It's 8AM and I'm standing on the dock of the bay as the last minute assembled crew of Straight Jacket arrives with gear, food and coffee. The sun is already high in the sky, the breeze is light and an overall sense of happiness is in the air.
It's a couple of hours motoring from the marina to our destination of Sawyer's Bay. It's the little secluded inlet behind the head of the sleeping giant. There's already a few boats moored off and we link up with them to expand the raft. It's a race day and this is the starting area. As more boats arrive and join up - the conversations grow to a dull roar. Sailors are walking across all the decks to meet up with others. We have our own little waterworld here.
Eventually the time comes for the skippers meeting outlining the course set for the race. We dismantle the barge one by one and start the race before the race. Everything by now is rigged up and we're ready to embark on a 7 hour sailboat race that parallels the 'Giant' then best course back to the city across the bay.
It was a beauty of a day for sailing. I packed my Nikon and snapped some pics throughout the journey.
Blue hour may now be my favorite time of colour. Blue hour takes place after the sun has set or before the sun rises. I was sailing last night and our club had a little party afterwards. The skies were brilliant and I couldn't help myself. I ran to get my Nikon and started snapping away. I had no tripod so I resorted to railings, docks and garbage cans to set the camera on to get these nice placid lake shots.
I had the good fortune to get out of the city for the weekend and head out to a friend's camp. I brought my photography gear with me as well as some insulated rubber boots. We heard reports that there could be a lot of slush on the ice now that the temperatures were getting well past 0C during these sunny spring days.
I've only just started learning how to shoot the night time skies with long exposures. I was excited to apply what I learned last month when a group of us shot the 'Blood Moon'. Being able to walk out on the frozen lake at 2AM and see the millions of stars was a great feeling. There wasn't much light pollution 2 hours from the city and the conditions were as close to perfect as one could hope for.
For those interested in the tech stuff, here's some of the settings I used. I don't claim to be an expert, this is just what worked for me that evening:
1. TRIPOD. Without a good tripod the excercise is almost futile, unless you have MacGyver like skills.
2. Dark Skies (No Moon):
I started with Apperture Priority and set my apperture as open as possible.
Switched lens to Manual Focus (My shutter will not work if it thinks it's too dark) and focused on infinity.
ISO between 400 and 800.
Switched VR on lens to off (good practice i've been told when using a tripod as it is suggested the VR will look for movement and introduce it's own, causing motion blur)
Switched then to Manual mode and set shutter speed to 30 seconds
3. Moon Shots
Same as above, however ISO can be down to 200 or even 100 depending on your lens. Apperture can be dialed in a bit. I think i was around F8. Shutter now a fraction of second. I think i was getting some good shots around 1/3". I was also using burst mode to crack off about 5 shots in succession. I learned from the Blood Moon shoot that the moon is moving pretty fast and this can help get a frame or two of really clear focus. It felt as though I was shooting the sun it was so bright. I had to play a little with the shutter speed and ISO to get in the range of light I was happy with.
Hope this helps. It worked for me and I was very pleased with the results. As the weather gets warmer and warmer, I'll be looking forward to more late nights with no gloves!
I've been struggling with my photography as of late. I watched way to many Youtube photography channels on the matter and have been swimming in the technical aspects of the art and it became daunting. I was shooting everything in 'raw' and spending way too much time editing my pictures in post like everyone i was studying on the internet. I couldn't see the forest from the trees. I wasn't happy with my photos as I was doing too much to them in post and feeling fraudulent.
After a great discussion with a fellow photographer about this he gave me some sage advise. Go back to JPG. It'll make your life easier. What I got out of our discussion was this - Raw gives you way more information to work with yes - but that can be debilitating. The images once in your post picture production software of choice will always look 'flat' as there is a ton of extra digital information that you have to work with. My take on this now is that I shouldn't have to rely on all this extra information to fix my photos if I take them well enough to begin with.
I flipped back to JPG and haven't looked back. When I take the memory card out of the camera and put it into Cyberlink PhotoDirector the picture looks more or less like I saw in the view finder. A bit richer - not so 'flat'. I am literally now touching up my photos in a minute or two as opposed to ten or twenty in RAW. The results are far more pleasing - at least to me and really - that's who I am doing this for. Me.
I was loosing the joy and getting stuck on the technical. I was going down the trap of wanting to buy better gear to make my photos better. I am what I am - an amateur hobbyist photographer. Being honest with myself has been liberating and I am back to taking snaps because I'm inspired instead of trying to proove I can do it.
These two photos are the first of my flip back to JPG. I am very pleased.
When the cabin fever kicks in it's time to get out into nature. Fortunate for me I live in Thunder Bay where nature is in abundance and you don't have to go far to take in some tranquility. I took these shots in around where I live - just minutes from my humble abode.
I really got into photography over the past 8 months. I think my process is coming along nicely. It also helps to have a daily project at work to be responsible for that is almost solely displaying a great photo of Thunder Bay (Good Morning Thunder Bay!) each day.
I fancy myself now as a 'landscape photographer' and I started a new Instagram account called @thunderbaylandscapes where I'm posting some of my photos. The next step will be building a portfolio site and start making and selling prints.
I was fortunate enough to spend the night at a friend's camp out at Silver Islet and got a couple of really great photos.
It's 8AM and I'm standing on the dock of the bay as the last minute assembled crew of Straight Jacket arrives with gear, food and coffee. The sun is already high in the sky, the breeze is light and an overall sense of happiness is in the air.
