Fall is here!

What a wonderful summer!

{begin sarcasm mode}Was it hot enough for you? Enough clear starry nights? Sunny days? {end sarcasm} As far as I know, Toronto only had one day with any kind of heat warnings all summer. But at least two big heavy duty storms.

We have not had one single suitable night for star photography all summer. As we joked at the club meeting on Wednesday, our star shoot will be in February! And I'll bet only a few of my students will want to be there! (I actually do have an idea about that, we'll have to pursue it later on).

And yet I heard that from a Global perspective, the average temperature worldwide was higher than ever. Just not here. Or in the US. Or in Europe, I understand. Africa and Asia got it.

Onward and upward! Pray for Fall Colours!

Remember, there's a free eBook on shooting Fall Colours available by subscribing to my Newsletter. Click the button at top right!

Topaz has done it again!

They released a brand new product yesterday, called "TOPAZ IMPRESSIONS". If you like to convert photos into fine art, this is the plug-in for you (it also works as a standalone, but all the Topaz products seem to work better for me inside of Photoshop (or Elements) because you can control it better using masked layers.

Click this link to go to the Topaz Impressions page. You can see some great examples of how it works, download the free trial or buy it right there. If you key in the coupon code, "SEPIMPRESSIONS" at checkout, you will get a 25% discount. This is only valid until the end of September!

I'm sure there's a deal there if you already own the bundle. I'm waiting for Topaz to reply to that question but I see that if you have a log-in on their site you may be able to find out there. As soon as they tell me I'll pass it on.

Remember, you can also get a 15% discount on the entire bundle or any other individual Topaz product by using the code "FACZEN" at checkout. This one doesn't expire but you can't get BOTH the 15% and the 25% at the same time (I wish!).

Do the math... 15% of $429 is $64. 25% of $99 is $25. If you're buying the bundle...

New Fall Colours Banner

Here it is (for those using RSS Feed so they can't see it at the top). This is an impressionistic picture of the early fall colours!

Win some, lose some

I usually drive the Argyle Road from Beaverton in order to avoid the 50km zone in Kirkfield when I'm travelling from Toronto to home. On Friday, I did as well, but for another reason. For once, I wasn't in a huge hurry to get home, it was a nice day and I wanted to take my time and some pictures.

There are several solar farms under construction in that area. I learned that several farmers had agreed to sell their land for that purpose, and for several reasons – access to the grid, flat geography, etc – it's ideal. I've been wanting to get some pictures of the solar arrays, so I stopped to ask permission to come in and shoot.

Nope. Got to get agreement from the company that owns the place. I got a clear explanation at the second place I stopped at: liability. If I trip and fall on their property...

The problem is, they have a high chain-link fence topped with barbed wire to keep people out. And the links in the fence are small, less than 2". No way to shoot through it without seeing the fence. This is the best I could do:

Too bad. There were some awesome pictures to be had there. In hindsight, if I had my point-and-shoot with me I might have been able to, by putting the lens through the hole. Think I'll try that next time.

Now THAT's a tree

I kept driving and ended up on a back road south of Kirkfield. There was a section where trees overhung the road, I stopped for some shots but I'll come back again after the colours are mature. However just after that, there was a farmer's field with some awesome oak trees in it. I spent some time there trying to get some images, I did get a couple. I had a mental image when I came in, don't know if I achieved it, but I stuck around and "worked the scene", and came up with this one.

Technically, it's a 5-shot HDR which I edited quite a bit. The textures were wonderful, but too overpowering. So I went to Topaz Simplify to smooth them and then I did some toning in Lightroom.  

Same tree, different view.This is what I envisioned when I was actually there, shooting it. For the tekkies, deliberately overexposed. Everything was done in Lightroom, using the adjustment brush, then I took it into Photoshop and used Nik Color Efex Pro 2 to enhance the high key look. 

As I said, I wasn't in a hurry and I wanted to have a look at the Carden Plains, an "Important Birding Area" just North of Kirkfield. I took an hour or so exploring up Wylie Road, then turned on Alvar Road. There weren't a lot of birds around, must be the wrong time of year.

Wetlands on Alvar Road. Probably a good idea to have 4WD here. A few minutes later, 3 deer crossed the road about 50m ahead of me, a buck and two does.   

PS, I did talk to some people on Wednesday (notably Dan Busby, who will be presenting at the HHCC meeting next month, don't miss it!) who are familiar with Carden Plain. Apparently Ontario has now designated it a Provincial Park. And the right time to visit is late May, into June (I said you probably should bring a macro lens to take closeup pictures of the blackflies!). You can bet that I'll be there. How have I not been there before??

Why do I do Photoshop?

