Newfoundland Post #5: Cape St. Mary

Out of sequence. I thought I'd share this before getting back on track, a whole week's worth of story and pictures from Witless Bay to come.
Cape St. Mary's Ecological Reserve is one of the best and most accessible places in the world to see nesting seabirds. Problem is, it's foggy 200 days a year. The rest of the year, it's winter.
Here's a link to a good description. Take a minute to read it.

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Here I am at Cape St. Mary, site of the famous Gannet colony ecological reserve. I spent two hours out there yesterday in the fog and a pouring rain so hard I think frogs might have drowned. It's a 1400m hike out to the "Rock" – 2000 steps on my fitbit in each direction (my doc would be happy!) – and everything I was wearing is still trying to dry. I bought an extra sweatshirt (as if I needed one, but it fits and it was on sale!). I 'crashed' at 9pm so here I am up and awake at 3am! Here's the story in a nutshell (what else is there to do at 3am?), even though I'm out of chronological sequence.

I checked into the Bird Island Resort — it's a motel/efficiency in St. Brides, just 4 km from the entrance to the reserve. Locals say that if the wind is from the SW, it will be foggy. It's from the SW. It's foggy. I hear the soothing sound of a foghorn in the distance every 30 seconds. Conditions are different between here and the reserve, but I didn't expect that much difference!

I plan to stay for a few days, maybe I can get some downtime from the endless travel, perhaps I can take out my oil paints again, only one picture so far this trip and it's not done.

Like many other Newfoundland communities, St. Bride's features a fishing port, a bunch of scattered houses and a convenience store that may or may not sell gas. Bird Island Resort is attached to one of those, and there's actually another 'motel' in town, and of course, the usual giant church. Groceries are, well, limited but they also have a bunch of chest freezers in the back with some frozen packaged goods and some meats. There's one restaurant where I had pan-fried fresh cod fillets last night.
Wifi is iffy, it doesn't work on the table in the room but it does on the edge of the bed, where I am right now. They won't admit it. The housekeeper's teenaged daughter knows, but they won't listen to her. The room faces West, right on the ocean. Beautiful sunsets, they tell me (ha!). Here it is during a clear moment:

(all of these next shots are unedited, just so you get a feel. Straight out of the camera, the D5500 with my 17-35 wide angle mounted) 

When I turned around, this is what I saw. This is the town of St. Brides, or at least the port – there's more behind me. 

The roads here are awful. In fact they fit perfectly with the title I'm going to use for the Blurb book, which I also used when I was here 11 years ago: "The Path of Least Potholes". More on that later. It's a bone-jarring 4km drive to the entrance of the reserve and then their driveway is 13km of nice pavement, except for the odd dip that can get you airborne if you drive too fast. Then you arrive at the visitor centre:

No joke, this is from 50 feet away. Something should have told me what I was in for! 

About half an hour later I arrived at "The Rock". As I said, it's 1.4km, a pretty easy trail for those who actually have knees, and it didn't actually start raining until I was halfway out there. FWIW, my goretex Cabela's jacket did its thing. Jeans, on the other hand, aren't waterproof. My feet were soaked inside my waterproof hiking boots from the water running down into my socks. When you reach the "Rock", here's what you see (again, SOOC):

There are thousands of Gannets. More on the surrounding cliff walls. Hope I get another look at it in better weather! 

I was carrying both cameras: the D5500 with the 17-35 wide angle on it on a neck strap under my jacket, and the D800 slung over my shoulder on the BlackRapid strap, hanging down at my side with the 70-200 mounted. I actually added the 1.7x telextender while I was out there in the rain. No simple feat.

Here's an image with that lens. Not retouched. 

I did work on one image, two frames after that one. Lightroom's DeHaze slider is magic.

Some sort of Gannet lovemaking behaviour. I'll find out more when I get back to the reserve in the next couple of days. 

This is a pretty tight crop, so I can't make a large print from it. Hopefully if it clears up a bit, I can come back with the 600mm and shoot some closer shots. It's not weatherproof enough in this rain, though.

