One evening at the lake we witnessed a stunning light display from a distant electrical storm. The actual event was silent (i.e. no thunder), which added an eerie quality to it. I shot a series of stills during the storm, some of which I combined to form the stop motion video short below. I added sounds from another storm and a loon call, all recorded at a later date at the lake.
Enjoy.
David
The lounge chair...
This was my father’s favourite lounge chair and, on the rare moments that he wasn’t moving, one might find him relaxing upon it at the water’s shore. It seemed a fitting prop for a series of family portraits during our most recent time at Long Lake.
It was a blazing early afternoon when we decided to do the shoot – a time that any photographer in their right mind would avoid, particularly given that I planned to photograph the gang hovering over the lake’s surface. And with the sunny conditions, I needed some flash to keep my subjects lit without losing background detail.
Me, up to my knees...
No worries – I had my trusty SB900 and my daughter’s Nikon D80 with it’s built-in infrared trigger: what more could one ask for at high noon sitting upon a giant reflective mirror of water?
Well, I thought a diffusion panel might be nice, so I jerry-rigged one from a step ladder and an old sheet with some clothespins, together with a voice-activated light stand (a.k.a. my brother-in-law). Consistent lighting proved difficult under this scenario, but I took what I could get and ran with it…
Below are selections from the photo series – variable lighting, to be sure, but I was happy enough with the final results.
My wife, Sherry:
Sherry at lounge...
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My sister, Valerie:
Valerie - lounging...
Valerie and high heels...
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Valerie and her husband, Daniel:
Sister and hubbie...
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Enjoy,
David
Cool morning air collides with the surface of the lake, still warm from the previous day’s heat, to leave a blanket of mist hovering over-top.
This past week was spent at the family cottage in Northern Ontario. The lakeside property has been in the family for as long as I have seen days – that would be fifty-one years’ worth – and every year from then till now I have spent at least a portion of the summer there. We call the cottage “camp”, as do all who hail from that part of cottage country, and the Taylor camp has afforded the family immeasurable pleasure over the last half-century. But there are two pleasures that are particularly dear to me: the sound of the loons and early morning mists on glassy water surfaces, the latter being the subject of today’s post.
This first image was taken handheld from our canoe with the early morning sun behind me.
Early morning mist against the peninsula...
The second photograph shown below was also taken from the water and was also handheld. But in this case I was facing into the sun and opted for a high dynamic range version of the scene, which required that I bracket it over several stops. (In fact, this final image is an example of HDR combined with panoramic stitching.) I also found the final version most pleasing in black and white. (A somewhat larger rendering can be viewed from my flickr site, which better reveals the detail of the raft in the lower left portion of the photograph.)
More of the mist - this being a high dynamic range image...
Enjoy.
David
Anstruthers lake - vapour trails...
This image was taken as we were travelling by boat across Anstruthers Lake, located in Ontario’s Kawarthas Lakes region, to the cottage of a friend. It is in fact a high dynamic range composite produced from three separate images shot in rapid sequence and spanning four stops of exposure. The composite was produced using Photomatix Pro and subsequently imported into Lightroom for some final adjustments.
The three original exposures are shown below. On cursory view one might think that the mid-exposure image (“exposure 2″) would do just fine (and perhaps it would). However, upon more careful examination one would note that the red and green channels – producing the yellow hues of the sunset – are blown out in various spots beyond the sun itself, and that some of the cloud formations lack in tonal definition. It is these two aspects of the mid-exposure image that are cleaned up nicely in the high dynamic range version.
When merging images for high dynamic range processing, I have found it best to limit the number of original files to three or four; using more than this number can lead to softer images. Note as well that, while a tripod is best, it isn’t always necessary – I often produce acceptable HDR images from handheld shots and have found that Photomatix Pro and Photoshop both do a very good job of aligning images. (Recall that these Anstruthers Lake images were taken handheld from a slowly moving boat.)
Anstruthers lake - exposure 1
Anstruthers Lake - exposure 2
Anstruthers Lake - exposure 3
Enjoy…
David
