Cape St. Mary's Ecological Preserve, Newfoundland

On our family's trip to Newfoundland, a day visit to Cape St. Mary's Ecological Preserve was easily one of the highlights.  The preserve is located on the tip of the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland, on a peninsula between Placentia Bay and St. Mary's bay.  It is home to a massive bird colony, consisting of thousands of Gannets, Common Murres, Thick-billed Murres, Black-legged Kittiwake, Razorbill and other species.

Northern Gannets

To get there, we drove down highway 100 from Placentia south to the cape -- a very picturesque drive, not to mention very hilly.  You drive through a series of small villages, each of which is in a cove at the bottom of a valley between two 250 to 450 foot-high hilltops.  The road up and down these hilltops is quite steep, at least from my perspective, which makes for an interesting and occasionally exciting drive.

Cape St. Mary's cliffs

When you get to the site itself, there is a roomy interpretation centre with information and a model of the cliffs showing the locations of the various nesting sites.  But the real fun begins when you start walking down the path to the cliffs.  The first viewing location is a grassy slope that lets you see the cliffs as a whole.  You can hear the birds as well as see the level of activity to and from the cliffs.  It's almost like a futuristic movie where flying cars are going to and fro on an aerial hightway.

Bird Rock and many of the 11,000 nesting pairs of Gannets

As the path continues (for about a kilometre), there are a couple of other viewing sites, but the best site is at the end of the path.  The path leads to the cliff edge, where you can venture out on a narrow rocky point to see Bird Rock, a rock about 20 or 30 metres away that is covered with Northern Gannets.  This view is truly awesome -- you can see the individual birds and their young, and various gannets flying back and forth.  I watched the birds there for quite a while, and took many photographs.

The Gannet superhighway

The whole experience was exhilarating.  When I was finished at the main viewing location, I went back to the grassy slope and just sat for a while watching the hub of activity, and listening to the sounds of the birds.

 These and other photographs from the preserve and elsewhere in Newfoundland, please visit my website.

. . . Rob Williams
http://www.robertwilliamsphotography.ca

A Carpet of Daisies

Around where I live, there is a lot of new house construction going on now.  When the land is being prepared, there are large areas of bulldozed earth that are left alone for months and sometimes years.  The freshly upturned earth seems to be full of seeds waiting to grow, all at the same time.  The results are quite spectacular:

A Carpet of Daisies

A gust of wind

Another view of the carpet

. . . Rob Williams
http://www.robertwilliamsphotography.ca

The fun is back for Infrared photography

I started making infrared photographs quite a while ago, using Kodak H1E infrared film.  I shot black-and-white photographs while I was young, and I really liked the dramatic contrast and unusual look of IR photographs.

The whole process from storing and loading the film, to taking the photograph, and developing it was difficult, frustrating, and very often disappointing.  Storing the film in the fridge wasn't new to me, but loading the film in the dark and having to use a virtually opaque 720nm filter was quite difficult.  Framing the photography involved setting up the photograph without the filter, and then carefully screwing the filter on, trying not to move the focus or zoom rings.  Not only that, but determining the correct exposure needed a lot of guesswork and bracketing.  I normally had to overexpose by 2 or 3 stops, but it was not consistent.  Even with bracketing by a couple of stops, I missed quite often.

Forest Scene, Shot using Kodak H1E film

When it all worked, the results were fascinating, and made all of the frustration worth the effort.  

When I switched to digital with a Nikon D100, infrared photography became much easier.  The D100 is quite sensitive to infrared light, as opposed to later generations of DSLRs.  I no longer had to deal with H1E film, or with guessing the exposure. I could check the exposure right away, and adjust on the fly.  My exposures (using f/11 or f/16) was on the order of a few seconds, which was okay unless there was a strong wind.  I took quite a bit more photographs using this setup, and learned how to introduce colour to IR by taking an identical colour image, and blending the two images.

Mer Bleue Boardwalk, Nikon D100, Hoya R72 filter

The situation went downhill with my current camera, a Nikon D200 which is much less sensitive to IR light.  The exposures now were over 30 seconds, and it was hard to find a good photograph with that long an exposure.  I virtually stopped taking IR photographs after I purchased the D200.

