Why I like Nature Photography

Much of the modern world is stressful, and that stress builds up in our bodies and in our minds, and this needs to be at times released.  For me, I find that being in nature, a good way to relieve that stress, and it is something I try to do a few times a year.  Often city dwellers, here in Toronto, don't have to go all that far to find nature, there are a number of large parks in the city, where you can find nature, often in your own neighbourhood.

This is another multi-image posting, and these are all images taken between 2003 and 2010, I will add some commentary to these, where I have it, and where I took it, if I remember....

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This is the oldest image in this series, taken with the Konica TC on Agfa Vista 200 Colour film, it was taken of a "funny" tree in G Ross Lord Park in Toronto, I would bike through to the North End of the Park sit under this tree for a while, then head back to my home that was about 4km to the south.  Not more than 200m to the East of this, is a large industrial plant, and 100m to the North is a busy Arterial road.

I have a few images of this tree, scanned on an Epson flat bed.  You may notice that some of the copyright notices are larger and some are smaller, I need to change this, as the font is a fixed size, and it should be a percentage of the image size.  So it's smaller on higher resolution images, and larger on smaller resolution images...

I don't know if this tree is still there, as it's been many years since I lived there, and it may have been cut down by now, there have been some big ice storms, and I don't think the bumps on the trunk made for a strong tree.  Some day I need to return there and see, if it's still there.

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This next image is another interesting one, it was taken using the Konica FC-1 on Ilford
FP-4  I think it was in Algonquin, as there is a similar image below that was from the same time period that was in Algonquin.  It has a bit of a dreamy effect, which is why I like it.  It's actually the first image on the roll, with a frame number of 0.  An old cataloguing system I used divided film into roll and frame numbers, then I added a different mechanism for digital, and a bunch of years ago, I moved to a single system, leaving the old roll numbers in the negative book, and referencing them in the EXIF data.  Which is how I get some of the data (like camera and film type) without needing to dig out the negatives. 

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This is an odd one, it was taken with a Point & Shoot Camera that belonged to my wife, she took thousands of images with it, in Bolivia, during a trip there, I borrowed it, to see how digital might work for me, and it did, so I bought the 300D at Christmas that year.  Again it has a dreamy, kind of feel, partly because it was in the morning of a rather damp day, and there was a lot of moisture in the air.  The day later dried up, and by evening it was very nice out.  I probably took more shots on this day, then I did the rest of the year.  My Brother-in-law was on this trip, and  we left at 5am and were at the park a little after 8, and decided to hit the trails before things got busy,  these images were taken around 9am.

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We were there for a long time, in fact we were still shooting at sunset, and the next image was taken at sunset on the same day, I think we got home after 11PM.  By sunset it was starting to cloud over again, the best sunrise and sunset photos need some clouds, and sunlight poking through the cloud deck, are pretty much the ideal.  One of the problems point and shoot cameras, is that you have to take whatever the camera gives you.  I got kinda lucky here, in that it blocked up the shadows, rather then exposing for those and burning the highlights.  I used the digital for this, because I had taken about 4 rolls of film, and had run out.  With some room left on the little digital.  It's one of the benefits of digital, a couple of cards can hold a lot of images.  If I were to have done it again with film, I would have taken about twice as much.

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This is a winter one, taken near Ashbridge's bay, in Toronto.  In early to mid winter, Lake Ontario is warmer than the shoreline, and as waves strike the shore, some water is thrown up as tiny droplets, as soon as it hits the land, which is much colder, it freezes.  This was taken with the 300D, which strangely enough didn't mind the cold as much as the FC-1, which was about 25 years old at the time.  This was taken on a very cold, windy and blustery day, even though the timestamp says it was March 3rd....  It was still solidly in winter, and probably around -10C.   

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I often tone summer images slightly sepia, and winter ones, slightly cyan, which I did in this case, the bluish tone, makes the image feel colder, where as sepia is a slight warming effect. 

This is another one from G Ross Lord park, which has a creek running through it.  Again the 300D, zoomed in as far as it can with the kit lens.  It's a fall photo, being around this time of year, it's a good imaging time, in that the temps tend to be a little cooler, not this year it's 30℃ as I type this.  Trees still are in nearly full leave, something that will not be the case in a couple of weeks.  As I said earlier, it's been a while since I have been to this park, and I would like to visit again.  This kind of image, is one I like, kinda messy, where it can be difficult to decide what the actual subject is.  It could be the trees at the front, the ones in the back, or the water in the middle.  It's actually supposed to be the water, but you could actually argue it's something else.  You can view it 47 times, and decide it's something else each time. 