More to come, of course!

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The Stories of Kensington Market

Got that macro lens!

As I mentioned last week, I'm really loving macro. The extension tubes are OK but they force you to choose between macro and regular distances (so when a hummingbird hovered nearby, I couldn't shoot it). I decided to bite the bullet and I bought the Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR macro lens. Took delivery on Monday, and have only had a chance to shoot a couple of images with it. Here's one:

This image is straight out of the camera. I didn't do ANYTHING to it beyond my normal RAW file import preset in Lightroom, not even crop it.  Well, except for 'spot removing' a couple of blemishes in the flower. 

Did you notice there's a wee spider lurking in the centre of the flower? I didn't, until I looked at it onscreen!

Rogers Wireless. First they refused to admit they had (have) a problem with their tower up here despite the fact that at least a dozen of us have the same symptoms: the audio on incoming calls is breaking up even with 5 full bars of signal strength. Admittedly my iPhone 4s is getting old but I'm not the only one.

Then they offered to charge me almost $400 to upgrade the phone to the iPhone 5s. They tried to sell me on an Android phone. But they couldn't convince me that it would sync with my Outlook calendar and addressbook and sure enough, my own research revealed that it will NOT without third party software, which I would have to purchase.

In the end, they said they'd discount me $75 because I've been a loyal customer for 12 years. Whoopee.

Costco and the good folks at Bell. After waiting hours in Rogers stores with staff who are more concerned with the state of their fingernails and a thimble full of computer knowledge, I left and went to Costco. This for an iPhone 6 not iPhone 5, same plan (plus 50 minutes of US calling), cheaper price AND the phone cost was $149. If I switched to Bell, which I readily did.

20 minutes later I was live, they transferred my existing data from the old phone and I got on the road back up North.

The reason I went with Rogers in the first place was because of mistreatment by Telus and the fact they had no usable signal up here in the Highlands. With Bell, I've got 4 out of 5 bars sitting at my computer. The iPhone 6 is nice, same look and feel as the 4s but faster.

I just ordered this "Tough" iPhone case through RedBubble with my own image on it:

It's a pretty dark image (intentionally), looks good on screen and I hope it will print well. Cost me about 60% of the cost of an Otterbox, by the way.  

In a rut?

Here's a link to a series of ideas/exercises that might drag you out of that funk:

http://petapixel.com/2015/07/16/13-exercises-for-photographers-that-can-help-jump-start-creativity/

...or you could get out of your comfort zone and do something different, like street photography!

Street Photography Outing

Seven strong, we headed down to Kensington Market on Monday. All street photography newbies. We knew that it was supposed to rain around 2pm but we hung in there anyway. Trying to get everyone in the same place at the same time was like herding cats. It can't be done! Holly and Chris were in a 'horticultural' shop, learning how to plant certain kinds of "seeds". Maggie went into another shop and bought earrings. Sharon was doing her own thing. Wendy turned left when we turned right. It was a challenge! Amin and I stayed together most of the time, though.

First thing I shot was an onrushing streetcar on Spadina. Slow shutter speed, zoom while shooting. Kind of trite and overdone, but I like it! The streetcar driver wasn't too happy with me standing on the track in front of his moving vehicle!

Then there was this guy...

He was sitting there, giggling and laughing to himself. There was a lot of that going on in Kensington: I usually get the munchies too, when I get the giggles... anyway he got real serious and gave me the eye when he saw me shooting his picture. 

I didn't want to make it all about shooting characters. I wanted stories. So I actually approached this next guy (after I took his picture!) and asked him, "how do you sound"?

He said, "I don't know, I haven't played in a long time". I'm not sure what he was on but... He asked to see his picture on the camera then wanted me to email it to him! Either he wasn't what he seemed, or he was...

Then the rains came. 

Another guy walking along laughing loudly at some internal joke 

This was one of my favourite pictures of the day.  

