Tag Archive for: travel

Torrance Barrens

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Another late summer day spent hiking in central Ontario. We walked on one of the trails at Hardy Lake Provincial Park as well as the main loop trail at Torrance Barrens Conservation Reserve. Below are a few photos from the day’s hike. The first two from Hardy Lake and the last four from Torrance Barrens. Torrance Barrens is a dark sky reserve. An ideal location for stargazing. And some amazing terrain for a landscape photographer. At times, I found myself wondering if I was still in Canada. The barrens reminded me of Africa.

Hardy Lake 1

Hardy Lake 2

Torrance Barrens 1

Torrance Barrens 2

Torrance Barrens 3

Torrance Barrens 4

Algonquin Park

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We packed up the car and left early this morning to spend the day at Algonquin Provincial Park. An amazing day spent hiking the Ragged Waterfall as well as the 7.7km Track and Tower trail.

Here are a few photos from the day.

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Elora Gorge

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My wife and my youngest son joined me yesterday to shoot the Elora Gorge. Elora is a scenic town located about 110 kilometres from our home. The day was perfect. We spent several hours hiking around the gorge. I took about two hundred frames of the area.

Here are a few of the shots. The last shot was taken at the base of the gorge. I was not alone. There were about 20 Mennonite women nearby. They had climbed down a very steep trail, full of sharp and pointy rocks, in their bare feet. And they congregated around an inlet to sing hymns.

I was very tempted to take their picture however I seem to recall that the old order Mennonites are not fans of photography. So I pointed the lens towards the gorge itself. It was a different experience to focus on the grandeur of God’s creation while a group of Mennonite women were singing hymns in the background.

Elora 1

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Elora 3

Elora 4

From The Great White North

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Wireless issues still abound. Although the techies were able to fix the connectivity last night, my Vista Stinkpad won’t stay connected. My son’s MacBook Pro works just fine. Typical.

Anyway, having a great time. Here are a few more photos to share from this morning.

Sunrise 1

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Sunrise 4

Sunrise 5

On Vacation

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Blogging will be a bit infrequent over the next couple of weeks. I am off to the wilds of the country a bit further north than Toronto. I wonder if they have Internet access out that far? Will my Blackberry still work?

We are at a family camp for the next week. And after that, I will be spending several days doing some remote recording.

I will do a bit of a photo essay on the remote project next week and post it online. The session is a grand piano and violin combination tracking for a Christmas CD. We have already tracked ten songs in the studio featuring a full band. This segment of the project will be ten songs on stage.

I haven’t confirmed my microphone choices as yet. I will be using a Millenia Media HV-3D 8-channel preamp feeding an 002R. My Pro Tools HD Accel rig is definitely a fixed installation so I have to leave it behind. The 002R will be driven by a Macbook Pro running Pro Tools LE 7.3 and a LaCie Firewire drive for the audio files.

I am not too keen on the 002R internal convertors, so I may bring my Apogees with me. And I may also bring my Genelec nearfields for onsite monitoring. Trouble is that we are using a concert hall and we have it for three days between 3pm and 10pm. I need to keep the remote rig is compact as possible to speed setup and take down.

I also haven’t settled on the sample rate. I track 24-bit and depending on the project, I will sample at 44.1, 88.2 or 96. Oh well. I have a week or so before I need to make those decisions.

Home Again

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Back in Toronto today. A few more photos from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. By way of interest, all of these photos were taken during the last hour or so of sunlight just after 7:30pm. I wandered into the river beds to get close to the river and so I had to exercise due care not to slip and fall. The currents in some areas of the various rivers get quite intense.

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On Top Of Old Smoky

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We make our way back to Toronto today. Parting is always such sweet sorrow. The Great Smoky Mountains has been a wonderful place to tour and to photograph. The photos below include a shot of our cabin, Sink Falls, and Laurel Falls.

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Smoky Mountains

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Yesterday was another day spent touring the Smoky Mountains by car. At different pull-offs and trailheads, we would walk a little ways off the road and come across some stunning scenery.

I did receive emails asking me how I achieve the silky effect on the waterfalls. Most of the waterfall and river shots were taken very late in the day. At this time of year, I would shoot these types of frames between 7:00pm and 8:45pm. The camera is set to aperture priority. I select a high f-stop, often f22. This means that the exposure can be anywhere from 5 to 10 seconds. A tripod is an absolute requirement. I will also trigger the shutter with a remote release with the mirror up.

Here are a few photos from yesterday’s journey into the park.

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