Photography
As promised here are the rest of our photos I wanted to share from our trip. Only this time the focus, quite literally is on the sky.
Usually when we camp we are deep in the woods somewhere tucked between some mountains. As lovely as this sounds it's nearly impossible to take stunning sunrise or sunset photos in these settings.
This trip to the Gaspe however we stayed most of the nights on a high point, a little mountain really, camped out in our friend's yard and then the last couple nights with my parents camped right at the ocean's edge in a lovely campground. The sky was spread out before me - day and night. I loved it.
Near the end of our trip, while camping by the ocean I got up very early one morning (3:30/4:00am) to photograph the sunrise. Don't worry I went back to bed but the sunrise was worth rolling out of my sleeping bag.
This sunset was a bit easier to photograph, sometime around 8 pm or so.
This next photo is right around sunset at our friend's farm. They live on the top of a ridge but misty air had risen from the ocean below and rolled over their pasture. It was breathtaking to watch. The contrast on this photo is boosted a bit for effect.
During the sunny days I was captivated by the sky and the ocean.
And here is where I want to share my little photographer tip. Ever since using a polarizer my sky shots have gotten much better. I bought it late last summer and every gorgeous sky/ocean shot I've published since was probably taken with that polarizer on my lens.
I'm not going to go into all the technical mumbo jumbo about how they work, I'm still figuring that all out. Quite honestly, when it comes to many things with photography I don't need to know why they work I just want to know how to use them. If you're of the same mindset you might like this article from Digital Photography School. This short article is a bit more technical (but still understandable) explanation of why and how they work.
I use a Nikon polarizer. I didn't use the polarizer with the sunrise and sunset shots you see here, only with the midday blue sky shots (and any other midday blue sky shot you've seen on my blog for the past year). I love it and think it's a great tool for landscape/nature photography.
More photos of our trip (all on our photo blog):
- Earth House, An Eco-Friendly Cabin, St. Louis, Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec
- Sunrise on the Beach, Carleton-Sur-Mer, Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec
- Exploring the Beach, Carleton-Sur-Mer, Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec (those white clouds popping out from the blue sky... polarizer)
- Deadwood, Carleton-Sur-Mer, Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec
- Contemplating the Flames, Carleton-sur-Mer, Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec
It's taken me a whole week to finally finish going through all our vacation photos from our trip to the Gaspe Peninsula. This first set of photos is of people and places, not everything mind you, just a few of my favorite shots.
morning chess with papa
The next set which I'll publish in a few days will be shots of the sky and a little photography talk about one of my favorite camera tools.
one of the places we pitched our tent
It feels kind of ridiculous to say, since it's like stating the blatantly obvious but I love photography. Especially taking photos of my loved ones, my home life and nature photography from places we've been.
Rainy day magnetic "paper" dolls
Laurent chases seagulls at campground
girls after camp showers
the beach and ocean lay just on the other side of this grass
I love this part of who I am. Mother, wife, homeschooler, resident cook, photographer.
Photo credit: Tougas children
We picked our first strawberries from our backyard plants this week. This is insanely early for strawberries, in my opinion, but who's complaining.
We're waiting on the organic u-pick farm berries to ripen before we go strawberry pickin' in earnest. For now we'll snack on berries from the backyard.
Brienne and I wrote this haiku together yesterday at lunch while eyeing the bowl of berries for dessert.
juicy strawberries
sweet and yummy in a bowl
pop one in your mouth
PS. I'm fooling around these days with the contrast curve and deeper shadows presets in Bibble, my photo software. You may notice that in some of my photos (like that photo of Brienne), though mostly it's very subtle. Heavily editing photos is not something I'm really keen on doing but I'm having fun with the creativity of it right now.
