The last of the boathouse, Ontario

 Canada, Ontario, Travel  4 Responses »
Oct 152012
 

Travel Planning: Namibia

I’ve started putting some thought into my next adventure and Namibia will definitely play a part. A desert full of dead trees that can’t decay due to the total lack of moisture, sand-dune boarding, a hot air balloon ride across the shifting sands, the morning mist rolling onto the shore where the desert meets the Atlantic and desert wildlife including elephants, lions, and ostriches.

Yup, I’ll have some of that, please.

How can we afford this, you may ask? I’m still working on that. One thing’s for sure, I can’t pay for one of the packaged multi-day tours that cost a fortune. Instead, we’ll be hopping on buses to find our way around the country. I think our two bases will be the capital Windhoek (a hub for buses into and out of Namibia as well as around the country) and Swakopmund (the Namibian holiday town and activity center on the coast).

Whatever happens, it’ll be an adventure.

Today’s Photo: The last of the boathouse

This is the last of my shots of the peaceful marina on Lake Ontario in Niagara-on-the-Lake. The sunset lingered for a long time and after rushing around trying to find a nice view that didn’t involve scaling a fence I decided on this one. Unfortunately, there was still a fence in the way. I tried every single gate to see if one was unlocked but didn’t have any luck. Eventually, I hoisted my camera, tripod and all, above my head and wedged it into the chain links of the fence. I let it stop shaking about and used my cable release to fire off 3 bracketed images.

 

White boathouse and lighthouse showing reflections on calm water in marina on Lake Ontario in Niagara-on-the-Lake

 

Sailing Lake Como

 Europe, Italy, Travel  No Responses »
Sep 192012
 

Today’s Photo: Lake Como

A visit to Lake Como was recommended to me by my uncle. I really knew nothing about the place but had faith that the two hour drive would be worth it. The plan was to hop on the ferry for a low cost “cruise” up the lake followed by lunch and a trip back. I thought it could provide a good opportunity to ratchet up a few photos.

As it turns out, Lake Como is beautiful. Mountains plunged from the blue sky into the deep water. Boats of all shapes and size plied the waters around us as the ferry chugged its way up the lake, from village port to village port. I definitely took a lot of pictures. I’m not sure how usable a lot of them are as a moving ferry doesn’t make for an ideal base. It was really a sort of spray and pray situation. I just kept taking photos in the hope I’d get a few I could keep. I think I’m happy with today’s photo. But, I do have to question whether it would make the cut if I’d gotten to go down to Portofino and the Cinque Terre where I had two days of shooting pretty well planned out!

The Technical Bits

Elia Locardi, over at Blame the Monkey, does this for each of his photos so I’ve decided to give it a try.

Camera: Canon 5d Mk II
Lens: EF70-300mm f/4-5.6L IS USM
ISO: 200
Exposure: 1/320, 1/1250, and 1/80 at f/7.1

Taking the Photo: This is one of the few photos I took on Lake Como that I remember putting a bit of thought into. I wanted to use as big a zoom as possible to compress the image and make the mountains loom over the village and the boats in the foreground. I made a quick switch from the 24-70mm lens I was using to the 70-300mm. I couldn’t zoom my focal length up as much as I wanted to, but the effect is still pretty satisfying. If you’ve read my HDR tutorial you’ll know that I usually keep my ISO down at 100 to minimize noise as the HDR processing emphasizes noise dramatically. But, as I was shooting handheld (no point in using a tripod on a moving ferry) and had a moving subject I wanted to freeze so I bumped the ISO up a touch.

Processing: It was a hazy day, and the camera emphasized this fact, so I wound up with a very dull, flat set of images. I processed them in Photomatix as usual and then did a lot of work adjusting the contrast in Photoshop to try to breathe a bit of life back into it. I used layers to selectively adjust the contrast, and saturation of different parts of the image. Then I realised that the mountains had come out very blue. I probably should have used a polarizer on such a hazy day. So, I made myself a digital, graduated warming filter with Photoshop to warm up the mountains a bit. Then, I used Topaz Adjust to boost the detail a bit. The higher than usual ISO and processing work resulted in quite a lot of noise in the sky, ocean and side of the sailboat. I created a duplicate layer of the image and selectively de-noised the problem areas before sharpening the foreground.

Software: Photomatix, Photoshop, Topaz Adjust, Noiseware Pro

Sailboats on Lake Como in Italy with mountains rising from the deep water to the blue sky.

The Boathouse, Niagara-on-the-Lake

 Canada, Ontario, Travel  No Responses »
Jul 022012
 

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.

Beautiful sunset on the shores of Lake Ontario, Niagara-on-the-Lake with a boat house and sail boats are on the dock with the lake reflecting the sky.