Good Morning 2017

Winter Stream, Innisfil, Ontario, Canada

Happy New Year to all!!

This morning I arose bright and early to greet the new year with a winter sunrise over a small stream near my rural home. It was a beautiful and peaceful morning.

To view the larger, sharper version please remember to click on the image 🙂

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Duchesnay Creek and the Bitter Cold

Duchesnay Creek
Nikon D800, Nikom 18-35mm lens, ISO 50, f16 @ 0.6 sec. Polarizing Filter

The forecast for today was one of bitter cold temperatures and snow squalls, however, the snow was to remain further towards the southern areas of the Ontario. When the weather turns bitterly cold this is often the time I am ready to head out to some of my favorite waterfalls and rivers because the extreme cold temperatures do wonders for the creation of awesome ice formations. My chosen destination for today was the beautiful Duchesnay Falls, which is on the Duchesnay Creek in North Bay, Ontario. I awoke at 4:30 a.m. and commenced my 3 hour drive north to North Bay. When I arrived in North Bay the temperature was a balmy -26 C 🙂 As I made my way through the forest towards the falls I soon came to realize that I could not hear the sound of the waterfall through the forest, and as I had feared it was completely frozen over, but I continued along the trail system the leads up to the top of the waterfall and did find some nice open water above the falls. I spent about three hours creating various compositions along this stretch of open water on the Duchesnay Creek before making the trek home. All in all it was a wonderful day, made even better by the brutal cold, which made for some lovely ice formations. I will share some of the alternate compositions with you shortly.

Please click on the image to view the sharper, larger version.

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Intimate Winter Landscapes

Winter river details

Today was a rare day for the current winter season. We had snow! While we only received about 3 inches after a long period of freezing rain, it was nice to see the landscape cloaked in fresh snow. Once the driving conditions improved, I ventured down a few of the small gravel roads around my home to some nearby, smaller tributaries of the Nottawasaga River (a large river that empties into Georgian Bay) to photograph some winter river details. Winter often presents us with challenges when we are out photographing and one such challenge is finding away to incorporate some colour into the scene. In the above image, while standing at the side of the road, my eye was drawn to the golden-toned grasses that were submerged in the river. In the image below I walked down beside the river to change my perspective for an alternate look. The blue colouration in this photograph was achieved by capturing the scene after the sun had dipped below the horizon on a relatively clear evening.

Intimate winter river

Below is one of the first images I photographed at this location. While driving down the road, the jagged river ice here grabbed my attention and I decided to stop and explore the potential possibilities at this scene. I used my Nikon 80-400mm lens to reach out across the fragile snow and ice-scape to photograph this interesting river ice. The river is about a foot and a half below the ice formations in this photo and appears very dark as a result. It has a black and white sort of feel to it that I like.

All images in this post were photographed with my Nikon 80-400mm lens, which is my favorite lens for intimate landscape work.

River ice

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