Raptors Workshop (no, not the basketball team)

Register for a really neat photo op!

A friend of mine, Les Palenik, is facilitating a "Birds of Prey" workshop at the Canadian Raptor Conservancy in Vittoria, west of Port Dover, Ontario. You get to shoot eagles, hawks, owls both on perches and in flight, and he promises owl chicks as well (owlets?).

The date is May 12th and the price is very reasonable, but I'll let Les tell you more about it: here's the link.

There are still some spaces available on this workshop, but I'll bet it will fill up fast, so wander over to his site and get signed up. I will be there, for sure! The birds in flight part excites me the most. When I asked him, Les said a 200mm lens should do, but I'm bringing the 400 as well!.

It's only a couple of hours out of Toronto, but I know that several of my readers live or cottage in the area, so this is a great opportunity!

Lightroom 5 Beta

Kelby did a quick review of the new features of LR5 on YouTube.

Here's the link.

I wonder how long it will be before his new book on LR5 will be out (if I sound cynical here, well I am...).

A few other thoughts...

• I've read on TIF and one other place (G+?) that the LR5 Beta is crashing Windows...

• The main editing features are one-button straightening (perspective cropping), and the new spot-removal and adjustment brush options. These are functions that you can do in Photoshop CS6 (well maybe not one-button...). I get that these are time-savers for those who edit lots of images and don't want to go out to Photoshop all the time. That's not a concern for me since I only edit a few pictures at a time (typically spending 30-60 minutes on each one) and there's always other stuff I want to do in Photoshop, but I see how others might find this useful.

• They did add a radial version of the graduated filter and allowed you to select it multiple times and stack them. And since you can adjust all kinds of things (exposure, contrast, highlights, blacks, clarity, sharpening, saturation, and so on), you can essentially add all kinds of lighting effects in multiple areas, much like control points in the Nik products. That one looks quite cool.

The one feature I've been looking for has not been added. Sometimes I think I'm in a text field, like keywords or caption, etc, or I think I'm typing on the other computer (I switch my keyboard between machines), but I'm really in Lightroom, and I start typing. Type almost any innocuous word and you're invoking commands. That's because Lightroom uses a lot of single-key shortcuts. For instance "B" adds a photo to the quick collection. "E" changes to loupe view. "R" turns on crop mode. "H" hides stuff. "P" picks a photo. All the number keys add ratings to a photo. And so on, for almost all the letters and numbers. The feature I would value would be a key or button that I would call, "oops". "Take me back to where I was before I started typing". I don't know how I would write that but then I'm not a highly paid software engineer either.

I'm not going to install this beta. Adopting Lightroom 4 early caused me a lot of grief: as I said elsewhere, they didn't solve the latency issue until 4.3, which made LR painful to use for quite some time. So I think I'll wait.

I also wonder what the upgrade policy is going to be. Adobé's strategy seems to have been to cut the price of LR in half, attract tons more customers, then pull the rug out a year earlier than usual with a new version. Guessing they'll want $79 to upgrade, that means all those new customers they sucked in will end up paying them the original $150 for the privilege.

Just musing...

Haliburton Home & Cottage Show
Our space is confirmed. Booth #204 in the Curling Club (hope we can find a way to block that ugly green arc-lamp lighting!). Linda Cresswell and I will be sharing this space and selling prints ranging from card size up to a 40x60 canvas Linda has planned (not too many of those, Linda: we only have 10' x 10' to display in!). I'll also be talking about and taking bookings for my DSLR courses and there will be at least one give-away to visitors.

The show is on the weekend of May 31 - June 2, in the beautiful village of Haliburton.

Even if you don't have a home or cottage in the Highlands, it's worth coming up for a visit. Lots to see and do, and Haliburton is home to many artisans and artists (the Fleming College campus of the Haliburton School of the Arts is here). More information to come...

