Historic Acadian Village in New Brunswick - Part 2

This is a second post from the gazillion pictures I took while my family and I visited the Historic Acadian Village in northern New Brunswick (www.villagehistoriqueacadien.com).  Mostly about buildings this time, but a few other things too!

Naomi is the only one in the family that doesn't mind my camera too much :)

We thought we were going to lose Caleb in the barrels of nails... he wouldn't leave them and had to examine each one of them!

Here's an example of why a flash can be very useful even in the harsh mid-day light.  This image has an over exposed background so that we can see Duke (a 34 year old horse, as tame and friendly as a puppy!).

This image was taken using my external flash.  Background can be properly exposed and subject light up with the flash.  I did not have any softbox and completely off-camera lighting, so there are a few shadows there.  But still, to me, it's a better image than the previous one...

Historic Acadian Village in New Brunswick - Part 1

My family and I visited the Historic Acadian Village in northern New Brunswick (www.villagehistoriqueacadien.com).  We spent two days there and still did not manage to get through everything.  We simply love it there! It's a great spot for photography, without a doubt.  I recently received an old external flash for my camera too (Vivitar 880AFNi). It fires correctly, but the TTL component doesn't appear to work - so I'm full manual when I use it!  It however proved to be very useful despite this.  The very dark antique houses needed extra lighting.  Bouncing the light off the ceilings usually provided extra light without appearing to be too artificial.  I messed up many shots messing around with the exposure and flash, but overall had a blast anyways - and still ended up with a few pictures I kind of liked.

Here are a few selected images of the over 750 images I took over two days.  Hopefully I will be able to post more soon.

Magnetic Hill Zoo - Summer 2012

We had an interesting day at the zoo with friends this summer.  Frustrating being at a zoo in some ways.  You can't easily shoot the animals when they are in deep sleep.  Lots of caging in the way for shooting, backgrounds are not always the best either.  Then you can't spend 15 hours in front of a cage for the animal to wake up or look at you, at some point the family (and/or friends!) will get impatient and you have to move along.  I however managed to get a few decent animal shots out of the afternoon.  Having my father's 300mm lens was critical as I could not of gotten close enough to any of them with the basic kit lens on my tiny Nikon D60 (18 - 55mm).  So here are a few selected images...

Fundy Trail 2012

We had a nice trip to St-Martins, New Brunswick this summer and visited the Fundy Trail.  Beautiful place that has expanded so much that you almost need more than a day to do everything now.  My father came along with us on this trip and it was a lot of fun! 

Had many great shots, but selected a few for the photo blog.  I shoot in Manual mode almost all the time and I'm noticing that I'm messing up fewer pictures now.  I sometimes will get a few over or under exposed images, or sometimes the depth-of-field is not exactly what I would like, but getting closer to getting it right the first time as time goes on.  It's all about practicing - so happy shooting! :)

Neth & Rocky's Wedding

This is the first wedding I've attended since I got my first dSLR (the used Nikon D60).  I didn't have any special lens (only the basic 18 - 55mm lens that came with the camera).  With this lens, it is challenging (not really possible for the most part) to properly blur out backgrounds, even with largest aperture possible (bokeh).  I also did not have liberty to move around, as I was not the assigned photographer.  So I did what I could from where I was.  I am posting a few of the pictures that came out decently well (in my humble, uneducated opinion anyways!)  This was a very simple and small wedding, but a very special and happy day for the couple in question nonetheless!

Fundy National Park - June 2012 (Part 2)

A few more shots from the trip... this time all processed with Picasa though (quicker for me at the moment)... I'm over-using the "vignette" effect, I know - I'll be working on getting away from that, but for now, these images were already processed, please forgive the redundant vignette effect :)  It's all about the kids today! Please provide feedback of what you think...

This is typical for my son :)

Nice view of the bay behind them...

Taken on Dickson Falls trail.

Sitting on a big rock in the middle of the little brook

My daughter peaking through an old rotten tree... the thing was leaning towards me and hanging over my head... I quickly took a few shots and got out of there, didn't feel very comfortable there - my daughter was on the correct side of the tree, I would of got it if anything went wrong...

I think my daughter is a tree huger! 

Fundy National Park - June 2012 (Part 1)

I'm drowning in pictures! My family and I spent a week in Fundy National Park (amazing park, one that I still greatly enjoy after 20 years).  Came back with 12GB of pictures and videos.  Birds woke me up real early in the morning (5:30am), so I got many sunrise and quiet time exploring the park and taking many pictures.  The only problem with this trip is that it didn't last longer!

With my limited equipment, I think I still got some great shots (at least some that I like!).  Here are a few (kids processed in Picasa, but other two processed in LightRoom).  Let me know what you think!

Bennett Lake was incredible that first morning.  I returned many times again throughout the week and couldn't get anything like the first morning.  Glad I was there and didn't miss that amazing morning!

Many sunrises were amazing in the park.  Some were more dramatic with clouds or fog.  However, without a gradual neutral density filter, there's only so much I could do.  My cheap eBay circular polarization filter ($8 CAD!) seemed to help in some cases.  For the most part, I didn't like longer exposures using my decent Hoya ND8 filter .

The kids had a blast, and I'm happy they enjoy the same things as I do.  We hope to return again at some point!