This is another image from the snow storm’s deposit the other day. That storm was localized to the city of Hamilton, Ontario, a fact we found out for ourselves as we drove into Hamilton. Consisting of large clusters of heavy, wet flakes, the snow covered and clung to every branch and created a storybook winter look to the area, although the conditions were such that about 90 minutes after this was shot, most had fallen to the ground. Here we see a pair of red Muskoka chairs (as we call them in Canada, although other countries/regions have their own label for similarly made chairs). The chairs are a left-over from a federal government (Parks Canada) sponsored project to place similar chairs (in a variety colours) across the country in tourist-frequented places as part of the 2017 Canada 150 celebrations. These chairs look over Cootes Paradise, a small, shallow lake located just west of Burlington Bay, itself at the Western end of Lake Ontario. Cootes Paradise is part of the Royal Botanical Gardens. Although you might think this is a selective colour image, it is, in fact, a full colour image. In case you were wondering. - JW

Date Taken: 2020-03-06

Tech Details:

Taken using a tripod-mounted Nikon D800 fitted with an AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm 1:4.0 lense set to 58mm, ISO100, Auto WB, Aperture Priority Mode, f/8.0, 1/160 sec. PP in free Open Source RAWTherapee from Nikon RAW/NEF source file: brighten the image overall by setting exposure compensation to EV+0.47, slightly boost contrast and Chromaticity in L-A-B mode, boost Vibrance slightly, enable Tone Mapping at default levels, enable Shadows/Highlights and recover both highlight and shadow details, sharpen (edges only), save PP in free Open Source GIMP:adjust contrast and brightness to get a more natural tonal range, use the Hue-Saturation-Brightness tool on the red channel only to brighten and boost the saturation of the red chairs, do some localized darkening of a light area at the base of the tree at the right side of the frame, sharpen, save, scale image to 6000px wide, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 2048 px wide for posting online, sharpen very slightly, save.

Tags:   Hamilton Princess Point Royal Botanical Gardens trees snow winter snow-covered snowstorm chairs red Muskoka Chairs Red Rule Parks Canada Canada 150 Open Source RAWTherapee GIMP Nikon D800 AF-S Nikkor 24-120mm 1:4.0

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The recent cold snap provided temperatures low enough to allow ice crystals to form on some of the windows protected from the generally warmer air in the main living areas. The last time I had a chance to shoot this type of image was about 2 years ago so I got what I could while I could.

I am always pleased to find the surreal-looking landscapes formed by these crystals in the tiny areas covered by my macro lense. To give you a sense of size, this was shot at life size (i.e. 1:1) making the vertical dimension about 18mm (almost ¾ inch for our American friends). The absence of any real colour in the sequences from which this particular image is drawn made a monochrome treatment a natural fit. The nice thing is, move about 3 to 4 cm in any direction and the ‘landscape’ changes completely. - JW

Date Taken: 2018-01-07

Tech Details:

Taken using a hand-held Nikon D7100 fitted with a Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1 (272E) lense set to 1:1 magnification, ISO 720 (Auto ISO), Auto WB, Aperture priority mode, f/7.1, 1/320 sec with an EV+0.33 exposure bias. PP in free open Source RAWTherapee from Nikon RAW/NEF source file: set final image maximum dimension size to 9000 pixels, crop image to square format by cutting off the left portion of the image (the less interesting part), convert to black-and-white, reduce the green and red channel gamma values to get a tonal range I liked, increase contrast and lightness in L-A-B mode, enable shadows-highlights and recover highlights to tame the bright edges of the crystals and also pull up shadows to brighten the darkest areas a bit, sharpen, save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: adjust one curve to pull the mid tones a bit, rotate the image 180 degrees, sharpen, save, scale image to 6000x6000, sharpen slightly, add fine black-and white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 1800 wide for posting, sharpen slightly, save.

Tags:   macro ice crystals surreal landscape monochrome black-and-white B&W Open Source RAWTherapee GIMP Nikon D7100 Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro 1:1 (272E)

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We were in Hamilton, Ontario a few days ago visiting family and I decided to take a walk in the woods along the South shore of the pond/lake named Cootes Paradise. This shallow body of water is bordered by property that is part of the land managed by the Royal Botanical Gardens (also referred to locally as the RBG). The land is a conservation area - a nice bit of nature in downtown Hamilton. It had snowed the night before but it was a wet, sloppy snow and began melting as soon as it was deposited. I was out in this area near Princess Point and the melting snow was falling all over me, soaking me and my camera gear. But the look of the dark tree trunks and the still significant amount of now dried brown, leaves on the trees created a scene that appealed to me. To do it justice and to preserve the sense of space, I opted to create a panorama format image. The first snowfall of the season but not the last. - JW

Date Taken: 2018-11-16

Tech Details:

This is a 3-image panorama made using free Open Source Hugin panorama software.

