Photo of the Week 2020-12-28

Well, well, well ...

 

I forgot to get a post out yesterday. I think this makes twice in over 10 years that I've missed making a Photo of the Week post on Monday. So here we go, a day late and backdated to yesterday ;-)

 

' Sleeping Beauty '

 

The back-story: I made a solo trip up to the cottage for a single night just before Christmas to check on things and take some items up so we would have more room in the vehicle the next trip. It also gave me an opportunity to scout around and look for photo opportunities without having to be concerned with passengers.

 

The drive up was mostly unrewarding photographically as the weather was quite blah. After cruising some of the secondary roads north of Wiarton, I managed to photograph a Rough-legged Hawk and grabbed a far off shot of a female Snowy Owl sitting on a fence post out in a farm field, but nothing really noteworthy. That day remained heavily overcast and dull so there were not night sky photo opportunities either.The weather forecast was for rain the next day so I planned to take care of a couple of things and leave early morning with enough time to do some Snowy Owl scouting on the was home.

 

I made a mid-morning departure and about 30 min into the drive I decided to pull off the highway to refill my coffee cup from my thermos. Safely on the shoulder of a side-road, I screwed the cap back on the thermos and looked out the side window to catch ' Sleeping Beauty '

 

 

Sleeping Beauty

Talk about serendipity! I'm not sure I would have noticed this bird as I scanned the area to either side of the highway as I drove along, but there she was. Sitting pretty and completely at rest if not sleeping. I watched for almost an hour and she never moved for nearly 20 minutes when she opened her eyes a bit and shortly after began preening.

I particularly like this image because the owl is perched on a rock in a natural environment as opposed to on a fence post, hydro pole or other man made structure. She stands out well against the darker field grass background.

An there you have it ... a day late and well worth it IMO.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2020-12-21

 

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.

But I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.

 

- Robert Frost -

 

The woods are lovely ...

Wanting some time, both with a camera and in the woods, Preservation Park, close to home on a foggy last day of fall was the perfect spot for a morning wander ...

details: Shot on a dual-spectrum (visible & infrared) converted Canon EOS M with  EF-M 18-55 mm, Kolari 550 nm filter, exposure 1/8 s, f/8, ISO 200. B&W conversion in Adobe LR  Classic, additional processing in Adobe PS CC with Topaz and ON1 software.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2020-12-14

 

frosted tapestry

 Sometimes it just takes frosted highlights to make one notice the beauty

of nature's complex roadside tapestry

 

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2020-12-07

 

Huron skies at the end of the day just keep giving and giving ...

 

shoreside sundown

I made a number of single exposures along with bracketed 3 exposure sets to process as HDR should the dynamic range require them to bring out some detail in the darkened foreground. As it turned out, raising the shadow exposure level in Lightroom was not significantly different that merging 3 exposures into an HDR image.I had already done the work on the HDR so I decided to keep it to include in the blog post for my Photo of the Week (POTW).

The sunset sky colours after sun had dropped below the horizon reflected on the boards of the wet dock and the water's surface to make this composition come alive.

 

DJE