Frozen in Time

Innisfil Creek in winter

Sorry for my lack of posts lately folks, I have been fighting a rather nasty flu bug. Today I finally felt like I had enough energy to actually get out and take a few fresh images, and while doing so came across this interesting frozen river scene. I was really drawn to this scene, not only for the pattern in the ice along the snowy bank, but for the way the river’s frozen surface along the right side of the composition appears to be flowing. Using a Nikon D800 with a Nikon 80-400mm VR lens, firmly mounted on a tripod, I composed the scene and then switched to the ‘Live View’ feature, zoomed in on a small section of the scene, manually focused the lens, and tripped the shutter.

Please click on the photo to see the larger, sharper version.

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A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That

Crepuscular Rays

Been swamped lately not too mention switching my computer over to a much more powerful system which has not been going well at all. I decided to upgrade to Photoshop CS6 but need to contact Adobe due to verification failure warnings. You gotta love it when you download legitimate software, yet cannot install it, because after the license key is verified Adobe warns that the software “appears to be counterfeit.”  After trying to resolve this issue through the ‘chat’ feature of Adobe’s customer support center I have been informed that I need to call Adobe on Monday to fix this issue.

In the meantime, I thought I would share these images that were captured during the summer and processed just prior to my photoshop issues.

Please click on the photos to see the larger, sharper version of each.

A Fractalius Rendering of Autumn Sugar Maple Leaf on Interuppted Fern

Black & White  Swirling Pattern in Granite

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Happy Halloween

 

A couple of artistic renditions of dewy spider webs to celebrate the day. To create both of these images I used the Photoshop plug-in Fractalius available from Redfield Plugins. To see the larger, more spooky version please click on each of the images.

Hope everyone has a safe night of trick-or-treating. I will be accompanying my lovely daughter Ava, who is dressing up as Tinker Bell this year.

Gotta go find the pixie dust tree

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Country Images Camera Club Presentation

 

Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario

On Tuesday October 16th at 8:00 p.m., which is tomorrow evening, I will be presenting at the Country Images Camera Club’s October meeting. If you happen to be in the area feel free to drop by for the presentation and do say hello if you do. The presentation will cover numerous inspiring landscape locations that may be found throughout the province of Ontario, many of which can be found in the eBook ‘A Photographer’s Guide to the Ontario Landscape‘ written by yours truly I will also be presenting how I photograph frogs and toads, winter songbirds, tips for captive wildlife photography, and also my techniques for creating inspiring artistic renditions of some of my most cherished photos.

The Country Images Camera Club presentation will be held at the:

Art Ferguson Building

16195 Bayview Avenue in Newmarket, Ontario @ 8:00 p.m. on Tuesday, October 16th (tomorrow evening)

Hope to see you there!

Please remember to click on each of the images in this post to see the larger, sharper version.

Oxtongue River Blur

Junkyard Grunge

Rosseau River

Poison Dart Frog Fractalius

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Over-Under Froggie

Above is a fairly recently created, over-under juvenile Bullfrog that I photographed while at the family cottage on Horseshoe Lake near Parry Sound, Ontario. To find out exactly how I managed to create this unique frog photo while staying completely dry and to see the Fractalius version too, please head over to the Creative Photography eMini-Magazine which is a free publication that is published by the very talented Denise Ippolito on a monthly basis. Once you visit the mini-mag’s home page simply enter your email in the appropriate field and press the subscribe button to receive your free monthly copy of this awesome online magazine. Enjoy!

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Creative Photography eMiniMagazine

 

I am pleased to announce the first edition of the Creative Photography eMiniMagazine, published by my good friend, the very talented and highly creative Denise Ippolito. Denise’s artistic rendering of various photographic subjects often leave me in awe. The Creative Photography eMiniMagazine is a free publication where you will be able to learn various techniques to apply to your own imagery to create stunning artistic renderings you can call your own. All you have to do to commence receiving the emag is to head over to Denise Ippolito’s blog post here and follow this link to the emagazine, scroll down the page to subscribe to future editions. The magazine is loaded with tons of great info and articles. I am very pleased and honored to be included with, and to join the great line-up of talented Forum Contributors. If you are heading over to the Creative Photography eMiniMagazine’s August Edition 2012 be sure to checkout my first article on Lower Rosseau Falls and my detailed description / tutorial on how I create my artistic renditions of waterfalls using Topaz Labs Black & White Effects with my custom ‘Waterfall Setting’.

