Boys Cottage Weekend

This past weekend was host to an annual outing to a friend's family's cottage to close it and do clean up. It's a beautiful spot and always a great place to shoot Fall colors. We might have been a bit late for the peak of the season, but it was still a fine display. We arrived Friday night and left Sunday morning.

On Friday night I took some night shots using the light from the cottage as many ways as I could. The Tungsten lights and Fall colors mixed well.

Using lights from a source like this at night is the closest I'll get to a proper outdoor shoot with spot lighting I'll likely ever get.

The directional light worked well in black and white, too.

The next day after a terrible blackberry alarm incident I went outside to shoot what turned out to be a very dreary dawn. It let me do some long exposure shots on the shoreline, smoothing the water and giving it a smokey feel.

The rich colors popped in the soft ambient light.

As the day wore on, the clouds cleared and it became sunny.

A triangle and a reflection; this was a teaser for the reflections that came later.

I went out to shoot for sunset after a refreshing nap. The water was calm, and the sky showed promise for an interesting sunset.

Spot color amongst the evergreens.

The lake, to coin a phrase, turned to glass as the sun went down. The cloud reflections were so clear they looked photoshopped.

It was all natural.

The clouds themselves had a bit of character. I found my lens not quite wide enough to do the broad shots I needed to properly frame the clouds and reflections. I needed something wider than 18mm (27mm DX).

Regardless, I had some luck.

This driftwood looks close-cropped out of an original photo, but it's just the incredibly smooth water in the background that makes it look so.

As the sunset drew to a conclusion, the reflections began to blur as I used longer exposures to capture the images.

On Sunday I stalked the bird feeder for a bit, sitting on the picnic table about six feet away. The Jays were too wary to approach, but the Chickadees went for breakfast.

© Jeremy Buehler and Bug Noir (www.bugnoir.com), 2010.