ICE FISHING HUT, LAKE NIPISSING

Yesterday I took a few pictures on the waterfront. I particular liked this image but it was difficult to process. First I made a straight colour image, which was fine but did not reflect the delicate tones of the actual landscape, so I decided to try a black and white image, which again looked fine but still lacked the mood I wanted. Finally I simply layered the two pictures and. so while the final image looks black and white, it does have some very subtle colours to soften the black and white tones.

BOXCARS, DOWNTOWN NORTH BAY

 

It was snowing yesterday. I like it when the skies are grey and the light is flat. It is the perfect weather condition to create some strong graphic black and white images. So when I looked at the parked boxcars near the downtown parking lot my first intent was to make a  picture just of a very elementary composition of a line of boxcars. However when working on the image today I decided that the added colour just added just that extra component, giving the final result a stronger visual impact.

BEAUTY SALON, NORTH BAY

I took a walk downtown. In the Winter, Main Street  looks rather desolate. however i found a wonderful book with images from the Banff Purchase. The book contains  great pictures by some of the best Canadian photographers like Nina Raginsky, Robert Bourdeau and Tom Gibson to name a few. On the way back to my car I took afew pictures along the way with a few I quite liked.

SANDPIT REVISITED

It has been too cold to venture outside to take new pictures. So this morning I was looking at some prints of a sandpit I photographed a few years ago. its actually interesting to revisit pictures from earlier shoots. You can re-interpret some of these pictures. I liked this image of a landscape with rocks and thinking how the photographer Bill Brandt would have printed this picture. I decided to print the image quite dark with strong lighting on the rocks emphasizing the surface textures.

SNOW, LAKE NIPISSING

We are getting enough snow now. I like Winter images because of the very graphic black and white rendition of the landscape. Everything is reduced to starkly defined elements.

TRYING AGAIN

So far the Winter has been very mild but the last few days, I guess, Winter is giving it another try. Today we had some snow so it was anice pleasant day to work on some photo projects.

BUTCHER SHOP WINDOW

Of course I could not resist taking a picture of this butcher shop window. I don't know if it
will attract customers because I don't think people will notice the rather gruesome humor of the display.

LOVE EACH OTHER

On the barn we photographed, someone painted a powerful  message which I think is very appropriate for our very troublesome time we are living in. So of course I had to post this image.

WINTER BARN, STURGEON FALLS, ON

Last Tuesday my friend Gerry and I made a photo excursion in the Sturgeon falls area. Our first stop was at this barn, which I had photographed on earlier trips. I like the textures of the weathered wood and rusting corrugated sheets covering part of the barn. Today I experimented with a variety of filters and textures. I like the end result, which reflects the cold winter day.

LAKE NIPISSING, 1 JANUARY, 2016

Well, at last Winter has arrived. We experienced a green Christmas but on Tuesday our first snowstorm left us with approximately 40 cm of snow. But first of course I wish everyone a very happy New Year. It has been a busy few weeks with preparing for the holidays, which we enjoyed with our family. I received some wonderful books, which I will refer to in some later postings. I also came across a marvelous photography podcast called The Art of Photography. It is a great site which has a rich content on not just tutorials on digital photography but more important on great tutorials on design and composition. Also the creator of this podcast Ted Forbes introduces you to all the great photographic masters not just from the past but also the trendsetting photographers from the 21st century. So I highly recommend this site to all of you interested in the art of photography. Enjoy.

CHRISTMAS DAY 2015

From a very green North Bay I wish all of you a wonderful Christmas and a very happy Newyear.

GARDENING ANGEL

It has been a long time since my last posting. The re are a variety of reasons for my tardiness, first of course the weather, it has been very grey and dull but another reason of course is getting ready for the holiday season. Today I had to make a card for an avid gardener and I liked the result so i decided to post it. I am getting quite interested in photo illustration. aso expect a few other examples. For those of you interested in the process, I used four different images and combined them using Photoshop and onOne Perfect Photo Suite 10.

THE SIDEKICK, TORONTO

I returned to my iPad to experiment more with some of images. I took this picture very early on Sunday morning in a coffeeshop on Queen Street in Toronto. By the way, the coffee and breakfast was excellent and a bonus was that in addition they also sell comics. But back to the picture. I liked the sunlight which created some beautiful shadows. The picture worked well in colour and black and white but then I decided to play with this picture using a variety of image apps. Some people might be interested in my workflow. So first I transferred my original picture to the iPad then into the app Snapseed. Then I used a wonderful app called iColorama. The next step is turning a copy of the image into a drawing using Photosketch Then on to Laminar Pro to combine the copies and add some effects. Learning to use these apps takes time of course but the result can be very interesting.

DRAGON

I send cards to our grandsons, which they enjoy. I guess we all like getting actual snailmail, cards and letters, rather than bills and printed advertising. I made this card after we visited the Royal Ontario museum and of course they liked the dinosaurs but I transformed the picture into a mythical dragon. Maybe the the skeleton of Smaug, the famous dragon from the "The Hobbit" or the dragon slain by Sir Lancelot.

POMPEII EXHIBITION, ROM, TORONTO

Another exhibition we visited was the Royal Ontario Museum Pompeii exhibition  Its an excellent show which we really enjoyed. The story about the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum is of course well known but seeing all the different art works you simply have to marvel not only about the superb workmanship but also the magnificent creative aspect of the displayed art  objects.

THE BEACHES, TORONTO

On our trip to Toronto we had rented a house close to the Beaches. Its a very nice area, which has a very nice board walk and of course we went for a walk along the lake. The adjacent park was lovely and to my surprise still had lots of Fall colour. For this picture I liked the Autochrome effect which gives the image an almost historic feeling.

J. M. W. TURNER EXHIBITION

We just returned from a very pleasant stay in Toronto, where we visited the J.M.W. Turner exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario. It was a wonderful experience. Most of the pictures were from the Tate gallery collection in London. So if you are planning to go to Toronto you definitely should go and see the show by arguably  the greatest British painter of the nineteenth century.

OLD MAPLE TREE

We have had some very nice Fall weather these last few days. walking past an office building downtown I made some pictures of this old very textured maple tree. The windows behind reflected a pattern of bare branches. I did not like the colur of the original image, which was quite blue so I turned it into a toned black and white image but brought back some of the colour of the tree to create a stronger visual contrast.

ABSTRACT STREET ART, POWASSAN, ONTARIO

I always am looking for textures and colour. the concrete surface of the overpass had a very rich colour palette ranging from a very light ivory to deep brown and charcoal black with beautiful textures. I reminds me of an early sixteeth century Chinese landscape painting.

RAILWAY OVERPASS, POWASSAN, ONTARIO

Yesterday we had a very unusually warm and pleasant Fall day. We walked around the town of Powassan. When walking you see so much more of your surroundings. A good example is the CN railway overpass in the downtown area. Normally you simply drive by and you will not see all the intricate textures, shapes and details. So I made quite a few pictures and this morning worked a few images using the new On1 Photo 10  photo editing program. I have to say I just love the program and will be exploring it over the next few weeks.