Mill Pond, First Snow

My day started trying to shoot this photo that I see every morning when I catch the GO bus downtown. Unfortunately, I catch the bus about 15 minutes earlier than when I got there today, and I missed the good light. These rushes practically glow gold when the sun hits them.

When I turned to swear at the sun (because that makes more sense than me getting up 15 minutes earlier, right?), I saw this flock of geese flying in front of it.

There was enough light to make cool reflections on some nearby condos.

A parking lot dusted with snow and recent tire tracks made for some cool texture.

A rare positive point about shooting in winter: You can wander around the empty playground with a camera and telephoto lens and no one calls the cops. A giant turquoise tongue.

Slide curve with fake bokeh.

Rings with real bokeh.

Where the net meets the line, and small mounds of snow.

Sara Conner's recurring nightmare, dusted with nuclear ash. Or snow. No skulls to be seen.

The old bell at the fire station.

I was certainly taking my time getting to the Mill Pond. Here's a blue door that caught my eye as I walked.

We have to be very detailed with our instructions in Richmond Hill.

My overexposed swan friends, caught here swimming in the Mill Pond's last remaining open water, when the sun made a brief appearance.

One day I'll figure out how to shoot shots like this. Today was not that day.

Radical snow grain and rock.

Fat bastard with big claws. Someone else fed it; I don't because I know eventually they'll be mugging people for peanuts.

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

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.

Halifax: Day 23, The Voyage Home

And so my Halifax adventure draws to a close. I had such a good time and I'm very, very grateful to my generous hosts. I took approximately 3,000 photos over 23 days and a few are keepers. I learned so much about my camera, photography and shooting.

It was a seductive taste of freedom for which I'll be pining for quite some time, especially as winter sets in and I'm trapped in my apartment by the dismal grey reality of winter in Richmond Hill. I'll soon be starting on my mini studio; I'm getting comfortable with this photography thing, and I don't want to miss it.

The Halifax Harbour, the cargo ship I shot many times, and Tim's apartment, as seen from seat 29A of a Boeing 767-300.

I don't fly a lot, and I'm grateful for it. I'm not desensitized to the awesome and simple beauty of what's outside a plane's window at 38,000 feet.

The secret life of clouds; their tops exposed to the sky.

Standing on the ground will never reveal this side of cloud cover. As with any change of perspective, it allows for new understanding of how clouds work.

The ever changing cloudscape. I can't be interested in on-screen in-flight entertainment with this evolving vista gliding past my window at 450 MPH.

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