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Merry Christmas – Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah USA

Merry Christmas – Mesa Arch, Canyonlands National Park, Utah USA

It’s a pleasure for Deb & I to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year for 2012.  It is such a busy part of the year that time allowed for photography is at a minimum and keeping up to date with posting images and writing blog entries is almost impossible.

The single image in this post is of the famous Mesa Arch which is located in the ‘Islands of the Sky’ region within the vast Canyonlands National Park in Utah, USA.  It is a ‘bucket list’ location for landscape photographers looking for that perfect sunrise shot and the effort required to be there was absolutely worth it.  This shot was taken on a Saturday morning in October and we left our hotel room in Moab Utah at 4:30 a.m. and thirty-eight degrees for the almost hour-long drive into  Canyonlands, where we parked at the trail-head in the dark and set out on the three-quarters of a mile hike under the moonlight to arrive at the arch in time to set up our gear and await the spectacular sunrise.

I will explain more about the experience and show many more images of the arch in upcoming posts, along with many other photographs from our recent trip through the American mid-west.

This image today is a Christmas one for a couple of reasons, the first is the sun breaking through the night sky reminds me of what it must have been like for the shepherds and wise men following the star that led them to Jesus over two thousand years ago.  A celebration we continue to enjoy today, remembering an event that changed the world like none other ever has or ever will.  Jesus is the only reason for the season.  The second thing is the sunrise reminds us that a new day is upon us and at this time of year we take pause to think about the New Year that awaits us.

So once again, Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to you and yours.

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Barred Owl – Presqu’ile Provincial Park, Ontario

Barred Owl – Presqu’ile Provincial Park, Ontario

My wife and I came across a beautiful Barred Owl while visiting Presqu’ile Provincial Park a couple of weeks ago.  Unfortunately it was late in the afternoon, long past the nice light, and to make things worse my tripod was at home so a monopod was the only means of support.  The following images were taken at ISO 1250 at shutter speeds of about 1/120 sec at f/5.6 (wide open for the 500/f4 + 1.4x TC combination).  The great thing was that the owl was perched on a small stick about eight feet off the ground and the stick was in the middle of a small meadow in the woods so there were no sight obstructing branches within about 100 feet of the owl.  Better yet, the owl allowed me to slowly but completely circumduct him which accounts for the varying background changes seen in the photographs.

These images are also the first posted since undergoing a fairly radical change to both hardware and software workflow which included saying goodbye to windows and hello to iMac.  Although we’re still getting acquainted with the new computer, it’s quickly becoming obvious why so many photographers endorse the Macs.  In the software department we upgraded to the CS5.5 creative suite (from CS4) and also purchased Nik’s suite of plug-ins for Photoshop, which are really quite amazing.

Straight on view.  The separation between the owl and the back ground created the perfect out of focus back drop for these images, which are all uncropped as the owl allowed me to ‘foot zoom’ for these frame filling shots.

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Three quarter view.

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Ontario’s mixed forests are great this time of year with the conifers providing rich green back grounds, while the deciduous trees, devoid of their leaves, create lots of grey tones which look equally good.

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The orange & browns from dead leaves make for yet another interesting back ground.

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The next time we are visiting Presqu’ile we will arrive earlier in the day and hope to catch this beautiful owl on the same perch!

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Today my wife and I had the privilege to see a Snowy Owl that arrived in Whitby about a week ago.  Based on its size it appears to be a juvenile female and hopefully she will pose for us in the next day or two.  A number of Snowy owls have been reported in Southern Ontario this fall so hopefully this will be an irruption year (if it isn’t already).  Perhaps some Great Grays will also find their way further south this winter.