Panning moving water

The other day, Linda and I were talking on the phone and she came across this outstanding artist, +Ursula I Abresch. A picture's worth 1000 words, but I don't post other people's work on my blog without permission, so here's a link to her 500px gallery site.

To see the images that I consider the most stunning, scroll down to the bottom third of that page. It's really worth the visit.

While we were talking, Linda was exploring her sites and content (I can't multitask, she can!). She came across a bit about how she creates these images, which involves shooting reflections in pans of water. But along the way, she read something about "panning moving water" and my ears perked up.

Yesterday, I was driving by the whitewater (no eagles again yesterday) and stopped to try some stuff. You can get some very interesting effects by panning:

This wasn't what I had in mind originally, but I found it to be a really interesting abstract. 1/15 second at f/22, ISO 50, F=200mm. I added some effects in Photoshop, mainly using the cutout filter to smooth things.  

While I was there, I thought, "what about zooming?" I did a few slow shutter speed zooms and got several interesting abstracts, including this one:

You need to move back about 2 meters from your monitor to look at this one. It's more effective when you view it as a gestalt. Again, I did nothing to this shot other than to crop it vertically. It was 1/10 second at f/22, ISO 50. I zoomed the lens from about 100mm to 200mm while the shutter was open. I like this image so much I'm going to print it, probably as a 12x18 watercolour. I wish I had shot this last week, I would have entered it in the RHCC creatives competition! 

Oil Paint filter again!

There's something magical about the oil paint filter in Photoshop CS6.

Black Ash leaf still hanging in early spring.

A little background here. Out for a walk the other day, with the D600 and the 70-200 f/2.8 around my neck. Nothing much to shoot, maybe I got one other shot of a snow drift that looked like shooting the Rocky Mountains out of an airplane window. I saw this leaf fluttering in the wind, opened up to f/2.8 and shot it with a dark-ish background. I was taken by the texture brought out by the afternoon light. Problem is, it was surrounded by its brothers at different distances, so it was hard to isolate. Also the tip of the leaf wasn't pristine. So I cropped it really tight, in fact the final image is only 1000 px wide, so I can't do much with it.

I spent half an hour playing with sharpening and Topaz, then abandoned most of it because I had lost the subtle texture in favour of oversharpening. Yes, the Nikon 200mm and D600 combo is sharp and renders colours really well, but it was the texture that drew me to this one. Then I thought I'd try the oil paint filter...

Now I don't like what it does to continuous toned backgrounds and I'm not taken by the "shine", although you need a little. So I reduced the shine to a very low number and then masked it out on everything but the leaf and the sharp buds and twigs.

When I looked at the jpeg on a white screen, I didn't like it, so I went back and created a mat using a colour I sampled from the image.

I don't know what draws me to this filter effect. Rosa hates it on principle, says I'm trying to fake a painting. Yeah, so???

PS: wish I had the tip of the leaf...

That's all for now. Go look at Les's workshop if you haven't already. Should be interesting! And don't forget to subscribe to my mailing list. I'm going to be giving away free stuff to subscribers, and you want to be there!

— 30 —

Sometimes you're in a different place

Life's all about change, right? Some things have changed for me, in my approach to my photography. Maybe it's just temporary, but when I pick up my camera, I have something different in mind. Let's see if I can explain what and why.

I'm planning to take a booth at the Haliburton Home and Cottage Show, to sell pictures. The show is at the end of May, I'll send my commitment in this week. A lot of planning goes into this effort, from the design and construction of the booth, to the choice of images for sale, framing, how to display non-framed pieces, what sizes and media, what price points, finding a device to accept credit and debit cards, lights, and so on. I'm working on all of those things.

