I was looking through some of the photos I’ve taken and came across this one…love this tree with it’s gnarly branches
Hey…I’ve been under the weather for a few weeks, but I’m feeling like it is time to get back to “normal”…
a little different perspective of a photo I posted a couple of days ago…taken with my iPhone will on the road!
Another photo taken while driving with my iPhone…of course I wasn’t driving. I enjoy this type of landscape, barren but every once in a while something cool pops up!
Buds on the branches mean spring is here!!!
rolling…
On the drive to and from Florida one of the areas I enjoy driving through is around Lexington, Kentucky. I love the farms/ranches and the rolling hills in that area of the state. Even on a dreary day it is lovely to see…
Another photo taken on the drive home of two of my favorite subjects, clouds and trees…
all in a row…
If you know me at all you know I love trees, especially “naked trees”…without leaves of course! This was taken while driving on the way home from Florida…fyi…I wasn’t driving! A crisp cold morning, brrrr. There is a bit of dirty windshield showing up on the right hand side but I really liked this so excuse the dirt!
a blustery day
cold wind biting deep
taking the longing to sit!
where is spring?
How has your spring been so far? Ours hasn’t arrived yet…check out our snow banks! As I am writing this it is snowing, in the morning the temperature is supposed to be -26F or -14C with the wind chill! …could be worse right?
bowing to the ground…
I never get tired of looking at these trees…they amaze me, their root system must reach a great distance. We have very strong winds in this area and I’m always expecting to drive by and find one or more of these old fellows toppled over. This photo was taken a few weeks before Christmas…
hard to believe…
This has been a most unusual December for me…Christmas arrived in the blink of an eye! Enjoy your time regardless of how or if you celebrate. By the way, it is raining again and is supposed to continue through tomorrow…snow will be gone again!
contrasting views…
Both these photos were taken while driving to Sudbury, (not me of course) 1.5 hrs west of North Bay…definitly a contrast between the two views!
Kentucky landscape…
this was taken on the drive home from Florida in 2013, when I began taking photos from the vehicle as we were driving…I’ve always been impressed with the Kentucky landscape, with the rolling hills, fences and gnarly looking trees.
Ice gone…
the weather is getting better, the ice is off the lake, I can see summer in the not too distant future! These photos were taken two weeks ago before all the ice was off the lake. I’ve not taken anything much since, too busy preparing for the Opening Day of our local Farmers’ Market.
the photos were taken at Sunset Park…a favorite childhood place for me to visit. The ice was moving about that day…you can see it piling up on the rocks.
when I took the photo below I stood at the shore line listening to the ice as it moved, I could actually hear it moving against itself…a very strange sound!
hopefully it is gone!
I took these two photos on the way to a meeting in Rosseau on April 27th, they are from separate lakes. Don’t know the names, but you would think I would after driving this way every Friday in July and August for eight years? I’m sure the ice is gone by now…hopefully!
touches of green…
simplistic I know, but I really liked how the evergreen trees popped through what appears to be a tangled mess of white trees…
I know some are Birch trees, but don’t know what the rest are, they almost look like they are dead or dying.
flowing…
I had the chance to take a few photos last week…thankfully we have lost most of the snow we accumulated in the mini snow storm we had last week…but the lake still looks very solid…no dark patches at all yet, so it will be sometime before there is open water!
This creek is certainly running fast…hard to tell from my photos though…
old is new again…
I’ve not taken any photos for a couple of weeks now, which is why I’ve been posting photos I’ve taken in the last year or so…here are three more.
Lake Nipissing facing south west…
Leesburg, Florida, taken a couple of years ago.
Lake Nipissing, facing north along Memorial Drive.
winter…
In the spring, summer and fall this is a beautiful park area beside Lake Nipissing…it is still beautiful but rather stark with the snow…when I was a child this was a busy happening place. Not so any more, I visit once in a while and there are rarely any people swimming here. Rather sad actually that such a great park isn’t utilized much…although we have a few that aren’t being used a great deal.
more frosty birch trees…
it was a bit windy the day this was taken…if you look closely, especially on the top left side you can see the snow blowing off the trees…
frosty…
This was taken on Friday morning as well…the trees did look beautiful. The clouds were rolling in fast as you can see behind the trees…
sunny for now…
I went out this morning to take photos at the waterfront…it went from sunny to cloudy in minutes! The lake appears to be frozen over but at this point the ice will only be paper thin…
selective cutting…
This post is all about trees…I love trees, they make the neighborhoods colorful, they attract birds, provide shade, in some cases privacy, short ones tall ones, I love the look of trees, especially in the fall when the leaves have dropped. The neighborhoods with out trees look rather barren to me…having said that I do understand the logic in pruning, cutting back large branches or even cutting the tree down when necessary. The reason I’m talking about this is North Bay Hydro, our local hydro company, pays a local company in town to do this so no branches are closer than 9 meters (29.5ft) to a hydro line…my surrounding neighborhood was chosen this fall to have this done…while I understand the logic of why it must be done, it saddens me to see how spindly some of the trees now look. Many of the large stately deciduous trees are fine as only a few branches have been taken but for some trees, in particular the coniferous trees, the whole side facing the wire is gone! The clump of trees in the center of this photo looks fine…it is large enough to handle a few limbs cut, but check out the tree to the right…
on the tree below, all the branches below the wire are in tact, so it is much like the tree on the right above…half a tree from the wire up!
