Going under ground
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 18mm, f/5.6, 6 sec, ISO400
I think an apology is in order. A while back I upgraded varies plugin’s on my blog, and for some reason the commentLuv plugin did not get re-enabled after the upgrade. I just realized yesterday that something was missing from the comments – the link back to the commenter’s own blog.
If you have commented on my images, please know that I appreciate them all, critical or not, and at the very least I should offer a link back to your blog. It didn’t happen, for that I’m really sorry.
Today’s shot is from an old limestone mine in Denmark. The mining ended in 1953, but the kilns were still producing burnt lime from other quarries all the way up to 1978. The mine is now part of a museum. Lots of tourists take the tour underground, guided or not. The constant temperature in the mine is perfect for storage and maturing of cheese, up to 200 tons of it. Just try for a second to imagine the smell… yeah, I know.
Besides being a bat habitat, the mine is also home to an underground concert hall – the acoustics are amazing.
The Mill
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 170mm, f/8, 1/2sec, ISO200
Well, I don’t know about you guys, but I think that was a very short weekend….
I’ll kick this week of with a shot from the paper mill in Espanola, Ontario. It’s from a set of shots taken in October last year. I just happened to be going by early in the morning, and seeing the mist or fog by the hydro damn and bridge, that’ s just an opportunity that shouldn’t be wasted so I had to pull over and grab some shots. Here and here are some earlier post from Espanola.
The corner
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 95mm, f/5.3, 1/320sec, ISO200
TGIF! What a long week. I thought I would end this week with another shot from a World Wide Photo walk. This time it’s from 2009 in Odense, Denmark. The walk was in and around the area of Hans Christian Andersen’s birth home, now museum. This shot looks really good in large print. Looking at the screen now, I’m not so sure… I was going for the patterns on the cobble stone and the bricks in the round wall.
Traverse City, MI
Nikon D300, Nikkor 70-300mm, 195mm, f/5.6, 1/750 sec, ISO200
This shot is from the 2011 World Wide Photo walk in Traverse City, MI. The walk was divided up in three parts. About an hour on the harbor front, and then you could choose to do either a downtown Traverse shoot or a drive up on the Old Mission peninsula for some spectacular views over the vineyards. I chose the latter and in hindsight, I should have done the city part of the walk instead. Now I know for next time. I got my bests shots from the harbor, and I choose to submit this one – and I’m glad I did.
Glen Haven, MI
Nikon D300, Nikkor 16-35mm f/4, 16mm, f/16, 1/125sec, ISO200
I’ll kick this week of with a shot from the Scott Kelby’s 2011 World Wide Photo Walk. I sure hope you got to do a walk near your location, if not, try to make time for next year. I had to pleasure to do two walks that October weekend, the unofficial one in Glen Haven, MI and the official one in Traverse City, MI. I have already posted one shot from the Glen Haven walk on this blog (click here), and here is another one. It’s the path from the old Coast Guard Station, (now a museum) down to the beach.
It’s definitively a place I would like to go back to sometime next year. Beautiful place.
Orchids up close
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 200mm, f/13, 1/250sec, ISO200
When I moved to Canada from Denmark about 9 years ago, I left most of my stuff in my parent’s basement. That included my studio strobes which wouldn’t have worked over here anyway, being the standard voltage here is 120 Volt compared to 220 Volts in Europe. So when I’m back home visiting, I like to take the gear out and take it for a drive. Over time the umbrellas has turned yellow and should really be discarded, but the color cast is easily fixed in LR. My studio strobes are very simple and very old – 2 power settings is what I get to play with, but it’s still a lot of fun. My setup is very simple, a strobe on each side of the dining table and I’m using my suitcase as a black back ground.
Like any woman, ( I assume) my mom loves flowers and plants, and it shows her apartment. No fake plants here. She had gotten or bought this orchid awhile back, and it was flowering while I was there, so it became the test subject for the afternoon.
The orchid is a Phalaenopsis orchid. There is many variants in that family, so lets just call it a pink Phalaenopsis before I get into more trouble. At the time I shot this, I did not have my 105mm Macro. I would love to do some really tight shots on this flower. But that’s a project for next time I’m going home.
I have included the a setup shot, and a couple more captures from the afternoon. Click on the thumbnails for a large size view.
Enjoy.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 65mm, f/27, 1/250sec, ISO200
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 200mm, f/13, 1/250sec, ISO200
Harris Creek
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 82mm, f/13, 1/6 sec, ISO200
I found this shot while going through some shots from 2009. I thought it would be alright for a post here.
The shot is from Harris Creek, which is running under Hwy 17 East of Blind River, Ontario. It’s a nice little spot where it’s easy to get to the tiny falls.
