Under the weather

I hate being sick.
Then again, who doesn't?

I've had the flu, bordering on pneumonia, for the past 4 weeks or so. It went to my lungs early on, then a few days ago popped up to my sinuses and nose, now I'm finally finished coughing stuff up and it feels like I'm getting out of it. I had nightly fevers – not a huge amount, peaking at 38.5°C once (101°F) – but difficulty breathing and hugely congested. A chest Xray was not conclusive about pneumonia.  Totally out of energy, sleeping 12 hours instead of 6, no appetite.

That's unusual for me. I've always lived by "Feed a cold, Feed a fever". This time I've lost 10 lbs!

This flu is a bit of a mystery. If you know me, you know I'm a big-time hermit. I haven't been out of Minden more than twice since coming back from Newfoundland and the few people I've actually been with, haven't been sick. So where did this come from? A number of my Facebook friends and fellow photographers have had this too... what's the vector?

Oh, my God. Could it be that you CAN catch a computer virus? But I have a Mac. They're supposed to be immune. 

The bad news is that I've been so lethargic I couldn't even concentrate on my photo editing. And Topaz Labs has come out with some great new stuff I haven't been able to spend any time on.  Well, I'm back and I want to clue my readers in on what's going on.

Topaz has come out with what seems to be a new concept but they're plagued with a haphazard strategy. It's confusing (to me anyway) but I'll try to lay out the concept here.

Bottom line: it's got a very effective FREE component to it and if you have a computer that can handle it, you should take advantage of that, if nothing else. 

Here's a link to where you should go to get the free Topaz Studio platform. Or you can use the box at right. Go there, check that it'll work on your machine and download it. Don't buy anything yet, I'll explain.

Topaz Studio works as a standalone program (although you can also call it from within Lightroom or Photoshop, etc). You don't need to have those programs, or Paint or Gimp, or Aperture, or Affinity or.... it works by itself if you want it to.

Topaz Studio has a set of free tools and some premium ones. The premium ones have a bunch of presets you can use, but you can't unlock the control sliders unless you buy the "Pro" version. For many people, especially those who don't do a lot of post-processing, the free version is more than enough.

Update: Topaz has put their paid adjustments on sale until the end of October. Use this link and enter "Fall25" as the coupon code at checkout to claim your discount. 

Another update: yesterday, Adobe announced the new upgrades to LR/PS — now there's a computer-based LR (called Lightroom Classic CC) and a cloud-based version (Lightroom CC). the "Classic" works like the LR we know and love. The other one stores your images in the cloud so you can access them from other devices as well.  That doesn't work for people with slow internet connections like me.

The price is still the same, but you can buy 1Tb of cloud storage for $10/month more. You can also get a version with LR CC and 1Tb of storage but no PS for the same price.

I'm not installing it until I come back from Wawa.  Just in case...

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Sometimes the Gods smile on you

I just got off the phone with Minden Subaru. I drive a 2011 Subaru Forester and it has 202,000 km on it. I got a letter from corporate Subaru a while ago saying that some vehicles with the Boxer engine exhibit excessive oil consumption. Their standard is 1 L per 10,000 km max.

In Newfoundland this summer. I used to drive as far as I could before I ran out of road in order to get the best pictures. I think this was on a hiking trail outside Brookfield, NL 

I've been complaining since day 1. When I got the letter, I went to Minden Subaru and they started an oil consumption study. Today, after 4,000 km, I had consumed almost 1.5 L.

So they called corporate: then they called me.

SUBARU IS REPLACING MY ENGINE (the short block).
For Free.

New Engine = (almost) New Car.

Now THAT is a good car company. My next car will be a... Subaru.

(PS: they said they'll inspect and re-machine the cylinder heads and upgrade any necessary parts. Too bad I don't get a new air conditioning compressor out of it (not complaining, not complaining!).

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...musings...

Here's an interesting stat (OK, interesting is subjective...)!
 ■ I have about 80,000 clicks on my D800.
 ■ I kept 14,000 of the RAW files for possible post-processing (mind you that also included bracketed files for compositing and a few star sequences... so let's round it down to about 12,000
■ I've edited 3000 of them
■ of those 3000, I've rated 500 of them with "4 stars"
■ of those 3000, I've rated 77 images with 5 stars That's in 3½ years so that exceed's Ansel's 12/year. I need to get more selective.

PS, I just looked at those 77 images and there are about 23 duplicates or variations from the same frame (purposes) so the net is really 54 images in 3½ years.

