I am staying at a wonderful hotel called Willows Lodge in Woodinville, Washington. A friend of mine wanted me to take a few pictures of the Christmas tree in the lobby. Here they are. And since I know you are checking the blog, let me know if you want any of the photos and I can pass along the full size images over to you.
I received a number of nice comments about yesterday’s photo of the day. That shot was taken the previous evening at Awenda Provincial Park.
We drove up to the park on Sunday afternoon from our home in Newmarket. The park was closed which meant that we had to hike about 2 kilometers from a parking area to the beach. And it was a pretty cold day. The light was going fast and I had to work pretty quickly to take some quality pictures.
There are two challenges with landscape photography. The first is subject material. Living near Toronto generally means a four to six hour drive roundtrip to find a scenic area. The second is timing. The golden hour of light is usually first thing in the morning or end of day.
At this time of year, end of day comes at about 5pm. No problem. We arrived to the beach by around 4. I kept shooting until it became dark. As you can see by the first photograph, I was shooting late. And, in the second photograph, you can see Matthew trying to find our trail back to the parking lot. Which was some 2 kilometers away. In the pitch black. Alone, in an abandoned provincial park.
If you get this message, perhaps you can find someone to help us out of the park. We are quite lost.
Just kidding. Matthew was an amazing scout. We eventually found our car.
Yesterday we hiked along the shores of Georgian Bay at Killbear Provincial Park. This is one of the best times of the year to take photos in the late afternoon as the sun arcs lower in the sky and the crowds are gone. Literally. We basically had the park to ourselves.
Quite a stunning area. Here are a few of the photos that I took yesterday.
From my travels on the web last week.
Scott Kelby has a new book: the 7-point System for Adobe Photoshop CS3. He has a collection of somewhat flawed exposures here. You work to recover those photos using the techniques in his book. I learned some new and very interesting techniques. I really, really enjoy Scott’s work. He has some great books on using Photoshop.
Maybe it is time to stop buying all those water bottles. We bring home a couple of cases a week. We also have a high-end water filtration system. I could get a couple of these and save some money.
If you rebuilt your Mac to run Leopard, you may need to grab hold of some of these 20 useful downloads.
I am thinking about doing a photography workshop. Most of the ones I have reviewed are based out of the states. I did find Mike Guilbault’s site here. Looks like he offers some interesting workshops close to home.
Noise. 24 hours a day. Tinnitus is the last thing I hear before I go to sleep and the first thing I hear when I wake up. Thankfully, I do not perceive it most of the time. But it is always there. I receive numerous emails from people who suffer tinnitus. I understand your pain and there is hope. You can learn to cope with this horrid condition.
Although I have far too much on the go, we decided to take a day away yesterday to hike Rosseau Falls and Six Mile Lake Provincial Park. Here are some photos from the day.
Last night, I copied over the photos of Awenda Provincial Park from my wife’s camera to my computer. We take two cameras on our hikes: the serious rig and the point and shoot rig.
And the differences in subject material can be interesting. You can see my formal landscapes of Awenda here. The beach is truly remarkable. However, my wife was able to capture a better sense of the size of some of the rocks. The first photo below is a shot that I took with my camera of the beach area at dusk. The next photo is from Lorraine’s camera. Lorraine’s shot of Matthew provides a much better perspective on the size of those rocks.
I received a very nice email from an artist in Burlington. It reads, in part:
I love your photos and a few of them are just begging to be painted. I am asking your permission to do that and would add your name as the photo credit for the source of the original.
I was pleased to grant him permission and I am surprisingly delighted that he took inspiration from my photography.
So last week was quite intense. I do not blog about my corporate side of life for a number of reasons. But part of the job does incur its fair share of stress from time to time. And so, after a major presentation yesterday morning, I took a mental health break in the afternoon. Lorraine, Matthew and I headed up to Awenda Provincial Park. The park is fairly close to where we live, about 100 kilometers, and we arrived there at 5pm. The trails are easy and the crowds at this time of year are light. We spent most of the time walking along the shore on our own.
Here are a few shots from the hike.
