Welcome to 2013! It promises to be a very good year.
The first installment for my blog this year is from the magazine. Stephanie Hounsell, our staff writer, conducted an exclusive online interview with one of Oopoomoo’s famed shooters. Lawyer turned photographer … Samantha Chrysanthou.
Read the full interview here.
Check out the newest installment of Wild Side in Outdoor Photography Canada magazine. John E. Marriott gives us the facts on sharpness in our images and how to attain it. Click the image to read the full column!
Enjoy and Happy Holidays to all
Roy Ramsay
Editor-in-Chief
A little over 3 weeks left to enter our semi-annual contest (deadline Dec 31, 2012). The theme for the fall contest is Canadian songbirds.
Head over to the OPC website and have a look at all the great entries so far, and enter your own! Just click the banner below to take you to the contest page.
Thanks for stopping by
Roy Ramsay
Editor-in-Chief
Outdoor Photography Canada magazine
In the Fall 2012 issue of OPC, Darwin Wiggett our advanced shooter columnist, writes about becoming a better photographer by knowing when not to shoot. Sounds crazy? You can read the full column here.
Thanks for stopping by.
Roy Ramsay
Editor-in-Chief
The November editor’s assignment is open only to landscape photography. Show us your best black and white landscape photo.
Your entry must be Canadian. Remember your technical skills as well as your creative ones. Only one image from all submitted images will be chosen as the November assignment winner. Each person can only enter one photo. The deadline for this assignment is November 30, 2012. Anything uploaded after the deadline will be ineligible.
Prizes: The winning image will be published in the Spring issue (April 2013) of OPC and the winner will receive 4 back issues of Outdoor Photography Canada magazine of their choice, and an official OPC toque and baseball cap.
Have fun!
Roy Ramsay
Editor-in-Chief
Outdoor Photography Canada magazine
Skeletons, vampires and ghouls will soon wander our streets in search of candy and treats. It’s a fun, if not a morbid way to say goodbye to another wonderful season. Yes, autumn is coming to an end yet again. It’s a time when Mother Nature shows us her true self, in all her glorious splendour; red and gold, yellow and orange. Photographers hit the trails to capture their vision of Mother Nature before she fades into her winter sleep. For each of us, as photographers, we try to capture this vision in our own styles. For many budding photographers this is a daunting task, not knowing what your style is, or how to begin to express it.
This is a view from the Dufferin Bruce Trail head. Overlooking farms and rolling hills.
How does one find their style? When will it become known? The answer lies only within us. I know this is a vague explanation, but when you finally do find your own path and style, it all makes more sense. The path that each of us must take is the path of practise. With practise comes two things; the first is a thorough knowledge of our tools of the trade. Our camera gear. Know it like the back of your hand and you will begin to experience your photography in a whole new way. Only when you have mastered your gear, can you look beyond it. No longer will you worry or toil over camera settings and lens choices — these all become second nature.
The second is an appreciation of the connection you experience through your photography. I spoke about this in a previous blog (What Photographers Feel When They Take a Photograph — September 11, 2012). The point when your inner self connects with the landscape, nature or wildlife subject is the moment that counts; it all culminates into that one moment. When this happens you’re essentially experiencing an emotional connection with Mother Nature. When you’re able to give yourself freely to this experience your style will begin to emerge and make itself known.
Fall colour near Lavender, ON
Autumn, for me, is a time for reflection as it was during this season it all clicked for me. I finally got it. Shooting during this season brings back fond memories and an emotional connection that will stay with me forever.
Theme: Canadian Song Birds
Contest runs from October 1 to December 23, 2012
To my blog followers
Enter your best Canadian song bird photographs for your chance to win awesome prizes and get published in the April 2013 issue of Outdoor Photography Canada magazine.
Good luck everyone!
Roy Ramsay — Editor-in-Chief
Recently I had a reader ask me a few questions: Why did you take up photography? When are you the happiest while shooting? And what do photographers feel when they take a photograph? I answered in the following way.
I have always had the artistic bug within me, so to speak. I tried drawing and painting and found I didn’t have the talent for it. I realized, at least for me, I needed to do something that I could identify with, something that would allow me to speak through my art. It was not so much my hands that would allow this expression, but my eyes, mind and heart. Photography allows me to do just that. In the beginning the technical was a bit frustrating to grasp, but practise, practise, practise got me through it. Then one day it all came together and I was able to express my innermost feelings of a place through my photography.
I’m the happiest when I am in nature – anywhere in nature away from the city. Nature’s sounds, the temperature of the air, and the quieting of my soul is what draws me there. Nature brings me a sense of peace that’s found deep within me. When I need to recharge my batteries, I go shooting. To take this one step further, I’m most happy when I’ve composed my shot and I trip the shutter. Whether the shot turns out or not isn’t what draws me, but rather the process that leads me to that point. The peacefulness that photography brings me is my reconnection with nature, and that’s my happiest time. The “good” photography comes with practise, but the process, which allows me to reconnect with nature, is what matters most to me.
So to answer your question of how photographers feel when they take a photograph…I can’t speak for all photographers, but I find that nature speaks to me through its trees and babbling brooks, so I answer with a photograph.
Photos: ©Roy Ramsay
Top photo: Main Chutes, Chutes Provincial Park, ON
Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 35mm, ƒ18@0.3 sec., ISO 200, Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer
Bottom photo: Minor Chutes, Chutes Provincial Park, ON
Canon 5D Mark II, Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L IS USM lens at 105mm, ƒ18@1/6 sec., ISO 200, Singh-Ray LB warming polarizer
Most, if not all, of us have busy lives and we don’t seem to have enough time to do the things we enjoy most. In order to do these things we must make the time. This is often easier said than done. I’m guilty of this myself.
I would like to begin with a story that deals with this topic head-on. I was neck deep in our most recent issue of the magazine and had very little time for anything, let alone my own personal photography pursuits. When things get this hectic, where I have little or no time for myself, I get grumpy, and no one likes a grump.
Even in the most hectic times, as long as you keep your creative eye open you can often see things in the most obscure places. Take this image, for example. While on a break from working on the magazine, I was making myself a coffee (yes, I love coffee) and noticed a pattern through one of our frosted windows. My creative process began in earnest and I had to drop everything to explore it. I figured if I had five minutes to make a coffee, I had five minutes to grab my camera and experiment with my idea.
So with my camera on a tripod and a 70-200mm lens, I composed the outdoor landscape through the frosted window. I made sure I could make out the implied details of sky, trees and foreground meadow. The technique I employed has been used many times in many places and I thought this might be a great time to use it also. During the exposure, I zoomed my telephoto lens out from 200mm to just shy of 70mm over two seconds. The resulting image gives you converging lines in a painted landscape.
Regardless of how busy we may get, we should always make the time to do the things we love.
Photo: ©Roy Ramsay
Image info:
Zooming Landscape
Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 70-200mm f/4 L USM lens, ƒ22@2 sec., ISO 100,
circular warming polarizer
This is my new blog. Who am I? I am Roy Ramsay, Editor-in-Chief of Outdoor Photography Canada magazine.
The purpose of this blog is to share my personal thoughts on photography together with the images I shoot as I continue my 25 year photographic journey. I will attempt to post an entry once per week where my crazy schedule allows. Although I enjoy landscapes, nature and wildlife images I will let my creativity decide what I will shoot and discuss. So feel free to follow along and join me on my adventures from behind my lens.
A collection of life and travel experiences.
pictures and prose dripping with colour
A comfy place for my writing samples
OPC Editor — Roy Ramsay 
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