Newfoundland Post #4 – Trinity

I've been telling people I'd consider moving to Newfoundland. Certainly, the price of real estate is right, at least outside the major cities. The scenery is awesome, if you like the outdoors and the ocean is your thing, this is the place to be.

Yesterday, in Bonavista, I talked with several people with that in mind. I talked with the owner of this house right on the end of the peninsula, his back yard abuts the ocean and he's a few minutes from downtown.

The owner moved here from Ontario — the Peterborough./Lindsay area, in fact — about 10 years ago. Loves it, wouldn't go back.  He told me that a property like this would sell for around $150,000, although he would want more for his because he doesn't want to sell and had done extensive renovations.

In fact this area is a "heritage area" and most of the houses have been brought up to high standards, inside and out. I'm standing with my back to the ocean in the back yard of the house next door. It's even bigger and the owner has lived there a long time. He says he's 78, won't move, and his son, who is a high school math teacher (I met him: he looks like he's 25 but he's 50!) He will retire in a couple of years and will eventually live there.

The house to my right is owned by the hospital corporation and is used as a residence for doctors and their families, as is the one across the street. Both of those houses are new and upgraded, and would go for more money, although a house across the street would be less because of the land value.

This is a Google Earth shot from in front of the same house. The blue house is out of the picture to the right (although it was white when Google shot it)). The one on the left is the doctor's house. We're looking Northwest at the ocean. The town of Bonavista is behind us. If you're interested, click this link and you can zoom out to see exactly where I was. 

So the town has a modern hospital, two (!) grocery stores, a quaint and beautiful downtown area, a population of about 3500 (I would have thought it was more. But there are no high-rises or apartments here!), the people are super-friendly,  the scenery is spectacular. High speed internet, I had 5-bars phone service right there... here's a shot just down the street:

My new blog header photo! 

It's a two minute walk to "Neil's Yard" Café and Crêperie

Neil's from London, England, been here since 2011. The building itself is a heritage building owned by the city but leased to him. 

Mmmm, Cheesecake and Café Americano. If I moved there, I'd have to get them to do a chocolate version. 

There's only one drawback mentioned by everyone I talked to.

— WINTER —

You have to be prepared for it, they all said. The rumours of 30 foot snowbanks are greatly exaggerated and the snow clearing is first class. It doesn't get as cold as we get at home. The big rock seawall keeps the ocean at bay. But it's just a little bit WINDY. Houses are all built to take it, some solid, some designed to go with the flow. Neil told me the North wind off the ocean last winter peaked at 155 kph. That's 100 miles an hour, folks. Is that a hurricane shelter at the back of the blue house up above?

Twillingate is a bit smaller (pop. 2250) but it's much more weather-friendly and its only industry is tourism. Similar prices...

I suppose one could buy a less fancy home and just use it as a summer property. Hmmm.

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There still be icebergs here. But a local told me that this is probably the last of it.

I used Topaz Impression to "paint" this one much like Georgia O'Keeffe might have. Although, I doubt she would have aligned the horizon with the top of the building. Getting more sophisticated in my old age. I might try my hand at painting this scene in oil. This is on the way to Cape Bonavista lighthouse. 

I think that's one of the icebergs we visited on board the Zodiac the other day. The sea was a lot rougher then!

This isn't the same one I was on. Ours was bigger, as I posted last time. Shot from the lighthouse. 

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There be WHALES here!

And I thought shooting icebergs was addictive. I'll post more whale pictures in the next blog, because I saw more down in the Bay Bulls area, but here are a couple of shots:

One of my first glimpses of these monsters, from the shore in English Harbour, near Trinity. This is a humpback whale, they grow to something around 50 feet (15 meter) in length. The whales were circling, driving a school of capelin into a bay where they could feed. 

And feed they did, coming headfirst out of the water (it's called "broaching", massive mouth agape.  

Passengers on this Zodiac were treated with a whale broaching right next to their boat. These pictures were all shot from the shore. 

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I took my leave of the Trinity/Bonavista area and headed south to Witless Bay, just below St. John's.

I like to venture off the main road. In this case, I drove toward "Little Heart's Ease" on a peninsula in Trinity Bay and I kept going until the last little outport on the end, called "Southport". 

Colourful house abound in Newfoundland, with the ubiquitous fishing boat. A bit off the beaten track, even for me! 

Next post, from Witless Bay, south of  St. Johns. Stay tuned!

— 30 —

Winter at last!

from the 'sporadic musings' department...

