Out With the Old, In With the New

 

The photographs accompanying today’s post mark the some of the last photos taken with my Nikon D200 and the last post for a couple of weeks. After a very long wait my newly purchased Nikon D800 has finally arrived and I will be heading out the door to have some fun with the new camera. Why did I upgrade? Certainly not because the D200 was not taking great images but quite simply, I require a new tool to capture the images I want, and I believe that the Nikon D800 will allow me to do just that. In the coming weeks we will see   The two images in today’s post are from Tiny Marsh Provincial Wildlife Area located neat Elmvale, Ontario. Do note in the last image I should have captured this photo a few seconds earlier when the highest part of the cloud formation was directly above the tallest tree on the right side of the image.

I hope everybody has a safe, fun-filled Canada Day weekend and to my friends south of the border, all the best on July 4

Please click on each image to view a much larger version of the photos.

See you soon!

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Seguin Recreation Trail

Small Lake At Sunrise, Seguin Recreation Trail

While out shooting fall colour about three weeks ago I wanted to visit one of my most favorite trails in Ontario – The Seguin Recreation Trail. This trail is not far from my family cottage on Horseshoe Lake. Sometimes I will drive out to the access point on Highway 69 and other times I will walk a one hour, woodland path off the cottage road out to this trail. For this day’s shoot I decided to drive out to the access point. The trail is no longer open to automobile traffic, only hiking, cycling and ATVs are permitted.

The Seguin Recreation Trail is rich in Ontario history and back in the late 1800′s it was once a railway line. This railway line was built by lumber baron JR Booth and connected Depot Harbour on Georgian Bay to Ottawa. The tracks have since been lifted and the trail is now referred to as the Park 2 Park Trail, which connects Killbear Provincial Park with Algonquin Provincial Park. When in Algonquin Provincial Park if you happen to hike the Mizzy Lake Trail, you will be walking on the old railway bed when you reach the section of the trail at Wolf Howl Pond.

I have always enjoyed this trail for its numerous beaver ponds and small lakes void of hand-of-man elements. Below you will see two versions of two different scenes captured along this trail. I am interested in hearing from folks as to which version of these two images they prefer and why?

Small Lake at Daybreak – Version #1

Small Lake at Daybreak – Version #2

Autumn Wetland – Version #1

Autumn Wetland – Version #2

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From Capture, To Clean-up, To Fractalius

Tiny Marsh Provincial Wildlife Area at sunrise

Several days ago I drove over to Tiny Marsh for sunrise. I was greeted with a cloudless sky, not the most pleasing of situations for sunrise imagery. However, I ventured out across the wetland trails to see what might develop. As the sun rose above the horizon I captured a few images, minimizing the cloudless sky and allowing the wetland vegetation to dominate much of the image. Shortly after this I decided to walk out along the boardwalk trail to search for my favorite wildlife subjects – frogs. The boardwalk goes through a forested swampy section of  Tiny Marsh. My timing for this was perfect as there were many young Leopard Frogs at rest on fallen branches and resting among the duckweed in the water. I spent the next three or four hours shooting frogs. Since the frogs were in rather unpleasant lighting situations with the blazing sun casting harsh shadows as it streamed through the surrounding forest I decided to use my Nikon SB-400 on a home-made flash bracket to illuminate the scene. When I shoot frogs I always try to get down to their level if possible, so in this situation I lay down on the boardwalk to get as low as possible. The use of the flash solved the harsh, contrasting lighting, but it created another problem that I dislike very much – flash generated specular highlights. So began the task of eliminating these from the images. Often I will work on a photo very large (500-800%) to evict the highlights. I often use a variety of quick masks and clone stamp to complete this task. Due to the glossy, wet look of the amphibian`s skin this can sometimes be a time consuming task, taking 1-2 hours per image on occasion. I do find the extra effort is well worth the end result and when I complete the task why not try running through the photoshop plugin Fractalius.

Below you will see one of my Leopard Frog images from this day showing the original capture, the optimized file and of course the Fractalius rendering.

On another note, I have started a Facebook fan page today, still lots of work to do on it, but you may check it out here .

Original Capture

Optimized Image

Fractalius Version

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Tiny Marsh Provincial Wildlife Area

Tiny Marsh at sunrise (3-stop reverse graduated filter)

On Friday morning I made a quick trip up to Tiny Marsh for some sunrise photography. Tiny Marsh, located just west of Barrie, Ontario, is one of my favorite destinations for sunrise photography and wetland wildlife images too. Don’t let the name fool you, this is a very large wetland. The wetland section of this location is 600 hectares in size and is surrounded by 300 hectares of forest and fields. It is managed, in part, by Ducks Unlimited Canada. This was my first visit to the marsh this year as I have been too busy to get here sooner. I often arrive long before sunrise to allow time to walk out across the wetland trails to be where I want to be when the show begins. It is always a pleasure to listen to the sounds of the marsh as it awakens with the new day. Black Terns, Pied-billed Grebe, Osprey, Trumpeter Swans, Least Bitterns, Otters and many other critters abound here.

