Yesterday’s processing was a bit of a chore owing to the HS10’s difficulty with solid white backgrounds. Today was quite a different story, as the sun came out for the first time in a week and the late afternoon sun was rather glorious. The processing went very smoothly and I got some surprisingly detailed results, even at 400 ISO.
I left the house at mid-afternoon with the intention of catching the sunset later on, hopefully with a snow Inuksuk in the foreground as I had seen a few years ago. But first, I wanted to stop by the Rideau Canal to shoot the skaters. I went down onto the canal using the stairs at 5th Avenue, one of the places where there is always a rest area and food for sale at several huts, including the ubiquitous Beavertails …
I quickly realized that the vantage point was not going to give me anything interesting and high-tailed it upstairs to stand on the canal’s western bank on the property of the rather nice restaurant “Ritz on the Canal.”
My opening shot was intended to show the crowds on what is the worlds largest skating rink (not the longest anymore, but the usurpers cheated and used a few miles of single-lane rink to achieve that :-) …
The canal shots are pretty much all taken with the HS10 on tripod and IS off.
I would love to be able to enter a series in the contest … I would call it “In My Canada, Everybody Skates” … and the next series will show you why I say that …
And of course there is the ubiquitous rest area. They cleverly used old Christmas trees as the fence. Terrific idea.
As much as I enjoyed the canal shooting, I can’t say that it was worth the $80 ticket that was on my car when I got back to it. F-ck …
So off I went … a few miles back to Parliament hill to catch the building in the late afternoon sun. I was not disappointed at all …
Here is out Centennial Flame and the main Parliament building.
Another shot from a higher vantage providing a better view of the flame.
The provinces are all represented on the flame’s surround. Here is the coat of arms for the province of Ontario, where I have lived since 1979.
And here is Manitoba’s coat of arms. I call Manitoba the “Mother Province” since I was raised there.
The requisite artsy-fartsy shot. I call this one “Peace” … get it?
A rather nice window in the main building … it was in shade and I think it turned out rather well for 400 ISO. With careful processing, the HS10 can retain a surprisingly 3-dimensional rendering.
Walking back to the street, I shoot an image of the flame facing the street, which brings the wrought-iron fence into the background. Grainy, but I like it …
While I was standing there, an RCMP cruiser drove right up the main path … this was the point at which I realized that the cam was set to 400 ISO … so this and all subsequent images are shot at 100 ISO …
The cruiser turned around and drove back towards the street, parking for a while. I tried to look unobtrusive when I positioned the flame in front and shot this image. Not sure what to call it… “Serve and Protect … Eternally” might work … Jon noted that certain elements would assume that the cruiser was being symbolically burned … that was the furthest thing from my mind when I set this shot up …
An image of the four of the coat of arms facing west into the setting sun. The steam is rising because the water is kept warm by the flame (you did realize that this is also a fountain, correct?)
So I hiked back to the car at this point and drove the western parkway along the Ottawa River. I was looking for an Inuksuk at any of the lookouts. But most were closed. The last one before the parkway ends was open and I am glad I did not stop at the one by the Champlain Bridge, which was also open.
Because, despite the lack of Inuksuk action, I got to see a spectacular sunset over the frozen water and the snow waves … (Snow Wave! … Wave!)
The first image is a blindingly obvious one … sorry. Place a tree in silhouette blocking the sun and get a shot of the scene with the shadow facing you …
A wider view of more of less the same image.
I hope that you are noting how finely the branches show up. Click through to the 800px versions to really see them …
The following is Jon’s favorite , and is the one that definitely needs to be entered into the contest. The only flaw, and it is not small, is the flare. However, Jon is correct that it balances the sun and thus is not a disaster.
One last throw-away image with the rocky shoreline in it. I like rocky shorelines covered in snow …
So there you have it. I have a lot of images now of winter scenes … I will ponder them all and see if I can scare up 10 good ones to enter …
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