I love photography but I think I love music more.

If there is such a thing as reincarnation, I want to come back as a musician. How to explain...

There's a certain joy you feel when you see a painting or a photo but hearing a piece of music that moves you is a whole other thing. Pictures don't bring tears to my eyes or that feeling in my heart that music does. Perhaps these are the ramblings of an aging man but I wish I could have expressed myself with music more. I can't play any instrument well. Not keyboard, guitar or bass, all of which I've had flings with over the years, and I haven't been able to sing since my surgeries a decade ago affected my vocal cords (come on. You've heard of "Simon, Garfunkel and Springer", haven't you? So now I just listen and try not to imagine playing.

I so enjoy virtuosity. Your list probably won't agree with all my choices (yeah, you probably WON'T if you're younger than I, as most of you are!) but can you argue when I mention Oscar Peterson? Or Barbra Streisand? What about Stevie Ray Vaughan? Or Tommy Emmanuel? Or specific renditions of certain songs, like Neil Larsen on the Hammond B3 behind Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah"? Haley Reinhart doing "House of the Rising Sun" (here) (or "Moanin'" with Casey Abrams), or Jena Irene covering Elvis's "Can't Help Falling in Love" on American Idol (here). I'd better stop now or I'll be listing songs and artists forever!

You realize that writing these paragraphs took HOURS, of course. I had to take time out to listen to some of these songs (I even invested an hour watching a Streisand concert on YouTube, here).

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I love/hate Facebook

There are lots of reasons to hate it. Many of them obvious. I'm not going to dwell on those. I think I've minimized them by limiting my "friends" list to people I know or fellow photographers whose work I admire. I'm active in several groups, but only a handful of them where I've enabled notification, so if I understand it correctly, the bulk of what I see in my newsfeed comes from those. Again populated by people I know or respect (major exception: the Photoshop and Lightroom Group where there are people whom I can help). For the most part, I've learned to simple scroll past posts that I consider nonsense and noise. Occasionally I get drawn it, which is why I hate it!

But Facebook is a resource for knowledge and information. There are countless people out there researching and finding and sharing things that you wouldn't find on your own. Great music and images and stories and learning. One case in point is an article I read today, written by Tavis Leaf Glover and shared by Vincent Versace who has a lot of insight into making pictures.

Here's a link to the article itself. I encourage you to read it, especially if you're a photographer.
http://petapixel.com/2016/01/30/10-myths-about-the-rule-of-thirds/

Here's the comment I made after reading the article:

Good article. ALMOST makes me want to turn on my left brain again, Although I agree that the rule of thirds is hackneyed and there are other ways to compose an image, it serves the purpose of making the photographer at least THINK about composition before snapping the shutter. 

 It's easier to deconstruct an image than to construct one. One has to wonder if the classical artists were consciously using various composition rules when they created their art: I think not. I think they unconsciously or subconsciously recognized how to achieve the desired effect, that's what makes – made – them artists. Today we have the opportunity to see tens of thousands of images and create a mindset that subconsciously tells us what we like and what we don't like and we apply it to our vision as we look through the viewfinder. 

 The article did make me think. It made me finally go out and order Michael Freeman's book "The Photographer's Eye". It reminded me to think about balancing elements and gestalt theory. It put me back on the path of pre-visualization. Give me another 70 years and maybe I'll be an artist. 

One of the things I don't necessarily agree with is Glover's caveat, "get it right in camera, don't crop and waste valuable pixels..." (paraphrasing). That's why I bought a D800. It has loads of pixels to spare. Often I don't have time to compose images in the field (certainly not when it involves living moving things!) so I try to include all the essential elements to extract later.

Now I'm almost afraid to post pictures since I'm doubting my composition ability! Not every picture has to be a piece of art, though. However they all have to tell a story!

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Gales of November

This is another rendering of the pano that I shot in September. This time I edited it using the new "Boundary Warp" feature in Lightroom CC 2015.4. It rendered quickly and beautifully but only from the middle exposures in my bracketed shots.

This is a 360° pano image that consists of 6 original images shot with a 17mm lens on my full-frame D800. I was able to increase the coverage of this picture by about one-third by increasing the boundary warp to 100%. By the way, it's 94 megapixels in size, 22k x 4.2k pixels. LR rendered it in about one minute. I pixel-peeped at 100% and I'm unable to find a visible seam. Colour me impressed. When you blow it up, you can see every grain of sand, every pine needle. That's due to the superb lens and of course, the D800. Obviously you're not seeing the detail here on the blog! I toned the image in Lightroom and used Topaz Clarity to bring out the clouds. No cropping, no other edits.

