BW – DP2M

Converting colour images into B&W with the Sigma DP2 Merrill works very nicely. Gorgeous tones with little effort.

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

A Winter Eden

Red Deer County, Alberta after a few days of off-and-on-again heavy fog and freezing drizzle. I took the title for this image from a poem by Robert Frost.

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

“A Winter Eden” – Robert Frost

 

Thinking Time

After enjoying my own Vanilla Latte this evening, I noticed this fellow through the window of our car and quickly rolled down the window to grab an image. I cranked up the cameras ISO to 800 and managed a 1/10 sec shot. I figured it would be a total failure as hand holding such a long exposure in a car that was running didn’t seem possible. Looking at the image on the review screen it appeared sharp but I had badly blown the highlights of the painting on the wall behind him. With nothing to lose I fired up SPP (Sigma Photo Pro) to see if the RAW data held any details. Wow! I easily pulled back at least a full stop if not more and the resulting image is completely acceptable to me. It’s also very sharp!

 

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

Inglewood, Calgary

This camera reminds me so much of shooting Kodachrome! The colours are accurate, saturated, and pure, but not over the top, just like you were standing and looking out a window.

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

Natural Recycling

The many things that happen to a tree stump as it slowly returns back to the soil from which it originally sprouted is quite amazing. Birds and insects bore and chip away at the soft wood and many different fungi start to decompose the tree creating fantastic patterns!

 

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

Soft Glowing Ambience

Out for a short drive into Red Deer County on a foggy day revealed a fine collection of trees desperately holding onto summers fluttering leaves. I think it’s likely a lost cause!

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

Clear Indications of Undercutting

Piper Creek is but a small creek most of the year, virtually frozen solid in winter. Springtime, however, is a different story. There will be a two week period during spring when the warm temperatures first hit the prairies in a sustained manner melting the majority of our accumulated snow rather quickly. Sometimes this is accompanied by rain as well. Needless to say, tiny Piper Creek comes becomes a roaring torrent as deep as 3-4 meters and flowing very quickly. This massive rush of water causes havoc with the banks along the creek and inevitably trees get undercut and fall. A few of the trees in this image will make it to next spring now that the ground has frozen, but next spring may find some of these regal oldies lying on the forest floor or bridging the creek.

A fresh bit of snow adds some brightness to this dark corner of the coulee a few weeks back.

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

Shapes and Interactions

A couple weeks back while in Calgary, I was down in the Ogden area  which has a lot of light industrial including the ADM Milling Plant along Bonnybrook Road. They mill wheat here and it arrives by either train or truck. I am obviously on the truck side of the plant and found this very busy scene full of shapes and textures. The challenge then became how to find an composition that used these shapes to the best benefit. All the different interactions that go on in a composition like this can be confusing and some sort of order is necessary to keep the viewers interest. Watching for a balance between different shapes(i.e. circles, triangles, squares and lines) can be a challenge, but I think that virtually every scene you might come across, wether it be a landscape or an industrial scene like this one, has the potential to be “organized”. Notice the odd number of wheels verses the even number of truck trailers. The three wheels are also anchoring the dark triangle above it ,which is really just a space. There is a single telephone pole that has been cut off, so to speak, halfway down the image only to re-appear again just above the one tire keeping the bottom half of the image from being it’s own entity, but now part of the whole. The many horizontal lines contrast with the very stark and obvious vertical line of the trailers and the building behind. The somewhat random and imperfect lines of the telephone cables and the curved lines painted on the trailers contrast nicely with the many ‘perfect” straight lines throughout the image. Then we have all the small square windows adding still another shape, the square into the equation. There is also a balance of tones in the image ranging from virtually pure white to pure black, but with many tones of gray in-between. Sure there is a lot to think about but I find when I make images like this it really only takes a few seconds to “see” it.  These types of images are some of my favourite kind to shoot, not a pretty postcard, instead an image that challenges me to watch for patterns, shapes, textures, interactions, and tones, and it’s my hope that the viewer will find a pleasing, and hopefully stimulating experience from them.

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

 

 

The Rest Went Around

A step back a few weeks before any snow or weather that would freeze up Waskasoo Creek. I am writing this tonight with our temperature at -23°C. Brrrrrr, just a bit too cold for me and we haven’t hit the halfway mark in fall yet! A small stone in the creek was sticking through the surface just enough to stop a leaf. Soon, another stuck to that leaf and so on. Pretty soon we have a nice collection. Most of the leaves, though, went around and continued there journey towards the Red Deer River only a kilometer away.

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]

Really, Really BIG Tree

Just a few kilometers south of Red Deer I found a row of very large poplar trees that were subjected to some heavy fog last week. I got there before the wind knocked all the hoar frost off. it was rather magical to walk along the small country road with these amazing trees towering overhead and being far enough away from the highway and town, the only sounds were a couple of magpies chasing each other around.

 

 

 

[Sigma DP2 Merrill]