Sunday Afternoon at Chippewa Park
It was a busy weekend with portrait shoots but I actually managed to find about 20 minutes to take some personal photos. One of my sessions took place at Chippewa Park so I decided to get there a bit early and walk around. With me I had my Nikon D610 and the 70-200mm 2.8 and 50mm 1.8. I usually don't walk around with these lenses as they are a bit on the heavier side. Anyone who has seen some of my previous posts know that I tend to favour the Fuji X-T1.
It was a busy weekend with portrait shoots but I actually managed to find about 20 minutes to take some personal photos. One of my sessions took place at Chippewa Park so I decided to get there a bit early and walk around. With me I had my Nikon D610 and the 70-200mm 2.8 and 50mm 1.8. I usually don't walk around with these lenses as they are a bit on the heavier side. Anyone who has seen some of my previous posts know that I tend to favour the Fuji X-T1.
For the photos of the sleeping giant I pulled out my trusty 70-200 2.8. I obviously use this lens a lot for all my weddings and portrait sessions but it has been a while since I used it for personal photos like landscapes. The Nikon D610 isn't the highest end full frame camera by Nikon but it did an amazing job with sharpness and detail as well as retaining the highlights and shadows. One of these days I'm going to upgrade to the D750 and use the D700 solely as a backup camera but for now I'm more then fine with the D610.
For all the other photos I used the 50mm 1.8. To be honest I just started using this lens again and I have forgotten how much I truly love it, especially when paired with the D610. I used it for the first time on portrait session this past weekend and I came away with some fantastic photos. The bokeh produced by this lens along with the rich colours are amazing.
As with most of my photography I rarely set the lens past it's 1.8 setting unless I'm taking photos of groups of people. But when I am just walking around taking abstract photos I always try and pick out small details as you can see from the photos below.
As for procession, I worked with the native RAW files converted to DNG in Lightroom 6. From there I always start by using my favourite preset. Then I play with the contrast and clarity and colour enhancements. To be honest, the files don't need much work. Then I'll usually sharpen the images using NIK Effects along with a few tweaks in Viveza. It seems like a lot of post processing but I'm usually only spending about 1-2 minutes per final image tops.
Thanks for viewing!
Canada Day at Chippewa Park + Downtown Port Arthur
Canada Day has come and gone but I finally got a chance to go through all the photos from that day. We started off by going to Old Fort William which I could honestly spend a whole day photographing. We ended up only going for a couple hours but it was plenty of time to walk around take lots of great photos. Not only were there a lot of people walking around, there are endless buildings to go into, each having there own unique personality. I would say my favourite moment there was in the stables. There were goats, roosters, sheep and a few other types of animals. I came away with some fun shots, one of the best ones being a sheep getting sheared.
Canada Day has come and gone but I finally got a chance to go through all the photos from that day. We started off by going to Old Fort William which I could honestly spend a whole day photographing. We ended up only going for a couple hours but it was plenty of time to walk around take lots of great photos. Not only were there a lot of people walking around, there are endless buildings to go into, each having there own unique personality. I would say my favourite moment there was in the stables. There were goats, roosters, sheep and a few other types of animals. I came away with some fun shots, one of the best ones being a sheep getting sheared.
Before we knew it, it was time to go. After dropping off the kids we decided to head downtown. It was still early in the afternoon but there was actually a huge car show going on which we knew nothing about until our friend Cora let us know. We just caught the last few minutes of it but I was still able to come away some good shots.
After working up quite the thirst and appetite we headed on over to Gargoyles, a local restaurant. The meal was great and I actually captured a few more good photos there, particularly the Gargoyle wearing a red tie. Once we were done we headed home to rest up a bit before going back downtown for the fireworks. My goal this year for the fireworks was to try and do a time-lapse. This was my first one and I have yet to process it but we will see how it turns out. I ended up getting a little gorilla pod which actually worked quite well with the Fuji X-T1 and 16mm combo. Perhaps I will do another post with that time-lapse if it actually turns out.
One thing I did try since I had my little tripod out was a long exposure of the people leaving the fireworks. I don't usually do long exposure photography but I think it actually turned out kind of cool. For all these photos the Fuji X-T1 performed admirably. The lenses I used were the 16mm and 35mm. As usual, I think for almost all of them I just used the jpg's with the Chrome preset and processed them a bit with Lightroom. Thanks for viewing!