The choice of pictures to sell is a major component, also size and quality. I've pretty well decided that most of them will be in the 12x18 size range, and most of those will be printed on lustre paper and priced quite reasonably under 50¢/square inch (so a 12x18 would be nominally $100, unframed). This is, after all, a cottage show. However I plan to have a couple of more expensive pieces there, such as this one:

This is a triptych which I plan to print on canvas and do gallery wraps. The vertical size will be around 18" and the price will be set around $450. The image, by the way, was shot in the fall of 2008 with the D300. It's an HDR and I used the oil paint filter in CS6 to complete it.  

Another image that I plan to display for sale is this one:

I want to print this one on watercolour paper, mat and frame it normally. $350 framed, $250 unframed, 12"x18". I shot this image yesterday (Sunday) with the D600, it's also an HDR. It's the Trent-Severn waterway, with Balsam Lake in the background. 

So here's my dilemma. I'm searching for images in my archives that are suitable for printing. I've come up with about 100 candidates, but some of them don't make it for various reasons: usually because I've cropped them too tightly and there aren't enough pixels left to do a large scale print. Here's an example of that:

I love the oil paint filter in CS6. Some people don't: what do they know?? LOL. It's only about 1600 px wide, so I MIGHT be able to get an 18" print out of it, but only because it's painted and small detail is irrelevant. 

I really like this image. I can picture it as a large scale print, say 24" x 36" flush mounted, or at the very least 18x24 in a mat. But it's never going to happen, unless there's some magic way to go from 1600 pixels to at least 5400 pixels without losing essential detail or introducing artifacts. So as I said, perhaps I can get it to a 12x18 but even then I wonder.

I haven't thought about printing before, really. Among other things I did in the past couple of weeks was to visit a professional print shop, where they specialize in archival and exhibition quality prints. I spent an hour picking the production manager's brain and sitting with some of my own images on their large screen. The conclusion was, if an image isn't originally 4000 pixels on the long side, don't bother. Yes, there are exceptions: the filtered oil painted image above might work because all the detail has been smeared out (his words) but certainly not as a large scale picture.

Incidentally, there's a fantastic print mounting method out there called "acrylic face mount". It's by far the best presentation I've ever seen for saturated, detailed images, they literally "glow". It ain't cheap: I was quoted almost $1 per square inch, just for printing and mounting. But it's beautiful. Google it...

So I've started thinking about composing my image in the camera so I don't need to crop. I'm paying much more attention to detail, to lighting, to textures and nuances of shading (love the snow in the above image, by the way). I've started making images with printing in mind. And that's a whole other mindset. This is stuff that other people have been saying to me for years, but I just haven't listened.

The good news is, I now have a 24 megapixel full sized sensored camera. I can still crop, but only "some". If I want images to look at onscreen, it's still OK to crop up to 100% size: but don't be tempted to print them.

I was out pretty well the whole day on Sunday and while I clicked the shutter about 150 times, many of them were 3-shot bracketed bursts, some were variations of the same image, trying to get it right (about 50 exposures of the Trent-Severn, above for example). And I was in 4 different venues.

By the way, if you want to buy prints, drop me a note and let's talk! If there's a picture you've seen here on the blog that you'd like to see hanging in your house, let me know and I'll figure out if it's do-able, size wise, then let you know how much it will cost. For now, until the business is established, prices will be not much more than the cost of printing and shipping. So a 12 x 18 could end up in your hands for under $40, for example.Send me an email

That said...

I haven't taken a lot of images in the last month, and certainly not snapshots. Well there are some exceptions, after all that's what a point-and-shoot camera is for! Here's one:

Four generations of women, and my brother-in-law. My mother, my sister, my daughter and my granddaughter. North-facing window light.  What's technically wrong with this shot? Well to start with, my daughter is in my sister's shadow. I should have had everyone swing around a bit to their left so the light would be more even. There are lots of other things that make this a less-than-professional portrait but (1) it's a snapshot! and (2) as I've said often in my workshops, "you can't take a bad picture of your family". Because there are memories, not just pixels, embedded in the image.

So what else is going on?

