2021 Selects: Close to Home

It is now the second month of 2022 and I have finally finished my 2021 edit although there is certainly more work to do before I can upload fresh images to my website www.donjohnstonphotos.com. But this is a good start.

I decided to choose some images that caught my eye during the 2021 edit. This time I worked with the theme “Close to Home”- landscapes, impressions and intimate images from areas near where I live.

Window frost, Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada

Certainly, Covid has constrained travel in 2021 but I was quite content to photograph near the woodlands and bodies of water, all of which are short drives from the house or on the property itself. 

Of course, there were some decisions to be made in order to whittle down this group of photos. I tried to choose variety in seasons, photographic style and subject, while staying with this 2021 theme. Please enjoy this selection- 22 from ’21. Stay tuned for other 2021 sets of images. Print enquiries are always welcome. Thanks for visiting!

2021 Selects

Creative springtime approaches

Greetings to all my new outlook followers. Welcome aboard!

Green starts to appear in Northern Ontario in early to mid-May, along with the blackflies! The first blush of green in the aspens is always a delight and I make sure to get out with the camera to some of my favourite locales.

Looking up in an aspen woodland. f22, 1/160 @ 35 mm

When the sun is bright and the skies are blue I resort to backlighting to take advantage of the translucent green glow in the emerging leaves. I prefer soft overcast with these first spring colours but I have to ‘go with the flow’ and make the best of what mother nature offers me.

Trying to be creative I usually drift toward some interpretive techniques, most of which are ‘in camera’. I hope to communicate the essence of spring with these approaches- delicacy, freshness, transience to name a few.

One technique I like is to look for emerging leaves in smaller trees near the camera. Positioning them between me and the lens I then (manually) focus on background subjects such as these birch tree trunks. With a telephoto lens and shallow depth of field I created this image (below), all in one shot, in the camera.

Birch woodland. In-camera selective focus. f/4 @ 86 mm

Another in-camera technique I like to occasionally use is multiple exposure. I choose six to ten frames and with a wide aperture I expose 5/6 or 9/10 with varying degrees of ‘de-focus’. I have to deselect autofocus and manually change focus, sometimes accompanied with a bit of zooming.

Aspens on a hillside. In-camera 6 frames. 240 mm.

Birch woodland. In-camera multiple exposure. 10 frames 155 mm f4 manual focus.

Birch woodland. In-camera multiple exposure. 10 frames 155 mm f4 manual focus.

Finally, with stands of tree trunks like these aspens I move the camera slowly up or down or up and down during a long exposure. I obtain longer exposure times using low ISO, small apertures and a polarizing or neutral density filter. This photo was made @200 mm and 3 seconds.

Aspen woodland. 3 seconds @ f20, ISO 31.

The advantage to employing these techniques is that the photographer can make interesting, unique images close to home.

Falkland Islands part 1: Stanley to Volunteer Point

 

Countryside with rainbow

In December Brenda and I joined Joe and MaryAnn McDonlad plus three other participants for a two week wildlife tour of some of the Falkland Islands hotspots. The Falklands is a bucket-list destination for birders and bird photographers. There are 5 species of penguins plus elephant seals, sea lions and many other song birds. Many of the animals display Galapagos-like fearlessness, allowing close approaches, when done with patience and care. It’s been said that one does not need big glass for the bird photography but I brought my 600 Nikkor and used it a lot. It was heavy to carry to some of the colonies but not unbearable and it allowed me to capture tight portraits and bring in the smaller songbirds when necessary. The flexibility and lighter weight of a 150-600 could be an alternative but I have not yet compared such a lens to the 600 for sharpness and contrast.

Residential details in the town of Stanley- painted building walls and fences

The tour began in Stanley with a day trip to Volunteer Point, site of the largest king penguin colony in the Falklands, followed by a day trip to the less visited Cape Bougainville for macaroni penguins, rockhopper penguins, sea lions and king cormorants. Since we were in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer months the sun rose around 4:30 a.m. and set about 9:30 p.m. Late December brought long days and plenty of light.

King penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) Adult feeding juvenile

The Falklands are very British, bleak and windswept, perhaps similar to the British moorlands. Sheep farming is the dominant industry but tourism is important too, along with other ventures. The terrain is treeless with occasional rock outcrops and the dominant grass is called white grass, whose colour tends to mask the summer greens, furthering the appearance of bleakness. But the terrain is undulating and dotted with small ponds and crossed by occasional streams. Our inter-island FIGAS flights gave us excellent views of the island landscapes.

King penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus). The colony

Getting to Volunteer point requires driving 4WD Rovers over a mix of paved and gravel roads (mostly gravel) followed by 10 miles (15 km or so) of slow, careful off-road driving over some very uneven terrain at times, about 2 1/2 hours from Stanley. The anticipation of seeing our first penguins made the final off-road portion of the day-trip excruciatingly drawn out- “Over there? That far still?”

King penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) The colony

We had about 4 hours with the animals at Volunteer Point but it was a very satisfying start. Joe and MaryAnn advised us to concentrate on the kings but how could you pass up the gentoos feeding their newborn chicks? Impossible.

Gentoo penguin (Psygoscelis papua) with newborn chicks

For a fuller portfolio of images please visit my 500px page and click on the Volunteer Point Gallery https://500px.com/don_johnston/galleries/falkland-island-part-1

King penguin (Aptenodytes patagonicus) Marching to the sea

Bad Light- There is no such thing

Jay Maisel, in his book Light, Gesture and Color, presents many compelling images made in ‘Bad Light’. Mr. Maisel’s contention is that there is no bad light in photography, only vision and opportunity.

Nature and landscape photographers usually do not care for high, hard, midday light although there are always backlighting opportunities and blue skies. This is especially true in the forest where the combination of trees and light present huge ranges in tonal contrast, that at times overwhelms the sophisticated modern DSLR sensor.

Autumn foliage on Vancouver Island, Sooke, BC- straight shot

Such was the case for this picture (above). While touring on  Vancouver Island I stopped for the backlit red and green foliage and used a polarizer to try and tone down some of the highlights glinting off the leaves. In post processing I was able to tone down highlights and reveal some detail in the shadows but the straight image is still very contrasty and pedestrian.

Thinking ahead I decided to make duplicate images partially and completely out of focus. I thought I could combine each one later with the ‘straight shot’. This is a digital version of the Orton effect, pioneered in the slide film days by Vancouver Island photographer Michael Orton.

Autumn foliage on Vancouver Island, Sooke, BC- Combination-1

Autumn foliage on Vancouver Island, Sooke, BC- defocused-1

This can be done in camera too, certainly with Nikon DSLRs, but the drag and drop approach for two images is very easy to accomplish in Photoshop. Once combined, I adjusted the opacity slider in the layers window to reveal about 50% of the focused image. I think the results are keepers! What do you think?

Autumn foliage on Vancouver Island, Sooke, BC- Combination-2

Autumn foliage on Vancouver Island, Sooke, BC- defocused-2

Straight Shots

Marsh marigold (Caltha palustris) growing at the edge of small river, with sunlit highlights from the river water.

I love making abstract, interpretive, impressionistic images with my camera. It’s satisfying to be able to create these types of  images, straight out of the camera. They are less documentary and in some cases inspire ‘what is it?’ comments. These images emphasize colour, texture, shape and line. They convey feelings of delicacy, fragility, lightness and euphoria or spirituality. It is possible to achieve these types of images without the use of image altering computer software. All it takes is careful observation and imagination along with a good knowledge of how the camera captures images.

Here are some recent images that illustrate some techniques I like to employ. I include some tips and advice to help you produce your own interpretive images, straight from your camera.

1. Shallow depth of field- I begin by setting the lens to f4 or so (wider aperture) with the intention of selectively focusing on my subject. I scout the composition  while handholding the camera to give freedom of movement and then when I find the angle and focus point I desire I mount the camera back on a tripod for a more careful composition. This is often called ‘selective focus’ because something will be in focus while much of the subject will be rendered as out of focus colourful blobs.

Birch trees in spring. Selective focus. f 5.6 210 mm

One subject I tried this spring was a birch woodland with emerging (backlit) leaves in birch saplings nearer the camera. I was fortunate to finally notice an excellent example below me as I stood on a hillside rock outcrop. My original intention was to climb the hill and photograph emerging foliage in distant trees on a hillside. I still photographed that hillside but I spent most of my time on the hill photographing the birch tree trunks and fresh new leaves.

Birch trees in spring. Selective focus. f 5.6 320 mm

This technique also works well for flowers especially with the camera set low to the ground and a focus point set on more distant blossoms. You can even try it with super telephoto lenses!