Or more accurately, "post-processing". I have to admit it's partly because I don't work well under time pressure. I'm off-topic here, but yes, I'm a procrastinator, yes I wait until the last second and put myself under huge time pressure, but that's not really what I'm talking about. I'm a "deliberate thinker". I need to sit back and analyse things, then take action. So making on-the-fly decisions  is not my forté and that includes while I'm looking through the viewfinder. The best camera I've ever bought is the D800 which gives me so many megapixels I can crop and straighten like crazy, and which has such good high ISO performance and dynamic range that I can ETTR (expose to the right) and fix stuff later in Photoshop. Or Lightroom. Or a number of plug-ins like Topaz and Nik.

So I'm about to give you a dumb example. Don't laugh, OK? When I was in Carden Plain, I drove past these cows. I remembered that I needed a "cow" picture for the HHCC Scavenger Hunt so I took a couple of snaps. The 70-200 with the telextender was on the camera and I just shot from the seat of the car at 340mm. This was the one I liked the best

I was a little slow; the two cows – one's a calf – were actually  interacting better in another shot but I didn't nail the focus.

Crappy picture, right? Horizon skewed, cows in the middle, a tree growing out of one of them, bad foreground, didn't fill the frame... but this is how my vision works. I knew I could solve most of that stuff in post. By the way, focus was not tack sharp either.

In Lightroom, I straightened it, cropped a little, toned the image a touch, then I used the Radial Filter tool to make them stand out from the background more. Then I took it into Photoshop and used the new "shake reduction" filter to sharpen it, and even took a paintbrush to the eyes to make them more crisp. I cloned out the tree. I cropped it again to get them out of the middle and saved it. I played with some plug-ins and while I was looking at the oil paint option in Topaz Simplify and really liked what it did to the sky; so I ran it, then masked out everything except the sky, and did a little painting with the healing brush. In the end I also blurred it a bit because the contrast between the sky and the rest of the picture didn't look natural. Voilà!

Not the world's greatest picture, it's not going to end up in the National Gallery, but somehow I like it. Now if these had been lions instead of cows... 

Cool, Unique Product

What do you buy someone who has everything? Something different. I ordered a pillow from RedBubble for my granddaughter. She loved it. And her little 6 month old sister apparently has been "saying hello" to it!

This picture is a screen capture from the Redbubble site. Visit my Redbubble page to see the pictures I have available there. Buy something! I haven't actually seen the pillow yet, it was delivered to Leah in New York, but I'm going to order one for me, perhaps with a different picture. If you join Redbubble, you can upload any hi-res picture and order prints and other products too! 

The whole thing cost me $40 US including shipping and everything. You can buy three different sizes (this was the medium), and the whole pillow or just the outer casing and you put what you want inside (cheaper and your choice...).

As an aside, ever watch Two and a Half Men? Walden has three pillows on his couch with custom markings. Comment here if you know what they have on them!

Algonquin Park Photowalk

Pretty well every year I swear I'm not going to shoot more Fall Colours and every year I do. Last week I told you about my planned photowalk to Algonquin Park. Yesterday I visited the Frost Centre to find out the rules about using the area (it's closed and "No Trespassing" signs are posted. But if you access from the south end, where the Algonquin Highlands hiking trails begin, it's legal.

Technically, the beach is part of the Frost Centre, but the hiking trail cuts between the Centre and the beach, so I don't see it as a problem. Neither does Curtis, the Township guy who runs the Parks and rec office right there. By the way, there's less colour at the Frost Centre than there is where I live (OK, well "green" is a colour, right?) but I'm sure it will be outstanding two weeks from now.

If you want to join the Photowalk, you need to sign up. Click this link to do so. By the way, it's free except (a) if you're not a club (HHCC) member, we're asking you to buy a coffee mug for $10 to support the club, (b) you need to get a day pass for the Park when you come in ($16 per vehicle) and (c) of course you're on your own for food and gas. I'll send out a list of people interested in carpooling after this weekend.

Featured image for today. Early fall colours in the Highlands  

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If it feels good, do it

Scroll down to read about the Algonquin Park photowalk at the end of September...

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I don't usually do this, but after I wrote this article for Haliburton County Living, I thought it might be appropriate to reproduce it here.

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Tell Me a Story

Photography has 1000 rules. And you have to learn and follow all of them if you want a successful picture. Bull. There are only two.

• (1) You can’t take pictures if you don’t have a camera with you. 
• (2) If it feels good, do it. 

Let’s talk about equipment. There are those who believe you can’t take a good picture unless you have $12,000 worth of cameras and lenses and a Sherpa to lug them around for you because they’re so big and heavy. Tell that to the photographer who made a Sports Illustrated cover photo with his iPhone. In fact, there are gurus out there I don’t read anymore because that’s the line they spout. Now you have to understand that I DO have expensive and high end camera gear, but there’s a picture attached to this article that I took with a $100 point-and-shoot.