If you click on the image it blows up only to the 800 pixel width that I rendered for this blog. However I have also uploaded a larger version here. Still only 4000 pixels wide (to keep it a reasonable size) but depending on your browser, if you click in the picture, you can see some of the detail.

The October 20-23 session is FULL. Amazingly fast! So fast that planning is under way for a second session a week later, October 27-30 (we still can't wait for November!).

It's an inexpensive outing in a spectacular place. Check it out.

As I write this, I haven't yet updated the web page to reflect that fact, and David hasn't put the booking page in place for the second weekend. I need to know who's interested in coming so we can make it happen, so please take a moment to email me and tell me if you're thinking about it. I'm giving some thought to gearing the second session more to 'intermediate' than to 'advanced' photographers, so more tutorials, more hands-on coaching. What do you think? Tell me!

Most of the information, other than dates, is exactly like the original weekend session, which you can read about here: www.photography.to/gales.

update: It's official and the site is up! Go have a look!

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Winter's here

I was going to say it's a weird winter, but it's just a little late. Last day of January as I write this, and  ice fishing – the mainstay of the winter economy up here in the Highlands – is just getting underway. Another snowmobiler died yesterday when he went through the ice so we all have to think about being careful out there.

Ice racing is happening in Minden. I spent an hour or so there yesterday and if you can, you should drop by. It's at the fairgrounds on Bobcaygeon Road. It's hard to capture the feeling with still photographs, you have to experience these guys driving faster on an ice-covered track than most of us can on dry pavement.

The lines on the ice surface give this a sense of motion, even though the shot was taken at 1/1000 second to freeze the action. 

The driver in the orange and black car at right was head-and-shoulders better than anyone else on the ice. In fact, he held back at the start line, giving everyone half-a-lap lead and not only won the race but pulled over near the end to let people catch up and unlap themselves. I'm told it was Tom Prentice, but I don't know for sure.

Some drivers weren't as good, or at least were driving beyond their abilities. Good thing they had snowbanks! I saw one car climb halfway up an embankment but nobody had an accident while I was there. 

Fender benders don't count. Imagine driving 100kph on a pure ice track, competing for position and trying to pass (or not be passed) in a chicane, while sliding sideways in a full 4-wheel drift. These are street studs, by the way, not racing studs (which are much longer). It's interesting that these are the exact winter tires I have on my car (less the studs)!

This is one of the drivers. I'm sorry, I didn't get his name but I thought the picture is compelling. So I don't know who he is either! Made you look. He said, "I thought you were taking pictures of my car, not me!" I was... He said, "be careful not to scratch the paint on my car!" LOL 

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Picture of the week

I ventured out on the ice on 12-Mile Lake a couple of days ago, on my 4-wheeler. I was assured by people who seem to know, that there's an 8" (20cm) thickness of hard water, almost enough to support a car, but some spots are thinner than others, wherever there's moving water. After 8 years here, I basically know where that is, but still I was being cautious. That's my ATV in the photo.

I want to comment on the composition. As you'll see below, when I shot the image I had the horizon in the middle but that's because when I shot it, I wasn't sure if I wanted to add drama by including foreground or feature the sky. So I left room to crop. 

This is one of the original images, SOOC ("Straight out of the Camera"). This was one of five, in fact it was the darkest one because I had my exposure comp set for +1. The finished one was an HDR merge in LR, some toning adjustments including de-haze, small crop to move the horizon, graduated screen toning and colour temperature/saturation adjustment on the sky, some spot toning on the ATV and hut, burn in on the bottom ATV tracks, that's pretty well it. Oh, and a small vignette because Ansel Adams said that a picture isn't finished until the edges are burned a little. About 15 minutes in LR, never took it to Photoshop. 

— 30 —

Chains upon my feet...

...from the "musings" department

I've said this before: if you want to learn how to set up a photo, watch TV. Or movies.

Last night it struck me again. I was doing something on the computer and although I don't normally watch NCIS Los Angeles (I do admit to watching the original NCIS and New Orleans, though), it was on in the background behind me. I turned around and saw a scene where the curly blond haired guy was sitting, talking to the old, short lady (his boss? – told you I don't watch it!) – and the scene made me come to a stop. It was outstanding.