But this one tops my list:

Tolerating the rain? Enjoying it? Reveling in it? In a hurry to get out of it? I didn't make this one black and white because I think the colour adds to it. In fact, I might make this the basis of my first attempt to paint a person. 

I have several more images to process from that outing. Hang in there!

Twinkle, Twinkle...

The other night I went out to photograph the Perseid meteor shower. Good news and bad news: I saw lots of meteorites but I didn't capture many on the camera. However I'd like to share two images.

This is a StarStaX composite of 100 images. There are actually four meteorite events visible in the image, look for lines that go in odd directions. But they're lost in the splendour of the star trails. I overlaid one of the foreground images and painted it in Impression

Both of these images are somewhat dark, I hope they render well on your monitor. 

This was a single long exposure (38 minutes). Partway through, I discovered that the lens was covered with dew so I carefully wiped it without moving the camera. The canoe was NOT in the scene: I comped it in after someone on Facebook gave me the idea. But the sky really did look like this, an example of real life emulating art.  

Stay tuned for more next week!

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I can't believe it's September

Did summer happen while I wasn't looking? Have I done a Rip van Winkle and been asleep for a couple of months? The temperatures have been in the low 20's here for about the whole month of August (that's the low 70's for my Yank readers). We did get a bit warmer the past few days, but because the nights are so cool, the water temperature is starting to get "brisk" (George Costanza and 'shrinkage' comes to mind!). I try to keep my lake at 75° but the heating bills are enormous!

Fall colours are appearing here and there. We're 4 weeks away from the PEAK colours in Algonquin Park (if you got my newsletter about the Photowalk, time to register! If you didn't, shame on you. Click the "newsletter" button at upper right).

Someone left a book out in the rain

I don't think that I can read it
It'll take so long to dry it
I may have to go and buy that book again...
Oh no! Oh noooh.

Oops. I forgot it outside in the pouring rain. I figure it'll take a month to dry, if it ever does! 

I was reading outside on the deck with lunch and forgot my book when I came in. Then the skies opened up. As I write this, two days later, the book is a soggy mass. Maybe if I leave it in the sun for a month...

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist who had a hand in the development of Superstring theory. I first came across him when I read his book, "Physics of the Future" where he describes where we might be headed in the next 100 years.

Although it has technical content, Kaku writes it in an easy fashion, so it's very readable. He is an incredibly erudite author and makes well thought out predictions based on where we are today. I'm impressed with how broad this man's knowledge base is. Amazing how many of the predictions of Star Trek have come true or are on the horizon (and which two are not...). Read it. You won't be sorry. You can get it here.

He went a little further in his book, Hyperspace. This is his field of study and he attempts to explain quantum theory without the mathematics. I'm not sure that you can. I was on the chapter about why it's self-consistent in 10 dimensions and 26 dimensions (they add two, and I don't get why. It's really 8 and 24 dimensions which makes more sense...). I haven't gotten to the chapter where Steven Hawking proposes an infinite number of universes. It might be a good thing that the book got wet!

OK, I have very little idea what he's talking about. Most of the developments discussed were after I left school, but more importantly, the last time I heard the phrase "tensor calculus" was when I actually studied that stuff in the late 60's (ah, Quantum Mechanics with Dr. Lee, whose accent was so strong nobody could understand him in English or in Chinese!). There's an old story that could have been about Dr. Lee...

The quantum physics lecturer  said, "...and obviously we come to this final conclusion, E=MC²". A student raised his hand and said, "but sir, that's not really obvious to me". The professor went to the blackboard and filled it with equations and calculations in his tiny precise handwriting. 90 minutes later, he turned to the class and said, "yes, it's obvious".

You had to be there. Actually, I was!

Dr. Sheldon Cooper is more my speed now! I'm waiting with anticipation for the start of the new Big Bang Theory season. Two interchanges stick with me as my favourites:

Penny: "... a monkey"
Sheldon: "when does a monkey have a trunk?"
Penny: "when a suitcase just won't do".

and

Stephanie: "how was your day?"
Leonard: "...I'm a physicist. You know, I thought about stuff."
Stephanie: "that's it?"
Leonard: "well I wrote some of it down..."