I often find creating artistic renderings of my own nature imagery keep the fun in photography and now with the official release of this great new publication – for free -  folks can acquire many new skills for fresh approaches / ideas to developing their own art.

Sign-up folks and start having fun, but be forewarned that this is highly addictive stuff

Hope to see you over at the Creative Photography eMiniMagazine soon!

 

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Fractastic Day At The Zoo

Lionfish – Glow 100 preset

A few weeks ago I made a trip to the Toronto Zoo for a fun day of photographing animals from all around the world. While meandering my way around the zoo, I thought that many of these animals would make wonderful subjects for the photoshop plugin Fractalius by Redfield Plugins, so after arriving back at home I immediatelybegan playing around with some of the presets and adjusted the sliders to taste until I came up with this assortment of fractalius renderings. When I use the Fracatlius plugin I always apply it’s effect on a duplicate layer. This is done for two reasons. First it allows my to mask back in the eye(s) so that the filter has no effect on the eye(s) and secondly, I may want to reduce the overall effect of the filter and the easiest way to do so is to reduce the opacity of the layer to which the Fractalius effect is on. Most often I go straight for the ‘Glow 100′ or the ‘Rounded’ presets as these are my favorites to use. I have indicated below each image which preset I selected, however, the effect was achieved by adjusting the sliders to taste. Please note, this fun and addictive plugin is only available for folks using Windows and is available for purchase here.

Hope you enjoy this collection of artistic renderings from my Fractalius addiction and naturally I could not resist the temptation to include a frog image from the zoo too

Please take a moment to let me know which is your favorite and why.

Waxy Monkey Treefrog – Rounded preset

Gorilla – Rounded preset

Gaboon Viper – Rounded preset

Meller’s Chameleon – Glow 100 preset

African Penguin – Glow 100 preset

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Stabilizing the Blur

Aspen Blur

I have spent much of this week trying to rest and rid myself of a nasty chest cold, so I haven’t been out and about to capture any fresh images. Hopefully, I will be able to get over the next day or two as we have just received about 4 inches of fresh snow and it is still snowing. Yippie!

Several weeks ago, on a rainy day, I headed to my favorite Aspen Tree grove to photograph some blurs. There is something about Aspen Trees and their ability to be great subjects for creating pleasing blurs. The steady rain on this day helped to saturate and darken the tree trunks nicely. While photographing the series of blurs that I captured on this day I decided to try something a little different, I activated the vibration reduction feature on my Nikon 80-400mm VR lens. As I framed this particular section of Aspens in the above image I selected an aperture of f22 for an exposure time of 10 seconds. Next, I activated the vibration reduction feature and attempted to handhold the lens as steady as possible while the vibration feature compensated for my body movements during the lengthy exposure. The above image is the result of this experiment and it is the only image from the series of blurs I photographed on that day that had this interesting blurred movement to it. Please take a moment and let me know what you think of the end result.

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Creative Cascade

Spencer Gorge Wilderness Area

I have been busy processing a backlog of images from this past spring, summer and fall and also trying to catch up on much needed rest. While going through my files I came across this small cascade that I photographed at Webster’s Falls in the Spencer Gorge Wilderness Area in Hamilton, Ontario. This is found along the Niagara Escarpment. The Hamilton region is noted for its numerous waterfalls on the Niagara Escarpment, many of them really only show any flow after periods of significant rainfall. I found this one to be particularly attractive with the escarpment wall for a backdrop. After processing the image file I decided to run it through Topaz Labs B&W Effects to create the effect you see above.

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Late Season Impressionistic Blurs

While on my way to pick-up my daughter from school today I had a few minutes to kill, so I headed off to a few woodlots along the farm roads near my home. In one of the woodlots there are some nice groupings of Aspen trees and I have always wanted to shoot some blurs of them. Today’s mostly overcast weather was perfect for such photography. I was surprised to see a few of the Goldenrod plants still in bloom and thought they would make a nice splash of colour against the browns of late fall / early winter. It doesn’t really feel too much like winter around these parts just yet, as the days are actually quite warm and pleasant. Below you will see an assortment of handheld, in-camera, impressionistic blurs that I created this afternoon. Hope you enjoy these images.

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