Texas wildflowers, telephoto lens, selective focus 300 mm @ f7.1

Texas wildflowers, 80-400 @ 280 mm f8.

2. Macro lens painting- This is a technique I tried after reading a posting from US photographer and photography educator Janice Sullivan. The technique employs long exposures (5 seconds or so), the camera hand-held on colourful subjects such as garden flowers. I started the exposure on a blossom and then pointed the camera at nearby colourful displays, all in the same exposure.

Macro lens painting in a flower garden. 5 seconds @ f18, 105 mm

Macro lens painting in a flower garden. 5 seconds @ f18, 105 mm

3. Camera movement/panning- This is a tried and true technique for creating impressionistic images of subjects like woodlands. I use it extensively in spring and fall. For the images below I moved the camera up and down during a lengthy (5 second or so) exposure while I was photographing a pine woodland in fog. The vertical lines certainly suggest I should use a vertical composition but I often do this horizontally to include more Vertical lines- tree trunks. Telephotos work best but I have tried this technique with wide-angle lenses too with interesting perspective results.

Red pine woodland in morning fog- camera movement, 125 mm, 5 seconds @ f20

 

Red pine tree trunks in morning fog- camera movement, 34 mm, 3 seconds @ f20

4. Natural distortions- I often like to photograph the reflective surfaces of lakes and ponds, in spring, summer and fall, concentrating on the gentle distortions of the reflected shoreline features created by the water. In the examples below however, I was stuck in my car, waiting out a thunderstorm. I left the wipers off and decided to photograph the distorted autumn woodland through the rain-soaked windshield. I hand-held and used my 105 mm macro. Focusing on either the subject or the windshield yielded different results and these can be evaluated immediately by reviewing images in the camera monitor. That’s the beauty of digital photography- being able to see the results in real time so adjustments or refinements can be made!

5. 

   White birch tree woodland in autumn colour at Lake Laurentian Conservation area as seen through a rain-soaked windshield. 105 mm lens f 3.5

    

   

   White birch tree woodland in autumn colour at Lake Laurentian Conservation area as seen through a rain-soaked windshield. 105 mm lens f 3.5

    

Christmas Images

Seasons greetings, Happy Holidays and Merry Christmas to one and all!

Christmas morning light on trees in the yard

After the family traditions on Christmas morning have been attended to there is sometimes an opportunity for me to do some nature photography, something that I always ask permission from the family before venturing forth, sometimes just on the deck, sometimes in the driveway, never too far from home nor for too long.

Christmas morning light and fresh snow on spruce trees

 

Christmas morning sunrise

Christmas is one of the quietest days of the year to be outside. The winter weather over the past 8 years- the time period from which these images were chosen- has been variable in the extreme. Cold days, El Nino warm days. Days with little snow but morning frost and days with beautiful fresh snow. This year is promising to be gloomy and wet but I am hoping the rain turns to snow in time.

A red fox lounging on a small roadside mound

 

A chickadee spreads its wings near the bird feeder

Through these past 8 years, when the conditions were excellent and the light was magical, I knew I had to forgo some of the family traditions and take time to make some pictures. Please enjoy these images made on a very special day.

Junction Creek snowfall 2012

Ice formations along Junction Creek

A dusting of snow on grasses along the driveway

Garden grasses

Tree shadows on snow drifts in the yard

An ice puddle at the edge of the lawn in an El Nino year

Santa Claus takes the kids for a ride

Interstate Rest Stops

Greetings dear readers. Apologies for once again neglecting the blog. Brenda and I have been travelling extensively this past year and some things like the blog have been placed on the back burner. The good news is that I will have a lot of new material to write about and post pictures about. Photo adventures in South Texas and Arkansas, Smokies (Autumn), Nevada, California and the Galapagos Islands should provide fodder for future posts. I’ll be spending much of this summer editing and catching up on the huge backlog of recent material.

This entry is about making photographs in unlikely places such as Interstate Rest Stops. Brenda and I will shortly be travelling to Arkansas and Texas for spring scenery and birds. We usually travel to our US destinations via the Interstate highway system. Occasionally we will drive secondary roads if there is a possibility we are missing something on the way. The Interstate Highway system is a fast, efficient and reasonably safe means of getting from Point A to B. Interstates can be boring from a photographic standpoint, although some, like I70 (in Utah) pass through jaw dropping landscapes. Interstates generally prohibit stopping, unless there is an emergency. I don’t think a state trooper would be amused if I tried to explain that my emergency stop was for taking a picture.