In a previous chapter, discussing the Big Bang and the origins of the universe, Kaku mentions some of the arguments concerning the existence of God. In the 9th Century, someone postulated, "If God exists, where was He before Creation"? "Does God have a Mother?"

Sometimes I think about stuff...

NEWSFLASH: I got an email from Topaz Labs that they're putting Topaz Adjust 5 on sale for 50% off ($24.99) from September 9 to September 30th. It's very rarely on sale, so mark your calendars and jump on it next week! Topaz Adjust 5 is my go-to plugin in Photoshop and in Lightroom, it's absolutely my favourite. Go to this link, and enter the promo code "septadjust" (without the quote marks) when ordering.

Puppies

How can anyone NOT instantly fall in love with a 9-week old Golden Retriever puppy?

Words are superfluous. His name is "Finnigan". Belongs to a neighbour, wish he was mine! 

Vegging out

Ever feel in a vegetative state? Fatigued? It's an effort even to get out of your chair? That's me right now. I can't say why, I'm sure it will pass, but in honour of vegging out, here's a bunch of vegetation pictures (OK, flowers). Fall is coming, I thought I'd better get some now before they're gone. It was raining, or I would have set up some backgrounds, and some external flash and reflector fills... maybe next time. Click a picture to blow them up.

Could be worse, I almost put up a bunch of ducks!

Why I live here

In closing, here are a couple of star shots from Saturday night. I stopped on my way home from my friend's place, and  I found a spot with less light pollution than my back yard. There was still some, though.

The coloured glow is from the town of Carnarvon, a few km away. The Milky Way is a bit further. The light on my car is from the stars only, there was no other light. This is a 30 second exposure, f/2.8, ISO 2500.

The Earth is rotating as it should. This is a 30 minute exposure, at f/2.8, ISO 100, from about the same spot. Both images were shot at 17mm on the full frame D600. 

So for my students and readers of my Weekender column, remember when I said you need a tripod? Get one.

TTFN

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The times they are a-changing...

There are two times in the year when the Highlands are not beautiful. At the end of the winter, when the snow melts and the world is painted in shades of muddy brown and grey, and now, after the leaves are down. One can be spoiled by the spectacular colours of autumn and once gone, they leave a sense of regret behind. The four seasons are magnificent, but there's a time between them that's less compelling.

To top it off, it's been raining and cold and grey. More to come: as I write this, the impending arrival of hurricane Sandy, coupled with a large cold front coming from the west, "Frankenstorm", the media has dubbed it. Thankfully we're not directly in the path, but we expect to be battered by it here as well.

The first thing I did was to change the banner at the top of this blog.  I plan to change it again from time to time.  Here's the old one, because I think it's gone, even from older posts.

This was the banner image up to today. The text was overlaid separately.

And here's the new one. 

So it's not a time to venture out with the camera to capture the spectacle of nature. Instead, it's time to throw another log on the fire, creating with senses other than the eyes, tools other than the camera. It's time to sit down with the computer. Photoshop, not photography.

I got to thinking about the images I've made in the past and wondered how much I've changed. I hesitate to say that I've grown, but I have to come to the conclusion that I have: some of my earlier pictures look incredibly amateurish and not up to my present technical or even artistic standards. I started by looking at my early HDR's. I found that I was taken with the extreme fringes of the technique, like many others I contributed to the frequently heard, "I hate HDR's. They're not realistic".

Although that's true, I don't hate all of them. Some are pretty good, but they lack subtlety. They're also one-dimensional in that they were attempts to get the most out of every pixel. Anyway, I looked at an image I shot 2 years ago, at Old Woman Bay on the shore of Lake Superior:

Not horrible, in my view. My goal at the time was to enhance the detail of the cliff face and the sky. 