it is difficult to tell in the tree below, but when the leaves are in full bloom they will be to the left of the cutting, the other branches are from another tree…
again, all the branches are gone on the one side of the tree…
strange sky…
yesterday was a strange day, with the most unusual skies…changing from dark and moody to light and fluffy so quickly due to the strong winds!
Serenade…
I was sitting on my deck last week enjoying the last bit of warm weather of the season and was treated to a serenade by this fellow for a rather long time, a good half hour or more…it wasn’t and angry sound, which is why I called it a serenade. In the beginning could hear the singing but couldn’t see the bird as he was a long way up…once I spotted him I took the photo. As you can see the leaves are falling!
a bit of B & W
I becoming a big fan of b & w…these are older shots I’ve converted as I’ve not been able to take many photos and the ones I’ve taken I’ve not done anything with yet. I’ll get to them soon I hope. The photo below is cropped as I liked the rather eery look of it this way…believe it or not there is a restaurant/bar behind me, I think I’ve shown photos of before…right on a canal that feeds into to Lake Harris, Leesburg Florida.
this is a shot I took from my vehicle window while driving through Kentucky on my way home last winter…if you are a visitor you will know I’m a huge fan of “naked” trees…
this is one side of Sunset Park point…before all the ice was gone…I thought the b & w made this shot look rather interesting…
drive bys….
When driving to and from Florida I would snap shots along I75…most are terrible, but everyone so often I see one that has merit, with a little help of course. These were taken this past March on the way home in Kentucky…
this one from a distance looks like the moss you see in Florida…not sure if it is though…it is a bit blurry, but thought it was interesting none the less.
If you have visited before you will know I’ve a thing for gnarly trees, especially on their own…
black & white
I’ve always liked black & white photos…it is amazing the change in a photo when it is converted from colour to B & W…if you’ve visited before you know I drawn to gnarly trees…soon they will be covered with leaves…
experimenting…
I visit a number of photography blogs and every now and then I’m inspired to try something different with the processing of the photos. I’m limited to some extent with the programs I have, Photoscape, and Picasa…I also have gimp but I’ve not taken the time to get into it. recently I”ve seen a few blogs who are using some form of HDR effect, which I rather like so I checked Picasa and it has a setting called HDR-ish…so I gave it a try with a couple of my photos…if you’ve been visiting for awhile you will know I’ve a thing for gnarly, naked trees…the waterfront on Lake Nipissing offers a few great ones due to the very high winds blowing regularly in the area…below is the original photo.
below I’ve used the HDR-ish setting…
of course this one is a simple black and white…more dramatic…
this one is black & white with HDR-ish used…
grayscale…
a blogging friend did a bit of black & white recently and I rather liked the look so decided to do something other than what is usual for me…I found three shots I and did them in grayscale…as is expected it changes the look considerably…it is good to step outside the norm on occasion…
my view…
on the way back from Key West, we stopped so I could take photos of the old rail bridge on Bahia Honda Key,
I post them another day…but when I looked behind me I thought that view deserved a couple of photos as well…but then that is just me and my love of the water…both views are looking back towards Key West…
the shore line wasn’t great here, but then it isn’t in some places in the Keys…not a big deal for me…
if I wanted a beach I would be going to the Caribbean… not Key West.
more of Lake Nipissing
I took these yesterday, the first two are looking in the opposite direction of yesterdays photos…it will most likely be another two weeks before the ice is completely off the lake. Of course that all depends on how much wind and rain we have as both of these contribute to the ice break up.
