I’ve been pissed the whole week. No internet is almost like no air. I didn’t have air for almost a week; that is, my internet connection was down this whole time. The ISP blamed it on the phone operator. It seems there was something wrong in my area and no one else had internet. I find it idiotic. How can an entire area be down for 5 whole days? I was prepared to terminate my contract with the provider but fortunately for them, the service was back up this morning.

Enough bitching. Today is Saturday but it wasn’t a very nice day. It’s the middle of December but the temperatures are pretty high for this time of the year. It was cloudy the whole day though. I was dying to go out and test my new Canon EOS 30D. I thought what the hell, it ain’t sunny but at least it’s not raining either. So I grabbed the 30D, my trusty 50mm f/1.4, the Canon 10-22 EF-S, a bunch of filters and my tripod, and headed to a nearby forest preserve, which is frequented by cyclists and joggers alike, thanks to the special paved track that runs through these woods. I find it rather beautiful; it’s wild and unspoiled, with wild deer and stags running through the trees.

I should warn you that all images are processed in Photoshop. Yes, I am an adept of post-processing. Few images are able to express a certain state of mind right out of the camera. Imagine, if you will, that you are seeing inside my dream. And in my dream I was strolling through these woods. This is probably what you would see.

This portion of the bike track is located towards one of the many entrances to the forest preserve, close to the parking lot. This is the first shot I took with the Canon 30D this day. I processed the image in Photoshop to give it a dreamy look that seemed in line with the early winter landscape.

A bunch of trees is reflected in a pool of water. I applied several steps to bring the image to this final state. Notice the edges of the pool at the top and bottom of the image. They help to frame the reflection of the trees. I flipped the original photograph vertically and then converted it to monochrome.

Death and decay. This tree stump rots in a puddle of water. I hope I have captured the spirit in a bunch of pixels. I applied a different set of Photoshop filters for this one. I usually experiment with several processes before I pick one that suits my mood.

Another water reflection. I like the way this image turned out. I hope you’ll like it too.

One final thing that I should mention is that this entire series (parts 1 & 2, which follows soon) were taken through the excellent glass of the Canon 50mm f/1.4. I kicked myself for having brought more than the camera + lens, especially the tripod which was nothing else but dead weight. Should I stress once again what great piece of (gl)ass the 50 1.4 is? I think not

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 16th, 2006 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Canon EOS 30D, Landscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.