This was taken on a warm, relaxing sunny afternoon on 12 Mile Lake, with a small pocket camera. I want to be one of those guys enjoying a paddle on the calm water.

Why? Because I was out in the boat (and it’s just a teeny-tiny little boat) and I’m a little afraid to take my D800 and big lenses out there. I threw my old point-and-shoot in the dry bag – I love dry bags, you should have one even if you don’t have a boat – so I had something with me. Truth be told, I had two cameras with me because my iPhone was in the bag too, but for other obvious reasons. I couldn't do the world’s greatest high resolution image, but I got something, and I was able to make it say what I wanted it to back in the computer. But that’s just me – you don’t have to be a post-processing freak either, although I admit it helps.

So why have expensive gear? To give you a better chance to make an image that looks like what you saw in your mind’s eye. You can eliminate some of the limitations and capture that feeling or memory. Which leads me to point 2:

Photography shouldn't be about making pretty postcards. I take that back, there are people who make a living selling pretty pictures and I don’t want to belittle their efforts. That guru I mentioned a couple of paragraphs ago said, “If you want to make beautiful pictures, you need to take pictures of beautiful things”. Bull, again. Some of us can’t go to the Taj Mahal or Antelope Canyon or Iceland. We take pictures of where we live and our friends and family, who may or may not be professional models.

 Maybe I'm mellowing with age, but photography should be about capturing emotions and memories. It has to bring you back to a place or time and it has to communicate what was special about that event to whomever looks at the picture. Otherwise why would we have photos of our long gone parents or ancestors, and why are the most meaningful ones the pictures we took ourselves?

It’s easy to teach people how to take better pictures, that is if you can avoid boring the students to death. The first part is purely mechanical, what buttons to push, how to set up the camera, some insight into how it works and what you can do so your image will look technically correct. The second part is to familiarize them with some of those 1000 rules so that they can instinctively use them and know what to avoid. Teaching composition, and even post-processing is also not tough, it just requires a bit more concentration on the part of the student.

Teaching people how to see… that’s the hard part. To use their right brain, to make, not take a picture. Just to put them in the right frame of mind, on the right path. Maybe this will help: figure out how to capture the moment so you can look at the picture later and remember how you felt at the time.

If it feels good, do it.

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FWIW, you've already seen the other two pictures that accompanied this article (click them to blow them up if you haven't): the one of the paddler on Maple Lake  last week and one of a racer at the PanAm Games test event from the week before.

  

The caption on the Paddler picture makes the point in the title of this article. It said,

Because it’s a wide angle shot that includes the landscape and the sky, this image, taken where Maple Lake meets Highway 118, tells a story more than the other images. Available as a large format print, if you’re interested.

I have to admit that I haven't figured out how to teach people to see. In fact, I can't do it either myself sometimes. Something to work on, hoping for an epiphany.

A little Nostalgia

Who remembers this bag?

If you've ever played Scrabble, was there any other bag you ever kept the tiles in? The bag in this picture dates back probably 60 years. I have a couple of other versions as well. It's the perfect size to hold my camera sensor cleaning kit!

From the Crown Royal website:

The first exquisite blend of Crown Royal® Canadian whisky was meticulously crafted from 50 select whiskies, dressed in the finest cut glass and wrapped in purple robes, to commemorate the first grand tour of Canada by King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, in 1939. And in truly noble fashion, this bottle of Crown Royal® was placed on the Royal train as a symbol of the hardworking and genuine nature of the Canadian people.

Apparently the design of the purple bag was originated by Sam Bronfman himself. The bags were produced by Montreal Swiss Embroidery Works, Ltd., founded by his colleague Jules Springer (my grandfather. I don't know if they were ever friends). When he died in 1958 the company was taken over by my father, Robert Springer and his two brothers.

It's interesting that Seagram's has brought the bag back for their 75th anniversary. I still have some original bags, found among my father's effects when he passed away in 2010. FWIW, a Manhattan, made with Crown Royal and vermouth (and a dash of bitters, which I usually omit), was my father's favourite alcoholic beverage and is still mine (although I admit I'm quite taken with some well-aged single malts as well!).

PS: Seagram's had a very creative ad many years ago. It was a picture of a Crown Royal bottle smashed on the floor, with the caption, "did you ever see a grown man cry?". Remember it? If you're under 60 you probably won't, it was a long time ago.

