Photo of the Week 2024-05-13

With a small group of photo friends, I steered the 4Runner, full of camera gear, to Algonquin this past week for a meet up with Jesse Villemaire of Follow Me North Photography. We had booked a full day small group session and the weather looked like it would cooperate after a switch of days to miss some incoming rain.

After an early, 5am pickup at our hotel, Jesse began by stopping at the west park entrance for a review of appropriate gear and settings for the low light conditions we would have should we encounter any wildlife out in the dawn hours. Although our group all had a level of experience with photography, his frequent reminders to check our gear settings were welcome as he took us around to some of his favourite and productive photo spots along the Hwy 60 corridor through the park.

Beyond the fundamentals of lens selection and camera settings, Jesse shared a number of tips with our group, ranging from composition to wildlife behaviour. On our stop at the Lake of Two Rivers campground, one particular suggestion sparked something with me and I used it to advantage in the following image, one of my favourites for the day.

' Algonquin Morning '

What was the suggestion? Well as we extricated ourselves from the van and organized ourselves, he suggested that we might use a beached canoe for a foreground element in our images. The canoe, a rental unit, didn't appeal to my aesthetic and I looked for something else. I had been working to improve my use of foreground elements in many recent shots and here there were a couple of driftwood remnants buried in the sand at water's edge that caught my interest. I proceeded to work the scene to use them in the foreground and composed to include the additional (as Jesse might say, 3rd element) element of the sun starburst and reflection in the image.

It took me some time to find the right position, right, left, up, down, shift over, shift back, lower ... etc., etc. to get the horizon centred, sun and reflection in the middle and the driftwood near the lower 1/3 intersection. Oh ya ... and the pièce de résistance, that tiny little starburst where the driftwood meets the water ;-)

Thanks (again) to Jesse, who captured a behind the scenes image of me at work, generously allowing me to share his shot here.

Think you might want to go shooting in Algonquin and need some inspiration, a guide, mentorship, I highly suggest you check out Follow Me North and consider some time with Jesse and Susan.

 

A day-long / long-day outing in Algonquin Park was just what the photo-doctor ordered ...

 

DJE

Photo of the Week 2017-11-20

There are very few weeks where I do not make a number of new images and have several to choose from for my 'Photo of the Week'. With the move off daylight saving time and fewer daylight hours, there is little time for photography before or after work. That leaves the weekend and when plans for work around the cottage consumed virtually all of the hours of decent weather ... I turned to the image library ...

A New Year Dawns

With winter not far off and the first snowfalls already threatening, a previously processed yet unreleased image from last winter, the First Light Challenge - New Year's Day to be precise, seemed an appropriate choice ... and the next First Light Challenge will be the 10th I've participated in. What will my image be? You'll have to wait and see ....

DJE