Project 365 - Day 311 - Mean skies mean HDR time

Today I went down to Lakeshore Promenade in Mississauga again.  This is a good place to shoot when I have something after work to do in the Mississauga or Toronto area.  Today was no exception.

When I got to the park, nothing was happening.  No one was around, and there was a smattering of canadian geese just wandering around.  My main focus was not to bore you with another goose shot - not that I didn't get a couple close shots in of course...

I shot this scene with the intent of making an HDR.  This particular HDR is a little over cooked for my liking -  but I was able to pull off the basic principle.  I am getting better at the HDR stuff, I just need more practice setting up my own profiles...

Project 365 - Day 310 - Closed for the season

Oakville harbour in the rain tonight.  I was trying a new technique that wasn't working.  I will get it, and blog about it, but it was taking time and it was raining pretty hard.  I started driving home, thinking about what else I could shoot when I happened upon this scene.

This is the docking area at Oakville Harbour.  It is usually full of boats - in the boating season that is.  Tonight, all the boats are gone and all that is left are the docks.  I am not sure if they pick the docks up or not ... I think they might ... but for tonight at least, the docks are still there.

With the rain falling it made the water pretty soft and the docks reflect the lights.  I had to clone out some rain spots on my lens, but other than that not a lot of work was done on this shot.

Shot with my 24-70mm lens at 30s shutter f/14.

Project 365 - Day 309 - Last of the fall colours

What originally caught me about this scene is the vibrant orange against the almost bare trees in the background.  Also, the scattered leaves on the ground out front.  This one orange tree is almost full of leaves, whereas the one right next to it is almost bare - only the smallest amount of leaves is showing to the right of the frame. 

Project 365 - Day 308 - Coronation Tree at night

Wow.  Is it ever dark early now.  I didn't notice how early it got dark last year - 5:30 and it's already pitch black outside.  As I was leaving the gym I had  a sinking feeling it might be tough to get a shot.  But I went by coronation park to look at my trusty tree, and I noticed the Toronto skyline in the background.  So I shot that.  30s shutter at f/2.8 and ISO 100.  It was all I could do to get a usuable exposure... everything wide open.

Project 365 - Day 307 - Sunrise in Oakville

Got up for sunrise this morning.  No one told the sun about daylight savings time ending, so the sunrise happened at the same time it happens every day, which by the clock is an hour earlier than it had on Saturday even though we got an extra hour to sleep.

Silly sun.

This is an HDR shot.  The HDR was challenging because of the moving clouds, I had to get all three epxosures very close together to avoid smudging the clouds across the sky.  Also, the lighthouse took  a lot of work to recover afterward, the HDR process didn't treat it as the main subject.  I need to learn more about using this program.

Project 365 - Day 306 - the sharp edge

This shot started out as an attempt to shoot the little metal edge on a roll of giftwrap tape.  Well, I couldn't find a roll of tape with a metal edge, so I ended up shooting one with a plastic edge.  Not the exact shot I was looking for, but I think even better.

I lit it off camera with a blue gel in front of my speedlight.

Project 365 - Day 305 - Perseverence

Was out shooting tonight and noticed this little guy growing in the road on 4th line, north of the rail tracks but south of the QEW bridge.  Shot it down low with my flash aimed to mimic headlights - the cars weren't co-operating.  I wanted to get the traffic lights and cars in the background to illustrate where it was growing. 

I can't get grass to grow on my lawn but apparently this guy can grow where there is no soil... :-)