Shooting at Humber College

It's official:
We're participating in the Haliburton Home & Cottage show, May 31-June 2! I'll be exhibiting, selling art prints and booking students into photography courses! Linda Cresswell will be there with me, selling her fine art images as well.

I just ordered 1000 of these cards for distribution at the show:

I have a source at a ridiculously low price for full colour printing. This card, printed on both sides in full colour, with an aqueous coating, is costing me under $50. Interested in getting something printed? Business cards in colour for about $20? Or attending a workshop? Send me an email.   

A little more flood stuff
I added a handful of pictures to the web gallery I had put up on the Minden Floods. Here's the link: if you've been there before, be sure to check out page 2. Sorry if the pictures got mixed up a little, I didn't save the gallery template and had to redo it.

Downtown Minden is a ghost town. They're worried about a dam giving way which would inundate the town without warning, so they've closed the main street to traffic.  This is a single frame toned image from my point-and-shoot, by the way.

The Box House
I took this a couple of weeks ago. My neighbour has a very attractive house. His last name is Box, so it's the "Box House". The story is that it burned down some years ago and was rebuilt, with this beautiful stone and glass façade.

This time of year, it's hard to make beautiful landscape shots because everything is brown, grey, muddy and wet. But I thought I'd give it a try.

I went a little overboard on this one. It's an HDR, then I toned it even further with Topaz Adjust, but I went nuts with the detail slider. Then I masked back the house and its reflection in the puddle to bring back the colour and detail. 

I tried another version of it using a line-art layer instead of the toning, but didn't like it as much.

Last weekend at Humber
I dropped in to the Humber College campus last weekend for a couple of reasons: to meet with someone from out that way, to say hello to my old motorcycle instructor colleagues, and to see what was interesting to shoot at the Humber Arboretum.

I miss teaching there. I don't miss the aches and pains, and with my voice issues, it was a challenge to make myself heard over the wind and the bikes. It was time to retire.

But after I left, they had to find a way to make the motorcycle course attractive again, so they went out and bought a whole fleet of pretty bikes:

Honda CBR 125 Repsol's. They bought some black ones too, but these are far prettier! 

There are a bunch of cool images to see: rather than clutter up the blog, I posted them on a separate gallery,
and here's the link. Drop in for a look!

Humber Arboretum
Although it was a bit early in the season, the only flowers that are up are crocuses (croci?) and daffodils, the Humber Arboretum is a great place for a visit. As far as I know, it's freely available to the casual photographer or visitor, but I know they require a permit for any commercial shooting. Check it out at their website here.

The recent firmware update for the D600 said they were addressing an autofocus issue. I haven't seen any problems, in fact it is unbelievably quick in AF-C mode. This is a composite of two successive frames in a high speed burst, F=400mm, ISO 250, 1/2000 sec at f/8. I will admit the bird was flying into a strong wind and wasn't moving very fast, but still... You can click to blow it up (like all the other pictures in the blog).

Is this a crocus? Or a lily? Not sure. Paintograph... 

Don't ask me what kind of tree this was on, although if I were guessing, I would say "cherry".  I have to come back when it's open. 

I ran into another photographer by the name of John, who was a bird and wildlife shooter. Despite the fact that he was using Canon equipment (I'm not going to stop making Canon jokes. Or Harley jokes. Live with it!), he had some outstanding images in the folder he carried in his car. He was actually shooting with a Sigma 150(?)-500 lens. He had some excellent wildlife shots, from deer to birds and foxes if I rccall. Anyway, we wandered around together and he pointed out things I didn't notice, oh, like a flock of about 25 cedar waxwings! They eat berries (ready for this? from CEDAR trees! Who would have thunk it!) and I got a few shots with berries in their mouths, but none perfectly timed.

Notwithstanding my previous comment about autofocus, the camera was fooled by all the branches and twigs, so I had to manually focus to get this shot.  

I think this is my favourite image.  

Although I kind of like this paintograph as well! 

OK, one more picture then we'll call it a day. I shot this one at the top of the hill in the arboretum.

I wonder how it will print on watercolour paper... 

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