Three overlapping mages were taken using a tripod-mounted Nikon D7100 fitted with an AF-P DX Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-6.3 lense set to 70mm, Daylight WB, ISO100, Aperture priority mode, f/6.3, 1/20 sec with an EV+0.67 exposure bias. The 3 JPEG (SOOC) images were then loaded into free Open Source Hugin software and the rectilinear projection used to produce an image 13,568x3500 px (setting was for 3500 high and whatever the resulting horizontal value would then result), and output to TIFF format panorama image. The panorama image was then edited in free Open Source RAWTherapee: enable and apply the Graduated Neutral Density/GND filter to darken the right 25% (approx) of the image to better match the tonality of the rest of the frame, save image to TIFF format. PP in free Open Source GIMP: use the tone curve tool to slightly adjust the overall tonality to darken slightly and add slightly more contrast, very slightly boost saturation to bring out the brown leaves, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text along the bottom, save, scale image to 1200 px high (and accept the resulting width that implied – 4265 px) for posting online, sharpen slightly, save.

Tags:   landscape panorama trees trunks forest Autumn leaves brown grass snow snowfall melting Hamilton Princess Point Cootes Paradise Royal Botanical Gardens RBG conservation area winter Open Source Hugin RAWTherapee GIMP Nikon D7100 AF-P DX Nikkor 70-300mm 1:4.5-6.3

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Late in the day yesterday, The Boss and I headed over to Kelson Beach (also known widely as Fifty Point beach but this is not strictly correct) to check out how things have changed over the past few weeks since out last visit. Kelson Beach is on the South shore of Lake Ontario at the West limit of the town of Grimsby, Ontario and thus at the East limit of Winona (part of the Regional City of Hamilton). The groynes continue to deteriorate and are but a shadow of their former selves compared to when I started photographing them many years ago. The recent cold weather had added a small coat of ice on on a couple of the groynes’ vertical beams. As we waited to see if sunset was going to give us a good show, the cloud cover to the West continued to obscure the sun and all we got was a bit of colour to the East and an overall blue and pink pastel light over the lake as seen here. Lovely in its own way but not what I had hoped for. Now I have to do another visit. - JW

Date Taken: 2022-01-04

(c) Copyright 2022 JW Vraets

Tech Details:

Taken using a tripod-mounted Nikon D800 fitted with an AF Nikkor 70-210mm 1:4.0-5.6 lense set to 145mm, ISO100, Daylight WB, Matrix metering, Aperture Priority Mode, f/8.0, 1/6 sec with an EV+0.33 exposure bias to get some detail in the groyne’s posts. PP in free Open Source RAWTherapee from Nikon RAW/NEF source file: set final image size to be 9000px wide, enable lense corrections, level horizon, crop image to a 5x7 format by getting rid of some excess blank space on the left, brighten overall by setting exposure compensation to EV+0.29, darken sky by using the Graduated Neutral Density/GND tool, use Shadows/Highlights to recover some shadow detail in the groyne posts, boost Contrast and Chromaticity in L-A-B mode, decrease Vibrance a little, reduce a green colour cast by shifting the Tint slightly toward the magenta end, sharpen (edges only), save. PP in free Open Source GIMP: clone out some sensor dust, add a non-destructive dodge burn layer in soft-light mode and use a black-to-transparent gradient to darken the foreground water and then duplicate the layer to amplify the effect, add another non-destructive dodge-burn layer in soft light mode to paint the ice on the groynes with white to brighten those areas and reduce the layer’s opacity to get a suitable brightness of the ice, create new working layer from visible result, sharpen, save, scale image to 6000 px wide, sharpen, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 3000 px wide for posting online, sharpen very slightly, save.

Tags:   Grimsby Hamilton Winona Kelson Beach Fifty Point groyne ice Lake Ontario water shore dusk Blue Hour pastels pink blue Open Source RAWTherapee GIMP Nikon D800 AF Nikkor 70-210mm 1:4.0-5.6

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The Hamilton, Ontario Public Library and the Hamilton Farmers’ Market share a building which provides a common look across their respective faces onto York Blvd providing the vertically striped background for this image. The red barn is a three-dimensional sign for the Hamilton Farmers’ Market. As for the red ‘E’, it is the letter ‘E’ from the word ‘Farmers’ adorning the side of the building dedicated to the market. And, of course, this is a Red Rule image. - JW

Date Taken: 2019-05-14

Tech Details:

Taken using a hand-held Nikon D7100 fitted with an AF-S DX Nikkor 18-105mm VR lense set to 85mm, ISO140 (Auto ISO), Auto WB, Shutter Priority mode, f/5.6, 1/250 sec with an EV+1.00 exposure bias. The SOOC JPEG file was quite good so I did not bother with processing the RAW/NEF source file but processed directly from the JPEG. PP in free Open Source GIMP: adjust the tone curve to pull down/darken the middle portion, correct perspective distortion crop a little off the right and bottom of the frame to eliminate some unwanted intrusions, use the hue-saturation-brightness tool to slightly darken the red channel only, sharpen, save, sharpen slightly, save, add fine black-and-white frame, add bar and text on left, save, scale image to 2048 px wide for posting online, sharpen slightly, save.

Tags:   Hamilton downtown York Blvd Hamilton Public Library verticals red Red Rule barn Farmers Market sign E Open Source GIMP Nikon D7100 AF-S DX Nikkor 18-105mm VR

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