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A "good old fashion Canadian winter storm" resulted in the closure of many highways and county roads in Southwestern Ontario this weekend. Included among them, Hwy 6. The section of 6 from Wiarton to Tobermory was closed by 11:00 am on Friday and my plans to leave for the the cottage after work were reluctantly scrapped in exchange for an uneventful weekend at home. Two amigos that would normally accompany me on a photo outing were down, each with their own afflictions, so I decided to stay very close to home. Actually I barely went out, except for clearing the accumulating snow, occasional walking of the dog and dinner at a new restaurant with Lynn Saturday night. I spent most of my time reading or working on photo projects in process.
One such photo project was experimenting in Photoshop with watercolour effects on some of my images from Italy. Recent discussions with the aforementioned amigos about sketching, pen and ink and watercolours had stirred my interest in creating both conventional and digital versions of select images. This weekend was the time to work digitally.
There is a seemingly unlimited amount if material online for just about anything and watercolour effects in Photoshop are no different. The challenge like everything else on the interwebs is sorting through
the crap to get to the useful stuff. I selected a few links and investigated, eventually ending up using one from a UK photographer. His approach was not complicated and after some trial and error, I was able to produce something decent. I'm not sure that I'm completely done with the work on this image yet. It still needs a few tweaks and perhaps a complete re-do from scratch to see if how much I can refine the end result.
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| morning canal |
All in all, it was a great learning exercise and it distracted me from the frustration of not being able to get up north.
DJE
Well, I finally made it through the basic selection and initial processing of the images I made while in Italy. Selecting candidates for a book to be published with Blurb as a single copy, a keepsake from the trip, was an enjoyable, if not so easy task. So many of the images cannot be separated from the emotions of being there sharing the moments with Lynn.
I have posted almost 200 images to a flickr set titled Italy 2013. Most of these will make it into the book, some, upon further scrutiny, will be replaced by alternates and still others will wriggle their way into the final selections.
It has been fun recalling the experiences from the trip through review of the images. Now to the work of laying out a book worthy of being printed ...
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| canal chase |
DJE
past it's glory
On the 5th day of our recent vacation to Newfoundland we rolled into Bonavista after a few hours of driving in cold rainy weather and stopped for a quick coffee before setting out to drive around the town. The weather worsened, the wind was buffeting the car and carrying the rain nearly sideways. I had not yet become accustomed to how the streets just seem to go off in every direction but decided to wander and see what we could.
It was only a couple of minutes before I spotted this old weathered fishing shack and boat near the shore. Envisioning a gritty B&W image, I parked and got out of the car discovering that it was going to be a challenge to make decent images given the weather. I had difficulty standing still in the blustery wind and the rain managed to find my front lens element no matter which way it was pointed or how I tried to protect it. Undaunted, I made a few images at this location, wiping the lens down before each exposure.
I'm very happy that I stuck with it ... this just may be my favourite image of the entire trip.
DJE
