WINTER LANDSCAPE, COLOUR

 So here is the promised colour interpretation. Rob gave the black and white image 10 out of 10, so I am interested which picture he prefers. I used the word interpretation because I used a variety of filters and adjustments to create the Winter mood I was looking for. The enormous changes in the various photo adjustment programs gives me the same freedom as painters have to create the image to your own artistic interpretation.

WINTER LANDSCAPE, POWASSAN, ONTARIO

 

Again a. picture I took a few years ago in the Powassan area. It was a difficult decision which image to choose, so I decided to publish both interpretations. Today I start with the monochrome image, tomorrow the colour interpretation. Each image reflects the Winter season and both show a different aspect of the cold season. I feel that this image reflects a strong graphic meaning of the Winter season. But lets look at the colour picture and maybe this will decide my view of which picture is the one with the most impact.

DRAMATIC SKY, LAKE NIPISSING

 

Last Friday afternoon I made a visit at one of my local beaches here in North Bay. It was a pretty somber grey Fall day. But I was lucky because just when I arrived the sky started to open up at the horizon. Of course that was all the change I saw but it made for a pretty simple but dramatic picture, which, after I turned this simple landscape into a black and white image, became quite a visually impressive image.

FIRST SIGNS OF WINTER

 

This photograph was quite a challenge for me. The original is an old and I mean old, Agfa  slide. This type of film has a pretty limited life span. The colour was faded and showed discolouring on the edges. So, after scanning, I decided to turn the image into a monochrome picture and I am quite happy with the result. I took this picture early on a cold November morning and I like dark moody quality. Then I made some rather subtle changes with a LUT filter, which you can create yourself, to enhance the overal tone of the final image.

OLD BOOTS

 

About time to post another image. Again I have been rummaging through my files and liked this picture of old boots at one of my favourite places to visit the Powassan Treasure Mill. Its a fun place to take pictures.

The boots were black with the centre pair brown. So I turned the original colour image into a monochrome picture and then simply masked out the brown boots. It just added a contrast to this richly textured image.

 

COMPOSITION WITH COW PORTRAIT

 One of the places I visit, is a famous local house which is decorated  with all kind of found and collected junk. But lately it does not look that interesting any more. Everything looks neglected and deteriorated. Still, I did take a few pictures and liked this painting of a cow surrounded by some typical Canadian objects like old snowshoes, skates and hockey sticks. Again I prefer the monochromatic interpretation.

FOUR BRICKS

 

Composition with four bricks. The original was in colour but, after some study, I decided to turn the image into a monochromatic picture. Then I brought back the colour in the bricks to make them prominent in the composition and I liked the result. It definitely made the image visually stronger.

REEDS AND REFLEXIONS

 Another black and white image, which I took a few years ago when taking pictures around Munster, Ontario. It is a simple subject of reeds and its reflexion in water. I like the contrast between the detailed textured reed contrasted by the strong black and white reflexions, which look like a Japanese ink drawing.

LAKE NIPISSING, CLOUDS AND WAVE

 

Visited my favourite beach today. It was simply a glorious fall day. But instead of creating a colour interpretation of the landscape, I decided to render the scene into black and white. The reason, simple I liked the similarity between the clouds and the wave at the bottom. Black and white made the two elements more dominant in this composition.

FALL REFLECTIONS

A beautiful Fall day yesterday. We went for a walk along some trails, where we took pictures along a small creek. My first interest in running water are reflections and textures. I know what I can expect but of course the results are quite new and can be spectacular. The final image looks closer to an abstract painting rather than a straight photograph. Working with the various images on the computer is exciting because you manipulating the original file you can  see the image turn into final result you had in mind in the first place.

AUTUMN LEAVES

 

Just listening to Nat King Cole singing Autumn Leaves. I still love his interpretation of this popular song.

SoI am posting my visual interpretation. I like the painterly effect of this Fall image.

FALL LANDSCAPE

 

On the weekend I took a walk around the maple bush on the old Thorn’s farm property on our street. The house is gone but the old maple trees in the back of the property are still there for the time being. It’s a pity but I expect that soon we will see this nice area transform into some form of new development. So just in time to take some nice romantic Fall landscapes.  

WALK WAY, NORTH BAY, ONTARIO

 It has been a very long time since I posted a picture to my blog. Other projects have taken priority but I will certainly return to posting images again. This picture was taken last week on one of our walks through  the downtown neighbourhoods we like to explore. These areas are always an inspiration because there are always new ways of seeing the very familiar cityscapes. This picture was made while walking down one of the various walkways between streets. We enjoy those walkways reminding us of the paintings by a relative unknown painter Albert Frank who loved to walk along the various little lanes in Toronto, which he photographed and made into very delightful paintings.

RAIN

Rain today and yes I had to take a few pictures of hostas again. The two different patterns of the  drops and the lines from the leafs created a marvellous image.

SUMMER TEXTURES

Summer started yesterday, so to celebrate the new season I took some pictures in our garden. The garden is almost pure textures which we enjoy. The garden is predominantly coloured in a wide variety of greens, ranging from light yellow green to a deep forest green. However I decided to render my composition in black and white and yes I think this works quite well. It reminds me of the very powerful images of plants and gardens by the San Francisco photographer Imogen Cunningham.

DIPTYCH

Since the beginning of the pandemic I did not post any image on my blog. Actually I don’t have a good excuse for neglecting my blog. Not that I abandoned photography, far from it. this time was actually a good time to start looking at my past files and thinking about the direction my photography is taking me. Maybe it is my age but I found a renewed interest in my. black and white work. Also as I have mentioned earlier, I am very interested in what I would call my abstract photographs. Here is an example of my latest almost painterly experiments in my photography.

ROOTS

Time for another post. My choice  is a picture of some visually interesting tree roots. I am reading a book on Chinese art, a topic which has interested me for quite a long time. It is the ink drawings with just some light touches of colour, which I enjoy and recreate in this photograph. In this time  of isolation I like using my iPad to work on my pictures. There are some very good apps which allow you to explore different visual effects.

SPONTANEOUS ENVIRONMENTAL ART

Walking along the shore we came across this stacked rock “sculpture”, which I titled “spontaneous environmental sculpture”. I liked the simple elemental aspect. Not just the shape but alsothe colur and texture made a nice added surprise to our  walk.

EARLY SIGNS OF SPRING

Yesterday we went on a short little walk and photo shoot along the shores of lake Nipissing. It is still very early in the Spring season yet here in Northern Ontario. An overcast day which resulted in muted tones ranging from grey to yellow and browns. Actually closer to late Fall tones than the exuberance of the Spring colours of predominantly light green and yellow. It was a nice walk which resulted in a few nice images when I returned home. We are very fortunate living in a part of the country which allows us the freedom in these difficult and restrictive times to still go and enjoy the spiritual healing of simply walking and enjoying nature.

RED DOOR, HAILEYBURY, ONTARIO

Another picture from my file. when I saw this door, I was quite curious about the construction of the entrance to the building. It showed a very generous application of cement not just the entrance but also around the window. Looking at the file It reminded me of some nineteenth century gothic scene. Remembering old wet plate photos from that era I first made a black and white image, which I combined with the original colour file. Then I applied a variety of filters to end up with an early hand coloured final image. My workflow is quite simple, starting in Lightroom then switching to Photoshop to make my preliminary adjustments and finally using the various filters and settings in OnOne.