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

Read Full Post »

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!

Read Full Post »

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!

 

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

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.

Read Full Post »

Fractalius Leaves

Bracken Fern

While playing around with the Fractalius plugin for photoshop, I wanted to see what effect the filter had on some of my recent leaf detail images that I had been shooting. I used my 105 macro lens to zero in on the vein structures of the leaves. After optimizing the images I opened them up in the Fractalius interface and used the ‘Glow 100′ and the ‘Rounded’ presets to achieve the desired results. Hope you like these artistic renderings. Let me know which is your favorite and why?

Sugar Maple Leaf

Autumn Red Oak Leaf

Sugar Maple Leaf

Read Full Post »

Detailed and Desaturated

Little Abitibi River in Ontario’s remote Abitibi Canyon

Since downloading Topaz Labs B&W Effects, I have been experimenting with the various presets and sliders, to fine tune the treatment of each individual photograph. I absolutely love the detail and detail boost sliders for creating a HDR-ish, grunge-like effect. I am also becoming rather fond of the transparency slider for revealing a touch of colour from the original capture, for a desaturated appearance. While I am still experimenting with the program, here are a few recent images that I have applied Topaz B&W Effects too.

George Lake, Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario

Abandoned Truck near Parry Sound, Ontario

Muskoka River, Bracebridge, Ontario

Lady Ferns, Parry Sound, Ontario

Kakabeka Falls, Thunder Bay, Ontario

Old Car, Granite Ridge Trail, Killarney Provincial Park, Ontario

Read Full Post »

Garden Flower Blurs

Handheld Petunia Blur

A couple of weeks ago while I was out running some errands I passed a beautiful flower garden at the entrance to a golf course. The garden was full of various colored Petunias and other annual garden flowers. Since I usually have my camera with me I couldn’t resist the temptation to pull the car off on the shoulder and shoot some blurs. The sunlight was very harsh. It was about 12 noon without a cloud in the sky. I quickly put my polarizing filter and 3-stop neutral density filter to bring my exposure times down to a second or so. Using a variety of camera movements I spent about half an hour creating several different blurs. Shooting blurs is kinda like opening presents on Christmas morning – you never know what you’ll get.

Handheld pan blur of Petunias and Celosia

The Gerbera Daisy image below were shot on the dining room table with my 105 mm macro lens and exposure times of roughly 15 seconds. While exposing the blossom I simply jiggled the stem of the flower.

Gerbera Daisy blur

The next image of the same Gerbera Daisy is an artistic rendering of an in focus blossom. I applied a touch of zoom blur in photoshop and then selected the psychedelic preset from Topaz Labs Adjust 4 and tweaked the settings with the sliders to get the desired effect.

Gerbera Daisy Artistic Rendering

Read Full Post »

Book Review

Before heading north to Horseshoe Lake I made sure to pack Denise Ippolito’s new eBook “My First Impressions of Bosque Dell Apache”. Denise Ippolito is a talented freelance photographer from New Jersey. Bosque Del Apache NWR is a 57,191 acre refuge located along the Rio Grande near Socorro, New Mexico. Each year during the “Festival of the Cranes” large numbers of Snow Geese and Sandhill Cranes are present. In November of 2010 Denise co-led a workshop at Bosque Del Apache National Wildlife Refuge with world premier bird photographer Arthur Morris. Arthur Morris has led Intructional Photography Tours at Bosque for the last 16 years. In Denise’s new eBook she shares her first visit to this location through poems, stunning artistic renditions, pleasing blurs, tack sharp flight imagery and sensational sunrise/sunset photos. As I read through Denise’s latest offering each image filled me with inspiration and creative ideas, the kind of imagery that is more than just a photograph, but an expression. Denise is at her creative best in “My First Impressions Of Bosque Del Apache” and the imagery clearly illustrates how much she fell in love with such a beautiful place.

Whether you plan to visit Bosque Del Apache or not, I highly recommend Denise’s this eBook. It will inspire you to create your own stunning collection of imagery.  If you do plan to visit Bosque consider the new 3 day workshop Denise has created during the “Festival of the Cranes” this November, at a killer price. To find out more about this workshop click here. In “My First Impressions Of Bosque Del Apache” Denise is also quick to note that you should not visit Bosque “blind”, be sure to read Arthur Morris’ Bosque site guide. Mr. Morris’ intimate knowledge of this location will put you in the right spot at the right time. Check out the site guide here. Someday I hope to witness the beauty of Bosque Del Apache for myself.  When I do, I will be calling Denise.

“My First Impressions Of Bosque Del Apache” is available here.

Thanks again for the inspiring work Denise!

Read Full Post »

Creative Fun with Tulips

Tulip (Bi-color and Vignette Blur filters)

Today I had a little time to work on some tulip images that I made back in the spring, but have not had time until now to process. For these tulips I used a mix of photoshop plugins to tweak the original captures. I love the Nik Software filters and used the ‘Bi-color’ and the ‘Vignette Blur’ for the first image in this post. The second image I only used the ‘Bi-color’ filter and the last image I applied my usual Fractalius settings.

These tulip creations were inspired by Denise Ippolito’s amazing artistic renderings that you can view on her blog A Creative Adventure.

Tulip with subtle ‘Bi-color filter’ treatment

Tulip Fractalius

Read Full Post »