2013 Workshop Schedule

The Spring 2013 workshop schedule is up at www.photography.to. Check it out. I reworked the landing page to clean it up as well. The workshops are designed for beginner and intermediate DSLR users, they're 2 days long and run up here in the Highlands, although I'll come to Toronto to run sessions on demand.

If you're an advanced photographer, I have two things to offer you: one would be to give someone you know (perhaps your SO or child) a step up, when they're ready to inherit that DSLR of yours (an excuse to get that new Nikon or Canon body you've been wanting?)  The other would be an opportunity to get out of the city and spend some time shooting up here in the Highlands. Talk to me.

Some new and exciting news!

But I can't tell you about it yet. Watch this space...

There be eagles there...

A couple of weeks ago, someone told me there were bald eagles on Horseshoe Lake Road, coincidentally, right at one of my very favourite dawn shooting spots. So I wandered over there one afternoon and got lucky:

These were shot with the 400mm lens on the D600, then cropped drastically because they're about 400m away! I spent 2 hours there on Sunday, didn't see hide nor hair of them. I'll be baaaack... 

Lastly, I was testing the light pucks I told you about a while ago, in the light tent. Not a wonderful solution but it works. Here's a test shot of a wedge of Mandarin Orange on my frosted background.

I got all extreme on this shot, playing in the NIK plugin set. Just for fun! 

See? Not everything is print- and exhibition-ready.

— 30 —

Did I say I was done?

Yeah, well...

In all the years I've lived up in the Highlands, I've NEVER seen the fall colours as vibrant and ubiquitous as this year. I have so many pictures I want to show you, and I'm so excited about the new D600. So I'll shut up now, and show you some images. These were all shot during what I call "Mini-Tours" of some fall colour sites in the Highlands.

I know you're going to say it's an HDR, and it is, but you would not believe that this was the actual colour of this maple tree.
All the HDR did was to enhance the sky. 

The tree was right opposite Stanhope Airport. Then I turned around and behind me was this scene.

This is another HDR, but I tried to make it realistic.  It was a blustery day, and nobody was flying. 

On Friday, 5 of us drove up to Bancroft. There was a stand of pine trees I had shot last week, and a waterfall...and fabulous scenery along Highway 118.

This was enroute, I think on 118 but it might have been closer to Bancroft, along 28. The detail from the D600 was so high, I thought it took away from the mood of the picture, so I used the oil paint filter in CS6 to soften it. Yes, yes, it's another HDR but I use that to enhance the sky more than anything else. 

Here are some images in that pine forest I mentioned.

Jim and Kathy from the Richmond Hill Camera Club 

My D600. Just showing off that I actually have one. That's my Nikon 70-200 VR f/2.8, the whole thing held rock steady on my ultralight 3-Legged-Thing tripod. Shot with my D300 with the 12-24 lens, which is for sale, if you're interested. See? It takes good pictures!

My favourite picture of the day. Also shot with the D300/12-24 (seriously, it's for sale. email me.) 

On Saturday morning we went out to shoot at dawn. Unfortunately it was rainy, there was no sunrise to shoot, but we stuck it out (lesson: don't give up. An hour later, conditions change and you'll find amazing shots!)

This is the old log chute, a historic site just behind Hall's Lake. A slow shutter speed — but not too slow, so the water patterns would still be there — I was going for the maximum amount of detail so it was shot at ISO 50, f/11 and I combined 3 shots in Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 (yeah, yeah. HDR).

Nearby was the Hawk Lake Marina. We took a bunch of shots there.

Of course it is. Do you have to ask? How else can you balance the sky and rocks into one photo? 

Next, we went to the Minden Wildwater Preserve.

I put the 10-stop Neutral Density filter on the 70-200. This is a 15-second exposure.  

While we were there, we were lucky enough to see some kayakers practicing their tricks, and the super fast autofocusing on the D600, coupled with its excellent metering, gave me a lot of excellent shots! I can't show them all here, but these were my favourites:

This last shot seems to have epitomized the day for us. To me it really says what whitewater kayaking in the fall in Minden is all about.

