I spent a lot of time last summer taking photos of sunsets off of the dock at my friends’ new house in Spanish Point. One day I decided to do something a bit different, so I went to take photos off the rocks on the other side of Spanish Point. The result, of photographing a tide pool there, has a weird abstract feel.
Clouds poured off of the mountains into the entrance of the fjord when a lone building, painted as if to hide in the sky, appeared on the shoreline. As the car rolled to a stop, music filled the air, operatic vocals backed by an energetic orchestra. The perfect backing for the grand setting. It was beautiful, but eerie. The music was emanating from an empty building, and there didn’t seem to be anyone around. After quickly snapping a few photos, the horror movie feel of the place took over and we hopped back into the car. Driving about a minute further up the road, at the very ends of the property, the music still audible, we found a farmer working. With the source of the music located, we could only admire the power of this guy’s stereo!
A beautiful, sunset in a quaint Canadian town, provided the perfect backdrop for this calm scene on the shores of Lake Ontario. This was taken just as winter was turning to Spring. It was an early Spring, hence the boats are on the dock rather than in the water chomping at the bit. The serene surface of the lake provided a perfect mirror to help show off the sky.
Only a chain-linked fence threatened to ruin the shot. In a panic, as the light looked ready to fade, I figure out how to use the fence in concert with my tripod to get the shot. You can read more about how I did that here.
Sitting here, after taking this photo, I came to the conclusion that we were not going to make it to the bird cliffs at Latrabjarg. They are the furthest point of land in the direction this photo is looking in. As you can see, we still had a long way to go. It was still a great night with some pretty dramatic scenery. All of the photos I’ve released from Iceland thus far are from this night. It offered up the best sunset we had the entire time we were in Iceland.
I really liked this old farm. Funnily, I actually stopped for the farm across the street but wound up spending much more time here. I’ve mentioned before that I was pretty worried about someone coming out to catch me trespassing. I had convinced myself that this place probably wasn’t really used anymore anyway. Looking at this photo, the number of tire tracks show that was a completely wrong assumption. Anyways, I got away with it and came off with a pretty cool shot.
After failing to reach the giant bird-cliff at Latrabjarg we were making our way back to the hostel. I stumbled upon this scene. Three identical looking horses hanging about a ruin in front of a shack. It was definitely time to make a stop. My travel buddy was a large animal vet who had been trying to catch some sleep on the drive back. She didn’t mind getting woken up for these guys though.
Icelandic horses are pretty incredible. They’re little stout things but incredibly photogenic with rugged coats and flowing manes. You could probably spend all of your time in Iceland photographing just the horses. There were a number of fields full of horses I could see myself spending hours at if I had more time. I’m hoping to spend all of June in Iceland next year. If I do get to do that I’ll definitely spend a lot of time hopping fences for closeups of Icelandic horses.
This is the last of my photos from Prague, for now, anyway. It’s a great city and I’ll certainly be heading back at some point. This is one of the most recognizable landmarks in Prague, Charles Bridge. It’s pretty difficult to get a shot with no tourists crossing the bridge. I’ve talked about other methods I’ve used involving combining multiple images to mask out any people or just getting there really early. With this shot, it all came down to patience. I set up and waited until there was no one in the way.
I’ve decided to stick with my rule of not posting photos from the same country two days in a row (I know I’ve broken it in the past), but I’m desperate to work up some of my Iceland photos. I expect I’ll be up late tonight doing just that. On top of that I was in the middle of redesigning the site when I had to take a break to travel to Iceland. I really want to make a little more progress on that tonight.
For those of you patiently waiting for my tutorial, I did make a lot of progress before leaving. I find I work best on the weekends when I can really dedicate a lot of time to it. I’ll be putting in some more effort this weekend.
Canoeing down the Lower Zambezi makes use of the old cliché “the journey is half the fun” really come into its own. Drifting casually down the river (while carefully keeping your limbs in the canoe) is punctuated by moments of intense activity and excitement. A lot of the time this is brought on by hippos hanging about in the shallows. The problem posed here is that when hippos get scared they head for deep water. So, if you’re in between the hippos and the deep water, you’ve got a problem. As a result, the approach is simply a bold game of chicken, in which you steer straight at the hippos in an effort to move them into the deep. Other exciting moments resulted from elephants coming down to the water to drink and play, which Chris and I may or may not have gotten dangerously close to. Other times the excitement was that we had an opportunity to get out of the canoes, whether it was to eat lunch, make camp, or go for a swim in a “safe” stretch of river. I say “safe” because, when asked, our guide said we were safe from crocodiles in the shallow water because we could fight off a crocodile there. Now, I don’t know about you, but in my opinion, if I’m having to fight off a crocodile I am already in serious trouble!
This photo was taken at one of the calmer moments as we floated through a narrow channel of the river. I’ve changed my approach to photos with moving subjects. Rather than trying to combine three different exposures I’m working with one RAW. Using Photoshop’s RAW converter I create three images by adjusting the exposure of the original. Then I combine these three images using Photomatix. This way, I don’t have to deal with loads of ghosting issues. If you look through my gorilla photos by clicking the category to the right, the last few have employed this method and you should be able to see an improvement over my earlier attempts.
Having so many photos from Iceland makes it pretty difficult to decide what to process first. I wanted something that typified Iceland for me, and was taken early on in the trip. This was taken towards the end of my first full night of shooting as the sun made its way back up over the horizon to track across the sky. The farm, the ocean and the mountain really do give you a good taste of the extremes experienced as you travel around the country. This was taken in the Westfjords, shortly after the decision was made to stop taking photos and get to bed. But, how could we not stop here?
I’m back home from Iceland now so can get back to my daily photo posting. It was difficult to get them done while in Iceland as any time that I wasn’t desperate for a few hours sleep I was out exploring. I’m looking forward to processing and posting the photos I took there. That being said, I’m still pretty worn out so you get a quick post today and a photo of a really cute, fuzzy Gorilla.