What I was trying to show in the photo below is there are buds on this tree…on a few trees I noticed…I couldn’t zoom in as the trees are very mature and much taller than I at 5ft 4in…but…if you squint, you can see the buds…:) Spring is officially here!
the hand…
I love old gnarly naked trees, they have such amazing texture and detail…if you look closely there is so much to see. Key West has some of the most wonderful trees, old, very gnarly, bent in unusual shapes for who knows why, not to forget the lush colours…this one is one of my favourites,I call it the “hand”…the second photo gives you a better idea of why…
beauty & gnarly…
here is one of my favourite bushes…Bougainvillea……so vibrantly colourful
experimenting with filters…
I was looking through photos for a post and began playing with the different filters available in Photoscape…while this isn’t an extensive software it does offer a few interesting filters…the original photo is below, then in order, water painting, two different swirl filters, reflection filter, embossing filter, with colour added and one of my favourite filters the reverse black & white
cactus & sunrise…
when I was a way I liked to take a walk every morning…I spotted this gigantic cactus plant on my first walk…it is huge…Marco Island
it was so spread out I the photo above is the left side and below is the right…
this photo was taken on Sunday, the last day of the drive home…between Windsor, Ontario and London, Ontario…a nice beginning to the day…again taken through the windshield of my vehicle.
home…
well…I’m home…so I will be back posting and visiting again regularly! I took many photos, some I like and some I don’t, but for today I’m going to show you three of one of my favourite things to capture…”naked trees” as I like to call them. they are beautiful with their leaves, but there is so much more detail and character to them, when they are scraggly looking, bent in some of the most interesting ways…
love this scene…as you can see it was a rather dreary looking day, but warm, which cancels out the dreary! on the ride home somewhere in Kentucky…
same day and drive… but I’m fine with the colours…
I don’t mind a dreary day once in a while, especially if it is warm…
PS…all photos were taken from my moving vehicle, on the drive home from Florida…
looking west…
I wanted to play a bit with this photo as I thought it had great potential…as you may have noticed I’m a huge fan of contrasts…so that is what you will see today…below is the original photo…this was taken last Saturday before I went the the Radar Runs…
this is threshold adjusted…
sepia of course…I’m becoming a fan of sepia, it adds interesting colour to the photo, giving an aged appearance to the photo…
Sunset Park…
I took a few photos yesterday at Sunset Park, before venturing over to the Radar Runs…it was such a beautiful day yesterday…today is pretty good as well…sunny and relative warm for a winter day! -2C but 28F for those using Fahrenheit. the photo below is looking out onto Lake Nipissing…to the west. I rather like this one below, something about the trees that always appeals to me…think I’ll do a bit of experimenting with it in a few days…
the next two photos are looking north west along the Lake Nipissing shore line….
favourites…
I’d decided to show you a few of my favourite photos today…but…I’ve been having an issue with the photos showing up on the page properly…anyone else having a problem with this?
experimenting with the levels…
yesterday I took this photo of the gnarly birch tree…I love trees with limbs like this one so interesting, always makes me wonder why the limb grew the way it did? I took the photo of the whole tree but it is in front of what I think is one of the City yards and there are work buildings etc., which doesn’t contribute to an interesting photo…too much going on when I wanted to concentrate on just the tree, so as you can tell it is cropped…
then I decided to play a little with the tools in PhotoScape as I’ve not done a great deal with it yet…this one is colour enhanced slightly.
this one is of course grayscale…
on this one I adjusted the luminance curve…
and finally…this one is reverse black and white…
very interesting to see what can be done with a relatively simple program…for the time being PhotoScape works for me…I know there is so much more that can be done with PhotoShop, but I don’t have the time to learn the ins and outs before I begin using it…this works for now!
more snow photos…
the weather here has been so strange…tons of snow…bitter cold, warm and rain, now back to bitter cold today…makes it difficult to walk! which I miss, can’t take photos…the photos below were taken back on Feb. 13th…
I liked the snow on the pole like this, with the blue sky and branches in the back ground…
the next two photos are of the same bush/hedge, the first is of course head on… 
it amazes me how these branches can hold up with all the snow on them, as they look very delicate, as branches go… 
moody skies…
I love a moody sky…something about them that has so much character…now don’t get me wrong, I love the clear blue sky with soft, fluffy white clouds as well…each has their appeal to me…
this is of the same island I’ve been showing on and off…this view is south west of where I lived, I would be standing at the far end of the break wall to take this photo…this is of course before the water has been drawn down…some years it is later than others.
another almost naked tree…this tree still has leaves on it today…I can see it out my window…
what a differnce a season makes!
the photos below are of the same tree, take frnm slightly different angels & of course taken at different times of the year…I added the double photo below as it was something I was trying with PhotoScape…turned out alright but it cuts off the original photo…would have to take the time to crop the photos to fit…the individual photos are below this one…
this tree is in Champlain Park, in North Bay…we are very fortunate here to have such a beautiful lake…the sad thing is this park has very little use…when I was a teenager I used to visit this park all the time…it was crazy busy then.
now the park sees very few visitors, except a few people walking their dogs or people bringing children to play, or those who use the boat ramp off of Lavasse River…rather sad when you think of such a beautiful area not being used to its potential…
Heather Cote... 