P & R – Back at High Falls
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 42mm, f/8, 1/3sec, ISO200, B+W circular polarizer
First I would like to say thanks you so much for your nice comments, encouragement and support. It is truly appreciated.
Last round of my “post & run” week.
It’s from my favorite spot to go shoot in my area, and yup, it’s another fall shot from the beautiful High Falls in Onaping and there will probably be more posts to come from this place.
Enjoy.
P & R – West Branch
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200, 18mm, f/8 , 1/125s, ISO200
Second round of my “post & run” week.
The shot above is from an outing up the West Branch behind Webwood, Ontario last year I believe, with my good buddy, Ken Bennison who is an exceptional and award-winning landscape shooter.
By the way, the flower from my last post was just a common lily. Pretty amazing huh? (well, not the photo, the flower of course 
)
Thumbnail below.
Enjoy.
P & R – Getting Close
Nikon D300, Nikkor 105mm Macro f/2.8, f/19 , 1/125s, Nikon SB900
Greetings. This week will be a “post & run” week. A shot, and very little text. Hopefully there will be 3 shots put up here this week. We’ll see..
Starting with a close up of a beautiful flower. Bonus points if you can guess what kind of flower it is.
Enjoy.
More falls colors
Nikon D300, Nikkor 15-35mm f/4, 35mm, f/6.7, 1/750sec, ISO20
It’s time for some more fall-fireworks from High Falls in Onaping, Ontario. Please feel free to click on the images for a larger 1200px view.
Above is from the trail that takes you along the falls and into the bush. If you walk far enough you will eventually end up on a look out that is over grown by now. Its called Sudbury Basin Lookout. Beautiful spot, but the sun was in the wrong place to get a usable shot from there.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 15-35mm f/4, 35mm, f/9.5, 1/125sec, ISO200
One more from the trail. This shot was also posted on Google+
Nikon D300, Nikkor 70-300mm f/4, 70mm, f/27, 1/2sec, ISO200
After walking in the bush for a couple of hours with a heavy backpack, I’m back at the falls dead tired and sweating like a ..well you know what I mean. I got there just in time for the late afternoon sun hitting the trees across the falls, which reflects these amazing green and golden colors along with the sky in the water. I could not pass this opportunity to grab a few shots of that. Absolutely gorgeous place.
Before I sign off, I want to say a huge Thank you for all your nice comments and tweets. Please know that they are all very much appreciated.
Fall colors at High Falls
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200, 29mm, f/27, 1.0 sec, ISO100, B+W circular polarizer
As mentioned in an earlier post, the weather has been outstanding up here lately. So there is no excuse, just get out there and shoot. I have explored the High Falls in Onaping, Ontario af few times now, and it changes every time I’m up there. The shots in this post are from the end of September, at the peak of the color show. I decided to put more than one shot up today, because I have a lot of shots from this place, and my blogging has been a bit on the slow side lately. It is nice to have some new ammo, so here we go.
Oh btw, if you are on a big monitor, feel free to click the images for a larger view.
The top shot is from the basin at the top of the falls. The incredible colors of the late afternoon sun on the trees and the sky paints the water. Amazing place to shot when it looks like this.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200, 27mm, f/8, 1/3 sec, ISO200, B+W circular polarizer
This shot is roughly half way down the falls. At this time of year the water flow in the falls are really low, so there are plenty of opportunity to get very close to the rocks and the falls. It’s a very different story in the spring…
Nikon D300, Nikkor 16-35 f/4, 35mm, f/11, 0.7 sec, ISO200
The last big drop before the water slows down and continue its run down the Onaping River.
Chutes
The fall colors has peaked up here and are starting to look a bit faded, some trees are bare and getting ready for next year.
Its Thanksgiving weekend and the weather the last week has been absolutely outstanding. Currently its 23°C outside which is pretty good for Northern Ontario in the month of October.
I went for a quick drive down the highway to Chutes Prov. Park to capture some tight shots of the falls there. The sun was out so it was perfect conditions to play with my new variable ND filter. (I still can’t believe I didn’t get around to buy one before now…) It is so cool to slow down the shutter speed and get the silky feeling of running water even in direct sunlight without the blinkies.
The shot above was a complete surprise when I looked on the LCD screen on the camera, it looked like gold was running down stream.