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Gales of November

It's here! I'm typing this on Thursday morning, and in a couple of days I'm on the road for Lake Superior! I still have a ton of things to do before I leave (one of which is putting the snow tires on!) but I'm really getting excited. I'm looking forward to meeting some new people and sharing some fantastic experiences. There's still one space available if you're a last-minute type person. Visit www.photography.to/gales to get on board.

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So being sick for almost a month has put a crimp in my photo time. I did get out a few times, including a day outing with the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club, so here are some pictures.

Out in my boat "loon hunting" on 12-Mile Lake. These guys are so much fun to shoot. BTW my boat's going to sleep for the winter after one more trip out before I leave. 

A quick trip to Algonquin Park (coughing as I drove!) for some fall scenes. Sadly, no moose spotted but the colours were starting to pop.

Topaz to the rescue. The colours are not as brilliant as previous years but still it's a grand place. 

This picture got a TON of hits on Facebook. I'm really not sure why... 

A black-and-white rendering to bring out the contrast of this stand of birch trees at Costello Lake. I added some Topaz techniques to give it a more ethereal look. 

The Club outing. Here's a selection of a few of the shots from that day. A dozen of us toured some waterfalls and moving water, and generally just hung out and had a great day!

The day started at dawn, on Horseshoe Lake 

Roots at Ritchie Falls.  

then breakfast in Kinmount. Now THAT's a phone! 

Across the river at Three Brothers Falls. I might print this one... 

At the Minden Wild Water Preserve 

Again at the Wild Water Preserve. Has anyone noticed, no waterfalls, no moving water in any of my pictures that day? Hmmm... 

Last weekend I was in Montreal and came across this scene on the way home, just west of Renfrew, Ontario. It was on-and-off pouring rain but it held off long enough to grab a shot or two. 

Trouble was, I didn't have the right lens on the camera. This was as wide a shot as I could do with the 105mm. Enhanced with Topaz Studio and Impression (free, remember! Scroll up for the link). 

In order to make this image, I shot 12 separate frames with the 105mm and stitched them together within Lightroom. The resulting file was HUGE, over 150Mp. Handled by Topaz with ease. I will print this one as a large canvas.

See you in a couple of weeks with pictures from the Rock Island Lodge in Wawa on Lake Gitchigumi (also known as "Lake Superior"!).

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Fall Colours Weekend

So my house is a disaster zone... I haven't even finished unpacking from my Lake Superior trip (thinking I might be going back), but when I get the urge to sit down and write, that's what I do. The house can wait!

Big mistake. BIG mistake.

The good news is, it could have been worse. Bad enough, though.

I think I have a good workflow. But in this case, I slipped up. Here's what happened. When I went to Lake Superior, I didn't bring my primary external drive (actually, I did: but not to use it, just to take it off-site in case my house burned down while I was gone). Also it's full. So I prepared another drive for use, and created a temporary Lightroom Catalog to use on the road.

I have a rule. Only name a file or a folder "temporary" when you're going to use it immediately. So if you see something with that word in the title, you can safely delete it without giving it a thought. You guessed it.

To avoid turning this into a long boring story (too late!), I intended to import all the images into the main catalog when I got home, which I did, but I missed a step: I copied the images over to the primary drive, all right, but not into my regular hierarchical file, instead they resided in a folder called, "Temporary Wawa trip catalog". Get the idea what I did? Yes, I deleted it to make space on the hard drive.

Costco-bound this weekend. I hope the 4 Tb external drives are on sale, I plan to buy two of them. It's a never-ending cycle. Maybe I will have to break down and split up my archives into multiple pieces instead of all-in-one.

Since I automatically make a second copy of the RAW files (on a different drive: the internal one in the computer) on import to Lightroom, I didn't lose the original images. I also didn't lose the Lightroom edits because they're kept in the Lightroom catalog and I had a backup of that too. What I DID lose were all of the external files, the PSD and TIF files that were created when I went out to Photoshop or a plug-in. In other words, the importantest, bestest pictures from the whole trip. I can recreate them, if I can remember what I did and of course by investing the many hours I spent working on them. Grrr.

Why did I tell you this? Just to make you think so you don't make the same misteak. And because I needed a shoulder to cry on!

Speaking of Lightroom...

Adobe just announced "Major Updates to their entire Lightroom and Photoshop product lines". If you subscribe to the CC versions, they're free. If you own the standalones (LR6 or PS CS6), sorry, you're S.O.L.