Shot with the D300 and the 12-24 lens (the combination that's for sale. email me!). I struggled with cropping this to move the kayaker out of the centre, but in the end, I preferred this full frame. It tells the story...

I hope you enjoyed these pictures. I plan to go out again next weekend. If anyone wants to join me, please visit www.photography.to and sign up for a mini-Tour.

PS: If anyone wants to learn more about how to create HDR images, I'm available for tutoring. Contact me to discuss the details. I prefer 1-on-1 sessions, maximum small groups.

PPS: and if you think any of these images deserve a place on your wall, or on your desktop, get in touch. Some of them will make outstanding large art prints.

— 30 —

First Impressions

I've got my new Nikon D600 and I'll share some first impressions here. But first...

Announcing Photo Mini-Tours
On the weekends of October 7 and 14, I'll be running some what I call "mini-tours". The intention is to take some people out to shoot photos of the fall colours up here in the Highlands, at venues I've scouted and perhaps give them some tips on how to take better shots. These are not full teaching workshops, just a 3-hour session that should give them some great ideas and if the weather cooperates, probably some "keeper" images. There will be 3 sessions each Sunday, depending on demand: loosely termed "morning", "noon" and "night".

If you're interested in attending or if you know someone who might be, visit http://www.photography.to for more information, but don't delay! The colours are coming, the colours are coming!

As I mentioned earlier, I've written a guide to taking better fall pictures. It's included in the registration for the mini-tours, but it's also available for separate download here.

They're Baaack...
Yes they are. The alien bunny-rabbit like creatures from a planet far, far away, have come back under cover of darkness and placed another caché of carrots for their forthcoming invasion of the Earth. I have proof, captured on digital film:

Some of the alien bunnies must be colour blind because they threw in a few parsnips this year. Also some onions and turnips...
perhaps we're destined for a stew in a giant crock-pot! 

Be Afraid. Be Very Afraid.

iPhone Picture
I have to admit, it isn't bad!

I built this little fence to block the elements so barbequeing  will be easier in the winter. I do that year-round.

OK, OK. You're waiting for the D600 impressions. Here we are.

Nikon D600 first impressions
Some good, some not-so-good, but I'm glad I bought it. I wrote most of this up on the TIF forum last night as well, so if you're on there, this might be a repeat. Here's what I wrote:

I have an overall positive feeling about the camera but there is a learning curve and a few glitches that take the shine off it a little for me. Some of it is just me but I thought I'd share anyway. 

Negatives

• Without Lightroom/ACR support, it's a bitch to post-process images. The only software I have that will handle the NEF files is NikonView NX2. Remember when LR4 was creepy-crawly slow? NX2 is worse. Adjust the white balance and wait 20 seconds before the screen refreshes. Exporting one file to TIFF is a 60-90 second process. The controls in NX2 suck compared with LR (or maybe it's just me). I initially set it up to output RAW+JPG(fine) and chose "vivid" toning. That looked horrible so I switched to "Neutral". That's also awful, I'll try a different setting tomorrow. Images are really flat. When you overexpose (eg. bird in flight) there's nothing you can do to recover.

• You can only do 3 shot bracketing. 1 stop increments are too small, 2 stop are too big. Or maybe it's because I'm stuck with JPEGS for now... 

• I used to walk around all day with my D300/70-200 in my right hand. The middle finger on the right hand sat comfortably under the little ledge on the front of the camera. With the D600, they reshaped the ledge and my finger hurts. I suppose I'll get used to it.

• None of my old accessories fit. Batteries, CF cards (the D600 uses 2 x SD cards), the cable release, even the AC power supply.

Positives

• The autofocus is super fast and tack sharp. I wasn't sure because it was hard to tell on the LCD but I went out yesterday and practiced on birds in flight and 80% of my shots were bang on. Learning curve, though: I have to figure out which settings work best. There's "AF-A" mode that takes some getting used to, but I can see using it as a default when 'walking about'.