The subjects were perfectly lit – they were in a dark room, on a staircase, with a doorway in the background and some light that appeared to be sunlight dappling the floor in front of the doorway. The lighting, the composition, the depth of field, the textures, were absolutely outstanding. If you took a still from that shot and entered it in an international Salon level competition, you would win, hands down. Then she walked away, through the dappled light, while the camera stayed focused on the guy's face. What a visual story!

But it's not just this shot, it's pretty well ALL of them. Go switch on your TV. Doesn't matter what you watch, a talk show, a sit-com, a commercial, a movie, a football or hockey game: it's perfect. Look at it and try to figure out why!

These are the big guys. The people who make big bucks doing photography and videography. They have unlimited budgets, all the equipment you dream about, and a staff that includes set designers, lighting experts, makeup artists, etc., as well as graphic designers and people who sit there and design and storyboard the shots. Do they do a better job than you can with shot setup, design and execution? You bet they do, better than I can or anyone that I know.

Sure there are differences between stills and video.  So hit "Pause" on your PVR and look at the still. Is there any question in your mind what the subject is of the picture? Is the subject in the middle or off-centre? Is it too flat or too contrasty? What about colour balance? Is it in focus? Is the exposure too bright or too dark? I can't see what you're looking at but I'm pretty sure I know the answers to those questions.

Use it as a learning experience. Sure, you don't have a team to set up your shots, you don't have an unlimited equipment budget... but there are tons of things they do that you could also do. One of those things is to stop and study a scene (if you're doing landscapes) BEFORE you press the shutter, even before you take out your camera. It's called "Pre-Visualization".

99% of the pictures I see, whether on Social Media, in competitions... would be instantly rejected by these big guys. Everyone is trying to emulate them, with little success (I was going to say 'varying success' but a 99% reject rate is not 'varying'). I may not be good enough to get in that 1% very often, but that isn't going to stop me from trying. I need to take more time to think about it. How about you?

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Gales of November Workshop

The Rock Island Lodge 

I've been invited to several workshops this year. Exotic places like Cuba, Costa Rica, Africa, Iceland, Yellowstone. You know what they all have in common? They're all THOUSANDS of dollars. US dollars to boot. The Gales workshop IS in an exotic location: the Canadian Wilderness, on the shores of Lake Superior, where the Group of Seven wandered and expressed what they saw in their art. And it's NOT thousands of dollars.

There's only room for a dozen people (although if demand is high, I can do a second session). It's already about half full. Think about it. If there's any chance you might be able to make it up to  Wawa next October, PLEASE go to this webpage and take two minutes to do the short questionnaire and leave me your name so I can keep you in the loop.

PS: I'm still working on the web page. Bottom line? It's a 3 or 4 day field experience for intermediate or advanced photographers who want some fresh ideas and an opportunity to experience some outstanding landscapes and express themselves in the company of other talented people.

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Topaz Labs year-end special

They're at it again! Topaz Labs is offering a 35% discount on any and all products until the year-end. If you've been waiting to take the plunge or add some more of their outstanding plug-ins, now's the time!

Some of the newer Topaz products require a higher graphics functionality to work. If you're not sure it will work on your computer, download the free trial before finalizing your purchase. Be sure to complete the transaction before the year-end, though.

Here's the link to their site. Enter the coupon code "TOPAZ2015" at checkout to get the discount.

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Triggertrap update

They've been listening! I love my TriggerTrap but one thing I've run into is the drain on the iPhone battery. Even if you turn the brightness all the way down, you still only get about 90 minutes out of an iPhone6. So I ordered (but haven't yet received) an external battery pack for the phone. This is not something TriggerTrap can fix (other than to remind you to turn your screen brightness down when doing time lapses).

But they did address the other issue, which is that brightly coloured and white screen glow which can affect your images if you're not careful. So their update 4.1 includes a "night mode". Much better!

Also they included a ND filter conversion calculator in the Timed Release mode: just enter your base shutter speed, the ND filter strength, and TT does the rest! I had printed out a table on a laminated card, then I lost it somewhere... no more mental arithmetic.

If you want to know how TriggerTrap works without paying anything, simply download the app (for iPhone or Android) for free and try it! To make it work with your camera, you need the hardware, which you can buy from a European or North American source. Free shipping until the end of the year! Here's the link to their site. There's also a bunch of useful video tutorials on their site under Inspiration→howto. Give it a looksee!

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Are we having fun yet?

