Mellow Yellow

Summer brings tons of colorful flowers. These lilies from our garden have such great color.

Macro Flowers

Tiny bouquet of baby breath flowers.

Red Color Pop

Power the Tower

Here is the main reason I love to travel with a bridge camera. One small camera, no lenses to lug. The zoom reach of these cameras is just incredible. This Canon powershot sx50hs captured the Skylon Tower across the gorge with ease. Zooming from the 35mm equivalent of 24mm-4800mm. Click to enlarge.

Close up

Great blue heron up close and personal.

Garden Color

Just some average marigolds in a garden.

Horseshoe Falls

Todays bike ride took me by Horseshoe Falls. I made a seven image panorama of the falls from a top Terrapin Point. Photoshop had a ridiculously hard time merging these photos because of the mist. I did manage to produce a small rainbow and retained detail along the Canadian shoreline.

River Run

A glimpse between the trees of the rushing waters of the upper Niagara rapids. Shot in black and white mode with an R-79 infrared filter.

Great Blue Heron II

Same bird as below but zoomed in tighter.

Great Blue Heron

A good find along Cayuga creek. This GBH was intently fishing for breakfast. I had to back off the zoom so I could include his full reflection.

Tree Swallow

Tree swallow (Tachycineta bicolor)

Good Pose

Tree Swallow

Another Swallow

Beautiful bird giving me some photo time and I'm glad he did. These little birds fly like rockets and are very difficult to shoot in flight. The canon camera I had this day was no where near fast enough to do BIF shots.

Big Swallow

A nice grab of this tree swallow perched a top a thistle. I love the blue feathers on these birds. This cutie looks pretty young, probably this years crop. It's important to not disturb any wildlife so keep your distance and use telephoto lenses. I used a canon powershot sx50 hs at 850mm which kept me about 15 feet away from my subject.

Second Look

Here is another angle of the beautiful white bird fishing for his lunch.

Lucky Break

We don't usually see white egrets in Niagara Falls. I am not a birder so he possibly could be an albino version of a great blue heron, I don't really know for sure.This guy has been stalking Gill creek for two years now that I know of and maybe longer. I catch glimpses of him occasionally on my bike rides. He will see me and he's gone, not a photogenic type I guess. This day was an exception he didn't care as much about me as long as I kept my distance, as he did about catching his lunch. Lucky break for me the sun was cooperating and so was a nice reflection in the water.

Ray of Light

This particular image I switched to a 10x ND filter. Exposure ended up at 30 sec. at f-2.8 and iso 100. I started the exposure while the falls was under cloud cover but halfway thru the a ray of sunlight came through the trees and lit up the water.

Peaceful Delight

While at Lockport falls I made some color exposures. To make the water blur you need a good tripod and a slow shutter speed. This one I used a 4X nd filter to slow the shutter speed to 6 sec. at f-11, iso 200.

A Little Waterfall

Went to Lockport and stopped by this little gem. It had been raining for the past week so I had plenty of water flow. I used an infrared R-79 red filter to make the foliage white. Long exposure of 30 sec. at 2.8 and iso 100.

Down the Stretch

A big stretch dual in the eight race with Gandys Got Gold and Rock My Soul challenging.

Big Win

Another jockey, Juan Crawford. He is smiles from ear to ear after an unexpected win on long shot Crowns Dancer.

The Jocks

Here is Helen Vanek after another successful win on Hombre Natural. She won the first three races opening day at Fort Erie Race Track for the hat trick. I used f-6.3 at 1/2000th sec at iso 900 to capture this image. The needed the fast shutter speed because the horse was still very excited after the race and moving around quite a bit. The f6.3 aperture was to acquire the most depth of field I could get an still keep my iso reasonable.

The Old Grey Mare

The old grey mare named Sandys Hurricane gets challenged by Our Gabrielle in the seventh race.

Finish with Style

I used manual mode with a start up setting of 1/2000th sec @ f-6.3 and auto iso to deal with the clouded sky. Iso in this pic ended up at 1250. I like the double image of this finish on the monitor.

Post to Post

I always try to find backgrounds that are not too busy so your focus of attention is on the action of the horses. Here I cropped out the sky and tree tops because they distracted the eye from my subjects. Use creative cropping to improve your compositions.

A Lot of Gull

Nice image I grabbed at the track of this gull flying around the grandstands. He was looking for hand outs but the bettors weren't interested in birds they were there to see horses.

The Giant Within

I love horse racing but it's not always fun and games. In the eight race on opening day at Fort Erie Race Track yesterday this great 5 year old champion named The Giant Within took a terrible fall and broke his front leg. Here is probably the last image of him healthy right before the race. Little did anyone suspect the horror that was about to happen minutes later.

The jockey, Christopher Griffith was thrown off his mount but appeared to be unhurt as he chased down the terrified horse. Meanwhile owners, trainers, horsemen, track officials swarmed on the scene.

They removed his saddle as quick as they could and tried control him. The following images are very graphic and should be viewed at your discretion.

Sadly there is nothing that can be done for this poor horse and I am sure he will need to be put down when they get him back to the stables. My heart goes out to all who suffered from this loss.

Opening Day

Traditionally I like to go shoot the ponies on opening day at Fort Erie race track in Ontario.

Hummingbird Garden Series

I like the challenge of shooting hummingbirds. I added some foreground to this image after the fact.

To Compress or Not

A nice profile shot of the same female featured below. Adding textured overlays to the background for interest. The lens I use is a 70-200mm racked out to 200mm and this compresses and blurs out the background. In most cases this is preferred but I wanted to see if a slightly muted background would make it more interesting. Any opinions on this?

She's a Beaut...Clark

Gorgeous female hummingbird shot with morning light.

Hummingbird

Experiment with shutter speeds to blur the wings to show action and movement.

So...Why Does a Hummer Hum?

Our hummingbirds have arrived this week.

Thrillium About Trilliums

The best thing I like about light painting is you're in total control of where and how the light illuminates your subject. As you can see from this trillium series I have achieved numerous looks with one single stream light pro.

Don't Move....I'm Light Painting

The trilliums I found are located in the a woodland area in the middle of the island. The slightest breeze moves these delicate flowers and makes light painting a little more challenging. I tried to find trilliums with natural obstacles nearby to block any wind so I could make 30 second exposures.

Trillium Series ( part 2 )

You can completely change the composition and your viewers perception of your image simply by changing the crop or converting to black and white. Here I have used the same flower image to demonstrate how that can be accomplished.

Painted Flower Series

I finally got a chance to shoot the trilliums of Goat Island today. The weather decided to cut me short and rained me out but I managed a few images. I wanted a different look this year so I decided to try and light paint the flowers. I used a 10x neutral density filter on an overcast day to get an exposure of iso 200, f-11 at 30 sec. I then painted in the scene with a stream light pro to make the image. I will be posting a few more of this series in the next few days.

Ryot Covered Bridge

The last of the eight bridges we toured while in Bedford county, Pa. The Ryot covered bridge was lost in a fire in 2002. The Bedford county commissioners committed to rebuilding the structure and was reopened in 2004.

Colvin Covered Bridge

The Colvin covered bridge was built in 1866 and refurbished in 1997.

Snook's Covered Bridge

Another great looking white with red accents Pennsylvania bridge. Built in 1882 the bridge is in remarkably good shape. I started out on this series of covered bridges using a tripod and seven image bursts of bracketed exposures but after the first two bridges I ditched the tripod and reduced the exposures to three bracketed. By then the sun had come out and I could maintain faster shutter speeds to hand hold the camera and still get sharp images.