• High ISO performance is OUTSTANDING. I did a forest scene at 1/200 sec, f/4, ISO 6400 and after a little noise reduction in LR (on a JPEG!) it looked like an ISO 800 shot from the D300.

• You can blow up/crop images to 200% and they look like 100% crops on the D300. Tons of detail on that 24Mp sensor!

I picked up the camera on Friday, and shot this test image that afternoon:

This is cropped from a larger image. The significant fact is, I shot it at ISO 25,600. Yes, I said 25,600.  I did apply a little noise reduction in Lightroom, but this blows my mind. ISO 25,600.

On the way home to Minden, Rosa and I stopped at a cool pine forest and I took these shots:

Rosa's taking an iPhone picture up in the trees.
We're probably going back to this spot on one of the mini-tours, by the way. 

On Sunday, I stopped at the landfill (OK, the "garbage dump"!) with the intention of testing the autofocus as I said above.

On the way home, I came across this wild turkey (the one above is a "turkey vulture". Different beast).

This was shot with the 400mm, quite far away so I had to crop. I used shutter speed priority, 1/640 at f/5.6, ISO 800. 

Heartwarming little dog picture
My neighbours, the Sweets, have a couple of little dogs. Marty walked by while I was shooting some fall colours and the dog stopped yapping long enough for me to get a photo:

I used the oil paint filter on the fur, and painted some catchlights in the eyes. It's cropped quite tightly.

That's it for now. More to come soon!

— 30 —

What's Goin' on?

Well for one thing, summer appears to be drawing to a close. We usually get an "Indian Summer" period where daytime temperatures approximate high summer, but the nights are definitely getting cooler and, "the colours are coming, the colours are coming"!

I've extended an invitation to several friends to come up and visit at the end of the month or first weekend of October. We'll be going out shooting the outstanding panoramas of Fall in the Highlands. I hope we can get up to Algonquin Park too. If you want to come along, send me an email so we can figure it out.

What else is new?
I don't want to jump the gun, but I've ordered my new Nikon D600. Faithful readers will know that I had to pass on the D800 I had my heart set on, but I've been saving my shekels and I can do the D600. Like I said, I don't want to jinx anything, but when you read the NEXT blog entry, I expect to have the camera in hand.

Now although I'd really like to have a backup body, frankly I can't afford it right now. And I have a superb lens that's DX and I need an FX one for the new camera. So my D300 is for sale, complete with a Nikkor 12-24mm f/4 lens. More than 20% of my keepers (the images I really really like) were taken with that lens. The big winner, by the way is the 70-200 f/2.8 with over 40%. You can't take a bad picture with it. So if you're interested in a deal on a great camera/lens combination, contact me. I'll cut you such a deal!

Absolutely Outstanding Customer Service
I'm impressed. I've written this up elsewhere (on the TIF forum) but the story deserves repetition here. A while ago I wrote about a new funky tripod made by 3 Legged Thing that I bought. It's got some incredible features, from the fact that it's only about 2 lbs and will support up to 17 lbs of camera/lens due to its carbon fiber construction, it extends up higher than I can reach on my tippytoes, folds down to 20" and costs half the price of a Gitzo. I've been using it for a few months and have a few quibbles. I sent an email to the manufacturer in England and to my surprise, I almost immediately got an overseas phone call from Danny, the CEO of the company.

First we walked through me trying to make him understand what the issues were (my terminology was flawed) and he immediately acknowledged them without argument. Then he said, "I could send you a few parts and tell you how to fix it, but I'd really rather just send you a new tripod". He asked me to be patient for a few weeks because their new model is being introduced at Photokina next week and he wants to send me the new one. He assured me that I wouldn't be out of pocket one cent (or farthing, I guess!).