Early Influence

I got to thinking about my early influences as a graphic artist. Probably the best example was this 1959 ad:

Attribution: "Think Small" by Magazine. Licensed under Fair use of copyrighted material in the context of Think Small via Wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Think_Small.jpg#mediaviewer/File:Think_Small.jpg

This is one of my favourite images. I have a print here that was on display at the Rail's End Gallery for a time. I'm having framed as we speak. It's pretty clear what influenced me when I created it. 

Sensor Cleaning followup

As I mentioned last week, it was time to clean the sensor on the D800. I have some 11,500 shutter actuations on the camera without any visible signs of sensor dust – a testament to Nikon's improved design and technology, a far cry from the D600 issue I had last year. A few spots appeared last week.

I had heard great things about the new Eyelead Gel stick and tried to buy one. The manufacturer was backordered, so I shopped on eBay and found one from the Far East. Turns out it was not an original (although it was priced the same). However the technology looked identical. Turns out it may not be.

The Gel stick has a sticky surface which you press (lightly!) on the sensor and it's supposed to pick up dust. It does, but unless I'm mistaken, it leaves a trace of adhesive behind. I won't be using that again. So I took out my SensorPen and used it. It was effective: I got everything I could see in about 5 minutes.

If you are careful and delicate, you don't have to worry about damaging your sensor (DISCLAIMER: I'm not telling you to do it yourself. If you do, and you damage the sensor, it's YOUR FAULT, NOT MINE). I think you have to take much more care when you do a wet cleaning. I found the kit that I bought at B&H the most effective, it includes a rocket blower, an illuminated loupe so you can actually see those bits of dust, and the SensorPen. Here's the link to where I bought it.

Photowalk planned

Last year I did a photowalk up to Algonquin park at the end of September. I'm doing it again this year, together with the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club. I'd like to invite my friends and loyal readers to join us.

Last year, on the beach behind the Frost Centre 

Also at the Frost Centre last year 

I'm usually pretty good at remembering where I was when I shot a picture, but this one is eluding me. Could be the Oxtongue River Rapids... Shot in 2011. 

There's no charge. This is not a teaching field trip, just a guided visit to some sites we know about that are 'photogenic'. However, in fairness to the Club, if you are not an HHCC member, if you join us, we're asking you to buy at least one HHCC coffee mug at $10 to support the club.

We're working on the agenda as we speak. Our tentative plans are:

• We are NOT going on a weekend. Algonquin Park is a ZOO on weekends during fall colours season. I refuse to sit in a 20km long traffic jam.
• Dawn shoot at the Frost Centre just South of Dorset on Highway #35. If you're not an early riser, you can join us at one of the other stops
• Breakfast in Dwight
• Come into the park at the West Gate on Highway 60 and meet somewhere, somewhen! (Maybe Mew Lake campground, we'll see). You have to buy a parking pass at the gate on the way in, I think it's about $15. We should carpool...
• Visit a few good spots for photography. We can go as a group or split up, as you wish
• A quick lunch somewhere, maybe at the Canoe store.
• Exit the park and go to Ragged Falls
• Gluttons for punishment might stop at the Kawagama River Rapids on (ready for this?) Kawagama River Road out of Dorset
• Go home and sleep.

Tentative Date: Monday, SEPTEMBER 29

Rain Date: Thursday, OCTOBER 2

I'm HOPING it's not a bright, sunny, clear blue sky day. Last year it was and I came home with very few good pictures. If it's an ugly, rainy day, we'll postpone, but otherwise it's a go.

If you want to join us, YOU HAVE TO LET US KNOW WHETHER TO EXPECT YOU. I'll send additional details as we go along, including where and when. If you do not complete the survey, we will NOT send out details to you. If you're not sure, do the survey and add a comment at the bottom. 

Survey location: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/J7JFXCC

That's it! Until next week...

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There are good weeks and there are...

... if you finish other peoples' sentences, you possibly completed the title of this post with, "...and there are bad weeks." Then there are those people who have this irrepressible optimism, an intractibly positive attitude, who would have finished it, "...and there are magnificent weeks." If you fall in the latter group, I envy you and I want to grow up to be just like you.

This week has had its moments, on both sides of the pendulum. One of the things I like about writing is that it can be cathartic, especially when you focus on the good stuff. So let me do that this week, and not talk about the possibility that my eye problems might not be so trivial and...

I haven't travelled in a while. For various reasons, things just haven't worked out that way in the last couple of years. I'm hoping that next year will bring some possibilities for me. In the meantime, I'm living vicariously through some good friends' trips to Alaska, to Newfoundland, to Israel and so on. My birthday is coming up in a week or so, and my bucket list is getting longer and longer, not shorter and shorter as it should. Maybe that has something to do with my challenging week.

Why do I like teaching so much?

