'tis the season

'tis the season

This is one of my least favourite times of the year. I've really had enough pictures with white stuff in it. And when the white goes away, we're left with ugly brown mud. I don't know about you, but I just want to stay indoors and hibernate a bit. Still, the Doc says I have to walk (I'll start any day, now Jeff!) and, well, I am the picture-taking-man. It occurred to me last night that it will be less than a month now, and I'll be looking for birds at Carden Plain, watching trees and flowers bud... "come on, spring!"

Last week there were some dogsled races: just enough snow to make it happen.

That said, I did make it up to Algonquin Park twice in the last two weeks. Here's an image from the first of those visits. I put a lot of thought and effort into the making of this image. I get most of my concepts from seeing other people's work and most of my techniques by researching then trying them myself. But I think one needs to understand not only what the maker did to create an image, but also why he made the choices he did.

You may dismiss it as "just another landscape shot" but from the toning of the sky to deliberately leaving the distant hills slightly soft to provide a sense of depth and carefully balancing the colours to match my vision, this shot came out just the way I wanted it and the uncropped version will make an excellent large scale print.

I could easily have removed the road sign: should I have? Where does your eye go first? Then where? How does it get there? Does it want to leave the image or explore other things? 

I cropped this image as the banner header for this blog (reproduced here for when I change it next time):

It's hard to find an image that works well as a 3:1 or wider pano. This does, and carries the same ambiance as the original without the story.

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I added a new hit counter to this site. Not that I don't trust the stats from Blogger... and I removed the revolving globe that doesn't tell me anything new. If you could zero it, it would be more useful, but a full map of hundreds of pins that cover North America and other countries isn't too informative.

Since Blogger told me I'm over 100,000 hits (105k today) I decided to start the counter at 100,000. So let's see what's really happening.

By the way, I used https://www.freecounterstat.com/.

That's what I figured. The big 7K and 10K hits a couple of months ago were an anomaly. Not even 300 hits in the last week. Of course, I haven't posted anything new...

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...while we're talking about internet stuff...

In a conversation with someone the other day, she told me where her website is hosted and how she "could count on one hand the times she had a problem or her site was down over many years". It got me thinking about where I'm hosted, at a big international ISP called "1and1.com" and I've been with them for close to 20 years and I've talked to their support maybe 6 times over that period of time. Usually to make a change I couldn't figure out but I remember the one time when my site went down for a few hours — it turned out the computer in their server farm that hosted my site went down. Fixed with one phone call. So problem-free.

So if I bored you while skimming that paragraph, let's get to the bottom line:

• if you need a web presence of your own, 1and1's a great place to go [by the way that's "one-and-one" not "L-and-L"!). It's amazingly cheap, they have all the tools to let you build your site or they can do it and a live person answers your call if you phone their support.
• If you still use Hotmail or even Gmail or, God forbid, AOL as your email address, it's time to join the 21st century. Let me tell you how easy it is to get your own email address. Still want to keep the old address so you don't have to tell people it's still valid? NO PROBLEM. Let me walk you through it.

Step 1 is to create a new domain. You might want to use your name, like "FredFarkle.com". Cost? $0.99 for the first year, somewhere around $10 per year after that (depends if you want .com, .ca, .biz, etc). OK, now you own your own domain! But it needs to be hosted somewhere.

Step 2 is to set up a hosting contract. 1and1 has it set up so you can do all of that in one swell foop. Get the domain name and a basic web hosting package for $1.99 per month for the first year, $10/month after that. That's pretty well all you need: as many email addresses as you can eat (one for you, one for your spouse, one for each of the kids, the dog, the cats, the fish...), several domain names and your very own website that you can build for free! Even if you don't want the website, you have those email addresses! Here's the link and just scroll down to where it says "Create your own website" and click the yellow "find out more" button.

