by janice on July 28, 2010
Campfires aren’t just a good place for telling ghost stories, sometimes a little magic occurs there as well. What? Are my children disappearing before my eyes? As the old saying goes… the camera never lies. Or does it?
The slow sync flash is a good way to photo people at night or in dim environments. The flash illuminates the foreground subject for a fraction of a second, then the shutter stays open for as long as necessary to capture the darker more distant background. The subject must stay still until the flash has gone off, otherwise they create a blurred image of themselves. My D5000 has a Night Portrait mode for this technique.
My kids had some fun with this by moving their arms as fast as possible to ‘appear to disappear’! Parlour tricks with your camera.
This next photo was taken without any flash. It’s dark and lacking in detail.
The photo below was taken with the Night Portrait Mode on, or using the slow sync flash. My husband moved his hands so there is some blurred movement but his face is in focus and shows a lot more detail.
It was also a fun way to capture the sparks from the campfire. Maybe there really was a little magic in the air!
by janice on July 28, 2010
I decided to desaturate the colours on a few of the shots of my kids doing typical campsite stuff…whittling sticks they had found and building fires. I reduced the colour saturation to –80 to give the photos an old fashioned timeless appearance. Of course the modern camping equipment and clothing are a give-away, but the almost monochromatic colours create a soft, quiet feel to the photos which I think fits in with each child’s focused concentration on the task at hand. It was going to be a late dinner as the sun was setting over the lake and the shadows were soft.
I cropped the photos quite close in on the kids to create a feeling of intimacy…yet no one is looking into the camera. There is a sense that the photographer is an outsider to all the action around the campfire.
The soft faded colours and lack of eye contact with the photographer create distance between the viewer and subject.
Desaturating the colours also allows the viewer to concentrate on the big shapes and large areas of light and dark, much like how an artist will squint to see the dominant forms and patterns of light and dark.
Sometimes colour is just a distraction.
by janice on July 20, 2010
Once upon a time in the Kingdom of Osgoode…knights in shining armour clashed on the jousting list, musicians played beautiful music for the twirling dancers and the crowd was transported back in history to a faraway land .
We were dazzled by a local belly dancing troupe, the Alimah Dancers.
Celtic Sea entertained the crowd with medieval inspired music.
The individual joust with lances was preceded by a practice tournament where the contestants played at quintain and rings.
The Knights of Valour put on a good show. It may not technically fit in with the history of Canada, but it sure is fun! The horses in the show are rescue horses.
In the UK, jousting became a professional sport in 1972.
Modern day jousting or tilting has been kept alive by the International Jousting Association which has strict guidelines for the quality and authenticity of jousters’ armour & equipment, and has developed the use of breakable lance tips for safety.
Jousting under the International Jousting Association rules follows a points system where points are given for breaking the lance tip on the opposing knight’s shield.
Other forms of entertainment included archery, a very large chess game, shopping for interesting medieval inspired items, blacksmithing… by the Lady Blacksmith… and people watching.
But for now… dreams of knights in shining armour and lovely ladies will have to wait until next summer when the kingdom comes back to life again.
by janice on July 8, 2010
Before Calypso… a new water park outside of Ottawa… there was a natural water playground, formed by the retreat of the glaciers during the last ice age…High Falls. High Falls sits between Stratton Lake and High Falls Lake and can be reached by canoe or along the Eastern Pines backpacking trail. It is an outstandingly beautiful area of small waterfalls, rock waterslides and smooth rock pools. It is a great spot to cool off on a hot summer day.
We were backpacking for the weekend, so we just hiked up for the day, an easy 1 1/2 hours from our campsite at Stratton Lake. Not surprisingly it was already crowded. The water was cool and refreshing, not cold, and my kids had a great time on the ‘waterslide’! No lines, no traffic jams and no entrance fee, except provincial park fees of course.
Lots of fun in an absolutely stunning natural environment. It definitely was a hit with all of us!
High Falls is accessed from Achray Campground through the Sand Lake Gate outside of Pembroke. Water levels are much higher in spring making it unsafe for swimming.
For more information,
you can check out this link, http://www.mcelroy.ca/bushlog/20060427.shtml, on Bob and Diana McElroy’s Bush log.
Or the Park website, http://www.algonquinpark.on.ca/mustrails/achraytr.html
Or watch the fun on Youtube,
by janice on July 6, 2010
The Queen was on Parliament Hill on Canada Day…so were about 100,000 other people. Did I arrive early to get a good spot? No, my husband and I strolled up onto the Hill just as the Mounted Police were entering to start the Musical Ride …about 10:30 am. We listened to the music and watched the tops of their flag poles bounce past. After the barriers were opened to allow more people onto the grounds, we surged forwards with the rest of the crowd in hopes of getting an unobstructed view of the stage! Ha! Ha! Ha!
Then we waited.
There was a lot of red.
There were the Snowbirds.
There were many wonderful performers.
I made good use of the ‘live’ feature on my D5000 which allowed me to hold my camera above the crowd to photo the performers on stage. It’s a bit tricky to get the right angle and get it to focus on what you want, and also quite tiring to hold it up for long but I’m only 5’3″ so it was handy.
And… there was the Queen!
I was on the opposite side from the podium where she made her speech so…not so great for photo ops, but after the show she moved to the other side of the stage and I was in luck…I got my much desired photo of Her Highness as well as Prime Minister Harper and Prince Phillip. Using my 55-200mm telephoto lens I managed to just catch her between all the heads in front of me. A little blurring is visible from the heads but hey, I was along way back.
I love this image of the Queen and Prince Phillip back to back, both greeting people, she with her bouquet and he with his fedora behind his back.
I missed watching her enter or leave the Hill area, the crowd was too thick. Wellington St. was teeming with people afterwards. It was a good opportunity to try out my new 10-24mm, wide angle lens.
This was pretty much the view for most of us in the crowd, but all in all, a successful day. And I got my photo of the Queen!
