Winter Trees

Winter Tree, Innisfil, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 18-35mm

 

One of my most favorite winter subjects to photograph is the skeletal forms of tree in winter. Living in a rural area in Essa Township provides me with ample opportunities to photograph these winter trees. Often I will head out at either sunrise or sunset to photograph them and when doing so I always search for the trees that are a slight rise in the terrain so that I can compose them against the sky being very careful not to allow any of the branches on the tree to merge with the horizon. It can also be rewarding to create artistic renderings of winter trees with a variety of photoshop plug-ins. In this post I am revealing two such creations that utilized the Topaz Labs plug-in Simplify. For the two artistic renderings at the end of this blog post I selected one of the sketch presets in Simplify and tweaked the sliders until I achieved the strong black and white treatment.

Winter Tree, Innisfil, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 24-85mm

 

Winter Tree, Innisfil, Ontario
Nikon D800, Nikon 24-85mm

 

Winter Tree – Topaz Simplify

 

Winter Tree – Topaz Simplify

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Horses

White Horse in fog, Milton, Ontario, Canada

Today’s post features a few images that were created over the last couple of years. Living in a rural region of Ontario I often stop to photograph horses when the conditions are optimum or when neighbors ask me if I have time to take a few photographs of their horses. The above image of the horse in the fog was created last fall after I spent the better part of my morning photographing rusty old wrecks with Denise Ippolito and the Toronto Digital Photography Club – who can resist a white horse in fog 🙂

Horses in fog, Milton, Ontario, Canada

The foggy conditions of that morning were quite special and in the above image I liked the contrast between these two horses and the fog. A touch of Nik’s Detail Extractor was used to bring out a little detail in the trees behind the horses.

Above and below are some portraits of a neighbor’s horses. In the images below I could resist the temptation to apply an artistic rendering to them.

Foal – Topaz Simplify

Horse Portrait – Fractalius

Please remember to click on each of the images to see the larger, sharper versions.

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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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