It sure is a lot easier (for me) in Photoshop and Impression! MUCH harder with brushes and canvas and oil paints! Two of my oil painting works-in-process.

Chippewa Falls, Lake Superior. It's a tighter crop than the last version, from much the same vantage point as J.E.H. MacDonald painted it. I didn't paint this one plein air, I came back to it and did another painting. This is oil paint on board, 9x12.

South Lake Road, Minden Ontario. This is in process; I want to change what the tree looks like but have to wait for the paint to dry a bit before I go over it. You saw a black-and-white version of the original photo in last week's blog, I'm happy with a lot of this image, especially the foreground, but not the tree.  Painted in oils on canvas paper, 9x12.

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Winter has finally arrived

...at least I think so. The forecast for Monday is warm and rainy, so I'm not counting my chickens. But the world looks so much nicer with a blanket of clean white snow than muddy brown!

I did take the opportunity to get my ATV out with the snowplow for the first time this year. We had about 4" of snow (I was going to say about 6" but then I would be open for all those off-colour jokes...). And new this year, "Chains upon my Feet". What a difference! In fact, my 4WD wasn't working yesterday (it's mysteriously back today) and I actually had difficulty on a slippery surface until I put on the chains! It feels unstoppable (I know enough not to get too cocky, though).

Putting the chains on wasn't too difficult, although I threw one after my first attempt. It was easier when I figured out that using the motorcycle jack to lift the tire off the ground was the trick. I need to get some heavier duty bungee cords to hold them tight. And with them on, no playing around doing donuts or they're likely to come off and damage something.

I didn't do much to this image. Almost straight out of camera... well it is a 5-exposure HDR processed in Nik HDR Efex Pro 2, I did a radial filter to add haze to the background, then I added the yellow light to the headlights which were actually off... all right, I'm lying, but really only about 10 minutes work, all in Lightroom!

This is the original SOOC 

And this shot is just the way I saw it... in my mind!  Among other things, I added a masked motion blur layer to give it a sense of motion (I know, doesn't make sense since it's obviously not being driven), blurred the background and treated it with Topaz Impression, then Texture Effects to give it a vintage feel 

"Waiting for Hard Water". Every year I do a picture of the ice fishing huts at the Red Umbrella Inn, waiting to go out on the ice. Well as you can see, despite the fact that it's December 20th, no ice yet. I think it'll be some weeks before they can go out, but I could be wrong. This is one of their smaller, older huts; the one at left in the foreground is brand new and 4x the size.  

— 30 —

Paying it Forward

A challenge for you

I was recently given a Tim Horton's gift card. So I went into Tim Horton's, asked for the manager and gave her the gift card. I told her to use it for people who come in who need it more than I do. I asked, "Do you know whom I mean"? She said, "I know exactly whom you mean". So do you.

It's just a small thing but I hope I made a few people a little happier for a moment. If half the readers of this blog did the something similar then a whole lot of people might get a little smile. Feels good. Be in that half. Pay it forward.

New Banner

I changed the banner last week and since some people can't see it, depending on how they view this blog, here it is:

As I worked on this image – I've created different versions of it, cropped a variety of ways – I realize how strong my attraction is to images with lots of negative space. If you look through my work over time, I've done a lot of images with absolutely nothing in the background, usually white but a number of black images too. And although "fill the frame" is a mantra of mine, I'm learning that wider shots that include more background, tell the story much better.

Topaz Labs February Special

Topaz Labs Plug-ins for Photoshop and Lightroom are brilliant. I'm addicted to their products, particularly Impression which I find outstanding and frequently include in my workflow.

You can buy individual products or the complete bundle and if you enter “faczen” in the discount coupon box at checkout, you get a 15% discount. You can also do a 30 day full free trial on any and all of their products. (highly recommended for Topaz Impression and Topaz Glow: they don’t run on all systems because they need higher functioning graphics cards. Try before you buy!).

There are larger discounts from time to time on specific products, for instance Topaz ReStyle is on sale for $20 off ($40 instead of $60) in February, using this coupon code: ‘febrestyle’. Here’s the link to their site (which includes my affiliate code), or click the Topaz box at the right.

ReStyle is a plugin designed to alter the colors in your image with its unique array of toning effects.

The technology behind ReStyle uses a cutting-edge process to map the color and tone statistics from a source image.

With this, creative possibilities extend to many inspiring choices. Restyle is a useful tool for the photographer or artist looking to alter the overall feeling and mood of his or her image. The program can even be used to revamp the tone of graphics and textures.

