YES Another Workshop

I was fortunate enough to attend a Fall workshop this year. Here is one of the pictures I made while there. You can also see more from the workshop at:

http://flickr.com/photos/markbelliveau/sets/72157594338149405/

Broken group foggy morning

At the end of August we did a 6 day kayak trip in the Broken Group (part of Pacific Rim National Park) on the west coast of Vancouver Island with some friends from Ottawa. Foggy mornings, but great weather; saw orcas, humpback whales (one 20 ft. from our kayak!), sea lions and seals. This was taken from our campsite on the beach of the island that is one of the closest to Japan, just before we got into the kayaks for the day's paddle. There's a bit of flare, but it does capture the feeling of the morning.

Huron County October Dawn with Tree

Anybody here anymore?

Lake Huron Lilies, Canada Day 2006

See everyone later in the summer - off to Australia and Hawaii for a month, next Wednesday. Lovely baby pic Mark! What better images can we make?

Cheers all.

Missing in action?

Who setup this blog anyway?

Hi everyone. I'm glad to see the continued contributions to the blog.

I've been busy learning how to be a dad.

I've posted some photos of Skye on flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/markbelliveau/.

There is even a Freeman Patterson group on flickr that I just found http://www.flickr.com/groups/46099611@N00/.

In hind sight that would have made a better forum for our group as flickr is much better suited for images.

Oh well, hindsight :)

Here is a fairly recent picture of Skye (8 months old now).

MarK

Almost a year has gone by

Greetings all. Thanks for the kind words on my last posting; I had hoped to post a few more but the last month has been amazingly busy--and we leave for 6 weeks in the UK on Saturday--the day after school gets out. So, I won't have an opportunity to post anything until the beginning of September--but I do hope to have lots of time to photograph while I'm away.
It seems amazing that a year ago I was wrapping up the school year and getting organized to head east to New Brunswick to the wonderful experience that was our week together.
Thanks to Mark for setting up the blog that allowed (some of) us to stay in touch. Thanks to all of the posters for sharing work and continuing the relationship. It really is important to me. Keep posting this summer and I'll look if I get the chance. Have a wonderful summer!!

The Palouse, Washington

Finally, some images from our Easter weekend trip to Washington state. It's a beautiful area to photograph--undulating fields, contrasting colours and textures--and lots of fun, with miles and miles of little-driven (paved) back roads. The last shot, of the sunset, is not particularly great but it does give an idea of the landscape. The sunset itself was in the other direction but I turned around and, just for a couple of minutes, watched as the last of the sun set the waves of the fields on fire.

Saint Martins- Caves at Sunset

The Fullar Falls in Fog -Saint Martins

Saint Martins -The Caves

Huron County Wild Apple Blossoms

Mother's Day, 2006

Lake Huron Crabapple Blossoms

Mother's Day, 2006

More of the same, in the absence of new work.

Cheers.

Should I stay, or should I go?

wide angle spring

I "discovered" the wide angle lens in Freeman's garden this summer and told myself that I should use nothing else for a period of time. Well, the best laid plans...... Anyway, I did use it in Victoria last weekend (except for some close-up shots of shooting stars with my macro) and here are some of the results. Two birds with one stone as the librarian at our school asked for photos of blossoms for a display. The two blossom shots have been "ortonized". All were taken in Beacon Hill Park in Victoria.

Two White Orchids with Purple Hearts

Janie has a sunroom full of orchids like these, so spent some time there this wintry morning.

Cheers.

Huron County Sunrise

An oldie from last fall.

Silhouettes on Lake Huron Ice

Sorry to have gone silent so long. Nice to see your recent work, Lesley - and thanks for the leads to technical tips on dreamscape-type imaging. Almost like being back at the workbench at Adairs!

This image is more a snapshot than anything else, but I've been missing posting here so put it up for lack of anything better right now. There's a silhouette of our cottage at about the middle of the shadows on the ice.

Cheers everyone.

More digital fun

Darwin Wiggett also has instructions for digital mirrored/flipped images done digitally. The site for this is http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles1204/dw1204-1.html . His personal website is www.darwinwiggett.com ; he is associated with PhotoLife magazine and has a number of articles linked from his website.

I have done very shooting of interest in the past few months--I think I'll dig out some more from the summer and "play" with those, perhaps using these instructions.
I'd love to see some more from others!

reference for "Orton" dreamscape instructions

Here is the link for the Orton instructions.
http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0106/dw0106-1.html

Have fun!

summer dreamscapes

I found instructions on how to do digital "Ortons" or, to use Andre's term, Dreamscapes. The fence was shot on a trip to Crater Lake in Oregon. We ended up on some dirt (not even gravel) roads by navigating with the gps. The others were taken in the interior of BC this fall, in the Merritt area where, again thanks to the gps, we ended up on range roads that were little more than tracks. I haven't shot anything decent for ages so I've had to go back to some images from the summer.
Here are the instructions.
I don't have the exact website, so I'll post it tomorrow.
Text and photography copyright Darwin Wiggett. All rights reserved.
Open any image you wish to try the technique on. Make a duplicate of the image (Image>Duplicate). Close the original image. Lighten the image as follows: Image>Apply Image… then in the dialog box that comes up change the bending mode to “Screen” and the Opacity to 100%. This will give you an appropriately overexposed image. Duplicate this overexposed image (Image>Duplicate). Blur this second image (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur… and in the dialog box use a Radius setting of 15 to 50 pixels – the higher the pixel setting the blurrier the photo and the more ‘painterly’ the image… but you can go too far!). Experiment with different settings, for my tastes and for the size of my digital files (50-100 megabytes) a radius of about 25 pixels works perfect. Now select the move tool from the Photoshop tool bar (or just press “v” on your keyboard for quicker access to the move tool). Hold down the “shift” key and use your mouse to drag and drop the blurry image onto the sharp one (don’t let go of the shift key until after you release the mouse button or the images won’t be in perfect alignment). Bring up the layers palette in Photoshop (F7 is the keyboard shortcut). Under the word “Layers” in the layers palette will be a menu box of blending modes. Change the blending mode from “normal” to “multiply”.
Now “flatten’ the two layers by \npressing “CTRL+E” or by clicking on the sideways triangle in the layers palette \nto select ‘flatten image’. There, you now have an Orton image -

I've been teaching grammar far too long! By the time I 'decoded' this sign, I was standing in the middle of the intersection. Best to all - bye for now!

The Old 52 Chevy......has gone to live at Adairs.

Hi Everyone,
This is Terry and Andre's now. It came from Kierstead Mtn in my neighbour's truck dump. I was sorry to see it go but now I know other photographers will get a chance to enjoy it too, since it has joined the collection down at Adair's. About two days after it left a guy came looking for parts...so it is his loss and our gain . I'm not saying where it went!