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.

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