I used Topaz Impression to finish this image that I shot last week. The "Georgia O'Keeffe" preset helped me produce the rich blend of pastel colours in the water as well as the textures in the snow. FWIW, this was a 5-shot HDR bracket. I pasted the ducks back in because they were ghosted in the HDR (on purpose: I was trying to smooth the water). 

Here's another shot from the same day, same spot (well, I was in a different position). I startled these Goldeneyes into taking off and used the Impression "Impasto" preset for the brush stroke effect. 

These shots were taken at roughly the same spot, but on a different day! I say "these shots" because this is a composite of two images, plus some background manipulation. There was in fact a wild turkey right where this one is in this shot but he was in a less flattering pose, so I replaced him!

Snowy Owl

Thank you, Kathy. Thank you, Kathy. In case I forget to say it, "Thank you, Kathy"!

When she put up some Snowy Owl pictures I said how envious I was. She texted me the next day and asked if I wanted to go shoot some. You don't have to ask me twice, but Kathy (McKelvey-Brown) has magic eyes. She sees stuff nobody else can. Grey owls in grey trees. Turtles. Ducks. So I figured I'd never see them. I was half right.

She told me where she had seen them the day before and when we drove there, (2 cars), she pulled over. I got out to talk to her and she said, "didn't you see the owl? It was in that tree, and when you got out of your car it flew away". Rats. I never saw it. Then she said, "There it is!". A white spec in a tree 300 meters away. Magic eyes.

Cutting to the chase: I got the hang of it and had at least half-a-dozen sightings, two of them after she left and I spotted them on my own! Without further ado...

They sit on top of power poles or on fence posts, looking for prey in the snow with THEIR magic eyes. White bird, white snow, white sky... 

This one took off from the pole when I got a bit too close (yeah, like in the next county!). I have a 200mm lens plus 1.7x telextender on a full-frame D800. Not quite enough for birding. 

I captured this owl in flight. Now if I didn't tell you this was a composited image, would you have known? There was nothing but the bird and sky in the original shot so I added in a background. This is the same bird as the previous shot, about 1/2 second later. Back button autofocusing and predictive tracking in the D800 does a fantastic job! So does Topaz Adjust 5 and ReMask.

Want a print of this image? Send me a note.

By the way, you know I'm a landscape guy, right? While driving around looking for owls, I came across this scene and it called out to me to be photographed:

— 30 —

Am I one-dimensional?

today you get some "sporadic musings" to start things off. Just trying to change things up from time to time.

...I hope not. At least I'm trying not to be. Yes, my first passion is photography, but there are other things in life. Something missing is people and I'm trying to correct that, but I do have others: writing, teaching, music, the outdoors...

I love music. If I could come back as anything in another life it would be as a musician. I envy people who can express their emotions so, well, blatantly. When was the last time you looked at a photo or a painting and were moved almost to the point of tears? Or with joy? So all of that said, I know that I can't play any instrument like I want to (my keyboard is sitting to my left as I write this, a guitar leaning against the wall and a handful of harps (harmonicas) lying on top of the keyboard. All unused for months now). But I can certainly listen to others play and perform.

What's driving this discourse is the fact that I attended a great concert in Haliburton last Saturday, by Harry Manx (and Steve Marriner). Both terrific musicians, first one in a long time. I didn't bring my camera in, although I could have – I decided I wanted to enjoy experiencing the music instead of trying to photograph it. I gave in and shot a couple of iPhone shots, that's all.

Too many links... go to YouTube and search for these guys. Their music is off the wall and not what you're likely used to but you might be impressed by the skill and emotion with which they play. PS, I never thought I'd be impressed by someone who plays a Sitar (or sitar-like instrument like the mohan veena) and clearly is influenced by Indian music (OK, George Harrison...). He did drop the "Ravi Shankar" name.

As I re-read this and wonder why I wrote it anyway, the realization has set in that as I age, I've transitioned from participant to observer, and that's not a great feeling. I used to ski, hunt, fish, hike, work out, play racquetball, put 17km on my legs and knees on a weekend teaching motorcycling... I was invited on a trip to Yellowstone yesterday and have been considering Iceland. But my first thought is, "how much walking is involved"? {sigh}. I really have to do some of these before I can't any more.

Message: don't "put off until tomorrow what you can do today..."

