Dick Bell Park -- Boats at Sunset

One of the first venues at which I shot when I got my first dSLR (Nikon D70s with Sigma 18-200) was Dick Bell Park. This is a pretty little marina on the Ottawa side of the Ottawa River. It has a somewhat protected harbor and when you walk along the point of land that protects it, you reach places where you have an unobstructed western view of the Ottawa river with the Gatineau Hills and Eardley Escarpment backing it. In other words ... it's really fricken pretty at sunset :-)

I shot this image the first time I went there ... it prints *very* well, and has been hanging in the lobby area at my office for over a year. It also hangs in my parents' living room.


I'll admit to being a bit heavy handed with the processing on that one :-)

On Friday evening, I was a bit later than I had expected to be (my usual excuse ... an absorbing conversation with a friend), but it turned out that there were still several boats out on the river and the sun was still plenty high in the sky. The clouds had threatened all day and were still around -- they would eventually wipe out any chance of a true "Sun on the river sunset shot" ...

I shot a couple of openers with the 28mm f3.5 AI lense on the camera and it on the tripod. The boats are always so nice looking at dock, and I can never resist trying to get some shots of all the colors. In this case, a spectacular thunderhead was soaring above the marina a ways down the river to the east, and so made a terrific backdrop.



That seemed like a pretty darned good start to me, so I turned my attention to the western view to see what the sun was doing. Well, I got a classic, if ordinary, sun over water shot ...


And an equally classic, and equally ordinary, boat on river shot ...


It's a pretty river with the hills in the background ... one must admit.

But that was about the extent of the scenery for now, so back I turned to the marina, facing east again. There, I was treated to a sudden appearance of a slash of sunlight that happened to light up one particular boat ... it was *so* cool!



A moment later, a muskrat swam by ...


Walking over the hill again to face west, I found that the clouds had intervened and that there would be no shooting of the sun on the river, so I grabbed what I could. The sun tried to break through for a moment, but it really never made it again ...


Soon, everyone was leaving. I caught an image of a lone fisherman packing it in for the day.


The boats and seadoos were coming in for the night ...



A quick peak back west showed me that the rain might yet threaten ...


One last peak to the marina ...


Kids ...

And off I go.


The seats are kept down nowadays because Nick remains in Europe and I like to hear all 7 speakers equally loud :-)

The first two and last one images were shot with the Nikon D300 and 28mm f3.5 AI manual focus lense. The series in between were all shot with the D300 and the 70-200 f2.8 AFS VR, Nikon's best professional level short zoom. I picked this up earlier in the evening from Henry's (through Headshots in Toronto) for the weekend.

For those who actually read this blog, remember that I mentioned that I am taking a workshop on Sunday with a dozen models ... and for such an undertaking I wanted an excellent lens. The one big surprise with this lens was that the tripod foot came without a lens plate, so my tripod was basically useless this evening. Everything with the zoom had to be hand held .... today I am substituting one of my lens plates (probably from the Tamron 180mm) temporarily.

Anyway .... I hope you enjoyed the boats.