This is going to sound odd coming from an admitted recluse like myself, but it's because of the interesting people I meet. In the last month, I met someone who has won an Emmy and who is off to Africa for a while, an historian, a fellow who has taken pictures of grizzly bears in the wild from so close he could touch them (OK, he's nuts!), some people so new to cameras they didn't know how to look through the viewfinder, a dog breeder, and more. Every one of them has stories and life experiences to share.

My favourite thing about teaching is watching that light bulb come on. It doesn't always happen while they're here, sometimes later, but when students call and thank me for helping them see the light (pun intended), well that makes my day. With that in mind...

A call to my students and print customers

Students: please send me pictures. Please share images that you've made that you're proud of, and please give me permission to reproduce them here. Not to be critiqued, just for me and my readers to enjoy! And so we can live vicariously and enjoy the things you've done and places you've been. You have my email.

Fine art print customers: are you enjoying the artwork on your walls? Please let me know! Any suggestions? A wish list?

Both groups: testimonials would be great! I'd love to put some up on my web site and especially, I'm trying to figure out how to make this social media stuff work, so please 'friend' me on Facebook, add me to your circles on Google+ or invite me as a contact on LinkedIn.

Algonquin Park Photowalk

I'm going to be in Algonquin Park on the last weekend in September, to shoot the fall colours at their peak. Who wants to join me?

I plan to shoot at a great venue at dawn on Saturday and at another spot that will probably include a waterfall (or at least some moving water!) during the day. On Sunday I have an early morning and other commitments.

What's a Photowalk? Just what it sounds like. The walk leader chooses a venue and preps the participants what to expect. Then a bunch of people come out and shoot whatever pictures they feel like. People cooperate: they share their techniques, look at each other's work, get ideas from one another. There's no formal workshop training but the more experienced photographers usually help out.

Afterwards, there's usually a coffee shop kind of meeting where people exchange contact information. The walk leader will often make a website available for people to post their pictures. 

The benefits of doing a photowalk are (a) meeting and shooting with and exchanging ideas with other photographers and (b) an excuse to get out and shoot some pictures in a place someone else has scouted out! It's a bit like being in a camera club where you've been given an assignment, it stirs up the creative juices.

It's FREE and it's FUN.

Why am I doing this? It's NOT for the money: in fact I don't expect ANY payment of any kind for this. Go up and read point (a) in the paragraph above. If this gets me any students for my courses later on, or sells any of my fine art pictures, or kindles interest in local (Highlands) residents in starting up a camera club, then "bonus".

You should know that the Richmond Hill Camera Club will also be in the Park that weekend, along with a thousand other photographers who can't pass up the opportunity to shoot the colours at their peak. I plan NOT to interfere with them and to avoid being at the same venues at the same time (I'll join them privately on Sunday).

If you want to join me on the Photowalk September 28th, you have to subscribe to my newsletter. Here's the link. All the details will be in the newsletter or by email to people registered for the event. How do you register? Read the newsletter.

Picture time!

Everyone knows by now that my favourite venue is the Minden Wildwater Preserve. Here's a whitewater canoeist challenging the river. This colour sketch is SOOC: "straight out of the camera"! The D5100 has an effects mode that's really fun!  

Here's another one. I call this "Planning Ahead". The kayakers were thinking through their approach to the white water. I'm not sure, but I think this was at Earl's Hole, a feature on the river. By the way, by the time you read this, the D5100 might be gone. I'm torn about whether I should sell it, it's a lot of fun and has some great features I'm going to miss, not the least of which is the swivelling LCD. And the Effects mode! 

I've lived here for almost 6 years and I've shot hundreds (maybe thousands) of pictures from my dock or the corner where Red Umbrella Road and Pleasant Point Road meet. I went out two nights in a row to get this shot. My goal was to capture the nuances of subtle colour at sunset. I eliminated all the detail by exposing as a silhouette and by using the 10x ND filter to extend the shutter time. This is 8 seconds at f/8, ISO 1000. This image is available as a large format art print, check it out here.
 

On Sunday afternoon, I shot this image at the same spot. Again I used the ND filter to extend the shutter time (15 seconds at f/8, ISO 200). By the way, I LOVE the Xume filter adapter. I shot about 15 different images in about 10 minutes. Without the adapter, that would have been over an hour.  Click the Xume link at right for info. I'm going to work this one up as a fine art print too, just haven't finished it yet. 

Chipping Sparrow. I saw this fellow in the pine tree outside my front door, grabbed the D5100 (sigh!) and the Sigma 12-400mm lens and got this shot. The D5100 has a cropped sensor so you can get more up close and personal than you can with the D600 Full Frame.  What makes this image for me is the fact that the bird stepped out into the light which gave me the texture I was looking for.