I have begun to use a Singh Ray 3-stop reverse graduated filter for sunrise photos where the sun is just above the horizon. The reverse graduated filter does a wonderful job at holding back the bright sun as it rises above the horizon. This filter yields more pleasing results for these type of images as opposed to using an ordinary graduated filter.

Tiny Marsh at sunrise (3-stop reverse graduated filter)

While waiting for the sun to rise don’t forget to look over your shoulder. Often you will find some rather pleasing colors in the sky. For the image below I used a combination of a Singh Ray 2-stop soft edge graduated filter with a Singh Ray Color Intensifier. The original image was composed with some wild rice poking into the foreground. To include the cloud formation reflections I was forced to include them in the composition and then evict them later in post processing.

Tiny Marsh (Singh Ray 2-stop grad filter & Color Intensifier)

As I was walking out along the wetland trail towards my car, the sun was much higher in the sky and broke through an opening in the cloud cover producing rays of light that shone down on the wetland. For the image below I used a 2-stop graduated filter and a Cokin Blue and Yellow Polarizing Filter. I don’t particularly like using the blue and yellow filter, but do find that it has its place when used sparingly. Often when using this type of filter with digital capture some adjustment to white balance and color temperature is required. If you are interested in using this type of filter I would suggest you purchase the Singh Ray version (I keep putting it off, but need to replace the Cokin one with this one) which is called ‘Gold-N-Blue” and to use if effectively refer to Darwin Wiggett’s blog entry at Focus on Singh Ray Filters.

Tiny Marsh (2-stop grad filter & Cokin Blue & Yellow polarizer)

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Cayo Santa Maria Landscape Results

Here is a collection of some of initial landscape results, or perhaps more appropriately they should be referred to as ocean-scapes, from my recent trip to the island of Cayo Santa Maria in Cuba. Much of the week there were strong winds that created rough conditions on the ocean – perfect for wave blurs. The last day or so the winds diminished and the ocean settled down quite a bit for some more peaceful ocean scenes. I found my 12-24mm lens to be my most used lens on this trip with my 80-400mm lens a close second, mostly for bird life. I used an assortment of filters for these images here, from ND filters to polarizers to grad and reverse grad filters. The islands in the Jadines del rey archipelago, a Unesco World Biosphere, are dominated by many mangrove sections that are very rich in birdlife. As fate would have it, while shooting landscapes one morning with my 12-24mm lens attached three Crested Caracaras flew by. I was a little disappointed that there was not as much birdlife on this island as I had encountered on a previous visit to Cayo Guillermo in the same archipelago, but nonetheless it is a beautiful location and I was able to add several new species of birds to my image collection which will be featured in an upcoming post in the coming days. Hope you enjoy this selection of imagery.

30 Second exposure at sunrise over Mangroves

Wave blur on the Atlantic Ocean

Daybreak on Cayo Santa Maria and Atlantic Ocean

Mangroves

Wave blur on the Atlantic Ocean at Cayo Santa Maria

Cayo Santa Maria ocean scene at low-tide

Rugged shoreline handheld from catamaran with 80-400 VR lens

Sunrise over mangroves

Atlantic Ocean at low-tide on Cayo Sanata Maria

Daybreak on Cayo Santa Maria and Atlantic Ocean

 

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Odds and Sods

Going through some of my images from last year and thought I would post a few. Hope you like the photos.

Sunrise at Antrim Lake in Ontario’s Halfway Lake Provincial Park

Fall colour along Irondale River

The Gut on the Crowe River in The Gut Conservation Area

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Winter Trees

 

With all the leaves finally off the trees around my rural home, I can’t wait to start shooting “tree skeletons” at sunrise and at sunset again. I think they make wonderful subjects and no two trees ever look the same. This tree was photographed one winter morning a few years ago, across the road from Tiny Marsh near Elmvale, Ontario. I was on my way to Tiny Marsh for some winter sunrise imagery and was about to pull into the parking lot at the visitor’s center when I noticed this beautiful pre-dawn light and fog that lay on the agricultural fields. Without hesitation, I abandoned my initial plans and took advantage of this great light while it lasted.

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Sunrise at Tiny Marsh

Here is a recent sunrise image from Tiny Marsh near Elmvale, Ontario. Tiny Marsh is one of my favorite wetlands to shoot at sunrise. Despite its name, Tiny Marsh is quite large at approximately 600 hectares making it an important wetland in south-central Ontario for migrating waterfowl. It was once drained for agriculture, but through the efforts of conservation organizations it is now a flourishing wetland once again and a popular spot for birding, naturalists and duck hunting when in season.

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