Lakeshore Lodge, Sandbanks Provincial Park. 

Late January, Ken and I went out to Sandbanks area to try out my Christmas present, a Panasonic DMC-FZ200 camera.  It was an extremely cold day and to make matters worse, the wind was howling.  We did however have great ice formations to photograph - unlike the previous week, when the ice had not yet formed along the shore.  As I am just learning how to use my new camera, I had some difficulty with my exposure, due to the glare of the ice, but am hoping to learn more as time goes by.  I was shooting in Aperture Mode and playing with +/- EV settings to get the best exposure.  I hope to be able to have some great shorts to share on this blog in the future, as I learn more on the workings of my camera.  So, stay tuned.

On approaching the water we were delighted to find a flock of winter ducks bobbing up and down on the icy water.

Getting down closer to the shore helped to get us out of the cold wind blowing off the lake.  Here we found great ice formations seeping out of the rocks.  This one reminds me a little of alligator teeth.

Water lapping up from the waves created some neat ice formations on some low hanging branches.

The suns rays helped to give a sparkle to the ice floating in the water, as Ken walked further along the shore from me.

Finally, it became too cold for me to continue along the shoreline, so we hiked back up to land where the trees gave us a little shelter from the wind.  I shot this silhouette of the trees against the sun's reflection on the water.

Presqu'ile Photo Shoot

Just got back from an envigorating photoshoot at Presqu'ile Provincial Park with Phil Norton's Photography & Fitness group.  Eight of us braved the elements and with cameras in hand, trecked along the ice covered shoreline of Lake Ontario.  The weather prior to departure was rainy with very gusty winds.  Although the sky remained gray, the rains held off and the water, ice and sky provided wonderful monochromatic opportunities.  Here's a few shots to wet your appetite - more will follow on Phil's website  philnorton.net/photofitness

Photo - Editing Software

You all know that the perfect image seldom jumps out of the camera when you first look at your newly shot images.  If you're lucky, you may just need to crop out a distracting feature or straighten up the horizon.  However, you may need to go much farther and give the image some real "punch".  To do this, you need a heavy duty photo editor like Adobe's expensive Photoshop Creative Suite or Photoshop Elements (a much more affordable package).  You might be interested to know that Adobe has released an old, yet very powerful version of Photoshop CS2 (2005 vintage) that is freely available on their website along with a workable serial number.  Anyone interested can go to the following website http://www.snapfiles.com/get/photoshopcs2.html to get more details and to download the Windows version.  It is also available for Mac on the Adobe website.

I, myself, am a Linux user and have grown to love the venerable Gnu Image Manipulation Program called GIMP for short.  The program was originally written for Linux computers but has now been ported to both Windows and Mac operating systems.  GIMP is freely distributed software and has no advertising or other restrictions.  It is updated frequently by the user community and has many freely available plugins.  It is very comparable in capabilities to the full blown expensive version of Photoshop.  However, it doesn't have anything like the overhead demands on your computer which you will find with most Adobe products.  Anyone interested in the Windows version can get it at the following link http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Editors/GIMP.shtml  I would also suggest that you get the free addon plugin package http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Graphic/Graphic-Plugins/GIMP-Extensions.shtml that provides hundreds of creative ways to manipulate your final image.  If you shoot your images in raw - which all of you should do if you plan to do post image manipulation - then you will also need the UFRaw program that links to GIMP
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ufraw/files/ufraw/ufraw-0.18/ufraw-0.18-setup.exe/download.

Now you have no excuses not to Photoshop or Gimp your images!

Nikon Image Space

Nikon today opened their new Nikon Image Space photo storage/sharing site - http://nikonimagespace.com/ . Being a loyal Nikon camera owner and aware of the 20 GB free storage limit (for Nikon camera owners), I went through the painful effort of registering.  Then the real problems began.  I uploaded a number of images - approx 4 mb each and they took forever to render.  I attempted to erase them with limited success and then re-uploaded smaller images - 100-200k each - to test the new service. It still took what seemed an eternity to render and display.  Others on the web have their own horror stories - use of antiquated flash, lost files, etc.  It's a shame a large and well respected company like Nikon can't get its act together better than this.  Let's hope these are only "growing pains" for the new service.  Try it at your own peril!

North Beach Provincial Park

Here are several photos taken late last year (Dec8, 2012) at North Beach Provincial Park located in Prince Edward County.  It was a gloomy, wet day - great light for photography!  I used a small Nikon S9100 P&S for these shots. See the following link http://flic.kr/p/dQe7am

Napanee Photoshoot

Below are several shots taken by myself (KL) with my new Nikon D5100 on a recent excursion (Jan 9, 2013) with Phil Norton's Photo & Fitness Group  www.philnorton.net to photograph the small town of Napanee - its falls and Christmas lights.

Barn on a late afternoon - Tripod mounted, 1/25 sec, F5.6, 100 ISO

Raging Water - Tripod mounted, 1/40 sec, F5.6, 200 ISO

Napanee Falls - Fast and Slow

Colourful Storefront - Tripod mounted, 1/2 sec, F20, 800 ISO

Middle of Main Street Napanee - Tripod mounted, 1/4 sec, F6.3, 800 ISO

Side of Main Street Napanee - Tripod mounted, 1/4 sec, F6.3, 800 ISO

The night was cold and breezy and the lights kept moving in the gusty winter winds.  Six photographers joined in the shoot and were rewarded with some wonderfully coloured images especially reflected by the wet pavement.

County Foto Club Webblog

The County Foto Club is a webblog for photographers and camera buffs in and around the Prince Edward County region (located near the north east end of Lake Ontario), who share a passion for the art and technology behind the photographic image.  It concentrates on digital cameras and the photographic tools and artistic techniques used to create the final image.

Anyone interested in photography who lives in the Picton/Prince Edward County/Quinte region is encouraged to participate on the blog, whether you use DSLR's or more convenient point & shoot cameras.

The blog will provide an opportunity to submit images, review other's work, provide education or "how-to" guides, and assign regular photo challenges/homework for our readers.

Participants will be encouraged to submit their images to the club's blog for posting for others to see and to comment on. 

If you have interest in participating, please email us at countyfotoclub@gmail.com or you can contact me - Ken Liddon at 613-476-2164.  The blog is currently in its formative stages so please be patient!