Photo of the Week 2026-01-12

 

Winter weather provides me with many opportunities for for photography and I don't always take advantage of them. I find my outings to drive the backroads within reach of home have become much less frequent. When I do take a backroad, stops to photograph have become less frequent and I find myself thinking "I should have stopped back there ... " and good photo opportunities are missed.

 

In an attempt to rectify things, on the heels of a chance finding of the scene in last weeks post, I purposefully gathered up the needed kit and headed out looking for additions to the series 'rural winter'  

 

' 6926 W C R 34 '

I've driven by this farm countless times as it's very close to home. I've made photographs at and around it but not composed in favourable winter conditions to create something worthy of including in 'rural winter', until now.

 

DJE 

Photo of the Week 2018-09-03

I like to learn new techniques and/or tools and regularly try something new to feed my creativity. Lately, it's been some actions and presets for Adobe CS that have had my attention. I've been learning and experimenting with a number of multi-layer actions for Photoshop that produce an artistic interpretations of photographic images, watercolour effects, vintage effects, sketch effects mostly.

Here for your comment or critique are some of the results ...

vintage effect

urban sketch effect

urban sketch effect

 

vintage effect

watercolour effect

watercolour effect

DJE

Photo of the Week 2018-04-16

Winter fights to hang on, spring fights to break through ... a snow and ice storm threatening historic proportion moves in to blanket the ground and throws a late chill into the forest.

snowy spring forest

Lousy weather? No worries, dress appropriately and go outside to get some exercise and fresh air, there’s always the option of a hot drink when you get home ... in my case a tasty matcha latte.

There's a very different feel to the outdoors when the weather turns bad. Gone are the usual sights and sounds. You could be surrounded by the hiss of the wind high up in barren trees and blustery waves that whoosh along side, the tick, tick, ta-tick of ice pellets hitting frozen trunks and your weather-proof jacket shell, and the unique crunch of 'sugar snow' under your feet as you work to find traction in the slippery granules.

Spring snowstorms attempt to blanket the life that has begun to emerge after the long winter. Signs of the new season can appear completely obscured in the 'snowy spring forest'.

DJE

Photo of the Week 2018-02-26

brew monster

Ever come back from a photo outing and Blah .... everything is just Blah?

Why not take a step back, walk away for a bit or set out on a little creative journey to try some alternate processing?

A recent outing with one of my photo groups took us to a local micro brewery / pub for an hour of shooting before the "paying customers" started rolling in to quench their thirst. I had taken a couple of my lesser used lenses to see what I might be able to create. 

As it turned out I spent more time chatting, with some of the others I hadn't seen in a while, than shooting ( I did have a very nice Oatmeal Stout though ;-). When I got home and downloaded the images, there wasn't anything that looked worthy of further attention and I was disappointed ... 

... fast forward to the next morning and a few clicks into an editing app that I use from time to time and ... things got a little better. I ended up spending a few pleasurable hours trying out some different options while listening to some great music ... nice way to spend a Sunday morning.

DJE

Photo of the Week 2015-05-11

I've been experimenting with my image post processing lately. It's all part of the journey. Trying new things is like creative exercise, flexing the artistic muscle if you like.

An approach that simplifies the detail in my original capture causes me to look more at the graphic elements and colours of an image. It removes reality to an extent, masks the flaws that I can become obsessed with causing me to give up on an image.  

For example, in this week's image, there are focus issues. The depth of field is too shallow, caused to some extent by me working hand held without a tripod, but also because I was shooting at a 135mm focal length at an oblique angle across a patch of trilliums, not wanting to step amongst them and cause any damage. Rather than give up on an image that I liked because the foreground and background were not in sharp focus, I decided to process the image with a Photoshop plug-in, Topaz Simplify, and create graphic photo-realistic like result.

In this, I see things that can help my photography, improve the original capture, strengthen my composition. Letting go a bit and trying something different can be a good thing. I'm not worried what others may say or think. After all, it's my journey.

By the way, I've widened the format of the blog post so the landscape format images are no longer cut off a bit on the right side when I post them large. Please let me know if you have any trouble viewing and if you see an improvement.

DJE