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.

Mill Pond - Fall Flavour

Had to go for a walk today to see what was left of the colors. It was a beautiful day and I wasn't disappointed.

The walk to the pond showed signs of the best colors already gone. There was still enough to put most of the Nova Scotia color I saw to shame; we're lucky to have maple trees in abundance.

This is a heron. A bit fuzzy, but I had to put it in for Tim.

Fat squirrel is fat.

On golden pond.

The yellows seemed to be particularly vibrant.

Black and white on the boardwalk.

Red and blue.

Empty nest syndrome.

Yellow in front of the fountain.

The fountain and frozen pre-sunset light.

Duck a la blue.

Looking down a colorful street.

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

Halifax: Day 21, Cape Breton One

Tim and I are in Cape Breton, shooting some scenery and hoping to capture Fall colors. So far, no luck; the colors aren't vivid at all. Maybe it's too soon. Anyway, today we went to the beach and tried to shoot the sunset. The sunset wasn't great but it was a few hours on the beach well spent.

Ocean clouds are the most fun.

This was easier than shooting the bird.

This beach had everything; sand, rocks, pebbles, seaweed and driftwood. And mud. Lots of mud.

The beach grasses were brown and dying, and absolutely beautiful in the sun.

More crazy clouds.

A stick in the mud.

Contrasting colors on the beach.

This photo was in no way staged. Honest. No really.

Spotlighting through the cloud cover.

As the light went lower, the surf became better defined.

Smoke on the water. Long exposure surf magic.

More long exposure sunset photography... without the sunset.

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

Halifax: Day 18, Harbour and Peggy's Cove

Today represented a textbook example of light and opportunity. I shot at three different times of day. The first was 7:20 p.m. last night on Tim's balcony. The second was about 1 p.m. along the harbour waterline and the Rotunda which is part of the Hemlock Ravine Park. The third was approximately 6:30 p.m. at Peggy's Cove.

The photos below are chronological.

And so the lesson begins. The last three nights have had exceptional sunsets. This shot was taken from Tim's balcony, and it was a failure. I was lazy; I didn't make the effort, and I got some pretty colors, poor composition, and a photo I'll probably not give a second glance to again.

And then there was my trip to shoot the Rotunda. To get there I had to walk along the waterline of the harbour, and as I did so I shot various interesting bits of rusted metal, wood, etc. as I went. This is some metal. Notice how the strong light makes it shine, even in black and white. The entire image is flat because of it.

In color with the saturation boosted, rusted metal takes on an unreal orange color that pops from the background; one way to break up the flattening effect of harsh direct light.

The Rotunda, in all its glory. Once the location where the local lieutenant governor and his French mistress and guests would listen to music and gaze out upon the harbour. The harsh light works in my favor by providing a mesh of sharp shadows that add character to the photograph, but there is a price...

A close up of the gold ball that adorns the Rotunda's roof. The price of the harsh light is that the gold color became over-exposed and the only way I could fix the problem in post production was to knock all the color out of the image and go with a black and white photo. There are still lines and shapes to engage the eye and make it an interesting photo. (Well, to me, anyway).

I can't resist a bug. This is, without a doubt, the biggest spider I've seen on my trip. Easily two inches in diameter, maybe three quarters of an inch tall. It was sucking contentedly on lunch, and didn't move around (other than its mouth), allowing me to get quite close and shoot it. It was perpendicular to the ground, pointing down, making it harder for me to get in front of it.

Some beach garbage is quite large. The harsh light burned parts of the black tires into over-exposure, making this shot interesting, but not great quality.

This shot shows the harbour as a beautiful blue and almost perfectly calm; I've seen the harbour in many states of agitation in my time here and it hasn't been the same day to day. The short depth of field makes the rock in the foreground pop as a subject, perfectly juxtaposed with the blur behind.

If I were to paint the tree out of the background in this shot, you'd be forgiven for thinking this is a mountain somewhere. In reality it's a weathered rock stained by gull excrement.

And here we have the first Peggy's Cove shot; some surf, caught at eye level. There's action, and what's more, there's awesome light. These shots take on depth and character, even in black and white.

More surf. The Atlantic was relatively calm, but Peggy's Cove is notorious for crashing surf.

My first shot of the lighthouse; it was early in the sunset and the rocks were already taking on exceptional color.

The real treasure was in the sky.

I found myself shooting everything but the lighthouse, and when I did it was more for balance than as subject.

The sky continued to get better and better as the sunset progressed.

A reflection in a near mirror-smooth pond.

The sky leading up to the grand finale.

At its peak the sky was filled with character; awesome clouds and colors. These are the ingredients of great photographs, opposed to my afternoon of OK pictures.

After the sun went down I stuck around for some long exposure shots of the surf on the rocks.

I tried a new angle on the lighthouse.

This was a hut of some kind down the coast a bit. Peggy's Cove is still a working fishing... town? village? The hut is lit by a Tungsten street light giving it an orange hue in this long exposure shot.

Slick black rock, surf and a dying sky.

Great fun was had when the sky was almost black and the stars peeking out; I attached my SB-900 flash and took this 10 second exposure of the lighthouse, complete with evil demon glow red warning light.

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