geocaching | photography | adventures
227/365: Naka No More.
Drove by our favourite garden centre / nursery, Naka Greenhouses, on the way home. Looks like we’ll have to find a new favourite as this one’s been abandoned with construction equipment having flattened parts of the property already for Brampton’s next development project. Here, they have a small tractor parked at the only part of the selling area still standing – the perennial section we bought our roses and clematis’ from.
226/365: Mocha’s Campsite.
Well, the photo for today came out a bit different. I originally was just going to demonstrate a Muskoka Lantern – just toss a small light source in a Nalgene bottle and voila one campsite lantern. Thing is, Mocha found it real interesting! Quick adjustment and we now have a photo of Mocha choosing a camp site. Seems she’s interested in the southern part of the park now.
225/365: Hawk Eye.
Paddling out of Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park, we stopped for a geocache on Anstruther Lake. We took a few photos from the view but on the way back to the canoes we heard a strange sound. Apparently there was a large hawk sitting in the tree above the canoes! I managed to crawl over a dead pine tree and get a somewhat clear view of the hawk. Well, I will say this, popping out of a tree thirty feet away from a hawk sure gets the bird’s attention. Totally had a “WTF” look on it’s face before it flew off. But I already had the camera in position….
224/365: Sunset Cruise.
Yesterday was a composite light painting photo. Today, an “out of the camera” light painting photo. This is another from the Kawartha Highlands backcountry trip, but this time it’s our canoes at sunset. Wow did we have the weather today. Sunny, rainy, sunny, windy, torrential rain, sunny. By the time we got back to camp we were cold and wet. We did manage to warm up eventually and out came the cameras again. For this photo, I’ve opened the shutter for a few seconds, stood off to the side and waved my flashlight over the canoes a couple times. That’s it 🙂
223/365: Ball Light-ening.
Well, first night on Site 204 at Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park. After paddling in and setting up camp I found I hadn’t really used the camera a lot. Part of that had to do with the solo paddle against the wind, part of that had to do with the amount of motor boats on Anstruther Lake meant I kept the camera secured inside it’s dry bag rather than risk getting the canoe swamped with a passing water skier. Anyway, we were promised a meteor shower and the camera was ready for it. Unfortunately we had cloudy skies. Here started taking some long exposures at sunset to flatten out the water before we started playing around with flashlights on strings. This is a composite image – one with the landscape and then blended in Photoshop with “lighten” which removed the silhouette of Steve (who was swinging the flashlight) and allowed the brighter landscape photo to fill in more detail. This is another technique I have to play around more with.
222/365: Corolla with a Kevlar Hat.
It’s trip time again! This marks a first for me – putting a canoe on my Corolla. A nice co-incidence has the canoe I borrowed from a friend matching the colour of the car quite nicely. After work today I got in the car and drove toward Kawartha Highlands Provincial Park, where I spent the weekend with friends, camping and canoeing the backcountry.
221/365: Restraint Bypass.
I want one of these buttons for life! Got something holding you back? Hit RESTRAINT BYPASS and go on past it! This one’s a quick iPhone / Snapseed edit of a button on a machine used for truck loading.
220/365: Bench Warner.
This isn’t a boardwalk, this is actually the spectator seating at a baseball diamond near my office. The grass is trimmed but nobody took a weed whacker to the stuff growing up between the benches, leading to a rather prickly surprise for those that sit down without looking. I was over here looking for Munzees after work.
219/365: Hamilton Beach.
Summer keeps on going with it’s heat. Yes, there has been a break in the extreme heat but we still got up to 30C today and that meant we had one destination in mind for the day — the beach. Now it’s the last day of the August long weekend, not the time to head to Wasaga or Sauble, not unless one adores traffic jams. So we headed on down to our favourite spot in the GTA, namely the Hamilton Beach Trail. We didn’t swim (who would, really, in Lake Ontario) but we did soak up some rays on the beach and headed out for a 12km bike ride on the trail. Of course, I got a flat tire ( the back went a couple weeks ago, this time it was the front tire’s turn). The flat came at the 6km mark and since I hadn’t replaced my spare tube yet, well, getting back to the car took a bit more work.
218/365: Latté Resting.
Lots of chores and running around today left not much room for photography. Latté really appreciates the time when we actually do slow down, and she’ll hang out on her chair in the living room when we’re around. The only real work here in this photo is the fact that she’s only lit by the glow from the TV and I decided to see how well the D800 would cope with ridiculously low lighting levels. As you can see, not too bad at all.