ICE FOLLIES 2016

This month the sixth biennial Winter art exhibition Ice Follies is on display on lake Nipissing. It is an interesting show but I was a little disappointed with the overall quality of the work. However I did manage to get a few interesting images of the displayed art installations.

WINTER STORM

Last Wednesday I went to the waterfront to take a few pictures at the Ice Follies art installations. I just walked out on to the frozen lake when the storm hit. The weather turned pretty miserable but I managed to get a few interesting images. Needless to say I was glad to get home. Yesterday I spent quite few hours cleaning our drive way. But Spring will arrive soon I hope.

DOGSLEDDING

One activity I enjoyed was dogsledding. It was a new experience for me and it I loved it. It is an activity I will definitely do again.

LE CHATEAU MONTEBELLO, QUEBEC

Last week we spent four wonderful days at the resort hotel Le Chateau Montebello. Its a magnificent
building. According to the information its the largest log building in the world. It was built in 1930. Construction took just four months, which in it self is quite impressive. Ten thousand cedar logs were imported from British Columbia. Thirty five hundred people worked round the clock. Even today that would be quite a feat.

CANADIAN CO-OPERATIVE WOOL GROWERS, COLOUR VERSION

A few days ago I posted this same image in black and white but a few of my friends asked me to show the colour version. So her is the original colour view.

CCWG BUILDING, CARLETON PLACE, ONTARIO

Another image from the inside of the CCWG building. It is an almost abstract image of strong lines and shapes. I prefer the colour version of this picture even though initially I wanted to make the final image in black and white. 

CANADIAN CO-OPERATIVE WOOL GROWERS, CARLETON PLACE, ONTARIO

Last week I visited the Canadian Co-operative WoolGrowers company in Carlton Place. Actually I wandered into their huge warehouse and processing plant by accident. It is an amazing place located in the old Canadian Pacific Railway workshop and roundhouse, which was used  by the railway from 1890 till 1939. The WoolGrowers Co-operative moved into the building in 1940. They process over three million pounds of wool every year. It's an amazing operation and I could have spent a few days simply exploring and photographing the place.

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.