Step 3 is to set up email address(es). You have two choices: you can set up a whole new address, which you can access via webmail online or send and receive via your email package (if you use Outlook, or Mail or...). Or you can set up the new address to forward to your existing one! So if someone sends a message to your new address, fred@farkle.com, it will automatically appear wherever you get your mail now! You do that all at the 1and1 site, no charge.

I just set up a new address as a forward, to test it. Took me less than a minute.

So it's time. If you still think having an email address like "kittycats.are.cute@AOL.com" is for you, then ignore this. If you think it's more professional to be "fred@farkle.com" or "henrietta@my-own-company-name.com" then follow this link.

Is 1and1 paying me to say this? Sort of... I get a small referral fee for new accounts, but I wrote this because I think people should get away from those hackable email addresses and join the 21st century. (I just got a virus spam email from my own doctor, who uses an AOL address. I didn't actually get it: I had a message from 1and1 that said, "virus detected" and they blocked it. Another advantage!)

I've also terminated my SmugMug account because I only used it sporadically and I don't sell images from there: it's a wasted expense for me. That said, I need to find another vehicle. Working on it.

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Too Many Images.

I'm going to make a conscious effort to reduce the quantity and increase the quality of the images here. As I said to someone recently, I've been posting images that would score 7-8-9-10 out of 10 and I'm going to try to only post the 9's and 10's from now on (I don't have a lot of what I consider "10's" but beauty is in the eye of the beholder!).

So I'm going to cut back and post only images I'm really proud of (or that add to the story I'm telling). First step is culling the images that I'm archiving.

(OK, starting next time! It's hard to quit cold turkey.)

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If you think the illiterate orange clown currently occupying the White House is God's gift to USA Incorporated, then you're probably reading the wrong blog. He's good for one thing, though: source material for comedy writers.

Here's a recent FaceBook post of mine for your enjoyment.

Someone told me that culling their photos after a shoot is a tedious chore.

But culling is a great activity. I mean, it's really fantastic. People who thing culling is bad are total scumbags. Total scumbags. It's great, it's really, really great. It's the best thing you can do. I've got all the best pictures, really the best. Some of them are tiny but they're great, really really great. And more people in the world have seen my great pictures than any other pictures in the world. I'm telling you. All the other photographers are worse than me. They're bad, so bad. Ansel Adams? A total disaster. Henri Cartier-Bresson, he's a fake. So fake, he has to have a hyphen in his name. Youssef Karsh? He copies my style. He knows my style because he tapped my phones. Someone told me he died in 2002. Fake news. So fake. He was an immigrant. Shouldn't have let him in the country, our country, the best country in the world.

So we sent him to Canada. Where we're going to build a great wall. It's going to be the best wall in the world, the best ever. And we're going to make them pay for it. Our photographers are the best photographers in the world. The best. You can hire them, you can pay them with opportunities for exposure, the best way to pay. And you can grab them by the lens. We're going to do that by banning all digital sensors, so we can go back to film and make Kodak great again. They're going to be so great and they're going to hire hundreds of thousands of people. Millions. It's time to make photography great again.

Feel free to share. If you share, more people in the world will read your posts. More than any other posts in the world. I'm telling you. It'll be fantastic. Think of all the exposure you'll get. Nobody shares posts better than you do. Nobody. It will be so big, it will kill the internet. Kill it. And we're going to make Mark Zuckerberg pay for it.

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Update on Newfoundland

It's happening. I'm going for the month of July. And I've found a travelling companion so we'll be able to share both experiences and costs. It's not cheap – just getting there, by air or by car is expensive (if you fly, you have to rent a car there. That's a fortune!) – and you have accommodations and food and... to pay for, but it's going to be worth it.

The original concept has changed a little. Instead of finding a single place to stay for the month, we're looking at 3 or 4 place where we'll stay for a week.

We're working on our itinerary as we speak, and I'll share some of that here later. If you live in Newfoundland and you're reading this, I'd love to visit with you when we're there if we can. email me. Ditto if anyone is planning a visit during that time: let's hook up somewhere!

