The House & other Arctic musings

Bunny Bonanza

The Arctic Hare (Lepus arcticus) population is on a high year this year. For much of the same reasons as people in the south are seeing huge numbers of Snowy Owls this year, the hares enjoyed a good breeding season. With the lemming populations high this past summer predators put much less pressure on the hares, resulting in them having a lot of breeding success. 

This time of year, when the hares are very active and easily seen, just how successful they are is evident.  In town and in most suitable habitats outside one sees them, feeding, and fighting in preparation for the breeding season.  A friend reported to me a herd of some 40-50 of them in an area not too far from here, near the old Nanisivik town site. Something I've only heard of from Ellesmere Island.

So a lot of bunnies, makes for a lot of photo opportunities.  Here are a couple of images to share.

Reflective

Thayer's Gull

More playing around with HDR

I've processed several more images in HDR, and in general I'm liking what I'm seeing, although in some ways there seems something, I don't know, unnatural about the image.  But it is fun.  One thing I've found is that even though I've bracketed a lot of my photos (and inexplicably kept all of them), many are handheld which leads to sharpness issues when you're combining three or more images.  At any rate, out of the dozen or so I've done here is one I like.

HDR

One of my clients is a photographer and does a little HDR (High Dynamic Range) photography. If you visit Kluglanoch Corner you'll be familiar with this type of photography. He was kind enough to let me try out some of my old bracketed photos with his HDR software.  Here are the results of the foray into HDR photography.  I may just have to do more of it. (click on the photos for a better look at it)

Photoshopped full moon

This morning I took a photo of the full moon, but it didn't turn out like I wanted. I had wanted the outline of the hills behind Arctic Bay visible.  The photo was just the moon against a dark background. But I got playing with Photoshop and added the (now much larger) moon into a cropped version of my House and full moon picture. 

Truth be told I like the original a lot more, but here is the photoshopped version for whatever it is worth...

Because words aren't flowing from my brain to my fingertips

More photoshop woodcuts

Just some more woodcuts I thought I'd share with you.

Sundogs

Iceberg and boat - Victor Bay

Camp - Victor Bay

Photoshopping

Photoshop is an incredibly powerful program.  I'm pretty sure that even if you worked with it on a full time basis you'd only scratch the surface of what it could do.  I use very little of the tools potential, but I do have some favourite effects and I'm going to share one of them with you.

I wish I could take credit for it but the instructions came from a Tips and Tricks pdf that came with the program.  It is for making woodcuts of your photos.  It is not as effective with every photo but if you play around with some you'll soon find the style it works best with.  Here it goes...

1) First of all make a duplicate of the photo you're going to use, a good practice to get into, it will save you grief. Chose Image > Duplicate  Name it whatever you want and click okay.
2) Drag the background layer in the layers palette down to the duplicate layer icon to create a new layer. Double click on it and name it Woodcut layer.
3) Change the blend mode on the Woodcut layer from Normal to Multiply.  Click on the Normal button at the top of the layers palette and choose Multiply from the menu that drops down.
4) Use the High Pass filter. Choose Filter > Other > High Pass. Set the radius to 1.6 and click OK.
5) Chose Image > Adjustments > Threshold and set the level to 127. Click OK
6) Blur the background. Select the background layer by clicking on its icon in the layer palette.  Choose Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur an set the radius to 6.3.  Click Okay.  If the image that you've started with is large you may need to increase this level to blur the background sufficiently.
7)  You're done.  Like the image? Choose File > Save As and save your work.

This turns this...
Into something like this...

Or this...

Into something like this...

You can also save alot of time if you like this effect (or anything else you do over and over again in Photoshop) by automating the steps.