Photo of the Week 2023-03-27

 

As we enter the last days of March, spring is truly upon us. No matter what the weather may throw at us, the Spring Equinox has come and the season has changed. Sunny warmer days with the emergence of leaves and flowers is not far off ... but before I get there with my photography, I have one image from the frigid depths of winter that I'd like to share.

 

Back in January, while looking after the farm for the youngin's, with a major winter storm forecast to slam Eastern Ontario, an idea for an image came to mind. With a fresh blanket of snow, I had thoughts of a night shot with the lights of the house glowing in the pitch black of night. Well ... add in blizzard like conditions with extremely heavy snow blowing off the roof of the workshop and here you have it !

' on a dark winter's night '

And here's the backstory ...

 

In the weeks and months leading up to my time at the farm, I was hoping for wintry, snowy conditions as they would figure prominently in my plans for photography. As luck would have it, the snow came and in a healthy dumping starting earlier one day and continued through that night.

After dinner, with cousin Steve who had come for dinner and a first visit to see the place I had talked so much about, I went around flicking on the interior and exterior lights. Then we donned the warm winter gear, checked for a charged battery plus a spare, grabbed the camera, tripod and headed out. Trekking down the lane and around the garden area I wanted undisturbed in the foreground, we made our way to the corner by the cedar rail fence. I set up a couple of compositions I liked and captured a number of frames for each, varying exposure so they could be combined in post processing to control the dynamic range of the scene. Done, I picked up the gear and headed in to continue with the after dinner conversation and adult beverages.

When I got around to processing the captured files a few days later, I was met with an unexpected challenge. For the composition I preferred, I had not captured an exposure where the brightness of exterior lights of the workshop were controlled. The lights and workshop wall were blown out beyond recovery in all the frames I had made. Undaunted, I grabbed one from another composition, fiddled for quite a while to manually adjusted the size and perspective to suit my preferred composition and meticulously aligned it as a layer with the others in Photoshop. Then I blended the portions of several frames together, adjusted exposure, highlights, shadows using a variety of steps in several work sessions.

All of this done, in the end I wish I had spent a little more time in preparation for the outing, paid more attention to the images as I was capturing them and confirmed rather than assumed that I had captured everything I needed. I normally don't spend as much time processing my images as I did for this one but  still, I'm very pleased with the result even though there is room for improvement.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2023-03-20

 

Experimentation is sort of like R&D for my creative mind. It can fuel my inspiration and lead me enthusiastically in new directions or let me wander and simply provide rest and distraction from the normal routine. Once started, an experiment can quickly run it's course, amble on for long periods ultimately leading nowhere, or even pause for a while until the time is right to pick it up again, tomorrow, next week, next month, a year or more from now.

 

A creative experiment underway the past few months had me working on winter scenes of rural homes and farms. Inspired by the work of a watercolour artist, I set out to capture and process images for a very specific look. I needed deep snowy foregrounds, barren surroundings and even skies and now that we have reached the last day of winter this experiment must pause. Whether I will pick it up again next or some future winter remains to be seen.

 

' rural winter - I '

The experiment produced just five images that come close to the result I was looking for. This week's image (above) is the best of the lot and as serendipity would have it, was my first attempt, capture and post process. A number of learnings came out of the experiment to date. First, not all rural scenes lend themselves to this process. The watercolour artist starts with blank and builds the scene with only the elements that are desired. Any photograph captures everything already in the scene and some elements could not be eliminated either through altering composition or in post processing. A scene with snowy or light plain foreground with minimal detail provides the best starting point as does a plain brighter sky. Dramatic or abrupt transitions to open space at the sides of the scene also allow for isolating the scene through heavy vignetting and transition to full white at the edges without appearing to be sharply cut out. Starting with captures having these characteristics allows processing to create an image where the main subject elements float within the frame or on the final print.

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2023-03-13

After my post last week, I had several conversations with followers about my encounter with Oakley the Otter. I thought it would be novel to show how that encounter progressed in separate groups of shots from each stage. I described the encounter in last week's post, but recount it again here to add context to the images ...

It started, from about 170m, shooting with my 100-400mm and 1.4x converter at maximum zoom - effective focal length 560mm. Images are interesting enough but only as snapshots to remind me of my wildlife encounter

When shooting wildlife focal length is king and you can never have enough ... so I had to move closer. This group from about 120m still at 560mm effective focal length. Cool, but still really only of interest to me the photographer as keepsakes.