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Another winter one, the date on this one is Valentines day, there had been thin ice over the top of the lake, when the wind picked up, it was tossed into this messy pile on the shore.  Again to offer a cold feeling I simulated the cyan tone, rather than the brownish sepia tone, I often use.  A  cyan tint in the film days, was commonly done using potassium ferricyanide, and was most commonly used in the production of blueprints.  These days we can do the same thing, by shifting the colour balance in a RGB black and white image.  Much less messy, and you can get the same result over and over again, where as bleaching and dyeing a print, will tend to give different results each time, without laborious notes. 



Okay, the last one for this week, I am debating about doing a similar series for next week, that will consist of some newer stuff, or possibly even older stuff, as I have some going back to the start 40 years ago.....  I suspect this is Limestone, which is fairly soft, and where water can eat away the stone in interesting patterns.  It's Lake Ontario again, but in this case over by the Humber River bridge.  What is strange is that although it appears almost a moonscape, there are massive condo's only 100m away or so, on the other side of a busy arterial road. 

Most of these were taken within a 1/2 hour subway ride, or bicycle ride from where I was living at the time.  Yes it does take a while to get to Algonquin, it's still possible to do as a day trip.  So as we began, you can look at nature very close to home.

W 

Camera Lenses

A Camera lens is a device that bends light, so that different light beams line up, preferably at the focal plane, which is where the film or sensor is located.  When this is true, it is said to be in focus, the earliest cameras had a single lens.  Since the film was so large in size, typically 4"x5", 5"x7", 8"x10", 11"x14" and 16"x20".  These numbers were not magical, they were simply standard window glass sizes, in the days of plate photography.  When sheet film came out, the same sizes were adopted.  However we are getting off track, if your negative is 8"x10" (20cm x 25cm) you can make things larger, by contact printing on 4x5" paper.

Eventually they developed  screw type lens mounts that allowed for changing lenses, and lenses of different sizes were developed.  It was quickly discovered that if you made the focal length shorter, the angle of view got wider, which meant more would fit in an image at a given distance from the camera, and depth of field increased.  News photographers would often use these benefits by fixing short lenses on their cameras.  Unfortunately there are also a disadvantage, straight lines would appear curved, and perspectives would change, an item that was close to the camera would appear much larger then normal, and an item further away would appear much smaller.  Photographers have used both of these traits to advantage. 

By the same token longer lenses would have a narrower angle of view, less would fit in the image at the same distance,  straight lines would not be affected, but the perspective changes would be reversed, flattening the image.  Portrait photographers learned quickly that using a slightly longer than normal lens, was more flattering, with a 35mm camera 85mm - 100mm is about right.   In the 1960's they developed the bayonet mount, which made lenses easier and faster to change.  Unfortunately where with screw mount lenses nearly all camera's used the same 49mm mount, each bayonet could be a little different.  You could no longer use a lens made by one manufacturer, on another makes camera.  Although third party lens makers would quite often make lenses with different mounts on them, and one company Tamron made adaptall lenses which could be used with different makes of cameras, using different adapter rings. 

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In the film days I used 4 lenses, a 28mm (wide, but not wide enough that the distortion wasn't livable), a 50mm, a 135mm and a 200mm, I have a 1.5x extender for that camera so it's really 28mm, 50mm, 100mm, 135mm, 200mm, 270mm and 400mm.  For digital, I have an 18-55 and a 70-300 which are a good combination, yes I realise that 56-69mm are not covered, but that isn't really an issue.   This camera uses a smaller sensor, giving a longer lens, for the Canon APS-C the 18mm is the same as a 29mm on the film camera, 55mm is the same as 88mm, the 70mm is the same as 112mm on a 35mm and 300 is more like 480mm on the 35mm. 

This weeks image of a white lion was taken at African Lion Safari, last year, from a car with the windows closed, with the 70-300mm lens at 85mm on the Canon 300D.  It's a nice image, of a cat on the prowl, it's funny to see that a house cat uses similar methods when they are hunting. 

I think that is all for now.... 

W.

Analog versus Digital

This week we look at Analog versus digital imaging.  Each has advantages and disadvantages, but rather then simply list them, we should take a look at how they work in the real world. 

Analog imaging is a chemical process, a silver salt, is a combination of silver and one of the halides, bromine, chlorine, iodine and fluorine.  Is exposed to light, producing a latent image, this is then amplified with another chemical to develop a visible image that is then processed with either sodium thiosulfate or ammonium thiosulfate which washes away the undeveloped salts.  This produces a negative, and by exposing this on another form of the same material, we can produce a positive.  If properly processed the images can be quite well preserved, for hundreds of years.  Although the chemicals have scary names, they really are not that dangerous, and some like the developer hydroquinone are used in medicine.  Interestingly enough, the most dangerous of the chemicals is actually silver, and modern labs will use recovery mechanisms to recover and recycle the leftover silver.  Yes the silver has value, but you need to process a lot of film, to get even a small amount.

