Flying South

Cottonwood Leaves in the Sun

The setting sun on a warm day provided the perfect backdrop for these Cottonwood leaves. A little bit of crop was all that was necessary to share this image.

A Leaf Hitting the Water

This is another photo from the Thanksgiving Monday shoot. I followed this Birch leaf as it fell and snapped off a few shots as it hit the water. it is crazy that such a small thing can cause ripples like that on a moving river. Pretty much all the same levels were tweaked as on the previous duck photo.

Thanksgiving Monday

Thanksgiving Monday was a beautiful day this year, with temperatures hitting the high teens. I went down near the fishing dock in Verdun around 4:30 pm to find a place to get the tripod set up to get a shot of the Harvest Moon rising over Nun's Island.
There were lots of people out enjoying the sunshine. Cyclists, dog walkers, kite flyers and even one guy playing a djembe very badly. But not bad enough to scare away the ducks. They know where their bread is buttered, and lots of people means kids, and kids mean they are getting fed.


The sun was going down but I had time to kill waiting for the moon, so I was taking tons of pictures of leaves in the water and ducks. This picture was under exposed, but I liked the reflection of the duck in the water, so I went to work.

First off, I knew there was no way i was lightening up the picture, so a silhouette made the most sense. I brought the exposure down some, nudged the blacks up and added my usual Recovery and Clarity. Then I sharpened it a tiny bit to define the edges of the duck and drove the luminance up in noise reduction to smooth out the water. I finished off with a crop to center and here's the finished image.

Asters In The Afternoon Sun

The thing I like about this image is the shadows of the overlapping petals. I can't believe all the colors are this vivid in October. And nice enough outside to still do photo safaris.

The Last Drops Of Summer

We have had a really mild start to October this year in Montreal. Temperatures have been reaching the mid twenties for the last four or five days. We are still waiting on our first frost and the flowers are hanging on. The house flies, mosquitos, hornets and bees are hanging on as well. This industrious bee was skipping from Aster to Aster, drunk as a skunk on nectar.

Bur Marigold

I find dieing flowers very interesting. I love how the bright colors and soft, inviting blooms of summer turn into armored citadels, brown and grey, ready to take flight and for the battle to survive the winter. This Bur Marigold was in fine form when I happened upon it on a lovely October afternoon. The shot was a little off center and one side of the bloom was missing it's petals, so I decided to crop it like this, not for size, but for content.