and reasonable. Give them a try. Tell Nick I sent you!

Update on house for sale

Not sold yet.  Need to find the right person. One potential buyer liked it but isn't ready to retire yet. The suggestion was to buy it as a cottage and watch your investment grow. Another person thought about buying it as a full time home but they already have a cottage further up North. Suggestion was to buy it and rent it out for the summers. This is a good place to buy for investment, prices haven't gone up like Toronto or Muskoka and you don't have to contend with Highway 400. Pass the word!

I love this time of year.

If you're a wildlife photographer, this is prime time. Landscape photographers, not so much but we're getting there!

In the past week or two, I've been to Algonquin Park twice, Carden Alvar 3 times, and just driving around the beautiful Haliburton Highlands.

Without further ado, and in no particular order, here are some pictures.

I shot this at the Prairie Smoke Alvar Nature Reserve. It's part of the Carden Alvar, just to the west. The Bobolinks were buzzing all around us in the grassy meadow as we walked through it. I thought this texture effect in Topaz Studio best represented the feeling of the day.

While I was there, I dropped the lens hood from my 200-400 f/4. "No problem," I thought. "I'll go on eBay and buy a new one, probably $20"... folks if you buy a Porsche, expect to pay big bucks for replacement parts. Same thing with a big pro Nikon lens. Almost $400! I went back on Friday and marched through the field, trying to execute a grid search. I was almost ready to give up when, "Eureka"! 

Algonquin Park...

You don't really get how big moose are until you have something to compare them with! OK, "Something with which to compare them".  

I did shoot the occasional landscape. This is Found Lake at the Art Centre, and that's Dr. Ron in the picture. 

Focus Stacking/Macro

It's amazing what you can see when you stack a number of closeup photos. Helicon Focus software gives you a whole new perspective!

Peppercorns 

It's Trillium time! 

This is a "Giant Water Bug". A species I didn't even know existed! 

Carden Plain

I'm not a great birder. Other people see as many species in a day as I have in my life list. People make a lot better pictures than I do. But it really is quite a challenge shooting the birds and very satisfying when you manage to entice one to come out and pose for a picture.

Sometimes it's not just about the picture. Just being there, seeing them and hopefully identifying them is enough (well, I'd also like the picture...). I bought a pair of binoculars on Amazon. Really very impressive, you can see things much brighter and clearer than looking through the camera!

NIKON 16004 PROSTAFF 7S 10 X 42-Inch All-Terrain Binocular, Green. They cost me $239 Canadian. People told me to spend more but I didn't want to. Anyway, you can return stuff to Amazon, so I thought I'd give these a try. Amazing quality. Perfect. Here's the link if you want some yourself.

On Friday, when I was back at Carden because I was looking for my errant lens hood, I met a group of real birders — you could tell because they had Swarovski spotting scopes that cost more than my camera — and they told me about a rare hybrid bird called a "Lawrence's Warbler", a cross between a blue-winged and a golden-winged warbler. I spent some time looking for it. I played the call of the blue-winged warbler on my iPhone (in the iBird app) and out he came to investigate! I got a good look through the binoculars, dropped them and picked up the camera but he was gone in a flash. I got a couple of shots of a fuzzy yellow blob. But I saw it! Large as life.

Here are a few shots I did take over the past few days.

Baltimore Oriole
 

Chestnut-sided Warbler. Another new one for me
 

Eastern Towhee

Upland Sandpiper 

Savannah Sparrow. It was a windy day!
 

Here's another shot of the Savannah Sparrow. Sometimes pictures like this tell a better story. 

Parting Shot


Here's a macro shot of my one and only daffodil, stacking something like 30 images together with Helicon. I plan to do more of these as the spring flowers come up here in the Highlands.

 

'til next time!

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