Something I really want to do for this trip is to make a list of my photographic goals. A "shot list" or "storyboard" kind of approach. When I review my images after a trip, I always feel as though I've missed important things. And I haven't captured the story. It's the old "work the scene" thing, applied to the whole trip, not just a photo-op.

I also need to work on some things. Here's an example:

Just an iPhone snap of the fishing huts from the Red Umbrella Inn in the parking lot
next to my house. Every little town in Newfoundland has weathered fishing stages,
old buildings, landscapes like this. I need to figure out how to give them that "wow" factor.

I also have terrible results shooting in bright sunlight (my last visit to Algonquin Park was a disaster in that sense). I'm trying too hard. I need to work on that Who knows, the sun might come out while we're on the Rock!

To my faithful readers: if anyone has always had their heart set on a specific image from there – a specific little outport, a puffin with a mouthful of capelin, waves crashing over a lighthouse, the milky way over the rocky coastline... a 6 foot pano or a 4 foot canvas for your living room or office wall – and you would like to commission me to seek out and make that picture for you, please contact me. 

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What would one of my blog posts be without pictures? 

Visiting Algonquin Park in mid-March, we came upon this icefall on Highway 60. I was with John Reed and Amin Shivji and we were all taken by the intense colour of this ice.  

looking straight up! 

The Visitor's Centre never disappoints. Although we didn't see a lot of wildlife except there, we were presented with some variety:

Evening Grosbeaks fighting over a landing spot at the feeder

The ubiquitous and aggressive blue jays loudly proclaimed their possession

It took some time to spot this Ruffed Grouse hunkered down in the discarded seed husks in perfect camouflage. John spotted it and spent a lot of time saying, "look along my arm at where I'm pointing..." before I could see it. Some photoshop work was needed to make it stand out.

Then look who popped out of the brush and posed for a photo! First time I've seen a pine marten here.  

While John was here, we toured some of my favourite sites. As we drove along Bethel Church Road on the way to Wintergreen, we saw at least 20 deer on and off the road. Good thing we were going slowly. I was driving so no pictures...

I captured a natural-light candid of the young lady who brought us our brekkie. OK, maybe not totally natural light and Lightroom had a little to do with the lighting! (Tom & Diane, is that your daughter?) 

We stopped at the white water on the way home, then I showed John the "Screaming Tree". 

I shot a huge pano merge, totalling over 80 Mp; then proceeded to throw most of it away to create this impressionistic image.  

The following weekend I ended up at most of the same spots, this time with Karen Young.  This is a tough time of year to find creative subjects (but not my guests!).

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Ready for winter?

I'm ready!

There's a whole checklist of things that had to happen to get ready, and I'm done. Today, my neighbour Jack came over to help (wrong word: he did the work!) by sweeping the chimney and removing some trees that had grown too close to the house. The other day I got my ATV back from the mechanic, it now sports a dedicated 4WD switch (electrical problems. It was intermittent) and the battery from my boat is now mounted on the back of the ATV to help power the winch that controls the snowplow. The car's been serviced, the furnace people were here three times to iron out issues with the heat, I've split and stacked all the firewood, snow shovels are by the doors. The boat's parked in the garage, the gazebo and lawn furniture are in storage. I'm done.

Let it snow! 

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A few more Lake Superior pictures

I still have lots more to process, mostly "people pictures" from the weekend. Here are a few more landscape shots from my trip

I didn't record exactly where this was. It was somewhere south of the Montreal River Harbour, maybe Alona Bay? 

Another shot in the same location 

Commercial fishing boat at Mamainse Harbour. 

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Algonquin Park

I managed to get a few days at home early in November. I woke up one day and decided I'd drive up to Algonquin Park to see what there is to see before winter sets in. It was certainly a lucky day! I got there early and saw this cow and calf moose. I took a bunch of pictures, then decided to move along, to see what else I could find. I really wanted to find a bull moose!