So I moved as close as I could get, about 95m away from the otter, at the edge of solid ice and I dare go no further in a line directly toward the subject if I wanted to stay warm and dry.

Now I was starting to get some images that had a bit of detail showing the otter grooming itself out on the ice in the (relatively) warm morning sun. Definitely not Nat Geo stuff but with more interest than my other shots to this point in the encounter. I looked away to see if I could pick my way along the shoreline to get closer to the subject without spooking it and when I looked back, Oakley was gone ...

After waiting a while to see if it would return, I collapsed my monopod support and racked the lens in to walk back across the uneven surface of the ice towards the cottage. As I approached shore, I happened to glance to my left and what do ya know ...

... at about 35m away, Oakley had come back up through the ice just in front of our neighbour's. Startled, I swung the camera up to my eye and fired of a bust of shots but at 140mm focal length as I had collapsed the lens for the walk back across the ice.

I quickly extended the monopod to get some support for zooming to 560mm and still at 35m away, got a few shots with the otter moving away from me. It still had not noticed me ... this is as close as I got.

Then as it made it's way up the shore and off the ice, I fired off a number of shots at about 45m distance, 560mm before I was spotted ...

 

...  and a hasty retreat to the safety of water was in order.

 

... and there you have it. My encounter in pictures. All shots uncropped except to straighten. All shots with only basic exposure edits. All distances from camera EXIF data.

 

My favourite from the series above ...

 

' hasty retreat '

 

DJE 

Photo of the Week 2023-03-06

 

' A visit from Oakley '

Almost 9 years ago to the day, I had my first close encounter with Oakley on the ice of Hay Bay. Today, Oakley made a return visit, or it could be Oakley Jr. given the time gone by. In any event, it was a great experience to see and observe the activity of this critter.

 

Lynn and I had just finished out morning walk with Murphy, which he concludes with a trip "down to the water" (or ice as it is in winter). I hadn't always joined them but since seeing an otter far off across the bay a couple of days before, I made a point of following to see what was going on.

Looking out over the ice, I noticed a far off dark spot and watched it for a while until I saw movement. That was enough to send me back to the cottage for a camera with my longest lens mounted on a monopod. When I returned, I framed up on the spot and made a number of shots from the treeline before moving closer and potentially spooking the whatever it was. I could see it was an otter and wanted to get closer. I re-positioned out on the shoreline where I was quite visible, framed up again and could better see the otter grooming as it lay near what I assumed was an opening in the ice.

It seemed quite content to continue with a wary glance now and then to keep an eye on me. EXIF data from the first series of captures at the treeline showed I was focusing to a distance of more than 150m. After repositioning twice more, I managed to get within 100m but that was as close as I could get in a direct line between me and my subject. I was at the edge of thin ice along the shoreline and took my eye off the subject to assess other options to get closer. When I looked back to the otter it was gone, off under the ice heading somewhere else on the bay. I remained there for several minutes scanning the ice from left to right, near and far without any sign of my subject.

Thinking the encounter was over, I collapsed the monopod and trekked back across the ice to our place, always looking down, my footing (no time to put on ice cleats). As I approached the snow covered shore at our place, I glanced to my left and there was the little bugger had come out of an opening in the ice in front of our neighbour's. Unseen, I froze, raised the camera and grabbed a few hand held shots. Trying to keep stable on the uneven spot where I had abruptly stopped rather than look for something flat, less slippery and risk losing this closer photo opportunity, I cautiously extended the monopod, framed the subject, zoomed in to the max and fired off frames at maximum burst speed. Unsteady and trying both to keep my balance and capture Oakley bounding towards shore at our neighbours, I was spotted. It froze for just a second, turned to stare at me, then hurried back to the safety of water, keeping one eye on me. Stopping for one last look before slipping back below the ice, I was able to grab some final shots with the subject well lit by morning sun over my left shoulder.

 

What a great encounter! Another for the memory bank.

 

Note: EXIF data from this last series of shots indicated a focus distance of just over 40m. I was shooting at 400mm with a 1.4x converter on full frame for an equivalent focal length of 560mm to get the lead shot for this post. I cropped the image about 5% to remove some foreground for better balance but that's about it.

 

DJE