The latest change in infrared photography is the ability to convert a digital camera to infrared.  The IR blocking filter over the sensor can be removed, and a 720nm or similar filter can be fitted over the sensor to block visible light..  The sensor itself is quite sensitive to IR light, and so the converted camera lets you take photographs at normal exposures, and without any external filter.  This is a huge improvement over anything available in the past.

Oxtongue River, Nikon D40x IR converted

The main problem now (for my limited budget) is the price.  There are a number of companies that offer conversion services (LifePixel and MaxMax are two of the high profile companies) and the prices range from $300 to $450 for most cameras.   To be honest, this is about the same price of an "external" infrared filter.  A Hoya R72 filter costs around $350 for a 77mm filter in Canada.  However, you also have to have a camera body to convert.

The Minto Bridge to Green Island, Nikon D40x IR converted

The price point is dropping, especially if you are willing to by a used entry-level DSLR.  The market for these cameras is quite competitive, and the models seem to last only a year or two.  I've seen Nikon D3000 camera bodies selling for about $250 on eBay.  I recently bought an IR-converted, used Nikon D40x, and although it is not a sophisticated camera (only 3 autofocus points!), it is great as an infrared camera.  It's a very light body as well, so it doesn't add much weight to my camera pack.

All of the barriers to infrared photography have been removed, and  it's fun again to photograph in infrared.


. . . Rob Williams
http://www.robertwilliamsphotography.ca

What a difference a day (or two) makes!

The weather around here can be a bit crazy in the spring.  On April 27th, we had snow, and  the few remaining tulips in my front garden had to put up with some cold weather.

Switch to today, the temperature got up to 15C (59F), with bright sun.  The tulips look a lot happier now:

. . . Rob Williams
http://www.robertwilliamsphotography.ca

Orchidophilia -- the Ottawa Orchid Society's Orchid Show

This morning I went out to a local sports arena where an orchid show was being held by the Ottawa Orchid Society. For two hours in the morning, they welcome tripods -- no doubt a way to avoid hassles caused by tripod-carrying photographers during the main hours of the show. I arrived shortly after the show opened, and had a short time with a few other photographers, but the event got much more crowded by mid-morning.

I've been interested in orchids since I started photographing wild orchids in local bogs and wetlands (Pink, Yellow and Showy Ladyslipper, Rose Pagonia, and Grass Pink). This show includes many cultivated varieties, but it's surprising how much most of the orchids resemble our local varieties. The variety of colour and shapes is amazing, and lots of fun to photograph.

The main problem I had was to get a relatively clean background. Most of the displays had some wood to support the orchids, but the backgrounds were still very busy and bright. I had to work quite hard to position my camera so that I had a reasonably dark, plain background. I also moved in for detailed images of the flowers.

The lighting was also challenging if you were not using flash (like me). It's a mixture of fluorescent and incandescent, so I had to do a lot of adjustment after the fact. Despite all of that, the results were quite good.

I want to thank the show organizers for accommodating the photographic crowd -- it was lots of fun.

. . . Rob Williams
http://www.robertwilliamsphotography.ca

Abstract clothes

Abstract clothes, originally uploaded by robertwilliams017.

Daily Shoot #138: Make a fashion photo today: a person modeling clothing, the clothes in your closet, an accessory that defines you, etc.

I'm no fashion photographer, nor a portrait photographer, so this assignment is a bit far-fetched for me. Since the assignment suggested clothes in your closet, I decided to try that out, and see what happened.

The closet is lit by a single bare bulb, so the light was really low. The only chance of hand-holding the camera was either to use ASA 1000 or more, which really doesn't look good with a D200. So I just used shutter speeds of 1/4 to 2 seconds, and moved the camera up and down.

This kind of abstract is very hit-and-miss, so you have to take many individual images and hope that something turned out. Before digital became affordable, it really was hit-and-miss, and expensive as well. Thankfully, digital photography has solved those two problems.

. . . Rob Williams
http://www.robertwilliamsphotography.ca