It's been a long Winter

I'm not a Winter person. While others love the cold and snow, I do not. So of course I choose to live in an area where it has been said to have "10 months of Winter and two months of lousy skiing".

What I miss most in Winter is colour. Looking over my photos, I notice there is a lack of Winter scenes. I found some images of when we visited Niagara Falls in February 2005.


Then there was that trip we took to Toronto in February 2008. We stopped off in Whitby and I spent a wonderful afternoon taking pictures with a great chap named Joe Noordman at the Lynn Shore Conservation Area.


We took another trip in February 2007 down to Northern New York and Vermont. While touring the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, I took this shot out a window.


Back in December 2006, we visited Upper Canada Village in Morrisburg, Ontario during their "Alight at Night" festival. This was definitely something to see. But you MUST dress warm. It was -14 C with a steady wind the night we were there.


As I look back through my photo galleries looking for Winter scenes, one thing became very obvious. I took more flower shots in 2008 than all the Winter scenes I've shot over the past 4 years. As I said at the start, I am not a Winter Person.

Please remember that clicking on any image on this page will open a larger version. Use your browser's "back" button to return to the Blog.

Anyone wishing to see other photos taken on any of the above mentioned trips can do so by clicking on these links:
Toronto & Niagara Falls 2005
Whitby Ontario - 2008
Short trip to Northern NY and Vermont - February 2007
Upper Canada Village - December 2006

Please feel free to leave comments here on the blog or in any of the photo galleries.

Thanks for looking. And stop by again.

Montreal's Mont Royal Park

Montrealers are very lucky in having a very large and beautiful park - Mont Royal Park - just minutes from the downtown core.



Mont Royal Park
Took a walk through Mont Royal in Mid October last year. It was just past the peak for the Fall colours. Everywhere you turned you saw gorgeous oranges, reds and golds.


Beaver lake - Mont Royal Park
Beaver Lake looked like something out of fairytale; the bright sunny day making every- thing glow.

It doesn't matter what day of the week or which season, there are always people strolling about, enjoying the peace and quiet, appreciating the beauty of nature.






Hope you've enjoyed visiting Mont Royal Park with me. I'll save a few images for another day.

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Other photos taken on this outing can be seen in my Fall Foliage Walkabout Parc Mont Royal - 17 October 2008 gallery.

Please feel free to leave comments here on the blog or in any of the photo galleries.

Thanks for looking. And stop by again.

Out and about in Montreal - Part2

Outdoor Terrace in mid-October
Montreal is a colourful town. With its love of outdoor terraces, its mix of architectural styles, its French/European flavours, there is something to catch your interest.


Workmen on break
I lived here for over 35 years now, and I never grow tired of it. Language issue not withstanding, Montreal is one of the best cities to live in. Or in my case, live near.


  One of my favourite buildings along
  Cote-des-Neige Blvd
A good deal of my time in the city is centered around Guy and Ste-Catherine. This is largely due to the fact that most of my medical Specialists are at the Montreal General Hospital. And because after taking the Metro from the south shore and getting off at Guy, you can grab a bus that takes you up to Mont Royal park.

Here are few more shots taken along Cote des Neiges, heading up to the park.

Looking west along Dr Penfield from Cote des Neiges


Old Nurses' residence at the Montreal General

Looking west along Cote des Neiges Blvd in front of the Montreal General

There are still the images taken on Mont Royal. But they'll be the subject for another blog.

Remember that clicking on any image on this page will open a larger version. Use your browser's "back" button to return to the Blog.

Other photos taken on this walkabout can be seen in my Walkabout Montreal - 17 October 2008 gallery.

Please feel free to leave comments here on the blog or in any of the photo galleries.

Thanks for looking. And stop by again.

Orton-izing your images

Something a little different for today's post. A while back in one of the newsgroups I participate in, we had fun Orton-izing images. Orton-izing images or applying what is called the Orton Effect, is a technique originally created by Canadian photographer Michael Orton.

Mr. Orton has published a book called "Photographing Creative Landscapes". A very interesting preview of the book including some of his photos and explanation of how he created them can be found on Google Book search. Click here to see the preview.

A small portfolio gallery of his images can be seen here.

There are a number of sites found on the web that talk about the Orton Effect and how to reproduce it on your own images. One of the better ones in my opinion can be seen here.

The hard part in creating an Orton-ized image is not in the creation process but rather in finding a image where the process works.

In most photo editing software that supports layers, you can Orton-ize your image as follows.

1. duplicate original layer.
2. set blend mode of duplicate to 'Screen'.
3. merge down.
4. duplicate layer, setting blend mode to 'Multiply'.
5. apply Gaussian blur to duplicate layer using a value between 15 to 50. I tend to use 35 for my images.
6. Create an HSL adjustment layer. Here you can increase or decrease the saturation until you achieve the desired effect. Again from personal experience I find I like increased saturation (15-30 values). The main exception to this is when there is a great deal of Red in the image. This is when I will decrease the saturation a bit.

There are times when the resultant image looks dark. The quick and simple fix is to duplicate the lower layer (the one that was a result of merging the two layers with Screen blend mode) and set its blend mode to 'Screen'. A second and more precise method would be to add a Curves layer where you can tweak just the darks and shadows.

The following are some of the images I have created following the above steps.













Hope you found today's topic interesting and enjoyable.

Remember that clicking on any image on this page will open a larger version. Use your browser's "back" button to return to the Blog.

Other photos that I've applied this process to can be seen in my Digtal Effects - Orton-ized gallery.

Please feel free to leave comments here on the blog or in any of the photo galleries.

Thanks for looking. And stop by again.