I just read the features of the updates here. At first glance, Adobe is expanding the utility of the new De-haze algorithm (in LR, PS and ACR) so that you can use them within local tools like the graduated and radial filters and the adjustment brush (yay! What a great tool dehaze is!).

In PS, they've put a lot of work into 3D and mobile app versions. Neither of which I use right now. But you can bet they streamlined other things and addressed a few bugs.

I'm even more convinced that $10/month is the best deal on the planet.

...AND speaking of Lake Superior

The proposed trip to Wawa, "The Gales of November Come Early", is still up in the air. I need three or four more participants to make this work.

If you can make it, you need to tell me NOW. October 22-25, $375 includes everything except getting there. I sent an invitation out to my mailing list, if you missed it or want the details, email me: I haven't put up a web page on this one. Don't delay.

Herding Cats, or
Fall Colours Weekend

A couple of months ago, I used the expression "herding cats" to describe the virtually hopeless task of keeping a diverse bunch of photographers together. At the time there were 7 of us in Kensington Market. This weekend I had almost 20 of them at half a dozen venues up here! Hopeless!

That said, a few people started responding to me, "Captain, my Captain"... that was cool (I miss Robin Williams!).

I was privileged this weekend, to spend time with both the Haliburton Highlands Camera Club and a group from the Toronto Digital Photography Club. The latter had a weekend retreat at Camp Wanakita and asked me to "guide" them during their visit up here. I chose some venues that I thought they'd enjoy visiting and photographing, did a talk for them on Friday night, and invited them to join the HHCC group on our annual trek to Algonquin Park for the fall colours. About 8 of them did in fact join us!

So doing this chronologically, the Friday night talk was so-so. The weather forecast seemed to indicate that we would get some clear nights so I built a "star shoot" into our agenda. Unfortunately the guy upstairs didn't cooperate – he wanted clouds – but I did do the presentation portion of the stars workshop for them on Friday night.

I tried to compress my all-day workshop into an hour (those who know me know that I didn't make it in an hour! As usual, I talk too much...). In fact, it was good practice for the session I'm supposed to do in Oshawa this winter, and I'll make some necessary changes. I'll have to incorporate more pictures in the presentation, and in different places.

It's a technical topic: "here are all the things you have to think about if you want to shoot stars successfully..." and also due to the late hour, people were somewhat 'itchy' as time went on. I'll fix it for next time.

Saturday, we went to the White Water Preserve, the Hawk Lake Log Chute and Buttermilk Falls. It was a fast water day! A couple of Kayakers graced us with their presence at the whitewater, the forest trails were delightful at the Log Chute, and a couple of animals made it interesting at Buttermilk! We never did get in a group picture (see "Herding Cats", above!) and I wasn't particularly taking pictures, just mentoring and helping as a guide, so I only got a few:

"A roof over my head"! This was at the Log Chute, where they grow their fungi big! And I've always been considered a fun-guy... Just kidding, composite, of course. Genny told me where this mushroom was, coincidentally where Liz Gallo shot some a few years ago when she was blonde! (LOL). The little red leaf was there, I swear I didn't set it up! Genny, you did, right?

At Buttermilk Falls. This Great Blue Heron posed for us endlessly! 

A mink, doing whatever it is that minks do, right at the top of the falls above the dam. Fall Colours in the reflections... 

On Sunday, we went to the Lambs and Ivy antique barn for a change of pace, then over to Wintergreen for lunch, which everyone enjoyed.

At Lambs and Ivy. A four-shot focus stack with the 105 macro lens, then Topaz Impression 

This was actually enroute in the morning. It shows the state of the colours in the region this weekend. Still not at their peak! 

At a display in back of Wintergreen. I love window lighting! 

Monday was Algonquin Park Day. First came dawn at Raven Lake

Not much "dawn"! It even took some processing to see the clouds. Grey day, but that's not bad when you're shooting the colours!

We then went to Marsh Falls on the Oxtongue River. But I'm going to show you that picture at the bottom of this post... After that we went for breakfast, then entered the Park and some of us went up Arowhon Pines Road, one of my favourite spots! OK, it was my idea...

Last year, the colours were yellow and gold. This year, still green. Obviously gorgeous! 

The tour busses have found this road. Don't get me started on how inconsiderate they (or their passengers – every one with an iphone or ipad) are. I had to stand out in the road to prevent them from whipping past us at warp speed, spewing clouds of dust and dirt and threating to mow us down and shave off our car doors. 

