Last Gasp of winter

The past several days up here in the highlands has been that ugly, muddy, wet, soggy time of year when everything is melting. I have a "pond" on the north side of my house. It's not very deep but the bottom is so soft that you sink in a few inches, resulting in a 'soaker' every time you go out for some firewood (taking it around to the front door for now). The driveway is all rutted at the back, although the 10 or 12 little trailerloads of gravel I spread last year at the entrance has worked. It's a muddy mess back where my garage is (and where my sump pump line exhausts!). So I parked my car in the driveway last night, not wanting to drive over it.

So of course, this is what it looked like when I got up this morning! Last Gasp.

iPhone pano. But it's all mud under that white frosting. I heard Algonquin Park got 15-25cm of the white stuff. Tempting to take a drive up but, nah... 

I did get one more trip into Algonquin Park before the end of March. Still snowy up there, but spring is on its way (I wrote this before I got up to the white stuff this morning!).

I culled my images back to three favourites as I promised (I know, should only be one. But it's better than the NINE I wanted to post here!

This young fox was in the Spruce Bog. Too accustomed to the presence of Man, s/he  followed us around in the hopes of a handout. The late day lighting was perfect. BTW I had a shot I liked better but there was a leaf or something stuck on the fox's nose! (if you subscribe to my blog you'd see that picture. I always send an unpublished picture to my subscribers! Click the "Newsletter" link at the top of this blog to subscribe. No spam, one click to unsub.)

This is a mink, making its way along behind the creek. I don't think it wanted to go in the water like the otter. I had a shot of it at full gallop, but chose this as one of my three! 

And here's the otter, snacking on frog's legs. I had closer shots but thought showing the environment tells a better story. 

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This was created using a Photoshop Action called "Seven Styles Watercolor" (Google is your friend!) which I purchased for the princely sum of $6. I don't normally buy actions or presets, but this one was so intriguing when I saw it in the Topaz forums, that I had to try it. It could add a new creative dimension to my post-processing.

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It was a rainy day... practicing for Newfoundland

When I'm in Newfoundland this summer, there are going to be a lot of photo ops shooting colourful little outports overlooking the ocean, with weathered, textured fishing stages and probably less-than-perfect weather conditions. I want to work up some techniques for shooting under those conditions.

Karen was visiting from Toronto so we decided to go out and shoot some pictures despite the rainy weather.

This first shot was overlooking the lake from my dock area. Um, the sun wasn't there and the duck was in a different place! I was showing Karen some post-processing techniques. Also my "blogframe" action (I wrote this one myself!). It needs updating, it doesn't work right on the Mac, especially since the fonts aren't available. Next time I get ambitious. 

One thing you need to do is work the scene. Sometimes you shoot close, sometimes more landscape. This ice fishing hut had lots of texture in the weathered wood but I decided that it competed with the graphic nature of the picture, so I smoothed it away. 

Then I thought that this scene might be typical of an outport in the rain, so I gave it a painterly treatment, bringing out the colours, especially in the reflections in the muddy foreground. This was actually a good test: I had the wrong lens, so I shot 6 images and stitched them together using the merge to pano function in Lightroom. I resized it before working on it, it was almost a 100 megapixel file!

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I have two trips to look forward to: Newfoundland in July and Lake Superior in October. I can't decide which one is going to be more fun! Anyone want to come along?

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It's fun being published!

Lots and lots of pictures for you today, so I'll keep the words down to a dull roar! Besides, I'm doing the Stars workshop in a couple of days and I'm still preparing the curriculum and materials, so I have to do this quick.

I'm posting this now because I posted the following picture and question on several social media sites, so perhaps I piqued some curiosity out there!

Here's what I wrote: "Why you should use "Pro" cameras and lenses. What was I shooting? Wait for it, I'll post it on the blog in a day or two... anticipaaatiiiooonnnn..".

