Stormy Niagara - October 2010

This month's image in my 12from2010 project was taken during my recent tour of Canada - Specifically Niagara, Tornoto in this shot.

A fall gallery of images from my trip can be found at this link www.westyphotography.com/travel/canada/

 

I arranged my trip for September/October to ensure that I caught Canada in it's 'Fall' colour scheme - I certainly got some lovely Landscape shots of the snow capped Rockies with Yellow, Brown and Green foliage in the foreground (earlier on in my trip in Alberta and B.C.) - The downside was that good weather was not guaranteed...

However, as a Photographer, bright blue skies are not always what you are after. This month's shot of Niagara's two falls (Canadian Horseshoe falls in the foreground, US falls in the distance) was taken 15 minutes or so before the heavens opened.

I set-up my D300 + 11-16 2.8 (thanks Dave!) on a small tripod, balanced on a wall, and took a total of 5 shots at different exposures to ensure that I had recorded all the detail in the dark sky, as well as the bright foreground.

As you can see from 3 of the 5 original shots below, this needed some work to get to the finished article I was after;

Next step was to bring all 5 images into Photomatix Pro to combine the different exposures to produce a single tonemapped image.

I then exported this as a TIFF file, which I opened in Photoshop RAW and added contrast and colour boosts where I saw fit using PhotoTools 2.

It is a fair bit of work, but I think the finished image is worth the effort.

I know that this HDR process is not to everyone's taste, but I think when it isn't overdone the effect can be very striking - I hope you think it works here!

 

Touring Canada

Click the link below to view a short slideshow of my Canada trip

Touring Canada

Looking for Whales

Saturday's tour was a five hour Whale Spotting excursion.

I took the bus to Steveston near Richmond, to board one of two jet powered Whale Explorer boats.

The boat trip took about 1.5 hours or so to get to the spotting area - The crew had microphones in the water to tell when they were close... The sounds coming from them over the boats speakers were amazing.

I must admit to showing my ignorance, as I was expecting (at best) to see a bump or something in the water in the distance - What I wasn't ready for was a group of 15-20 Killer Whales within 100m of the boat.

Thank goodness I had bought my 70-200vr with me - The perfect lens for close quarters shots like these.

Killer Whales

The speed and grace of the animals was brilliant to see - I am sure we have all seen Dolphins (and possibly even Killer Whales) in tanks at Seaworld, but to see these huge creates playing in their natural habitat was very humbling.

Although most of the hour we were there the Whales just swam up and down ,which was impressive enough as they came up for air (as above), I was fortunate enough to capture one of them 'playing' too:

As you can imagine I took loads of photos - I will process the others when I get back home, and post a link.

Sealions

We also had a further treat on the way back to Steveston as the captain stopped at a small island to allow us to see a group of Sealions that were basking there:

 

Quote of the day must surely go to the French couple on the boat: "I told you we should have bought the camera today" - Yes you should!

Yet another terrific day in Canada - Off to Toronto for a couple of days now. I want to get some photos of a certain well-known waterfall...

The Social Network

Tonight was my first experience of an opening night of a movie: and I happened to be in Vancouver!



The cinema was packed out - and, take note UK, when the film has a 19:30 advertised time, that is when it starts!



The film was 'The Social Network', based loosely on the book 'The Accidental Billionaires', which is turn is basically the story of how Facebook got started.



The film was excellent - You neither come away liking or disliking the main Mark Zuckerberg character, but rather see how quickly something can spiral almost to the level of being out of control;

It also shows how far people are prepared to go to get what they want - Strangely money doesn't appear to have been the motivation.



If you have read the book (I had it as a audiobook from Audible) there is little here to surprise you - If, however, you know little of the story and are expecting a film about a geeky kid who made a fortune in his own back bedroom, I think you would be very pleasantly surprised by the the twists and turns.



The acting was excellent, as was the music (by Trent Reznor of NIN fame).



Definitely worth going to see when it opens on the UK - A really well produced and acted film, with a genuinely eye opening (but believable) story line.



I would be more than happy to see it again with Clare when I get home.