We got the grey jays (whiskeyjacks) to come out and play again. Suet is apparently like catnip for them! All of the ones we saw were banded 

After lunch, some of us rounded up the trip with a walk around the Spruce Bog Boardwalk...

As Van Gogh might have painted it 

...and a stop at Killarney Lodge just to shoot their red canoes on the beach.

I was tired. So I sat down and shot this (there was another canoe there, but through the magic of Photoshop... 

Shot of the day

I saved this one for last. It's Marsh Falls, on the Oxtongue River where it meets Highway 35. Jack March, my neighbour and fellow club member, set this up for us, including making little direction signs and putting them up so our people could find the place. When we got there, he was just coming up from the falls, soaking wet. Seems "Marsh Falls" is also "March's Fall"! The rocks were very slippery. He didn't get hurt and he saved his camera, just bruised his ego!

I didn't venture down to the very bottom where he fell. But I did manage to capture this image:

The right shutter speed is essential to capture the essence of a waterfall. For a big expanse like a lake, you need several seconds. For a small trickle, a second or two. For wild water like the kayak spot on the Gull, 1/8 to 1/15 second. Here, I chose 1/4 second, although I shot a variety of speeds just to make sure. I want some texture in my shots, not just a featureless milky white.

In this case I was lucky that I could achieve this speed without stopping the lens all the way down (and introducing diffraction effects, blurring the sharp rocks). It was at the limit, though: 1/4 second at f/16, ISO 50. I could have put the polarizing filter on to bring it down one or more additional stops, or of course my ND3.0 filter which would take it down 10 full stops. I think this is one of my favourite waterfall shots ever. Hope you like it too!

Onward and upward! I suppose I should clean my house now... or I could just pour myself a scotch, put my feet up, and chill. What to do, what to do...

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Screaming Heads

Proposal to affect our beloved White Water Preserve

Orillia Power is proposing to build a power generating station at the Minden Wildwater Preserve. I'm not going to go into all the details, you can find them elsewhere, but there is NO DOUBT it will affect this fabulous natural waterway, where the PanAm Games kayak and canoe slalom events were hosted, unique in the world, and a natural treasure.

I wrote a letter to the Minden Hills Town Council who are considering the proposal. I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears:

There are many arguments for and against the project but I defy you to find one supporting it that does not have a financial aspect. Money will be made if this project goes ahead, by OPG, by those hired to do the work, by others, and likely by the Town of Minden. Fair enough.

I have failed to find even one argument against the project that has anything to do with money. Instead they centre around changes that will affect this precious resource; not only the waterway itself but also the lakes and waters both up- and down-stream. Those who use the white waters for recreation – the kayakers, the fishermen and women, even those who simply wander the banks of the river, explore the caves, watch the trilliums grow in the spring, enjoy nature at its best. There’s no denying that these gifts will be affected if this project goes ahead.

As a photographer and an artist with ties to many outside the community, I often get requests, “I’m thinking of coming up to Minden Hills for a visit, what do you recommend that I see and do?”, number one on my list is to visit the Minden Wild Water Preserve. By far. The gnarly tree roots, the warblers and cedar waxwings flitting through the trees, the pristine trails along the water’s edge… Even in February! The rushing water, leaving filigreed caps of ice on the rocks (the original “Iced Cap!”) Even before the PanAm Games, it was one of the few things that people knew about our area. “You live in Minden? Isn’t that where that fabulous white water falls is located?”. Now, after the event, it’s a calling card for visitors from all over the world to come see our natural beauty.

Who has stood on the side of the Gull river and not thought, “Wow. This is a magical place”?

And now there’s a proposal to take it all away, or at least make it less magical. Shame on Minden Council if you approve this project which will affect our natural treasure for the sake of the almighty dollar.

New Banner Picture

I replaced the banner picture. For the record, here's the old one, since otherwise it disappears into cyberspace!

Topaz ReMask special offer!

The fine folks at Topaz Labs are in the process of updating one of their most effective plugins, "ReMask". If anyone has struggled with making a selection in Photoshop (frizzy, blowaway hair is the best example, but any irregular shape also poses challenges), ReMask is an intuitive, quick and extremely effective tool.

ReMask is designed on one simple idea: To create the best quality mask with minimal input. By using ReMask’s simple 3-color tri-map technology, users have the power to quickly and easily extract even the toughest elements — hair, foliage, and transparent materials — in their photos. The new updates to ReMask 5 make it the most powerful masking software on the market. The two biggest additions are standalone capabilities and background replacement tools.

