Red Leaf In The Snow

I know this blog is about Black and White images. In this case, and at first glance, this appears to be the case. Bear with me...

This photo was taken about halfway between the base of the Niagara Escarpment and Beamer's Falls along "The Forty" the lovely creek flowing down the Escarpment through the town of Grimsby, on its way to Lake Ontario about 1.5 km (1 mile) North of here. The bed of the creek lies in a steep-walled, heavily wooded ravine and, as a result of the thousands of years of erosion, is littered with huge slabs of dolostone that fell into the bed as the creek cut through the Escarpment face. With the recent heavy snowfall and cold temperatures, the waterway is largely frozen over and everything is pretty much snow covered. In places like this, a small amount of water has run over the top of the large rock slab and formed a border of icicles.

If you think this is a Black & White image, look again. Amidst all the white snow cover, a lone maple leaf, still in its full red glory, has somehow found its way onto the snow surface and sits there in lonely glory near the top centre of the image. You can shoot in colour and still get images that are, for all practical purposes Black and White, without doing any monochrome conversion whatsoever. - JW

The image was taken using a tripod mounted Nikon D5000 fitted with an 18-55mm VR kit lense, at 55mm, f/6.3, 1/250 sec, ISO200. Minimal PP was done using GIMP: tonal range expansion to recover full range, slight saturation boost, sharpen, add border, scale to 1024 wide for posting.

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Commited, Not Involved

There is an old joke about the two people arguing about the difference between being committed and being involved. The example presented is bacon and eggs. In that case, the chicken is involved but the pig is committed.

At this local church fund-raiser, the pig was committed and became the featured dish at the bbq supper.

Spokes

One of my hobbies involves an old Corvette. Consequently, I belong to a club devoted to other like-minded individual's passion.

This is a tight shot of one of the wheels on a Corvette Z06 at one of the car shows my club puts on. Held in Port Dover Ontario.

PP: Simply converted to BW using GIMP - Desaturate - preserve Luminosity.

Arches Forming, Moab, Utah

Along the "North" shore of the Colorado River just West of Moab, Utah, there are massive cliffs which are showing the earlier stages of arch formation. In the nearby Arches National Park, fully formed arches abound. But here we can see how the wind and weathering has begun to carve out the characteristic bowl shaped cuts into the face. Over time these will develop into arches, just not in my lifetime.

Pooped...

While shopping at the Eaton Centre in downtown Toronto, Ontario, one little fellow lost the battle. Here dad assumes a protective stance.

The image was converted from colour in GIMP (desaturate based on luminosity)

Magnolia #2

This image is a BW conversion from a digital image in colour. The magnolia on my neighbour's property was just finishing up its blooming period this season and amny of the blooms had lost one or more petals. In the case of this particualr bloom, the loss of petals affroded a wonderful interior "cross'section" view.

For the rechnically mined, conversion from colour was done using GIMP, an open source bitmap editor akin to Photoshop. Colour was completely desaturated while using the settings to preserve luminosity values. Some minor "curves" adjust ment was applied to ensure appropriate contrast and tonal range were preserved. THe original image was taken using a Panasonic Lumix FZ30 with a #1 close-up lense attached.

Darlene Stubbs in Her Log Cabin

Darlene Stubs at one time lived in the summers in a log cabin she had renovated. It was a single room cabin with a bed, table and chairs and a cook stove that served as a heating system as well. She said that she had come here to get away from her high pressure work in Toronto and write poetry.

The cabin is (was) located west of Gowganda, in Northern Ontario, well off the main road (at the time a rough gravel road serving logging trucks) on a river. If you did not know where it was, you certainly would not find it. The area surrounding the cabin was dense bush but about 30 metres from the front door (actually the only door) to the cabin was a typical Northern Ontario river and her dock. Tied up to the dock was a fibreglass canoe, her main mode of transport to town (Gowganda) for her shopping trip every couple of weeks. That trip she would make alone and took about half a day each way.

She loved the peace and quiet and tolerated us as one of her only visitors that year (aside from her boyfriend, a local prospector). But she also had the occasional visit from a bear. To deal with that she kept a loaded rifle handy in the cabin, and she said she new how to use it, and had.

Darlene graciously served Dayle and me tea and allowed me to take her photo.

(Photo taken late 1970s)