The answer to that question is, "The Kin[sman] Club Truck Pull, show 'n shine and ATV Mud Bog" at the Minden Fairgrounds! The truck pull is photographically boring (grass growing is more exciting!), I missed the car show, but the Mud Bog was a ton of fun. Here are more pictures than I really should post, but it was hard to choose!

See why I got muddy? That trench is (guessing) 100' long and about 4' deep in water and mud. Fastest ATV in each class  wins.  This was my favorite shot, but the Minden Times didn't use this one. 

They printed this on the front page, 3 columns wide, above the fold!  

Jay Warner was the E-Class winner on his souped up Can-Am 1000. What you can't see in this picture is the Nitrous Oxide bottle which apparently he didn't use in this race because it isn't legal in that class. This bike has more  power than my car. And when he raced past me less than 10' away, well, I got muddy! 

Here's a shot of Vic Rizzo, F-Class winner in motion! I shot this with the 17mm wide angle lens so you get that I was only about 5 feet away when he whizzed by. Most of the others were at 200mm.

A similar shot of Jay. I think he pulled the Nitrous on this run. Also ultra-wide angle, up close and personal! Boy, did I get splashed.

Also at the event, they were doing training for kids, teaching them to be safe on ATV's. They were busy the whole day! Some of the things they did brought back my motorcycle instructor days (ATV training is also under the auspices of the Canada Safety Council).

The youngster on the red bike is Seth Waldensperger, son of one of the instructors, leading the group. See? I'm learning to take notes. This shot was also published in the Minden Times.

At the same time, I had another assignment from the Times, for a feature page called, "Minden Moments". They published 4 of my shots (almost the full page), including these two:

 

  

 

Kawartha Dairy gives you your money's worth when you buy a large ice cream cone! 

It doesn't get any better than this for kids! 

Lens is sold

My Sigma 120-400mm lens is sold. I'm picking up a TC-17e teleconverter for the 70-200 f/2.8 which will extend it out to 340mm at f/4.8. It was too much to carry around. Now I can be almost equipped with a shoulder bag.

And finally, one more photo

A little street photography in Minden the other day.

I'm proud of myself. I actually engaged Dave in conversation then asked permission to take his picture. Note the teardrop tattoo below his left eye. I thought I knew what that meant, but I could be wrong: I'll leave it to you to Google it. He had other tats, somewhat crude so you know where they were done. Interesting character, though.

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Spring has Sprung at last!

I have a bunch of new pictures, so I thought I'd get this post up. Heading into Toronto today. Spring has finally sprung, though: to my friends in Minnesota and Wisconsin, chin up: it'll get to you eventually! I had lunch al fresco yesterday!

A lot of people up here are still under water. I feel for them and I hope that the Government and insurance companies come through. That's why we pay them all that money!

Working on the Dam

Parks Canada was working on the dam at the South end of 12-Mile Lake (the water flows into Mountain Lake, the headwaters for the Gull River. The Gull is the waterway for the Minden Wildwater Preserve, then the Hydro Dam, then Minden, then all the way down to the Trent-Severn Canal).

Remember, you can click on any picture to see a bigger version of it.

They were blocking off the West half of the dam (nearest the camera) but leaving the overall flow the same. You can see that there are 3 or 4 logs in the back not going in. The purpose was to retrieve a dock which the floods had driven under the dam by forcing it through the East channel. 

The old-fashioned mechanism still works. Step 1 is to remove the boards blocking the opening, then winch a log into position (it's 12" x 12" by whatever length). The guy in the middle has a hook that looks like a gaff to hold the log in place while they release the winch cables. When he lets it go, the log falls into place on top of the stack in the water. Then they do the next one. Once they're prepared, it takes them about 2 minutes to drop one in. Retrieving it is a similar operation, although I'm not sure how they get the winch cable attached when it's down under water.

The lad on the left seems to be the group leader. He was coordinating the operation. I must be getting old, but I swear he's too young to shave yet... 