This tripod is worth a look. You can buy it at B&H (here's the link). We even talked about his need for a retailer in Canada, and I've forwarded some contacts to him. By the way, the manufacturer's website is as funky as the tripod itself and you can see it here.

You didn't think I'd finish without some pictures, did you?
I was out shooting for a couple of days after quite a dry spell. But I'm going to start with the most recent pictures, from last night. OK, well technically from early this morning, not last night. I was on my way to bed and realized I forgot something in the car. When I went out to retrieve it, I happened to look up. O–M–G! The night was so crisp and clear, the stars were like light bulbs and the Milky Way was like a carpet of mist. I HAD to go out and shoot some pictures. So here are a couple:

I had a small flashlight with me so I painted the trees with light during the 30 second exposure. I did need to do some work in Lightroom to enhance it, but nothing fancy. I've often wondered what that cluster of stars is, in the upper right corner. Anyone know? That really really bright one has to be a planet. 

Beats me what that glow is across the lake. The lights from a house illuminating the bottom of a cloud? It was barely visible to the naked eye, but a 30 second exposure at f/4, ISO=3200 can see EVERYTHING. I can't wait to shoot some of these with the D600 fantastic noise performance! 

I decided, "in for a penny, in for a pound" and I prepared the camera (and of course my 3 Legged Thing "Brian" tripod for a long time exposure. At 2:45 am, I set it up (by the way, ISO=100, f5.6, 12mm focal length) and went back inside with the shutter locked open, intending to spend an hour editing images before going out to retrieve the camera. Well I fell asleep in the computer chair, so the actual exposure was 102 minutes! Probably should have stopped it down a bit more, I've had success at f/8 but working on the RAW file in Lightroom, I came up with this:

Hope it reproduces well on your monitor. 

Let's go back in time to Friday. I went out for an hour or so to try to get the images for the monthly TIF rally. The 3 categories were "Yellow", "Motion" and "Fuzzy", set this month by yours truly. I didn't cheat: I went out with fresh eyes looking for images. I won't post the ones I'm going to enter here, you'll have to go over to the TIF forum to see them. You need to register (to keep out the riff-raff) but there's no risk or associated spam. Look for "September Rally" under "Battlefields".

Anyway, here's some shots I will not be submitting (unless I change my mind!)

Macros are fun, but really challenging! This is a focus-stack of 5 images, enhanced with Topaz Adjust 5. 

I've been trying for a month to get a bee in focus! 

This is a tiny bee-like insect. These guys are more interested in the pollen they're gathering than in the lens less than 2" away, or in the delicate, vulnerable hand holding that lens! 

La pièce de résistance!
After filling up my water jugs at the Maple Lake mountain spring (it was running really slow, so I took the bee pictures while I was waiting. And the leaf at the top too), I went in search of another water source a local told me about, at Stanhope Airport. Nothing doing there worth photographing, but there was a sign saying "Open Doors Ontario" on the church at the corner, so I popped in (be patient, I'm getting there!). Nothing caught my eye in this 111-year-old church but in chatting with a lady there, she told me that the Twelve Mile Lake Church was also open for visits. She said it was tiny, and completely off the grid: no electricity. It was built in 1890, which makes it 122 years old. I wandered inside, and the décor wasn't spectacular, but they had a manual antique pump organ that had been built in 1888 and was still in use! According to them, the natural wood carving and finish are original. Can you say, "HDR"? So I asked and received permission to photograph it, and here it is.

I decided to also use the Oil Paint filter in Photoshop CS6, after rendering the HDR. I spent a lot of time reconstructing the top step on the left in Photoshop and think I did a creditable job, shadows and light nuances and all.  

So that you get a feel for what the Oil Paint filter can do, here's a 100% crop from the image:

 

So that's it for now. I'm going to head out in a few minutes, have to drop into the garbage dump and pick up some groceries. I'll be bringing my camera with me, of course. TTFN

— 30 —

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!

— 30 —