I met Nigel at Claireville Conservation Area today for a walk around the park. We selected the south entrance as our starting point and headed east along the trail. Things are nice and brown again, meaning I have to work a little harder to get that inspiration.
The Rock
I didn’t take many photos here, but I did like this one I took of a rock in a sea of yellow grasses.
It’s been a week since the heat wave and the camping trip to Tobermory, Ontario and this time I’m camping with my friend Nigel in Killbear Provincial Park. The weather this time around is not as friendly as last week. Temps are back to the regular cool temps of late September here in the middle of Ontario.
White Tailed Deer
When we arrived it was raining so we timed getting our tent up in-between spurts of rain. Once the tent was up we decided to drive around the park and see which trails we would do the next day. On our way through the campground we found some deer grazing in the grasses.
Since the light rain wasn’t looking like it would let up we decided that instead of making dinner in the rain we would head to town and get warmed up at a local place.
It was a chilly night’s sleep and I was glad to be up and around the next day. The rain had cleared and we had beautiful blue skies great us for our morning hike and some infrared shooting.
Lone Pine Killbear PP
And of course you can’t miss photographing the small things:
From Darkness
Our last evening was going to be another cold one but we had some plans to hang by the fire before heading out to the photograph the windswept tree at night.
Killbear Tree at Night
As we photographed different angles of the tree we started to notice something happening on the water. A beautiful mist started rising up and moving along the top of the water. Added to that the moon’s glow made it seem eerie as you watched this mist move this way and that.
Enveloping Mist
I could have watched it all night but we had to get some sleep as we were heading home the next day. How quickly the weekends end when there is so much to photograph.
Today I went out to a yarn festival quite a ways west of town. It was a fun outing but it was the drive home where I had the most fun. The small town of West Montrose has a beautiful covered bridge, called the Kissing Bridge. It is the only wood covered bridge in Ontario and one of the oldest in Canada.
Montrose Covered Bridge – built in 1881
Unfortunately, there is no way to get down to the river to get better views of the bridge as all the surrounding area is private property. It’s a shame really but I guess they’ve had a few problems because previously there weren’t so many “No Trespassing” signs up. I guess it didn’t help matters that the recent movie “It” was filmed here. So, in the end it was a short stop here as photographic angles were limited.
To the Bones
When driving through the country side it’s not that hard to find ruins of one barn or another so it wasn’t too much of a surprise when I came across this one. I’m not sure why but there is something about them that always makes me stop and take a photograph.
Today we headed just north of Akureryi to find some turf homes before finding us some waterfalls. About 30 minutes from the town we found an outdoor museum that had some turf homes, a church and a barn.
Turf Homes
We spent some time here checking out all the angles, and trying some new ways to photograph the same things. Driving a little further along the ring road our hopes were to check out Dettifoss, one of the largest waterfalls in Europe with a huge amount of water falling over its crest. The original idea was to approach from the east road only to find it closed due to flooding. So, we had to back track to hit the west road and the more popular route to the falls.
Dettifoss
The main reason for driving to the east road was a clearer view of the falls as the cliffs obstruct most of the falls from our eastern angle. It was time to get creative. The great thing about there still being snow on the ground (albeit a slushy, hard to walk through kind of snow) is the patterns that can be created because of the falls and what I suspect to be volcanic ash. Upstream from mighty Detifoss is a mini “Niagara” of sorts called Selfoss.
Selfoss
Located only one kilometre upstream from Detifoss it has its own kind of majesty. One can walk right up to the top of the falls and enjoy the spray that ultimately makes you very damp along with your gear. It’s difficult to get close to a lot of these waterfalls because of the spray. I was constantly wiping my lenses and not always leaving with shots that were droplet free. It takes a lot of patience and a whole lot of microfibre cloths to get some of these photos. Course using a long lens can offer you different opportunities than a wide angle lens. The Dettifoss photo was taken with a 500mm lens while the shot of Selfoss was with my wide angle.