While driving to the Smokies in springtime it became apparent that the best redbud in bloom would be found well north, in this case at an I75 Ohio Rest Stop.

The system includes Rest Stops every 50 miles (80 km) or so and these are well maintained and convenient places to change drivers, go to the bathroom or have a bite to eat if weather is cooperating. There can be photo opportunities at rest stops. Often there is information describing something of historic or geographic significance in the area. Usually there is a picnic area and a place to exercise the dog and stretch one’s legs. One needs to set aside pre-conceived notions about these places and have the camera ready if opportunities arise. My tripod and camera bag are always accessible when we stop.

While we had lunch in North Dakota I tried to time the passing vehicles travelling in the opposite direction, between the oak trees

Here is a selection of other images I have made over the years at these Rest Stops. Please enjoy.

A stand of young trees in Minnesota

Late autumn colour and early snow in Michigan along I75.

Frost for hundreds of km along I94 in North Dakota. Unfortunately it petered out before Roosevelt National Park was reached.

The NC/SC state line rest stop proved to be a welcome respite from a late winter snow storm in the Carolinas.

This I 25 Rest Stop was an ideal locale for photographing the fresh snow near the Rio Salado sand dunes in New Mexico.

A photographer’s perspective on Weeds

Following up on my last two postings on the subject of the monarch butterfly and its host plants I thought I would post some images of noxious and invasive weeds, taken over the years. In some locales these plants can be common. Often, under the right conditions, they can make nice photographic subjects. I don’t shy away from photographing invasives and noxious weeds. A weed is a flowering plant (usually) in the wrong place, such as a garden, crop or lawn. On a more sinister side, invasives such as purple loosestrife can seriously disrupt natural ecosystems like wetlands, and their control becomes more important. Photographing these plants can help draw attention to the ecological issues. Agriculture has classified plants like common milkweed as noxious, giving them special status for control programs. Unfortunately there can be some collateral damage, such as loss in monarch butterfly numbers. As always, with complex problems such as these, there are no simple answers.

Here are some pictures of noxious weeds (classified usually by state or province or country) as well as some invasive plants.

Sunrise and Queen Annes lace flower. (Pennsylvania)

Purple loosestrife is pretty but deadly to wetland ecosystems. The infestation in North America has necessitated the use of specific insect controls- beetles and weevils that feed only on this plant, but are themselves non-native.

Purple loosestrife (Lythrum salicaria) in an Ontario wetland.

Orange and yellow hawkweed are invasive plants in North America, but their flowers are visited by many beautiful butterflies.

Mixed colonies of windblown yellow and orange hawkweed at base of rock outcrop (time exposure with wind)

Canadian tiger swallowtail (Papilio canadensis) perched and nectaring on orange hawkweed

One reason the milkweed is classified noxious is because it can propagate through the production of airborne seeds.

Common Milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) Bursting seed pod

Roadsides and other marginal habitats are often places where invasive plants get a toe-hold.

Roadside wildflowers: Daisies, Birdsfoot trefoil and vetch.

Hare’s-foot clover (Trifolium arvense) Flowering colonies in Olympic Park on the road to Hurricane Ridge

Russian thistle is unwelcome in South Dakota’s badlands ecosystem.

Russian Thistle seedlings in cracked mud. (Badlands National Park, SD)

Oxeye daisies and dandelions are so common we often forget they are non-native. The dandelion flower and leaves have some culinary and medicinal uses.

Large colony of roadside oxeye daisies blowing in strong wind (time exposure)

Oxeye daisies, star chickweed and hawkweed in urban roadside habitat.

 

Dandelions on lawn with flowering serviceberry bushes. (Manitoulin Island, Ontario)

 

Shortly I am off to Churchill for an exciting polar bear photo tour (with John Marriott). Brenda and I just returned from autumn in the (very busy, but very pleasant) Smokies in Tennessee. Blog entries to follow, when there is time. Thanks for stopping by.