Another Great Experience

I've been fascinated by American Sign Language for some time. I haven't learned it properly because I really don't have anyone nearby to practice with, although I know three people who are very conversant with it: my cousin Dr. Steve who is a psychologist and specializes in deaf patients, Shannon, a photographer friend from the Huntsville area who is hearing impaired and in fact teaches ASL, and my friend Ilana who works with deaf kids at the York Region School Board.

Enough intro? Ilana and I went to a new restaurant in Toronto called "Signs" where all of the wait staff are deaf. And you have to order from the menu using ASL (there are 'cheat sheets' on the menu and the table!). The food is good, prices are Toronto-competitive, and the atmosphere is outstanding! I highly recommend the place.

I was going to photoshop this to make me taller and slimmer and not so stupid looking, but hey, 'I yam what I yam'. Ilana, of course, doesn't need any photoshopping! 

By the way, when we first walked in, the maîtresse-d' (did I get that right?) specifically said it's OK to take pictures. In hindsight, I should have taken some shots of our waitress Chandri (her 'sign name' is "Candy". You'll understand what that means if you get into ASL), while she was talking with us. Signing with us. I will next time, because I'm definitely going back. Watch the little video on the Signs site.

What's fascinating about ASL is it isn't just making signs with your hands, speaking in ASL is like acting. You need to add body language and facial expressions. People who speak it well are soooo fast! It's hard to read them! But our waitress and the other staff at Signs know that, and are really helpful!

By the way, as long as I'm rambling on about this, did you know that there's less and less need for signing today? Two reasons that come to mind: a large percentage of profoundly deaf people can regain some hearing through cochlear implants today; Ilana tells me there's almost no need for signing in the public school system any more; and electronics, like iPads and the like, make communicating much easier than it used to be. See? You learned some trivia today!

I DID photoshop this one. Slim, eh? Too bad it's not that easy in real life! 

PS If you Google "ASL" or "American Sign Language", there's lots of links to learning the basics.

Speaking of iPads...

I was, right? OK, I mentioned them... I can't use my old iPad 1 as much any more. Somebody mentioned recently that Apple has built obsolescence into the iPad (and iPhone) products. They have, haven't they? Consider that I can't upgrade the I/OS in the old iPad beyond version 5. Then apps come along with updates that I can't install or worse, that I can install but no longer work. I haven't figured it out yet, but iBooks, which I used to use to read a library of books and pdf's on the iPad, doesn't want to work any more. Hell, I can't even play Scrabble. I think Apple wants me to buy a new one... anyone else have this issue?

Colour Space

For my photographer and Photoshopping friends (what photographer doesn't do post processing today?), the issue of colour space is important. Bottom line, what you see on your screen will likely not match what you get when you print; and what you see on the internet (especially FaceBook!) doesn't look like what you're seeing in Photoshop or Lightroom. It's not a simple topic.

When you're editing, you're likely using a "colour space" which is bigger than what the printer or monitor can handle. For example, you might have something fluorescent orange which won't look that way when you print it, but you want to edit it in such a way that you can see all the detail, all the nuances of colour in the program, onscreen. But as I said, the minute you want to post that image online or print it, you have to convert it to the colour space those media can handle. And that's not so simple either! For example, do you want that range of fluorescent orange colours to look like the brightest orange you can print, or do you want to "map" them down into the colour space so you can still pick up details?

A good example was that business card I showed you last week: the printing press uses cyan, magenta, yellow and black inks to create the colours, your monitor uses red-green-blue*. They're obviously going to look different and in this case, I had a greenish tinge. Both Lightroom and Photoshop have the ability to simulate what the image is going to look like in a different colour space – PS more that LR – and it's called "soft proofing". Here's an example

The picture on the right is what the image looked like when I finished editing it (just the colour, etc. I haven't edited the picture itself, so don't criticize it!). But when I saved it for FaceBook it looked like the middle one. In order to make it look good in sRGB (for online or printing) I had to change it in Lightroom to look like the picture at left.

* Actually whenever you put ink on paper, you're dealing with reflective colours and when you look at images on a monitor, it's transmissive colours. So all printers work on the CMYK principle. When you send an image to your inkjet printer, you send an sRGB image and the printer translates that into how much Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black to put on the paper. Some printers have more ink colours (the Epson 7900 has 11 of them, if I recall correctly) in order to reproduce nuances better. Some newer ones can work in other colour spaces. I don't know any printer that can reproduce fluorescent orange the same way a monitor can.

So if you've ever sent a picture out for printing or posted it online and you were disappointed with the colour, this might be the reason why.