Here they are actually operating the winch. Note the flotation vests around each of their necks. The fellow with the blue one (his name is Mike) is actually from the Peterborough detachment, on loan up here during the flood crisis. The young lad's name is Ryan.

I talked for a while with these guys about what caused the flooding in Minden and elsewhere. Their basic response was that it was due to the heavy rains that fell in a one or two day period before the ground defrosted enough to absorb it, coupled with the snow melt the very next day. They couldn't hold any more of it back because the lakes upstream were overflowing their shorelines and around the dams that were in place. The lowering of the lake levels in late summer has two purposes: to maintain the levels in the Trent-Severn and to prevent just such an occurrence by making room to accommodate the anticipated spring runoff. This year was just too much, in fact in my experience, the August lake levels were lower than I'd ever seen them.

See? You learned something!

First ATV Ride
I took my ATV out on the trail off Pleasant Point Road the other day, for the first time not on a road or on the ice. At first I was nervous, especially about what the clearance was like and for some reason, it feels like it falls off to the right. But I got a bit more used to it after a while and the clearance is awesome. I can put pretty big rocks in between the wheels instead of going around them.

I plan to be on this trail through the summer. I'm going to try to document the way the forest changes from month to month by taking pictures at the same spot on the trail. Here are a few images:

Looking South along the trail from the high point. The white spots are NOT flowers, they're dead leaves (beech, I think) 

Here's where my ATV was parked. It's an HDR, then I used Topaz Adjust "Glamor Glow" on the trees.  

Another shot of the bike. I like the high-key effect on the trees and may try to take some more like that. I had shot this as part of an HDR burst but didn't combine it. 

This is at the South end of the trail as I'm about to go back in. I was concerned about getting stuck in the mud but there wasn't even a hint of a problem. 

On the way back, I handheld my Point-and-Shoot camera and took a video while riding with one hand (there's one spot where I blip the throttle because my thumb slipped, riding one-handed!). Here's the link to the video on YouTube. The 6-minute video was 400Mb in size! I found a utility to reduce it and it ended up around 50Mb. Remember, this was my first time and I was being cautious. I didn't go through the mud/water because I was wearing sneakers and didn't want to get them all wet.

At the end of the video, you can see the level of the lake water over the road where Point Pleasant Road meets Red Umbrella Road. Normally there's a boat launch there that's at least 2-3 feet high, down into the water which is normally about 20 feet away from the shore.

Crispy Car HDR's

Credit Michael White (an HDR photographer from Florida who specializes in car images, see his work here) with the phrase "Crispy Cars", which he posted in a message on the TIF forum.

So when I got back from my ATV ride, I noticed this car in the Red Umbrella Inn parking lot. It had been quietly sitting there for at least a year, then apparently on Sunday, while I was in Toronto, it turned into a toasted auto. No discernible reason: it was wet from heavy rains and the Fire Marshall even said there was no trace of accelerants that would point to it being torched: a mystery! Anyway, HDR's of crispy cars are cool. Here are some.

This last one is also a "Paintograph" since I applied the Oil Paint filter to the HDR. Actually it's not; that would imply that I actually digitally painted it but all I did was click and move a few sliders around.  

Lots of pictures today: I'll stop here until next time!

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The best laid plans...

Sometimes stuff doesn't work out. Nothing dramatic, but I didn't get to shoot the pictures I was planning on this weekend.

I was booked to go to the "Tough Mudders" event at Mount St. Louis/Moonstone, as a spectator, not a participant! 12 miles of military style obstacle courses, imagine the photo ops! But I must have pulled a muscle at the motorcycle course last week because I really didn't feel that much up to going. Then to top it off, they sent us an email saying that there was no parking on site, they had a designated parking area and shuttle busses: almost 1 hour away from the venue! So that would have meant 5-6 hours of travel to get there and back, and I passed. I saw some pictures that someone else took and I was envious, but that was too much travel for me for a one-day event.