Nikon D300, Nikkor 70-300, 70 mm, f/22, 1/8 sec ISO200
Photowalk 2011 – Glen Haven, MI
Nikon D300, Nikkor 16-35mm f4, f/8.0, 1/350 sec, ISO200, 23 mm, 8 frame pano
It has been a tradition of mine to go outside the country to take part in the World Wide Photo Walk events. I have done that in 2009 and 2010, (both Denmark) so why should 2011 be any different. This year I went to Traverse City, MI. Traverse City and area is an absolutely gorgeous place this time of year. The fall colors are just about peaking, and the landscape is very inviting with lots of hills, beaches, dunes, wineries and orchards. Traverse City claims to be Cherry capital of the world – and that’s probably very true. I urge anyone within driving distance to check it out. Beautiful place.
I had the opportunity to attend two walks. Yes, I know you can only register for one, but that does not prohibit any one for tacking along another group, as long as you notify and get the OK from the leader of the walk. You can of course not submit photos for the competition. Well, I had no problem getting the OK from Ken Snyder, who was the leader of the walk in Glen Haven, MI – Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.
This place is just gorgeous. Incredible beach and the dunes are just spectacular. I wish we had more time to explore the area and check out the Coast Guard museum, but that will have to be next time.
Above is a 8 frame pano from the Dunes overlooking the lake. Very strong winds that day, but thankfully no rain.
ARoS – II
Another very distinctive piece of art that calls the ARoS art museum home is the art work “Boy”, and oh-boy it’s pretty amazing. The sculpture is made of glass fiber, is a whopping 15 feet tall. It is incredible life-like and the artist has put an incredible amount of attention to the small details such as the small veins in the skin, the redness on the knees and feet – it’s just spectacular to look at.
The artist’s name is Ron Mueck and has made several extremely life-like oversized sculptures of men, woman and children. Try and google him, and you’ll see.
The image above is my pick of the series i shot at the museum. Given the huge window behind the sculpture, the lighting was a bit tricky on the shadow side. I attempted a HDR, but it turned out quite soft due to the noise I had to get rid of, (camera operator error of course, ISO was way too high). It’s in the thumbnails below among other details of the “kid”. The sculpture sits on the museum’s lower floor, and walking down the stairs gives you a great first visual of the size of this piece of art when looking over the stair rail. I’m sure several jaws has dropped at this point, including mine. 15 feet tall - imagine the size of pants and shoes….
Please feel free to click on the thumbnails for a full screen view.
In case you missed my first post from the ARoS museum in Aarhus, here’s a link.
ARoS – I
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 18mm, f/11, 1/250sec, ISO200, 5 frames
During my recent trip to Denmark, I had the chance to visit the art museum called ARoS in Aarhus. It’s huge, apparently one of the largest art museum’s in Northern Europe. The museum displays all kinds of art on its 10 storeys and I’m sure it would take several hours to explore the museum in details, so our main target with our visit was the art work called “Your Rainbow Panorama” by Olafur Eliasson, a Danish-Icelandic artist who is known for his large-scale color, lights and water art works. This particular artwork sits on the roof of the museum, and is a 360° view of Aarhus, but viewed through tinted window panels in all the colors of the rainbow. It is truly a spectacular experience. Once inside the ring, the color changes as you walk around the art work, and your perception of colors changes dramatically. It was very weird feeling to see object that you for sure knew what color it was but was shown in a totally different hue. An absolutely spectacular experience – (did I say that already?). Should you be in the neighborhood, take an afternoon and explore this great museum. It is an art piece in it self.
Since the artwork is called a panorama, I attempted to shoot a pano. The pano above is combined from 5 shots through the clear glass of the entrance to the ring, so you might see some reflections in the pano. Below is a view of the art museum from the out side, and a few shots from inside the ring. The images from inside the ring are straight from the camera without any adjustments at all. You can click on the thumbnails for a larger view.
The next couple of posts will be from this, to me, extraordinary museum, which among other things is the home for the largest boy you can imagine. Stay tuned.
Look out
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 95mm, f5.6, 1/160sec, ISO200
I have looked at this image a lot. I don’t know why, but every time I go through my shots, I tend to stop for a second at this one. There is something very simple and pleasing thing about this shot IMO, and that is as close as I can get to explain what is does for me. It is one of those shots that will end up on one of my walls as a gallery wrap at some point.
It was shot during a World Wide Photo walk in Odense, Denmark in 2009.
The SuperScooper
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 44mm, f/16, 7 exposures, handheld, HDR
Speaking of forest fires, (see last post), I was on a service call at the Ministry of Natural Resources (MNR) at our local airport here in Sudbury. After the service call was out of the way, I had the opportunity to take some shots at the water bomber, a Bombardier 415, which was being prepped for take off the next day. The sun was, as you can see, in a really bad spot and I only had about 3 min to shoot and couldn’t really go on the other side of the plane, so I grabbed some brackets from this side to make sure I just didn’t get a silhouette of the plane. I knew there were gonna be some sun flares, but this was my chance so I ran with it.