 A couple of fellow photographers were there (Jerry and Dave from Barrie) and one of them said, "a bird in the hand, you know..." so I stayed a bit longer!

Yearling male. You can see the nubs of his antlers coming in.

My favourites are the last two; they're "environmental portraits" which tell of the animal in its surroundings. Closeups are fine, but I prefer to tell a story

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Eventually they moved on, and so did I. Next stop: check out if the Pine Martens were back. I wonder where they go in the summer...

They were – or at least one was – but the backlighting was horrendous and it was really dark where he was. Still, I got a shot or two! 

Continuing east, I drove up Opeongo Road to see if I could find that elusive Bull Moose... no such luck, but I did come across a couple of spruce grouse!

Check out the gorgeous colours of this male bird! 

The spruce and ruffed grouse share a defense mechanism: they freeze and they're very hard to spot in the bush — are you kidding me? Maybe for the Ruffed grouse and the female Spruces... I think they were handed a short supply of brains. It's a wonder any of them are still around! Dig the bright colours and contrasty feathers!

I decided to hold off on the foxes until after I turned for home (no, I'm not going to share where they hang out... don't ask!).

This is "Papa" fox. He's been around for a while and he's really good at posing for a shot! 

So all in all, not a bad day... kidding! It was an awesome day.

The next day, at 11:30 at night, after I had posted a few pictures, my phone rang. It was Dr. Ron. "I'll be there at 7 am, we're going up to Algonquin. {sigh}. SURE!  Up we went!

While we were waiting for the foxes to show up, this blue jay entertained us. 

I think the Blue Jay should have been named Canada's National Bird instead of the Grey Jay or WhiskeyJack. This name is a variation on Wisakedjak, a benevolent trickster and cultural hero in Cree, Algonquin and Menominee mythologies

Right on schedule, our furry friends showed up. This is either Mama or one of last year's kits. 

Off to look for Pine Martens. Again, we found birds to shoot:

A fearless red-breasted Nuthatch comes down for a treat! 

Hard to see, as I said earlier. Here's a Ruffed Grouse hanging out in a pine tree. Dr. Ron spotted this guy.

And our friendly neighbourhood Pine Marten came for a visit. There was a bit more light than the previous visit, so I managed a decent picture. 

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Parting Shot

That was a long couple of days! Rewarding, wouldn't you say?

Then there was all that hype about a "Super Moon". Folks, the super moon looks exactly like any other full moon, except it was (wait for it) 7% bigger. Whoopie. But I was duty bound to go out and shoot it. When I got back to the computer, as I said, it looked just like every other moon shot. So I decided to play with it and came up with this:

Super Moon Rising over Horseshoe Lake. This is a composite image, the foreground is from a shot at the Shuyler's Island Causeway, looking for Northern Lights last summer. 

A lot of people on Facebook liked this image and asked for it as "wallpaper" for their computers. So I made a 1920x1080 pixel version and uploaded it to  http://www.photography.to/wallpaper/moonwallpaper.jpg. If you want it for your computer background image (wallpaper), just go to the link, right click and save it, then follow the procedure in your operating system. Enjoy!

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Odds 'n Ends

Did you always want a dash-cam?

Fred, from the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club, put me on to this one. If you have an iPhone, you can have a dash-cam for the princely sum of $1.99. He pointed out that you can also buy a dedicated one at Costco for a couple of hundred dollars, but it doesn't do anything your iPhone can't!

The iPhone app is called "iSYMdvr" car recorder. You can find it in the apple App store.

Oh yeah, it also cost me an extra $15 for a suction cup mount for the iPhone. Good to have anyway, to turn it into a legal hands-free.