ReMask 5 works as a standalone program now, in addition to being a plugin. This means no host program is required and Lightroom integration is available. ReMask 5 also allows you to replace and edit the background of your masked image without leaving the program. Choose from transparent, solid color, or image backgrounds.

If you already have ReMask 4, the update is free. If not, you can take advantage of the sale that's now on and purchase it for $49.95, a $20 savings, between now and September 18th!

Here's the link to the ReMask product page. You can try it out for free... but complete your purchase before the 18th to take advantage of the sale price. At checkout, enter the code. "GetReMask5". 

Screaming Heads

Note: this paragraph and picture added after the fact. I realized I never posted a picture of a "Screaming Head", and my intro was rather weak. 

Sometimes an artist's vision is so far out of the mainstream, it defies description. Peter Camani's Screaming Heads project is like that. You have to see the place to get it.

The club had an outing to "Screaming Heads" near Burk's Falls. If you've never heard of it, it's an off-the-wall place, conceived in the creative mind of Peter Camani. You can read more about it here, or Google it to see a variety of videos and other links. There's no simple way to describe it, check out the links. On September 18th weekend, by the way, the "Harvest Festival" will be there, an event which Peter describes as something like Burning Man (Google that if you've never heard of it either!). He expects over 3000 people.

Peter Camani describing some of the features inside his Midlothian Castle home 

As a challenge, I decided to shoot the entire visit with one lens only, my new Nikkor 105mm f/2.8 macro. I changed lenses only once, to do the group shot because I needed a wider angle. Otherwise everything you're about to see was shot with the one lens (although I did crop many of the pictures).

Our group. Missing is Philip Brown who was there but he disappeared sometime in the morning. Hope the witches in the castle didn't get him! I borrowed Jack's neat lightweight MeFoto tripod, set up the camera and used the TriggerTrap for the first time, controlling it with my iPhone. I set it to take a shot every 5 seconds, I did half a dozen or so before wandering back to shut it off.  

Many of my shots were enhanced using various Photoshop tools, such as the Flame Generator here (there were no flames in these old lanterns!). Then I used Topaz Impression to create a painting.

Another painted image (Topaz Impression, "Turner Afternoon" preset). This is essentially a full-frame image, I was challenged by the 105mm lens and couldn't get back far enough to include the whole canoe.  

You could either walk around the pond, or take the human-powered 'ferry' across! Amin is providing the muscle for this crossing. It doesn't take much – I had crossed myself earlier so I could get this shot and I sent the ferry back under the power of a little 5-year old boy! I toned this one similar to Dianne Stender's style. 

Cement and other sculptures dotted the landscape. Enhanced in Topaz Impression, "Impasto" preset. 

Eyes cut in the sculptures made wonderful frames to shoot through! I took some pictures of Chris and Holly looking through some eyeholes, but others have posted those so I didn't.

I did say it was a macro lens, right? So I had to shoot this grasshopper... 

...and this wasp or hornet gathering nectar on a goldenrod bloom. 

Amin and Gord hanging out. The 105mm gives an excellent perspective and by the way, it's really sharp! Amin is wearing the new HHCC baseball cap, the shipment came in a couple of days ago if you're a club member.

Christine struck a fashion model pose on one of the sculptures. 

...and so did Holly. 

And Wendy. Very, very rare for me: I did NOTHING to this shot, it's straight out of the camera, not even cropped! 

Another painted image in the style of Degas. I think the composition really works here!

The castle is guarded by this little gnome, hidden in the wall near the gate. At least he was sheltered from the rain (yes, we got caught!). 

And finally, one more shot, taken in their lush garden:

You know I did a little work on this one in Photoshop and Topaz! Told you this is a sharp lens! 

So an excellent day's outing, capped off by a great early dinner on a patio overlooking the river in Huntsville before the drive home. 

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And so it begins!

A new year is upon us. What will it bring? 

It is winter in the Highlands... when the wise man stays inside to edit his images instead of going out in the -30° temperatures and vicious windchill to take more pictures. Nobody ever called me wise...

So there's a mix here, of musings and images! 

To start things off, here's the new banner for this blog (I change it every now and then). 

I took this from out on the ice, between my dock and the Red Umbrella Inn. After some other edits, I used the "Turner Afternoon" preset to capture this impression of the southern shoreline 

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I came across this inspiring list the other day and saved it to my desktop. I spent some time searching for it so I could properly attribute the list, but failed. The deepest I managed to get was to an image on Pinterest. Anyway, here it is, "author unknown":

Rules to live by? I admit it's a lot easier when you don't have to go to work every day... 