About the 415. It’s a Canadian built water bomber and is one of MNR’s work horses in the fight again forest fires. Used mainly in Canada and the US. A fair share of the 76 ever built is also flying in different countries in Europe, such as Italy, France and Croatia. This plane is a further development of the older Bombardier 215 which the Ontario MNR is still using. The 415 is capable of scooping up 1620 US gallons or about 6140 liters of water in 12 seconds by skimming the surface of a lake. For that reason, this model is also called the SuperScooper. It has a range of about 1500 miles or 2400 km so on a tank of fuel this plane can deliver around 100-130 loads of water, depending on proximity of water such as lakes or rivers of course. There is no question that this plane is invaluable in the fight against forest fires.
Smokey…
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 200mm, f/5.6, 1/750 sec. ISO200
About 2 weeks ago I was walking around downtown looking for something to photograph, and as the sun was setting, it became so red like I haven’t seen in a long time. I believe last time was on a MC trip in Portugal, and it was more or less under the same circumstances – smoke pollution from forest fires. This time of year is fire season up here, and as the vegetation and soil dries out in the heat, it just takes a lightning strike to start a fire. There was about a 100 or so fires going a couple of weeks ago, and it turns out that the smoke from some of these forest fires in Northern Ontario was moving south and causing these amazing colors.
I underexposed the image quite a bit to get the deep red colors, it is also cropped very tight in post to eliminate power lines, communication towers and other junk that obstructs a clear view.
Downtown candid
Nikon D300, Nikkor 105 f/2.8, f/2.8, 1/350 sec, ISO200
Wow, its been awhile since my last post. Time flies…
My inspiration on the coming posts comes after reading a couple of blogs I frequent regularly. It was basically something like go photograph whats in your back yard. I got nothing in my backyard to shoot, so I have decided to explore my neighborhood and my town instead. My town, Sudbury, located in Northern Ontario, is not very exotic, but there’s a lot going on. We got lots of rocks, lakes and forests up here. It’s a mining town, mostly nickel, copper and other precious metals. And of course there are plenty of heavy industry that support the mines in the area.
My neighborhood is a very typical working class community close to downtown. Small houses, most of them are old – like my house is – just a few of them are new-err. It’s all well established, not much room for new development in this area. We certainly don’t have million dollar mansions in this end of town. Reason being is probably the proximity to one of the mining companies smelter, which is just a short drive from here. In fact, I can see the super-stack from my street. I will post some images of that bad boy later.
But I choose to live and work here, so I’ll make the best of it. I have during my walks in the area discovered quite a few gems that I will return to again.
Today’s shot is from downtown. Its late evening, the stores are closed and the streets are empty. This old guy is sitting on the corner of a downtown intersection reading his book. He never looks up as I walked past him. A heat wave has been going on for a couple of weeks now, and the only time to be outside for a longer period of time is around sunset. And I’m sure this guy was just wanted to get some fresh air and escape the heat in his apartment – well, that’s the story I’m sticking to…:)
The shot is processed in LR, Nik Silver Efex Pro and OnOne’s Focal Point.
As I went through my shots, I had a couple where the sign in the back ground was sharp and it had some interesting thoughts written down on it, so I thought I would share its wisdom…
Busy week
Wheew, what a crazy week. Went camping with the kids on the Canada Day long weekend, where I had a chance to shoot some fireworks. This was my first time trying this. Example above and below. Here is what I found tough that night about this type of photography.
- Focus – where do you focus? Its pitch black and for a quick second you get a short burst of light. That’s all there was to aim at. Of course auto focus is out of the question. So it was a bit of a guessing game on my part. I picked a small aperture, so I tried to imagine how far out the fireworks would go and focus about a third into the scene on manual focusing. The depth of field should hopefully take care of the rest. I did get some sharp images, but also a fair bit of blurred images, so perhaps the lens I was using has a problem with focus creep (if that is even possible) when the camera is tilted up wards. I have to look into that a bit more.
- The bugs – The camp ground was on a lake, so of course they would shoot the fireworks out over the lake. So I picked a spot just by the shore about 100 ft away from where they were launching. I got bitten by mosquitoes so bad on my left hand that I had a hard time bending my fingers the next day. My neck and face was in the all-you-can-eat/drink zone too, so that was not fun at all. Next time, I’ll bring a bug-jacket. I just didn’t want to take the chance and spray bug spray on me and then by accident get some on my gear. I hear that stuff is pretty aggressive.