You can go through the options yourself. I have it set up to record 5-minute clips. Once it fills the space you've allocated (I can hold about 30 minutes worth) it writes over the oldest one. You can click the camera icon onscreen to take a still at any time (that's how I did the shot below). You can easily transfer any video to the camera roll in the iPhone and it even has a utility to turn the phone into a server if you're wi-fi connected and upload directly.

So if something happens enroute you have a video recording of it. It's a very neat application. By the way, it has built-in GPS capability so it can automatically record your speed, and you can set an alarm to go off when you exceed the speed limit. How cool is that! I don't really want it recording my speed (don't ask me why and I won't tell you) so I turned that off.

I uploaded a video for your viewing pleasure to YouTube. Just after taking the snapshot below, I drove through the standing water, but was driving really slowly to look at the water levels, then into my driveway.

For my photographer readers

Want to know your shutter count? I've addressed this topic before by suggesting you download and use PhotoME but in a recent thread on FaceBook, I learned that there is an incredibly detailed source of data within Photoshop itself (why am I not surprised?!).

• Open a RAW file in Photoshop (disclaimer: I'm using CC, I don't know if this exists in earlier versions but I'll bet it does)

• On the File menu, click on "File Info" (or use the shortcut ctrl-alt-shift-I if you have that many fingers!)

• Along the top of the resulting popup window there are a bunch of tabs. Select the "Advanced" tab. If it's not there, click the downward facing arrow on the right side of the tab navigator to find it.

• You'll see this window: select "Schema"

Here it is! In this example, my shutter count is 3102. 

I'm curious whether Canon and other cameras have all of this info. Last time it appeared as if this line is not in the EXIF information. Leave a comment at the bottom of this blog if you tried it. Ditto with other brands of cameras.

While you're in the File Info, look through the other tabs. You'll be amazed at the amount of information collected in the EXIF data with each image.

A few personal notes about life in the Highlands:

Will it never end? It's April 16th as I write this and I'm looking out at a blinding white vista, the ground covered with a fresh blanket of snow about 10cm deep. It's cold, too, around -5°C. It was the same temperature yesterday but it was windy and damp and the cold just seemed to bite right through you. Maybe in July we can finally look back and laugh.

Yesterday I drove into Haliburton to teach a workshop at Fleming College (OK, more ostentatious than it sounds: I was hired to teach a session to a Real Estate company and they rented a classroom at the college). Nice facility, by the way. When I got on the road, I was glad to have my all-wheel-drive Subaru, it was greasy and slushy as Hell. People were driving 40 and 50 kph on the highway if they didn't have 4WD.

Water levels in the lake are not high, but the melt a couple of days ago has had a huge effect on the low-lying ground just south of me. Helped along by runoff from the Inn parking lot, no doubt. Here's a snapshot taken with my dash-cam. This is right opposite my dock

That water is about 6" deep. It's running out of the woods on the right into the lake on the left. There's a seasonal cottage just to my right where I'm parked: every year I'm amazed it hasn't floated away or rotted out, it's under several feet of water. The plot of land to the South is for sale, any takers? 

The other thing is, the ground is really soft underneath due to the melt. So my car leaves deep ruts (as do my feet!) in my driveway. The Inn has wisely taped off their parking lot to prevent people from making an ugly mess by driving in. For the same reason, I'm not taking my ATV out to plow this snow, it'll make a real mess of the ground. Hopefully it'll melt soon.

Here's a fantastic product

I don't know why I waited so long to get these. It took falling on the ice and breaking my wrist to make me finally do it. My neighbour, Dorian, is the power-that-be behind Kador, the importer of this and other interesting products (Kate, if Dorian wants to think he's the MAN, let him!). Actually Dorian came over and gave me a set of these. I've permanently mounted them on an old pair of hiking boots that I can slip on whenever I go out.

These YAKTRAX™ give you absolutely PHENOMENAL traction on ice. They've saved my bacon a number of times! I know it's not the right time of year to think about these, but get some now before you forget. (they're no longer on the Kador website but you can email Dorian directly at this address). 