So I revisited the image, and this time, used Nik HDR Efex Pro 2 to tone it. I did it without looking at the old version:

This time, I wanted to add some character to it, so I used control points to add the light from the setting sun, again I emphasized the cliff face, but now I cropped off the messy foreground and spent some time simplifying the dead tree in front. I varied the saturation from spot to spot and of course framed it with a vignette which I created with Topaz Adjust. This time I zoomed in and fixed some chromatic aberration and reduced the halos that I hadn't noticed two years ago.

Which image do you prefer?

Of course, I still think there's a place for extreme effects. I'll show you that in a minute.

All of that said about the lousy weather and dull scenery, I did go out. I had a purpose in mind. About 25 years ago, I wrote a short story. Now I'm using it as a basis for a more challenging work: an actual novel. Here's a sample, for what it's worth:

As soon as it reared up over the rocks, Henry recognized it for what it was: a large black bear sow. It spotted Henry and for some reason, felt threatened and moved to the attack. Bear were usually docile unless provoked or if you got between them and their cubs, so he wasn’t prepared for its aggressive behavior. He could see the sharp claws and hear them as it scrambled over the rocks, could almost smell its fetid breath as he stared down the gaping mouth, through the sharp teeth. It roared and the sound chilled him to the bone and spurred Henry into action.

He quickly lifted the .32-20 and thumbed back the hammer as he brought the muzzle up. Henry knew that this lightweight gun was much too small against a large bear, but it was all he had. He tried to mount the gun on his shoulder but his pipe was in the way and he couldn’t get his cheek on the stock so he brought it down and fired from the hip. Working the lever quickly, he fired again as the bear attacked with race horse speed. He got off a third shot and with the bear very much alive and ...

Yeah, you're going to have to wait to find out what happened. In the original piece, I wrote these opening paragraphs:

An artist would need only shades of grey, green and brown on his palette to capture the entirety of the November forest. No other colour intrudes upon the senses. The ground is carpeted with the brown colour of dead leaves, interspersed with the occasional spot of green where a hardy fern still displays its life. Here and there, a slate-grey rock pokes up its gloomy head, covered with splotches of dark, almost black moss. Occasionally the moss is bright green, almost fluorescent in its contrast with the rest of the bleak world.

Above stand the trees: their trunks painted almost universally in shades of grey, tinged with green. The evergreens are close to black in colour, sometimes forming a monolithic wall against the dull sky or the brown hill behind. Everywhere are the dormant branches of the brush, like a brown fog wherever you look, partly obscuring whatever’s behind. You can focus your eyes on a branch, or try to see through it. There are gaps where you can see with crystal clarity, but mostly this is an out-of-focus world.

Here and there are bushes where not all the leaves have fallen – a bright yellow/brown that draws the eye. It’s hard to focus elsewhere, difficult to see through them. Or the odd silver birch, a bit of white in an otherwise pastel world.

Today, a gloomy, rainy day, I set out to capture that feeling.

It's not a great picture but read the text. It tells the story. The bear came over the rise on the left...

Just for the record, I'm about 8,000 words into the book. I hope I'm not jinxing it by talking about it. I'm giving myself the winter to finish it. I may publish excerpts here from time to time.

So...

"If you go out in the woods today, you're in for a big surprise."

There's always something to shoot. Here's what I found...

I don't care if you think extreme HDR is for the birds. I like it sometimes.  

 Also, I went out on Thursday for a last ride on my bike. I'm giving up motorcycling, the bike is traded for an ATV with a snowplow which, according to the phone call this morning, I'm going to get on Wednesday, weather permitting. Expect pictures...

Here's a farewell picture of my bike.

The naked trees aren't the story, the bike is. A similar selective coloration treatment as in the tractor picture, and vignette like the Lake Superior landscape. 

Since colour isn't the story out there right now, here's a monochrome treatment of the pine woods where I stopped to get the bike picture. This is now the wallpaper on my iPad. 

Be safe in the hurricane, everyone. I'll see you on the other side.

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