Photo of the Week 2011-05-30

What's you pleasure, colour or black & white ??

TO courtyard entrance - Colour














TO courtyard entrance - B&W














There's one of each here, so everyone should be happy ;-)

A walk Downtown Toronto this weekend from Union Station to the Distillery District provided a broad variety of subject matter to photograph. On the Esplanade before we reached the Distillery District I passed an entrance to a condo courtyard that had magnificent light spilling in from either end on the slate pavers and decorative wall.

I can see this one being printed in either colour or B&W and framed for the wall.

DJE

Photo of the Week 2011-05-23

birches in IR

My new addiction is Infrared Photography, well technically near infrared, but let's not get too technical just yet.

I love the realistically surreal quality of B&W IR images. Having experimented a bit with IR filters on my DSLR's and being frustrated with the excessively long shutter speeds, I decided to try something else....

I sent a decent quality P&S 7mp digital camera, a Canon G6, to Digital Silver Imaging for their conversion service. They remove the low-pass infrared filter over the sensor and replace it with a high-pass filter. The high-pass filter blocks most of the visible light and allows the higher light frequencies approaching infrared through to the sensor. The resulting images can be quite stunning.

Depending on the transmission characteristics of the filter used, "false" colour images can be created, more frequently, images are converted to B&W. I am enjoying my sight through my new IR eyes ...

... stay tuned for more.

DJE

Photo of the Week 2011-05-16

in the haze of dawn

Some sights just pass silently without anyone laying eyes upon them like the mist of dawn lingering around a pond and surrounding trees at the UofG Arboretum. Even those who may venture out to walk the trails could pass nearby and miss dawns diffused light catching the green a red of new spring growth making them glow.

DJE

Leamington & Point Pelee Scenes

Following are several images I want to share from my recent visit to Leamington and Point Pelee National Park. The weather was unsettled throughout the day and the sky had clouded over completely then broken up more than once. I had envisioned a sunset captured from the tip of Point Pelee but the weather needed to cooperate.

As I left Windsor heading for Leamington the sky had cleared (again) and thanks to the flat topography (boy is it flat in SW Ontario, I had forgotten just how flat) I could see isolated storm clouds all around moving through the area. When I arrived in Leamington and parked at the ferry dock, a light rain was being carried by gusty wind. As timing would have it, the rain increased just as I got out to get some camera gear out of the vehicle hatch and sent me back to inside until it let up. Fortunately it did not last long and I was able to get out and get a shot of this ...

Storm off Leamington


heading for the dock


Moving on, I arrived at the park gates under clearing skies and the appearance of the sun. My first stop was at the marsh boardwalk to check out the view from the tower. Thunderstorms moving off to the east provided a dramatic background with the sun on the still brown marsh grass.

marsh boardwalk


passing storm


I was eager to press on to get to "the Tip", that was the main objective for this outing and I wanted to be sure I had enough time for the the hike and to make some images. I found the tip without the characteristic curving sand spit reaching far out into the lake. The tip is always changing year after year, with the ebb and flow of the currents on Lake Erie. On this day the tip was a tapering point diving below waves that swallowed the land in their turbulence.

this land's end


the tip


solitude (last man standing)


... a return visit is a must.

DJE

Photo of the Week 2011-05-09

cloud over waves

Point Pelee, the southernmost point of mainland Canada was my destination after finishing my work week in Windsor on Friday afternoon. The weather had been unsettled throughout the day with intermittent rain and heavy cloud and seemed to be breaking up just in time.

I made a stop in Leamington to visit the Ferry Dock and caught the Jiimaan coming in from Pelee Island along the edge of a storm front. Later I headed for Point Pelee National Park and specifically the southern tip of the park with is just south of the 42nd parallel and the southernmost point of mainland Canada. There are more images to be catalogued and processed but this one presented itself just as I was leaving the tip to head home. A single cloud moved in and covered the sun as it was nearing the horizon ... a lovely end to my first trip to this unique location.

DJE

Algonquin Scenes

I wanted to put up some more images from my recent trip to Algonquin Park. I have not yet completed reviewing and cataloguing all of the images I made ... if I wait that long, I may never get them up to share :-)

rowboats reflected


Algonquin stump


Labrador Tea


calm & reflected (uncropped version)


Enjoy
DJE

Photo of the Week 2011-05-02

My second annual spring photography trip to Algonquin Park began with promises of clearing skies and warming temperatures. A week of unsettled weather was reluctantly clearing out of Southern Ontario just in time for the weekend.

I arrived in Algonquin with time for a evening drive along Hwy 60 to see if there were any moose venturing out to roadside as dusk fell. It is a bit of a gamble as to whether or not the moose are active and that they will be feeding along the road as you drive by. I caught a glimpse at two separate locations and in both cases the animals were skittish, heading for the cover of the forest as I approached ... it was going to be a challenge this year...

The next morning, I headed east on Hwy 60 about 20 minutes before sunrise and was presented with a fiery orb rising into a cloudless sky. If the moose were not going to cooperate, the weather appeared that it would. A couple of stops to shoot the morning scenery and nearly an hour into my morning brought me to a section of the highway overlooking Smoke Lake. There was a heavy fog bank on the water at the far side of the lake ... scenes like this are meant to be captured and shared.

Smoke Lake Morning


DJE