How's your wrist?

Thanks for asking! Not great. If you've not been keeping up, I broke it on January 16th, so 3 months ago today. I still can't close my hand completely and there's still some pain. I'd estimate the strength in that hand at about 30% of what it was before. I'm doing some physio (not as much as I should, I'll admit). But the big problem isn't the wrist, I hurt my shoulder at the same time but didn't realize it. Xrays and an ultrasound have determined that I did NOT tear my rotator cuff as I suspected, it's only bruised, but it's really painful especially at night and I can't raise my arm above my shoulder. Doc says "physio" but here's a Highlands problem: there's only ONE physiotherapist up here OHIP-registered (affiliated with the hospital) and there's a 140-patient backlog which means 2 months before I can get an appointment. If you know a physiotherapist who would like to live up in God's Country, it's a Hell of an opportunity!

The birds think it's spring

That's one of the joys of living up here. I managed to refill my bird feeders and it didn't take them long to figure it out. Yesterday, I added one to the species count when a mating pair of yellow-bellied sapsuckers visited the Scotch Pine in front of my house:

I didn't get great shots of these guys. I haven't micro-calibrated the 120-400 mm lens to the D800 body yet, and I think I'm front-focusing a bit at this close distance. Male and Female yellow-bellied sapsuckers.

I really don't like Grackles. They're loud and raucous, they arrive in huge flocks and hog the feeders, scaring off all the other birds, and empty them in a day. But their iridescent head feathers are interesting.  This image was enhanced using Topaz Detail which is on sale at half price for the month of April. It does a fabulous job of enhancing images without injecting artifacts and noise. Use this link and enter 'aprdetail' at checkout to take advantage of the discount.

The ubiquitous Blue Jay. There are lots of these guys around. Although they're loud and aggressive too, I like them a lot more than Grackles because they don't arrive in huge flocks. Again, I used Topaz Detail on this shot. 

Here's a dark-eyed Junco. For some reason, I find it hard to get a sharp picture of these little guys, maybe it's the front-focusing thing again (actually, look how sharp the branch at the bottom under the bird is).  The only reason I put the picture here is so that I could say "Dark-eyed Junco". So there.

I'm no expert, but this seems to be a hoary redpoll. My book doesn't show that bright yellow spot on the lower part of the bill, though. NOTE: I've just been corrected! This is a American Tree Sparrow. Thanks, Jack! I guess I have to eat crow!

I also saw a pair of downy woodpeckers, some red-winged blackbirds, white-breasted nuthatches, black-capped chickadees, and I can hear robins chirruping in the trees. There are some mallards in that high water south of me. All in the space of an hour or so!

The Haliburton School of the Arts

This campus of Sir Sandford Fleming College is a rustic building surrounded by acres of forest, populated by dozens of outstanding sculptures. Worth a visit, and I'll go back in better weather for more pictures. I've been in the forest before but never in the building.

"Rustic" is the operative word. You can't see the open hemlock-beamed ceiling, but this is a typical classroom. This is part of the group of Realtors with whom I was doing a workshop on shooting better listing pictures. I brought my flash with me and this shot illustrated trying to compensate for excessive outside light using an off-camera flash (it's in the picture on purpose). There's motion blur because I dragged the shutter to illustrate blending the light sources. 

This metal sculpture is just outside the front of the school. Great detail when you get up close. I actually got an angle that I liked better that shows it in dynamic full gallop but I wasn't happy with the composition. 

This is the front door of the building. It's hard to see at this resolution, but there is a circular design inlaid in the wood (no, that's not a watermark!) and until I got it back to the computer, I never realized there were words carved into it as well. Look closely at the top. It says, "Within These Walls the Walls Within Disappear". Great motto!

PS: you know that "Thou Shalt Not..." image I put up last week? It took FIRST PLACE at the Richmond Hill Camera Club. Yahoo! Or maybe Google...

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