Gallery Exhibit

As mentioned earlier, there's an exhibit at the Agnes Jamieson Gallery in Minden: on until February 7th. 25 outstanding photographic images, all available for sale but they'll be gone by the time the exhibit ends, so get there early. This is a juried exhibition, pictures selected by the Curator of the museum (Laurie Carmount). The gallery is located on Bobcaygeon Road in Minden, Ontario. If you're not from this area and you're interested in any framed (or unframed) images, let's talk...

Note: my images are individually hand signed but not numbered: which makes them unique... 

 

  
From the "Sporadic Musings" department...

Early Adoption 

I was thinking about the pros and cons of being an "early adopter". I've been one from time to time over the years (less often now because I need to watch my pennies more).  As an "early adopter" you get in before they get the bugs out! But you do have the "latest and greatest"!

Take my iPad, for example. I bought a Gen1 really early and loved having it. But in their infinite wisdom, Apple decided to keep coming up with updated operating systems which won't run on the old iPad 1 (best I can do is iOS 5). Because the app suppliers follow suit, a lot of apps won't run on my iPad. Facebook crashes every time I click a video in it. Time for a new one, I think. But if I had waited for Gen2, I'd still be in business.

I also "early adopted" a Sony BetaMax VCR many years ago. 'nuff said?

I guessed wrong with my D600 too (insurmountable technical issues). I was lucky enough to be able to swap it for a D800. Of course 6 months later along came the D750...  

It occurs to me that one derives great satisfaction from having the latest and greatest, but only for a short time until the rest of the world catches up. Then the next generation comes along and suddenly you're behind! And no way to catch up unless you have bottomless pockets...

This is different from putting off buying something because something better is in the wings. There's always something bigger and better coming along if we're talking about technology: but if you wait until the absolute best camera or computer or car comes along, you'll be without one until the day you die.

PanAm Games

I drove by the Minden Wildwater Preserve the other day, site of the PanAm Games this summer. It's hard to imagine how they're going to accommodate so many people there. It doesn't make sense to enlarge the little parking lot for a one-week event. And there's room for MAYBE 100 spectators on the riverbank. (in fairness, there's the other side of the river too: but room for fewer people and physically quite challenging to get to, so I wonder about liability issues). 

I also heard that people up here are thinking they can rent their homes and cottages for the week for hugely exorbitant sums of money. Wishful thinking, I expect. 

My application is in for press accreditation, I'm sure they're going to severely limit the numbers. They responded to my email inquiry saying, "you should be hearing from the Olympic Committee shortly." Stay tuned...

Here's a pencil sketch of what the river looked like on New Year's Eve. Rendered using John Stevenson's complex action for Photoshop CC and Topaz Impression, with a bit of dodging and burning and tweaking.

And so it begins...

The ice fishing season is under way. As of yesterday, there was 8" of ice on 12-Mile lake. And because of the weather conditions in the past week or two, it's good, solid clear ice. This thickness is more than enough to support a car. Certainly I had no worries about driving my ATV out there this afternoon.

I had these two kids pose with the ice blocks their father had cut from under the ice fishing hut. I added some saturation to the blue of the ice so you could see it better, and the kids give it a sense of scale. You can see the real colour on the second block in the image.

Here's their vehicle, a Polaris side-by-side ATV. Some of my neighbours take winter seriously! 

Another neighbour has this beautiful ATV. I was struck by two things when I did this image out on the ice this afternoon. First of all, the smooth delicate colour transition in the sky (although I admit I increased the saturation for this shot) and the awesome vehicle my neighbour acquired for riding out to the ice fishing huts and clearing his snow. It's a Bombardier Can-Am side-by-side ATV with bogie-driven tracks and I'm guessing this can go ANYWHERE. 

I used a Topaz Impression "watercolour" preset selectively on this image, and added a motion blur to the background. I was trying to convey a sense of power out on the isolated ice surface of 12-Mile Lake.

UPDATE: I wrote the above a week ago. The banner image at the top of this post was shot today, and so was the following shot which I have repetitiously titled

"and so it begins"! There will be a couple dozen more Ice Fishing huts out there soon 

And last one for today:

I'm not sure why I'm taken with this picture.You have to blow it up to appreciate it (click on it). The subtle textures and brushstrokes of the Cezanne preset (modified) match the lighting and gradation of the scene. I'm debating printing this to canvas.

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