My Old Landscapes

Landscape painting, I always found, was therapeutic. It was a nice break from the more concentrating necessary practice of portraits, and even still life. With landscape, less is generally more. Capturing the atmosphere or "feel", and not just the details of the subjects, is what tends to make it successful. A few strategically placed skilled brush strokes that give the viewer that exact impression of the light conditions, the atmosphere, and the colours which that light creates without one ounce of rendered detail being necessary. Are my landscapes like this? Not really - I wish they were lol! I did try not to make everything the exact level of detail, but they weren't those luscious loose strokey "I captured the light and shadow and feel in 5 strokes more or less". That takes natural skill, an already inborn propensity towards that way of painting. I know it when I see it but I can't mimic it. However, I still found that painting landscape was a freeing sort of process and although it wasn't my biggest personal thrill physically or mentally as an artist, my landscapes were well received and family and buyers liked them.

Cheating or Not Cheating?

Well, yesterday, when working with some of the woodpecker images I shot, and which are in my previous post, I suddenly realized something. Looking at the images close I see that the hole in the wood seems to have this light amber golden what looks to be something slightly gooey and that is what the birds had on their beaks in several of my shots. Click! (and not a camera shutter - my brain) omg, is that peanut butter? All of a sudden the photos I managed to get lacked some of the thrill, a bit of the lustre, lol! Ok, either some avid bird photographer was putting peanut butter in the hole so they could get a shot of the birds real close or someone came along who maybe always does, and provided the birds with a needed source of food in what has proven to be a pretty fierce winter.

I don't know, discovering this, having this visual explanation as to why the sudden influx of woodpeckers which seemed to us to be this amazing experience, kinda scaled down the thrill a few notches when I realized "oh, it was the bloody peanut butter" lol! It made my images seem not so lucky, not so amazing and thrilling and certainly way less natural, upon learning Why the birds came so close, why we got so lucky and had so many of them to see and get a chance to photograph.

But, on the same token, that peanut butter allowed us to get to see these amazing creatures, especially the boy Downey Woodpecker, closer than I have ever seen before, left us feeling elated and amazed, made our day, made us feel grateful, and allowed me to see the detail of these wonderful little creatures even better once we got home and looked at my shots (since really, my long distance eyesight has never been good never mind great). It also meant that they are able to survive and hopefully flourish in the aftermath of that really hard which was lived through both by people and animals.

Our Old Haunt

We decided today that we wanted to visit our old area, the area we loved, the enjoyment and walks having been long missed since our move in October 2013 not to mention the pretty icy and cold winter we've had. Halls Rd. and Lynde Shores, we missed you :-)

 Having first arrived, we ran into a really nice guy we knew from a couple years back, a nice and knowledgeable guy who used to do guided Rouge walks, one of which we went along on back in 2011 or so. He mentioned he hadn't seen a lot around on his walk this morning. He did however give us some tips of where to walk, off the beaten path trails, in our new area, near the Bluffs in Scarborough. Lots of dragon fly species and butterfly species he says are often only seen on those specific trails, which we look forward to checking out now! At Halls Rd., there were cute Chickadees and some American Tree Sparrows, the Red squirrel was out and about too, but nothing to exciting at Halls. The lake was high up on shore, and we saw that the ice storm didn't spare Halls Rd. - lots of downed branches and trees.


We headed over to Lynde Shores. The ice patterns on the marsh were cool! We headed along the chickadee path and sure enough, there were the usual Wild Turkeys. There were lots of squirrels, lots of Nut Hatches, tons of Black Capped Chickadees, and we saw Red Cardinals and some sort of sparrow we couldn't quite identify.

There was a raptor of some sort, which flew across and into a mid dense tree area. We knew it was a raptor but we couldn't quite tell which exact one. It was a hawk of some sort.

As we neared the back area, as usual, there were suddenly a bunch of exciting bird visitors :-) The most exciting creature, who flew right near John and right at eye level, was the resident Red Bellied Woodpecker. We had heard her but hadn't spotted her yet. Right after that, I couldn't keep my camera still for then a male and female Downey Woodpecker couple joined us and right after that, a female Hairy Woodpecker. They were closer than usual. So adorable and looked very healthy!

Hope to get a few more pics up after these here. Loving using my zoom lens again having replaced  my broken camera!

New Camera!

With the coming of Spring, Summer, and my daughter's grad most importantly, I really needed to be able to use my camera and my zoom lens.

Originally, we were trying to save for the Nikon DF. Though that camera is ideal for the artist/photographer mix that I am I would be sacrificing other possible expenses, like a car break down, etc.,  too much to purchase an almost $3000 camera. We saw a used D90 at an amazing price so we grabbed it. It is an upgrade from my D70 which broke down finally after 7+ years and over 30000+ actuations of the shutter (I was lucky).

I am thrilled to have my camera replaced! I hope for it to last a year or 2 until we may be in a better position to buy a camera that should then pretty much be a long time lasting purchase as it is a camera that would be worth taking in to be repaired. Walks and photo taking were my leisure and enjoyment :-) They were a constant mini vacation :-) The joy we got from them was indescribable. Now we have that again :-)