I spent a glorious 2 hours this week at the Purdon Conservation Area, near Watson's Corners in Lanark County. The largest population of Showy Lady Slippers in Canada is found there. I was a visual feast beyond my expectation! If you love Wildflowers this is a must see destination.
Click on image to enlarge and zoom in.
Tags: Lady Slippers Showy Lady Slippers Orchids Wild Orchids Ontario Canada Purdon Purdon Conservation Area 2017 Lanark Lanark County flowers wild flowers
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A full arch Milky Way shot at North Frontenac Dark Sky Preserve in Ardoch, Ontario. The is my version 2 of a previously posted image. Composed of 28 panels for the sky and 6 panels for the landscape. I completely restacked and reprocessed these panels in Pixinsight with calibration frames.
Backstory:
I have been trying to photograph the full arch of the Milky Way ever since I began astrophotography 3 seasons ago and all attempts have ended in failure, until this week.
My two astro-buddies and I drove 2 hours west of Ottawa in the early morning hours to get to the North Frontenac Dark Sky Preserve in Ardoch, Ontario, in time for a 3:30 am setup in -20 degree Celsius temps to be ready to shoot from 4:30 - 5:30 am. After a successful photo-shoot, an artery-clogging trucker's breakfast in Carleton Place was the perfect ending to an awesome photo shoot under the stars!
Regarding the footprints:
I really lucked out with this one. My two buddies and I were cramped together on a helipad to the left and our red night lights were getting in each other's shots. So before the shoot I ventured out into the field and walked towards the fence to try to find a more secluded position. Then, just before sun up I shot a few quick landscape panorama shots and as it turned out my footprints from an hour before were just perfect to add interest to the scene! Not planned, just lucky!
Technical info
Camera: Nikon D5500
Lens: Sigma 24-35/f2 Art
Tripod head: Sirui L-20S Pan/Tilt Head
Sunwayfoto DDP-64SI Indexing Rotator for Panoramas
Aperture F2
Exposure: 6 seconds x 10 shots and stacked
ISO 3200
Focal length 24mm
Shooting workflow:
4 rows, 7 frames/row, 10 shots/frame. Begin shooting at the top row left side and work left to right then down to horizon row. I completely restacked and reprocessed these panels in Pixinsight with calibration frames.
Processing workflow:
28 stacks of 10 images each processed in Pixinsight as follows:
- Step 1: Calibration and Integration with 100 darks, 100 bias and 64 flats
- Step 2: Automatic Background Extraction and Dynamic Background Extraction depending on the stack
- Step 3. Background Neutralization
- Step 4. Color Calibration
- Step 4. Stretch using ArcsinhStretch
28 processed stacks were stitched together with Microsoft ICE (awesome program by the way!!!)
Foreground landscape images stitched in MS ICE
Foreground pano blended into sky pano in Photoshop CS5
Final processing of complete image done in Photoshop CS5
Tags: Milky Way Milky-Way
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The Earth and our solar system are a part of the Milky Way Galaxy. What you see in this astro-photo is our galactic home along with 100,000,000,000 (100 billion) other stars. Kind of humbling, eh?
This is a rework of a previously posted image, but this time I left Ottawa's yellow-orange light dome in the scene to add some colour and interest. This photo was shot in Beckwith County west of the city with three huge solar panel structures in the foreground.
Tags: MIlky Way Ottawa stars night sky astro astrophotography Ontario Canada
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Well after a lot of wishing, hoping, looking and asking since last year I finally found a Fox den with babies today (By the way, they're called kIts). As I was driving home from my second Loon photo shoot this morning I spotted two little cuties peeking their heads up from the right-hand ditch and I knew immediately what they were. I got my gear, climbed the fence into a cow pasture and found this old culvert which made a perfect little den.
I made friends with them quite easily since they were such curious little rascals. I guess the mum was out hunting because she was nowhere to be seen. They were tough to photograph because there was a wire mesh fence between them and me and I had to shoot with my 300mm lens through one of the rectangular holes in the mesh, meaning that I could not get full body shots without getting the mesh in the frame. So I had to settle for all head shots, but I'm not complaining because these guys' faces are adorable!
Tags: Red Fox Red Fox Kit Kit Fox Pup Fox baby Rudy Pohl Ottawa area Red Fox cub Red Fox babies
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This young female Snowie was checking us out yesterday morning to see if we had any food for her, which we didn't. Nevertheless, her curiosity and bravery gave us some wonderful shot opportunities during our brief time in the field. The 50 kms/hr wind gusts allowed her to hover effortlessly above of us about 50-60 feet away as we ripped off as many shots as our cameras could manage. We are so blessed in the Ottawa area to have these beautiful birds come down from the Arctic and over-winter here, year after year.
I don't get out much anymore compared to previous years and I have an entry-level Nikon D5500, which is not really an action-wildlife camera, and I use a borrowed lens and teleconverter thanks to my photo-buddy Doug Griffith. But everything came together yesterday for a great little photo-shoot with some wonderful pics to remember our Arctic visitor by.
Note: Despite not having the features needed to make it a good wildlife camera, the D5500 still does alright and has the amazing 24-megapixel Nikon sensor without an anti-aliasing filter which delivers razor-sharp image detail and a huge dynamic range. I love it!
Click on image to enlarge.
Tags: Snowy Owl
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