1/800 second at f/8 (see a pattern emerging?), ISO 900. I had auto-ISO on to hold that minimum shutter speed, which I need for sharp images at 400mm focal length. 

That's it for today. Watch the newsletter for Photowalk information, it's exactly a month from today as I write this!

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And the beat goes on...

Did you notice the new banner up top? Every now and then I feel the need to change it up. And when I do, I post the previous banner in the body of the blog because otherwise it disappears completely! So...

I chose the new image because (a) I had to find something that would fit in the footprint, an extremely wide pano, and (b) I like the smooth tonality and colour blend of this image. It is a picture taken from my dock on 12 Mile Lake. I've taken hundreds of pictures from the same spot but occasionally one stands out. I like how the shape of the shoreline and its reflection on the left creates a virtual arrowhead that causes the viewer's eye to move from left to right across the image and back again to pick out the structures and detail.

For those who care, it's an HDR merged in Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 from 3 exposures, shot with the 17-35mm lens at 17mm and f/8 on the full-frame D600. For what it's worth, here's the original image (well, the merge!) minus a few pixels for better framing.

I will make this available as a fine art print. I think it would look outstanding on a matte art paper. Check out the gallery link at right to find it and email me to order a print. It also makes a fine wallpaper image for your computer. Two sizes, one for normal and one for wide screens. This wallpaper image is FREE for subscribers to my newsletter, so click here or on the link at upper right to subscribe.

I'm going to start today by nagging you.

Backups

Some of my readers are diligent about doing their backups. Some are not. Some people need a subtle reminder to do it. This is intended for you!

Do your backups. My backup strategy isn't perfect but at least I do them. Today I sync'd my two external drives so I have two up-to-date copies of my photo archives. I also copied my Outlook data files to an external drive. Don't forget those, they're in a weird location (on a PC) and you don't want to go through what I did when the original got corrupted...

On a personal note, I have to sit down and create a new Lightroom catalog that contains all my "Keeper" images, then copy the whole shebang to another drive. Reason is, my external drives are getting very full and I'd really like to have a third copy of the important images, at least. 

Update: I just did that. It took about 8 hours for Lightroom to percolate and copy a little over 500Gb of data. FWIW, I have over 15,000 keeper images (ones which I had flagged earlier as 'not unacceptable')! I should have sent it directly to the external drive because now it wants another 7 hours to do that. I feel better, though. Now I have a third copy of my "keeper" files and it's going to be stored off-site.  

Anyway, do it today. I don't know what your backup strategy is, but do it. Just imagine your house burning down to the ground and in addition to everything else, losing all the images you've ever shot.

Emergency Medical Card

If for some reason you have a medical emergency, the important information about you should be available if you end up in an ER and can't tell them everything, or can't remember. You should also have contact information, a list of meds, all that stuff in your purse or wallet JUST IN CASE.

Years ago, I created a .pdf document that you could fill out (on your own computer, you don't send that out anywhere) and put it up as a public service. At one point I had a hit counter on that page and recorded over 50,000 hits: I lost it, so I'm going to start it over again.

Anyway, go to this page: http://www.faczen.com/medcard.htm and fill out the form. You simply type your info into the page, print it out, then run over to Staples and get it laminated if you want, and carry it in your wallet or purse or camera bag...

Note that this is absolutely FREE and we don't record any information about you including the fact that you downloaded the document or visited the page (except that we count how many people have done that). No worries.

You may be one of the rare people who don't have any medical issues or take any prescription drugs or have any allergies, but at least you should carry your doctor's name and contact info and who to call in case of emergency. Please do it now. And if you think it's a good idea, please tell your friends and loved ones.

OK, finished nagging...

Heads Up!

I'm going to be announcing an Algonquin Park Fall Colours PhotoWalk in the next week or so. My initial concept is that there will be no charge for my students and subscribers to my newsletter, just trying to put it together. Watch for the announcement on the Newsletter.

SmugMug has a new look

There are lots of places you can put your photos up on the web for free. Everyone's doing the "cloud" thing now, but most of the free sites have some down sides. Every day, I read about how someone's pictures were stolen on FlickR or on 500px... I've been a SmugMug subscriber for years and because that's the only thing they do and because it's not totally free, they care about you.

I had a "Professional" account there because I wanted to be able to sell images through them with a markup. They had links to a couple of really great labs, like Bay Photo in San Francisco, and you could easily order directly. I stopped doing that because, well, it wasn't a good way for me to market my images (that said, I haven't found one yet!). Anyway, I downgraded my account to something called a "Power" account which costs me $60/year. If you're interested, here's the comparison between the different accounts they offer.

A couple of weeks ago, they totally revised their interface and look-and-feel. It's really, really slick now, IMHO. Check out my site at faczen.smugmug.com. Go ahead, I'll wait right here...