So on Saturday, I got on my bike and rode into Minden. While I was there, I saw some offroad Jeeps all covered in mud and thought, "hmmm. Jeeps crashing through puddles, climbing over rocks..." and I went off in search of their staging area. Here's a shot I took there:

HDR processed in Photomatix Pro 4. I also edited out a trailer in the background with Content-Aware Fill in CS6. 

Here's a closer shot of his tire:

This picture sits next to the word "Grungy" in the dictionary! 

In talking to the organizers, I found out that the only way I was going to see these guys doing their thing was if I went into the bush with them. Not gonna happen. Then someone told me that on Sunday, there was a venue visible from the road: all I had to do was to follow a road called "Black River Road", then turn off onto the "Hinden Forest Access Trail" to where there was a venue they were using to do rock climbing with their Jeeps. Cool.

Some Jeeps returning to the campground 

You've got to love what it says on this guy's windshield! 

Later that day...
I took off on the bike to look for other photo ops (this was still Saturday) and ended up 'way down a road from Minden to Bob's Lake. There was an old cabin there that looked really picturesque and I stopped for a while to shoot some pictures. Now when you think "gritty old cabin in the woods", the letters "HDR" come to mind. I worked the scene for quite a while, but just didn't come up with anything extraordinary. However when I got home, I took one image into HDR Efex Pro and played with it. Then I tried the Oil Paint Filter in CS6 and:

Very interesting how the oil paint filter added texture to the old building. 

I looked at this image blown up and found some really interesting extracts: here's one

There were actually a number of interesting areas to explore. HDR and Oil Paint filter. Cool. 

On Sunday, I went off in search of that rock climbing venue. Suffice it to say that after 35 km of driving (in the car, I wanted to bring more stuff than I could carry on the bike), here's where the "it didn't work out" kicks in. When I ran out of road I was comfortable with — getting momentarily stuck in the sand after clumping over a rock was my first clue — I gave up and turned around. Never did find them. I was halfway to Bracebridge, so I continued on in search of photo ops. How shall I put this: there are no rapids in Housey's Rapids. Cooper's Falls doesn't have a waterfall. OK actually it does, but you can't get near it because it's on private property. It started pouring rain on Monck's Road, and didn't stop until I got to Minden. Kind of a disappointing day, photo-wise but I had fun exploring anyway!

Here are a couple of pictures from the previous weekend.

I happened on an equestrian competition. Pretty boring: just riding around in a circle at a walk, sometimes a trot (a dressage show, I'm told). Anyway a couple of good horse pictures. 

Remember my macro shots?

You have to admit it takes nerve to shoot a wasp from 1" away... 

Here's a little flower. Love that oil paint filter! 

Now a challenge!
On Saturday I passed by this garage sale where the daughter dressed up in something called a "Morph Suit" and stood out on the roadside trying to attract potential buyers. I got her to do a dance for me.

This would make a cool composite, wouldn't it? I was trying to imagine it on a variety of backgrounds. But no particular one came to mind. So, dear reader, what about you? Ready to show off your creativity? There's a 680x1024 pixel image here: http://www.photography.to/morphsuitextract.jpg. Go ahead and download it (I relinquish copyright) and go nuts. Please email it back to me at photography@faczen.com and show me what you can do! I'll publish a selection of them here.

This kind of challenge goes on at the new TIF Forum.

TIF is the place for creative minds to share photos, grow in skill, and learn new skills. We are a community of Photographers, Graphic Designers, Illustrators, Web Designers and other Creative Minds with skill levels from hobbyist to professional! 

Please no nudity, bad language or discussions regarding politics or religion. Please keep our community safe and enjoyable!

It's a newly created forum which (as I write this) has about 50 members. It's still a work in progress, but eventually it promises to be a resource where people can share images and other contributions, where there will be a variety of experts available to answer any question or address any problems you might want to bring up. It's totally free, but you have to register to participate (to avoid spammers). Your name and logon information will never be shared with anyone. Go here: http://www.suitehound.com/forum/index.php. Get in on the ground floor!

See you next time!

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