One of the problems with the process, is that if you have a unrecoverable issue, such as an out of focus exposure, you can't erase it and do over, you need to use more film, and either throw it away, or leave it in the archive.  This has nothing on the printing process, where a good day in the darkroom, results in a few good prints, and a bin full of wet rejects.

Some of us, moved to a hybrid process, where you would shoot film, scan the film into a computer, and then do your editing on the computer, some even took and sent their printing to a wet lab. This can be difficult however, in that it can take a lot to get a good scan, and you can spend more time scanning then you do processing and printing in a darkroom.  This weeks image is such, taken in 2003 with a Konica FC-1 on Fujicolor ASA 400 film, it's a pretty good rendition of a wonderful image.   Some of us are now looking at using a digital camera to copy some of the older stuff, you need a macro lens though to get a 1:1 image, and that can be more tricky then anything else.  This is because I have  books of them, in my case going back 40 years, although much of the stuff from back then, I look at now, and think of it as crap.  Which is why as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I will probably never look at.

Then there is a fully digital process, digital cameras have pretty much eliminated all of the problems except one, there is no real way to archive images, the way the old B&W negatives could be put in a box and left for a century or more.  We will find that we need to copy images over to new media as old media types are replaced with new.  Just like 8" floppies were replaced with 5 1/4" which were replaced with 3.5", we will eventually see a day, where CD's and DVD's will disappear as usable medium, and billions of photographs will  disappear with them.  Digital formats will change over time, the JPEG files will be replaced with something else.  This becomes the question, if your great grandson finds a CD full of your Jpeg files, will he know how to retrieve them? 

On that thought, enough for this week

W

A walk in the woods

Occasionally here, I will do a story, and the story may come with several images, rather then just one image, sometimes it will be a photographic study, with a whole group of images.  Today we get such a narrative.   I know there will be more then one image, but as I write the text here, I don't know how many.

So last Sunday I said to my other half, that I would like to take a walk in the woods.  She said it sounded like a good idea, and looked at a few places, here in Southern Ontario, in Canada, there are 4 systems of parks, that you can choose from.  There are Federal Parks, there are Provincial Parks, City Parks and Conservation Areas.  She suggested Heart Lake Conservation Area. It's not that far from home, and while I get my walk in the woods, she and the kid, can do a shorter walk and then use the pool at the site.  I think they walked about 1 kilometre or so, I probably did closer to 10.

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A walk in the woods, is a great tool for destressing, it's not always quiet, in fact a forest by a lake can be quite noisy.  Birds, insects and frogs can be quite noisy, but somehow the sounds of nature  is less noisy than a street full of traffic.     The trail we took goes from the treetop zip line, to the border of someones private property, I didn't go quite that far.  We found some small frogs, I suspect these are Northern Leopard Frogs, as you can see from the surroundings they are quite small, they could be from this years crop.  Seeing animals like frogs in a murky lake, often means it is a healthy lake.  Lakes that are completely clear and devoid of fish and aquatic reptiles, often means that the lake is dead, from pollution.  Which is a sad thing to see,
 

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When one wants images of wild life, you really need to remember 2 things, you need a big lens, and to proceed as quietly as possible.  In this case the lens is a 70-300mm Zoom, it's a little soft all the way out, but that's partly because I didn't have the opportunity to set up a camera support.  I found this little guy just chilling on a log, and took a few images, before he noticed me, and took off.  I took about 100 images on the day, maybe 5 of this particular chipmunk, then picked the one I liked the best for the posting.  One of the others may find it's way into a later post.  I think if my wife and 5 year old had been around, I wouldn't have gotten any.   I need to teach the little one, that it's okay to not be speaking, and that we can sometimes see things that we would not otherwise see, when we make noise.

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They were around, for the bumble bee though, and this was not taken with a long lens.  Sometimes Insects are tricky, especially ones that bite and sting, in that you don't want to scare them, if they feel threatened, they are more likely to sting or bite.  In this particular case though, I think this bee was too busy gathering nectar to take back to the hive.  Summer is winding down, and Bee hives need to prepare for winter.    Although honey bees and bumble bees can be very similar, bumbles appear scary hairy, and looking at this one it's most likely a bumble.  Interesting difference, with honey bees, a smaller portion of the colony winters over, with bumble bees only the queens hibernate.  Just in case you think all of the images I took, were of animal and insect life, there were some plant photos as well, like this last one.  

Looks like these plants are pretty much done for this year.  The seed pods have already burst, and spread their seed for the winter.  What I try to keep out of photos, is the fact that many parks have a single problem.  That is people, many people are dirty, they leave garbage everywhere.  I am of the opinion that the only evidence you visited a natural place should be the photographs and images that you took.  If you create garbage in the woods, take it out with you, it's not hard, and it means that other folks can visit a nice clean place.

We are actually coming into one of the best times to walk in northern woods, Fall adds the wonder of colour as the world gets ready to shut down for winter.

Thanks, all for this week

W