Back at work for Monday and Tuesday, then of to Toronto for Scott Kelby’s Light It, Shoot It, Retouch It seminar, which by the way was absolutely outstanding. If he brings this seminar close to a city near you, sign up – you wont be disappointed. I also had the pleasure of meeting Terry White at this seminar. Great guy and extremely helpful.
A couple of busy days back at work before the weekend, this time fighting of a cold I probably got at camp. I’m still a bit under the weather but its going the right way.
Being off-line for a week means that I still haven’t caught up on all the blogs I usually visit, I’m working on it though. But boy did I miss some good ones this week. Like Mike Olbinski’s Phoenix Haboob time-lapse movie. Scott Wood also made a movie of the event. The time-lapse movies these guys made was just spectacular, and congrats on all the attention they got out of it. Simply amazing.
Then there was Zack Arias review of the Fuji x100 camera. Best review I have read in ages! Check it out. A guy next to me at the seminar had just purchased this camera at a store in Toronto the day before and I had the pleasure of checking it out. Very nice camera, with some great features.
I hope within the next couple of days I get around to all of your posts. In the mean time, take care.
A nice spot
Nikon D300, Nikkor 16-35mm f4, 27mm, f/22, ISO200, 7 exposures
One of the spots I like to go shoot is about 1 hour drive from my house. I drive by this place just about once a week as part of my daytime job, so I can kind of keep an eye on whats going on there. It’s the Duchesney Falls in North Bay, Ontario. Being visible from the highway, it’s fairly easy to determine if there’s too much water going down or too little. Too much water, and you wont get the small interesting trickles or mini falls over or between the rocks – those are the ones I like to shot, it’s also a bit tougher and of course very dangerous to get to close to the falls. Too little water is just as bad.
Nevertheless, it’s still a great place to practice photographing water falls all year round.
The shot above could be an example on why it’s not such a good idea shooting water falls in direct sunlight. The foaming white water, the wet highlights are instant blinkies even at fast shutter speeds, and remember fast shutter speeds will not give you the silky look. This is shot with my new Nikkor 16-35 mm f/4 lens, and I did not have a 77 mm polarizer or ND filter to put on, so I decided to try some bracketing on this location. In Photomatix, I made 2 tone maps. 1 for the overall scene and then a shadow map for some contrast (see Rob Hanson’s blog for this very cool technique ). In Photoshop I combined the overall tone map with the shadow map, and masked in the water from exposure that looked the best.
Running water
Nikon D300, Nikkor 18-200mm, 60mm, f/27, 0.5 sec, ISO100
To me, one of the coolest things in photographs are when there is a sense of movement, there is an energy or a power in the shot. Examples of that could be lightning, storm clouds, streaking cars or trains. Water does the trick for me. I love shooting running water and by playing around with long exposures you get some pretty neat effects. To me, a tag sharp image of water falling or running is less interesting than if there is a blur to the water. Water in rivers and creeks moves, sometimes fast, sometimes slowly usually depending on the time of year and to me that movement needs to be in a shot of, lets say, a waterfall. In order to get the sense of flowing water or that cool silky look, the shutter speed needs to be slowed down – way down.
Here are a few tips on how to achieve that look.
- Use a good solid tripod.
- Use a cable release or use the timer on the camera.
- Keep ISO low.
- Use aperture mode and choose a small aperture like f/16 or f/22
- Shoot at dawn or dusk, or on an over cast day.
- To cut even more light use a polarizer, which not only remove reflections and boost colors, but also eats at least one stop of light – slowing down the shutter speed even more..
- Or you can use a ND filter also called natural density filter. The will usually reduce the light between 1 and 10 stops depending on which one you buy.
- Your goal is to end up with a shutter speed at around 1/10 sec or slower. It depends on how fast the water moves of course, but generally at that shutter speed the magic starts to happen and you get that silky smooth feel of water running.
Try it out next time you are out shooting running water, it’s very rewarding. Btw, the shot above is from Moose Creek, Levack, Ontario.
More skies…
Nikon D300, Nikkor 16-35mm f4, 16mm, f/8, 1/2000sec, ISO200
I was out doing a bit of Geocaching just outside of town, around mid May this year, there where still no leaves on the trees. One cache took me to the top of one of the peaks – about 985 ft ~ 300 meters above sea level. Great look from there over one of the lakes. While I was logging the cache, the skies just got really dark to the right on the image, which is roughly over the down town area and you could see the rain coming down – probably pretty hard. At the same time, the sun was shining through a thin layer of clouds to the left of the image. I had to shoot it because it started to look really cool and dramatic. I was kind of hoping that the B/W conversion would convey that.