If you clicked on "Browse", you would have seen some other galleries that I've put in place (works in progress...) but what I like is they are for special purposes and the casual visitor doesn't have to be distracted by them.

So one of the other things I like about SmugMug is that when you send an email to their helpdesk, a real live human being responds in short order. And it's someone who actually knows about things, not some CSR in a foreign call center (Hi, I'm Rajesh, and I can certainly help you with that problem...).

One more thing: Lightroom has a plug-in where you can sync with SmugMug. Just drag photos into it and click "Publish" and you're done. Nice. I just added the image at the top of this post to both my "New and Featured Images" and my "Fine Art Prints" galleries with a couple of clicks.

Anyway, I'm happy to recommend them to all my readers. Go to www.smugmug.com. You can play with it for free for 14 days, then sign up. If you mention me in the referral box when you sign up. Two ways of doing that: put in my email address (glenn dot springer at faczen dot com. You know what to do with that, right?) or just cut and paste in this code:  16NrueyZ8KPmc. You'll save $5 on your first year subscription.

Speaking of new looks...
Business Printing

Tell me how this strikes you:

■ 1000 double sided business cards, printed on both sides in full colour, full bleed, on heavy (16.5 point) card stock with an aqueous coating, all for $20 or so.

This is the front of the business card I printed for myself (no black border. It bleeds right off the edges of the card). By the way, shot from the same dock as the banner up above!.

■ 1000 postcards, similar to the above, 4x6 size, both sides full colour for about $50. All superb quality. That's ONE THOUSAND CARDS, folks!

Here's how it works: the supplier I deal with gangs up print jobs so he prints hundreds of cards at a time and trims them out of a big sheet. So each individual card is inexpensive and the printer is happy because he's making money. As long as everyone uses the same inks (4-colour process) and paper, he's laughing.

If you're interested, I'll send you a template. You fit your art in the template and send it back. We print it. Or you can use, for example, my photos for the background. If you want me to do layout and design work, I can, very inexpensively. Starting to sound interesting?

Have you ever seen prices like that for full colour high quality printing? This is a no-brainer, folks. contact me...

Don't say I didn't warn you!

I shot this a couple of days ago. It is coming... 

On to some images!

Kind of an unusual casual portrait... this was a mistake. For some reason I had a HUGE exposure compensation set: more than +3 stops. I think I turned the dial the wrong way. But when I saw the image onscreen, I liked it! I had to do a little work on the faces to bring them back, and it's at ISO 6400 (the D600 is amazing!). I need to try more of these high key images! Rita and Ray Felson are relatives, visiting my mother. 

Internationally renowned photographer Stu Freedman, visiting with the Felsons at my mother's. Stu's wife and my mother are related, haven't seen each other in 80 years or more. Stu is 90, he founded the Toronto Guild about a million years ago, and is still shooting pictures! Don't criticize my background, OK? It was a casual shot while chatting. At least I got the lighting right! (North-facing window, behind the Felsons above, if anybody cares). 

I know, it's just a seagull (Herring Gull, larus argentatus, if anybody cares!). But the 400mm Sigma lens can be really sharp when it wants to. And it's on the cropped sensor D5100 too, so effectively 600mm! I did some birds-in-flight too, that day. I practice on them sometimes when I'm at the dump. 

While riding my ATV on the trail near my house, I came across these giant fungi on a fallen tree stump. I didn't have anything with me to give it a sense of scale, so I put my Nikon 70-200 f/2.8 in it. If you're not a photographer, that's about 9" long... if you are one, it's still 9" long but you know that!  

I went back yesterday to try again, this time I brought a tripod. Now do you see how big they are? It's weird because (a) I've never seen one that big outside of a rain forest and (b) there are no other ones around anywhere. Aliens, I tell you... 

Until next time! TTFN

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Get your A$$ out of bed

...but before we get to that, some other stuff...

Still some openings
I'm doing an introductory lesson this Saturday morning and could use more students! If you're in the Highlands, you're reading this and you want to get started learning to take better pictures, please click here.

Also on the PhotoWalk on Sunday morningRead the previous blog: I'm shooting Furnace Falls at Dawn, then the Irondale Church, then maybe a visit to Kinmount on the way home. See how it's done and get some pictures of some really interesting venues! Click here!

I've also been asked to do a DSLR course in the GTA (in Vaughan). They want a mid-week session, which is OK with me except I would have to stay overnight in Toronto, so it only makes sense if I have more students. Some time in August. Send me an email if you're interested.

