"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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'tis the season...

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

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

Photo Fads

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

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

"WOW" image

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

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

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

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

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

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

...musings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Algonquin Park

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rose-breasted grosbeak with attitude! 

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

Pretty sure it's a white-throated sparrow 

Chipping Sparrow. 

Carden Plain

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's Trillium Time

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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I'm Famous!

I'm Famous!
(not rich yet, though)

PhotoLife Magazine has chosen my image, "Dahlia Impressions" for their June/July 2015 edition. And printed it... not once, not twice, but THREE TIMES!

ON THE COVER 

 

On the Index page and in the story inside

It's quite an honour to be chosen as the lead image from all the photography clubs in Canada! As I write this, the original print is on display at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in Minden and you can purchase this original image, impeccably printed and framed by contacting me directly.

Seriously. It's for sale. After this original sells, I'll start a limited edition of prints and prices will go up. Hurry.

There are matching prints of other floral subjects available as well.

Start, or expand your collection of Glenn Springer fine art prints now!



This is for the photographers in my audience.

Topic #1: A place to hang out on Facebook
I've long been involved in some discussion forums online, back to the old NAPP days and then when that died, to a smaller group called "TIF — The Imaging Forum", which still exists but it's pretty quiet (Here's a link to the forum itself. It's free to join...). That's because everyone seems to have migrated to Facebook, where it's harder to organize and maintain an ongoing multi-threaded discussion, but much easier to get a dialog going on a specific topic, to share images and get constructive criticism.

So I helped create a Facebook group called, well, "TIF — The Imaging Forum" and I've included a hyperlink to it here. It's different from the huge FB groups like 'Photoshop and Lightroom' which has over 100K members, but it's got some very friendly and helpful people in it that go back to the old days, as I mentioned. These are people who want to learn, share or help: some are new or novice and others are very knowledgeable and it's not limited by geography, we have people from all over the world! It's kind of like a "Camera Club in the Cloud"!

You need to join the group to participate: it's a closed group so 'anything you post in TIF, stays in TIF'! which means it can't be directly shared outside the group.  Click "join" and the moderator (me!) will approve you.

Note: this group is ONLY for friendly, helpful people. If you're a sh1t-disturber, you'll get kicked out right away. 

If you're on Facebook, have a look. It will take a while to get a critical mass of topics going, so be patient. That can be a good thing, too: you won't get overloaded with messages!

Topic #2: My new preferred shooting mode!
A few weeks ago, I started experimenting with auto-ISO, with the camera mode set on Manual. It's changed my shooting style some, so it's worth talking about.

Some background. I watched the following video from a fellow named Steve Perry.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mFLxYMLsv8I&feature=youtu.be

I was somewhat skeptical but you know what? It works. He very clearly tells you off the top that (1) it works on pretty well all modern Nikons, but only some Canons and other cameras, but he tells you in the video how to find out if it works in your camera. And (2) it's not for everyone and certainly not for every situation. I find it useful when shooting any kind of action – could be wildlife, could be sports – but turn it off when shooting static subjects or landscapes, situations where I have time to reflect and don't have to shoot on the fly.

Now if you care about what ISO you're shooting, you have to be careful to preset the maximum ISO limit in your camera. When don't you care? Well, when you're shooting those action or quick shots and the image story or content is more important. I've found that the high-ISO performance of my D800 is awesome: I can get low noise images even as high as ISO 6400. But you don't have to go that high!

So what's the big advantage? I've long taught that what makes or breaks the quality of a picture is the aperture: you choose the depth of field you want to select the feel of your composition. So I recommend Aperture-Priority mode in most cases. But when you shoot action, the shutter speed is equally important – maybe even more so if it involves freezing (or on the other side, allowing) motion. And shutter speed is a consideration when you take camera shake into account.