Don't get me started on the need to calibrate your monitor if you've got any hope that what you see is what you're going to get! What if your monitor was too red? You'd adjust a picture onscreen until it looks right but look at it on someone else's monitor or in print? If you calibrate you have a chance that they'll be the same.

So much for my lecturing for today. It's one of the things I talk about in my Photoshop and Lightroom workshops. Want to learn more? It's the right time of year, the weather outside's getting frightening! Read about it at www.photography.to and sign up for a course!

What's Art?

There's a discussion going on on Facebook about whether using Topaz Impression is cheating, pretending to be an artist. There are arguments going back and forth about how the computer is not a real art medium, how only people who hold brushes and get paint on their clothes are real artists...

I'm torn. Clearly, anyone who can translate their vision into a shareable medium is an artist (I consider ALL musicians to be artists, see above). Regardless of how you do it (Warhol and his Apple Mac were used as an example), it's art. And there's nothing wrong with emulating someone else: otherwise the question, "who were your influences when you were starting out?" would be meaningless. COPYING someone else is a no-no, though.

Dumb example. I created this in a game for my grandson on my iPad by bringing up an image on my computer, looking at it and then sketching with my finger on the iPad to copy it. This isn't art. It's copying someone else's art. 

But if I take one of my photos and apply brush strokes and textures to it using Topaz Impression, does it become art? Well it already was art... I'm just making it look more like how my mind saw it. Impression's presets are labelled "van Gogh", or "da Vinci", or "Cezanne" or... does that mean I'm pretending to be one of those masters? I don't think so. Since I never studied classical art, I had no idea what those masters did or what their work looked like. As I look through the presets, I find ones that I like, they could be called "X" or "Z" or "fuzzy brush strokes", doesn't matter. By the way, I'm enjoying looking at paintings and would like to know more. I need to go to Kleinburg (The McMichael Collection) again soon. The AGO is south of the 401... 

Can you create art on a computer? Without question. Look up Patrick LaMontagne. His work is amazing. Do I think the National Gallery will ever display a work done in Impression? Who knows? Who ever thought that a Campbell's soup can would be considered art?

I love Impression. It allows me to add another dimension to my images, and as I said above, it makes them look more like what my mind saw. Is it art? Youbetcha.

I reworked this old image in Impression, using the Edward Hopper I preset as a starting point. Probably not something I would hang on my wall, but fun...

Here's the thing. Pictures with minimal editing in them now look flat and lifeless to me. I have to get out of that mindset.

So now some pictures...

If you want to practice shooting birds in flight, go to the dump! Just as I learned from shotgun hunting, when you have a whole flock, you have to pick one bird to focus on (or use a small aperture to get huge depth of field). In this case I got lucky, I had the wrong focus point selected!

There's a plug-in for Lightroom that shows you which focus points were used when you shot the image. 

Sometimes the bird is just standing there, posing for you! My camera is always set to AF-C (continuous tracking) and back-button focusing, so I'm always ready, whether the subject is moving or not.  

Nailed it! But I did shoot about 50 images... I liked this one the best. 

Shooting pictures in the winter is challenging. For the above shots, I set the exposure compensation to about +1ev because I wanted white, not grey snow. Read about it and other winter tips in my 56 page eBook, "Winter Wonderland, a guide to taking better pictures" available for FREE to subscribers to this blog (click the Newsletter link at the top, or here). If you're already a subscriber, you'll get an email with the link to the free eBook. If you don't want to subscribe, you can get the eBook here for $2.

Here's my picture of the day. I went out for a walk and saw the grass poking up through the new snowfall, and the boat mostly buried in fresh snow. It was coming up to sunset, so the shadows were interesting and as soon as I spotted this scene I knew basically what I wanted to do with it. So I shot it with the idea that I was going to process it with brush strokes. I chose the "Georgia O'Keefe" preset in Topaz Impression (there were about 8 presets that I liked for this!) and didn't change it much. This is definitely going on my list of images to print. 

Just a reminder that this time of year you might want to have some Holiday greeting cards printed up with your own images on them, or mine if you prefer. I can help, very inexpensively fro excellent quality. And think about giving gifts of art, it's perfect for those who are really hard to buy for! I have a great selection of images on my SmugMug site (just working on updating it today), on RedBubble (check out their pillows, smartphone and tablet cases and skins and other stuff! Some great gift ideas there!) and on Fine Art America, all at very reasonable prices. Check them out or send me an email and let's talk!

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