Staying With the Plan

Since I last posted Spring has blasted through and swept winter aside. Almost two weeks or so of above average temperatures in early May has led to an avalanche of green in the aspens and birches. During this time I have been setting the alarm for pre-dawn excursions to spots close to home. A few days ago I decided to revisit a beaver pond as the temperatures hovered just above freezing with clear skies. I expected fog and was not disappointed. But as I parked and set up and assessed the situation I realized that conditions would not (apparently) be as promising as I anticipated. There seemed to be too much fog

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of desperation I decided to stay and make the best of this mediocre dawning. I reasoned that if I weighed anchor and charted a course to other destinations on my short list I might be travelling during sunrise and wasting what good light there might be that morning.

Shortly the sun began to add colour to the sky and peek through the fog. It was now producing sufficient definition in the shoreline trees to attempt landscape images containing discernable features.

The one picture element I thought might rescue this image was a lone Canada goose floating motionless near a small rock outcrop. Although small, it’s silhouette contrasted well with the fog. Likely the goose was behaving as a sentinel for his mate on her nest. As the sun rose a little higher the goose held its position. Soon the motionless goose commanded more of my attention as the sun turned the mist to a golden colour.

As the sun continued to rise above the mist I realized that I had better exclude it from the images as it was overpowering the digital sensor, even with the use of a graduated neutral density filter.

Fortunately I packed my long lens that morning and I began using it to isolate the goose in the sunlit fog.

By moving my tripod a couple of meters I could omit the sun’s direct reflection.

Finally, back to shorter lenses before the sun got too high.

Photoshop’s Oil Paint Filter

Summer wildflowers Multiple exposure

While I enjoy winter photography in Northern Ontario there are stretches of time when the camera remains inactive. We have been experiencing a ‘normal’ winter this year and there have been periods of extreme cold, snow and overcast conditions. These conditions, together with a winter lethargy contribute to staying indoors a lot. One of my winter projects, apart from catching up on backlogs of recent material, website work, marketing etc, has been to comb the extensive file of transparencies, looking for hidden nuggets worth scanning and digitizing. While optimizing the raw scans I wondered whether some images might be suitable candidates for the Oil Paint Filter now available in CS6.

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Summer wildflowers Multiple exposure- Oil Paint Filter

People sometimes ask me ‘Is Photoshop CS6 worth getting?’ and I answer in the affirmative (although I am certainly not a Photoshop expert). I like some of the new tools such as the improved content aware fill, the crop tool plus the way pallettes and layers are now organized. One of the new filters in CS6 is the Oil Paint Filter. Generally I avoid gimmicks such as these types of filters, but sometimes it’s nice to fool around a bit. It’s hard enough overcoming the skepticism inherent with viewing digital photography these days- ‘C’mon, that’s photoshopped….right?’, but I subscribe to the notion that we are making pictures and not always making a purely documentary image of nature.

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For that reason I do enjoy camera movement photos, lengthy time exposures and variations of in-camera multiple exposures. See my blog post on Interpretive Images. With the current crop of Nikons (actually in-camera multiple exposure has been around for a few generations of Nikons) it is easy to create multiple exposures. It was possible to perform multiple exposures with film cameras too. It was just a bit more complicated.

As I processed my slide scans, I wondered whether an application of the Oil Paint Filter would produce pleasing variations of some of my multiple exposures and other impressionistic images. If I thought I had a candidate image I would optimize it, save it and then Save As xxx_V2.tif. Below are a couple of before and after examples to consider.

Spring Forest, multiple exposure

Spring Forest, multiple exposure, Oil Paint Filter

I thought the Oil Paint filter might also produce nice variations of abstract reflection images, such as the examples below. This filter can aslo be used to rescue otherwise hum-drum images that might be consigned to the trash. Images with cluttered detail, boring skies, etc. might be candidates.

Spring reflections

Spring reflections, Oil Paint Filter

Autumn reflections

Autumn reflections, Oil Paint filter

If you are interested in trying the Oil Paint filter, there are a number of ‘how-to videos available on the net available through a Google search or a U-Tube search. Below are the settings that I decided to use. As always the on-screen preview gives you an accurate rendition of the final result, which can be tweeked and saved and then re-saved using the history pallete. The filter remembers the last-used settings. In future versions I would like to see Adobe add ‘save custom settings’ to the filter window.

Oil Paint filter settings used for image examples

Autumn forest, multiple exposure

Autumn forest, multiple exposure, Oil Paint filter