Someone else asked me to do a twilight shoot in Toronto (city lights, just at dusk, HDR, cityscape...). Again I'd like to do it if I can get some more interest from my adoring public. Send me an email

Been Looking for this for YEARS!
Screwing filters onto my lenses is a real pain in the butt. Especially the circular polarizer, because when you try to take it off, it's stuck. The outer ring of the filter turns (as it's designed to do) but the body is seemingly permanently screwed on the lens. I started carrying surgical gloves around to try to get the thing off.

Same thing is true of my Neutral Density filter, although that comes off easier. But the problem is, I can't see through it when it's installed, so composition and focusing is a time-consuming operation. Set up...put the filter on...shoot a test shot...decide to recompose...take off the filter... recompose...put the filter back on... and so on.

Well these guys came up with a system where you put an adapter on the lens that has a super duper magnet in it. You put your filter in the mating adapter, snap it on and off. Bingo! There's a little video on their site, click the link!

Disclaimer: I haven't got mine yet so I haven't tested it. It popped up a couple of days ago and I haven't even had time to get my order in. Looks amazing, though and the starter set is only $50 or so.

Highlands Living
People ask me all the time how I live up in the Highlands full time. "Don't you feel isolated? Especially in the winter?" The truth is, that's a downside to living here. I don't get enough company. But the winter is wonderful, probably my favourite time!

The good far outweighs the bad. I stayed with a friend in downtown Toronto last week and I was in Montreal last weekend and I wouldn't live in the city for all the money in the world (OK, wait a minute... that's an expression, not a statement of fact!...). So many people. So many cars. It took me longer to drive on Tuesday morning from Toronto to Mississauga and back to the 401/Allen than it would have to drive all the way home. And back. You can keep it.

But again, there's good and bad on both sides. For instance, I touched bases with a whole bunch of people I don't see very often (in one case, it's been almost half a century! Gary actually introduced me to photography that many years ago. He's a fine photographer himself, I hope we'll get to shoot together soon).

Also cities are full of photo ops. You'll see in a minute.

But it's been 33°C (over 90, you Yanks!) and I have something you don't: a lake. I was in the water 3 times yesterday and I'll be in there this afternoon after I finish this blog post! Last week, my friend Ilana visited me for a couple of days, 'way too short a visit, I hope she comes back soon! We did get some waterfront time in...

I took this with the D5100. I wasn't that impressed with the original shot, the lighting was rough in the middle of the day, but Lightroom and Nik Color Efex Pro (Polaroid Transfer filter) saved the day. Very little retouching is needed when you have such a beautiful model!

I posted this for a couple of reasons. There's something to be said for photographing people instead of rocks and trees and it's high on my list to learn to do better. By the way, to quote Dr. Sheldon Cooper, "she's a friend, she's a girl, but she's not my girlfriend". Oh, to be younger...

That's my lead-in to the first picture below:

Old Montreal
Some background, then I'll tie this back into the title of this post.

I was in Montreal on family business and we took an afternoon drive through Old Montreal (don't get me started on the traffic...). I immediately said, "I have to come back here tomorrow morning at dawn". So I did... well sort of! I woke up at 4:30, said, "I can sleep another half-hour or so", then promptly fell asleep until 6am. By the time I got downtown, it was 6:30. The sun was long since up, but I'm going to count that as a dawn shoot.

I have NEVER gotten up for a dawn shoot and been disappointed. NEVER. You'd think I would have learned that by now. I'm going to get my a$$ out of bed early much more often. This was no exception. The only things moving in Old Montreal were the street cleaning crews, a few vagrants, and the cute blond girl in the little red City of Montreal Parking Enforcement car who seemed to follow me around and take out her ticket book every time I pulled over to take some pictures! When I shot the picture below, she was just pulling up behind my car.

I processed this picture 6 different ways and loved them all. This is selective colour using Silver Efex Pro, a little toning in HDR Efex Pro and a Glamor Glow added in Color Efex Pro. A testament to the Nik Plugins!

I'm not sure if this fellow was a vagrant or just a visitor. He had a bedroll on his back, walked with a laboured limp, and I saw him several times as he walked along the full length of St. Paul St. He didn't know I was taking his picture, I used the "I'm chimping, not taking pictures" trick I read about recently. Shutter speed was only 1/40 sec, OK for camera shake with the 35mm lens on the full frame, but not quite enough to freeze his head movement. Nik saved the day.

For your enjoyment, here are a few more "Old Montreal early in the morning before anyone else was up" pictures.

This isn't actually Old Montreal. It's Ste. Catherine Street, closed for a festival. My camera was doing some funny things: not sure why. 2- or 3-stops overexposed, nothing set wrong that I could find. Lucky shot. By the way, first shots with my newly returned D600.

This IS Old Montreal.

Same spot, colour version.

Always turn around and look behind you

 

It was worth getting my a$$ out of bed...

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