So this gives you the best of both worlds! You can go into manual mode, choose both the aperture and the shutter speed you want, and let the camera choose the ISO! Like I said, it's not appropriate ALL the time, but it's now my go-to mode when shooting anything that moves.

Don't take my word for it: watch the video and try it. And let me know what you think! The best way to do that is on Facebook: link to the "TIF — The Imaging Forum" page as I mentioned above.

More from Carden Plain

First of all, I get why you need a big mother lens when you shoot birds. I've managed to capture some presentable images with my 70-200 + 1.7x teleconverter but you really want to have a 500mm or 600mm lens for this. I'm fortunate in that (a) I have an outstanding camera in the D800 that allows me to crop tightly and still have enough pixels to make an acceptable display image and (b) I have a lens good enough to retain the acuity that I need, but for the large format print work I'd like to do, it isn't enough. Someone suggested I trade in my car for a lens. If only I could!

That said, it's not only about taking their pictures, it's about SEEING the birds in the first place! I'm really not very good at that, which tells you that you really should think about visiting the Carden Plain because you're sure to do better than me.

Carden Alvar is not just about birds, it's about other indigenous wildlife as well, and flowers too. I hope to get back there to shoot some more before they're gone.

This is called "Prairie Smoke" and it is ubiquitous in Carden Plain. Hope they're still around next visit.

 The Scarlet Indian Paintbrush is hard to photograph effectively. I had to resort to Topaz Impression
(Palette Knife/Oil Painting) to get one that I liked. 

Here's a few birds...

Pretty common Song Sparrow, doing his thing on a fence. I like the framing of this shot. BTW there were some out-of-focus weeds in the foreground, minimized by a large aperture.

American Bittern, not common here, in a typical stance. He's saying, "you can't see me! I have great camouflage and  I'm going to hold still"! Works better when you're not on a green background, dude!

The story on the bittern is that as I headed down the trail on the Sedge Wren Marsh Walk, a birder coming the other way said, "there's a heron just to the left when you reach the river". Guess she wasn't a birder either, I was expecting a great blue heron, far more common! I watched him feeding in the river, I got a few shots of him with a minnow in his mouth, but nothing spectacular. Another photographer joined me, someone with one of those humongous lenses and he got the same shots I did, but closer. I don't think he knew what it was either.

In mid-swallow. 

Yellow Warbler, singing his little heart out! I'm not an expert birder, but I think this is what you're going for
when you shoot "birds on a stick"! 

Whitewater Action

As my loyal readers know, I have received press accreditation to shoot the PanAm Games this summer. I'm still waiting for my press card from the Olympic Committee and I have to take it down to Toronto to get it validated and pick up my vest and press kit. I'm SO looking forward to this! We were told, "no vest, no get in". I'm feeling privileged. It better arrive in time!

Last weekend was the CanoeKayak Canada Slalom Team Trials and the winners of this event were seconded to the team representing Canada at the PanAm Games. There were a few foreign competitors trying their mettle against the wild waters of the Gull River, some of whom did very well!

Devin McEwan and Casey Eichfeld from the USA powered their way through the waters just below the "Otter Slide". 

Ben Hayward will represent us in the Men's Canoe Singles. Normally I discard shots where the paddle blocks the athlete's face but in this case the athleticism and power sold me on this shot.

Jazmyne Denholland is our Women's Kayak hopeful on the Canadian Team. 

This is a composite of six images showing Canadian team member Haley Daniels (Women's Canoe) navigating gate #10 on the course. Competitors have to pass through the gates: missing one costs a 50 second penalty and just touching one costs two second. I hope I can get this vantage point during the PanAm's! 

Here's a shot that says to me what this sport, and this river is about. I'm thinking about printing multiple copies of this one for sale during the Games. I'll probably do one original print on museum quality paper, frame it and sign it and make it available for sale as well as a set of limited edition prints. Any interest, speak now before the original is gone!

PanAm Games 2015 at the Minden Wildwater Preserve in Ontario, Canada 

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