Kaleidoscope Photography

I’m mentally gearing up for my week teaching photography at Arts Camp by experimenting with a few new ideas.  One idea that I’ve seen in a few magazines and web sites is the technique of turning in natural picture of a tree, flower or shrub into a kaleidoscope image.

This is easily done in Photoshop by copying and flipping cropped segments of the picture.  Increasing the saturation and adding poster edges brings out a slightly surrealistic quality.

 

Hopefully I will have some interesting photos to post after the week.

 

Headwaters Gathering Collage

I spent the day playing with the photos I took at last weekend’s Headwaters Gathering, wanting to practice a method I’m planning to use at next week’s Arts Camp.  Here’s the result.

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Royalty, …a poem

One day, much like today, I was leaving early in the morning and noticed that all of the blossoms on the apple tree had fallen during the night and were carpeting an area of the lawn.  As I watched, a fox emerged from the trees.  The following poster is a poem I wrote that grew from that moment, and then added to a picture I’d taken previously.

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Super Moon Pictures

Here are a few shots I’m happy with from the moonlight hike a few days ago.  The thing about moonrise shots is you’ve got to carefully pick your spot in advance.  Once the event arrives, you don’t have much time to move.  I was lucky and was shown a location that worked really well.

Some Fall Pictures

Yesterday I did something that I’ve not done in some time.  I had a rough plan to head out to Grey County to look for interesting Fall photography opportunities and to visit their Artist Studio Tour, but actually I had no idea where I was going.  I just kind of headed into the unknown, letting fate guide me to whatever it may.

I liked the results.  Fall hasn’t “bloomed” totally yet, but I like the colours when there is just a hint of them.  Not only did I seem to stumble upon some excellent photo opportunities, but also managed a very fortuitous resource connection in one of the studios.  The first time that I stopped at the side of the road to photograph some purple flowers, I spotted a monarch butterfly amoung the flowers, trapped by the wind and the cooler weather.

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A sunset from the recent Point Pelee trip.

Although the weather made this a rather unproductive photography trip (but a good wine tasting trip) I did manage to get a few shots on the first evening.

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Heron in the pond

I took a bunch of pictures at the Newmarket Mill Pond yesterday.  Lots of bird shots.  More to follow.

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A few pics from last week’s downtown foray.

Last week a few of us went down to photograph some urban sights.  A lot of the places I’d hope to photograph were in the midst of construction, so it wasn’t possible.  Here are a few samples of the shots I got.  Yes, heavily treated by Photoshop.

The first one is a shot taken straight up of a mobile sculpture hanging in a bank concourse.

The last one is a close up of a lit fountain.

Sunset #2 from weekned

A Sunset From the Weekend

No blog entries this past weekend.  Just sitting around and enjoying friends and the view.

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A few pictures from the mountains

When reviewing my pictures I was somewhat surprised to find that almost all of them were of water.  This trip was defined by water (the way that a SouthWest trip is defined by lack of water).  There was lots of rain and although it was hot there was always a stream or swimming hole to play in.  Since that’s where we would tend to stop on the hikes, and since I tend not to take many pictures while on the move, the result was an abundance of water pictures.

Here are a few from the Ramsey Cascades hike.  Incidentally, we never got to Ramsey Cascades, being diverted by the many excellent sights along the way.

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Larkwhistle Garden

About 25 years ago, on one of my major hikes on the Bruce Trail, I hiked past Larkwhistle Garden.  At the time, m;y major concern was water as it was blazing hot and I’d run out of water.  This part of the trail runs inland from the coast, so there is no natural water source.  We were forced to go to private homes and beg for water, usually choosing the youngest and most innocent looking member of the group to accomplish this.  That summer was particularly brutal and there had been a drought, so we actually found many homes where the well had run dry.

Larkwhistle Garden was our salvation.  Requiring a healthy supply of water to maintain the garden, they had a deep well and were able to fill our canteens.  We didn’t really have a good look at the garden itself, but I always remembered it and returned there on my recent visit to the Bruce.

Located on a back road that few must drive on, the only notable traffic would likely be the Bruce Trail hikers.  And even that might be sparse, as I doubt that this is a stretch of the trail which is well traveled.  And yet, this seems to be a famous garden with many references in guide books and on the Internet.  There is even a YouTube slide show.  The garden is a masterpiece of variety and colour.  My main goal there, not being much of a gardener, was to use my macro lens.  Here are some of the results: