Revisiting Lower Rosseau Falls

Lower Rosseau Falls, Rosseau River, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada

How often do you revisit locations for landscape photography? I do so often. Why? As each season passes and years fall away conditions change. These images of Lower Rosseau Falls in Ontario’s famous Muskoka region are the perfect example. Over the last few years the water levels have been much lower, but with the region being hit with a significant amount of snowfall this past winter, the subsequent snowmelt has raised water levels so that the river is now a raging torrent. This has created numerous, new photographic possibilities and has seen the return of the double cascade created by the rock mid-stream in the above photo.

To find out how to get to Lower Rosseau Falls and to learn more about great Ontario landscape photography locations please consider my eBook “A Photographer’s Guide to the Ontario Landscape” – the first ever comprehensive guide to landscape photography in Ontario.

Do click on each of these images to see the larger, sharper versions.

Lower Rosseau Falls, Rosseau River, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada

Lower Rosseau Falls, Rosseau River, Muskoka, Ontario, Canada

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Frog Pond Photo Tip

Male American Toad (Bufo americanus) chorusing in pond at night.

I have been quite busy these last few weeks, with little time to get out for fresh images. This week with our night time temperatures being relatively warm I had to head out in search of some photos of chorusing toads, which I could hear far off in the distance. Since the ponds behind my home were destroyed a couple of seasons ago I now must travel further a field for images. I have located another productive pond about 15 minutes from my home, so I drove there a couple of nights ago. The toads were being most cooperative as song filled the air.

When I photograph frogs and toads at night I will use a head-lamp as well as two tiny flashlights attached to the flash head with elastics, these are used for focusing at night. Another useful way to use external lighting to assist with night-time focusing is to use a small clip-on flashlight and fastening it to sturdy elements within the pond such as that of a dried cattail stem. By doing so you can aim the light quite accurately to assist with the focusing. This is exactly what I did to photograph the toads in this blog post.

Small clip-on flashlight secured to dried cattail stem.

Often I have noticed that the toad’s colorations can vary greatly among each specimen that has arrived at the pond. I was delighted to find this specimen with it’s lovely golden yelow tones.

American Toad (Bufo americanus) in pond at night

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Simplified Waterfall

Secluded Woodland Waterfall on the Nottawasaga River near Orangeville, Ontario

The above artistic rendering of a small waterfall located along the Nottawasaga River near Orangeville, Ontario was created using the Photoshop plug-in Topaz Simplify, which is available from Topaz Labs. I visited this waterfall a few years ago and have had the image sitting on the back-burner ever since. This evening I decided it was time to optimize the image file and play around with creating a painterly-like version of it as well. Below you will see the original version of this lovely, secluded waterfall.

Secluded Woodland Waterfall on the Nottawasaga River near Orangeville, Ontario.

In other news: the May issue of the Creative Photography E-Mini-Magazine (The Mini-Mag) is now available on-line here. This wonderful, absolutely free, on-line creative photography magazine is published monthly by Denise Ippolito. Do check out this magazine that is full of useful and creative tips and to see the latest froggie article by yours truly click here.

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Rotten Old Vessel

 

While vacationing in the Cayman Islands, on the island of Cayman Brac I often passed this old wooden boat along the road on the south side of the island. I could not help myself but to create a low perspective, wide angle composition that I could bring home to play around with for that grungy look. After making the required tweaks in ACR and performing a bit of image clean-up for dust bunnies and such I opened the image in Nik / Google’s Color Efex 4 and selected the Detail Extractor tool. Using a heavy hand I enhanced the detail to a slightly grunge look and applied the results. Next I opened the image a second time the exact same way to apply the Detail Extractor Tool a second time. This is my lazy-HDR technique when I am seeking that grungy effect. I often use this technique for my Rusty Old Wrecks gallery, which is on my Smugmug page. Please do click here to view this gallery too.

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