A Day by the Cold, Dirty Lake (Dial-up warning)

[JeffR]

Was getting ready to post these this morning, when I saw regnaD kciN had a new thread featuring real photos of a real beach! Oh, well.

For an old Floridian, there's nothing more disappointing about exile in Toronto than the lakefront. On a good day, I can pretend briefly I'm looking out at my beloved Atlantic, but the site of a dead smelt washed up on the gravel or the smell of the sewage treatment plant nearby can quickly shatter the illusion.

We're a ten minute bike ride from the lake, though, and last Saturday I made a rare trip down to the boardwalk and came home with pics. Here's a few:

Seawall. Just beyond this is a magnificent Art Deco waterworks, currently off-limits due to renovations.


Jetty. The boulders on the right are part of an ongoing effort to prevent erosion of the beach.




Somebody's best friend. He doesn't have the same snooty attitude about this beach that I do. He loves it.


Driftwood.


Dare ya.


And the only reasonably successful butterfly shot I've got this year:

[NV Whino]

1. Love the dog.

You've captured the unadulterated joy.

Nice butterfly, but a little bland when it comes to color. ;)

[JeffR]

2. My bad. It might have been a moth...

:)

[NV Whino]

9. Now here's a butterfly

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=5560099&mesg_id=5560099

[bvar22]

3. Brrr.

Doesn't make me want to swim or roll naked in the sand.
You captured a damp day at the shore well.
The B&Ws are especially effective.

[JeffR]

4. Thanks. B/W seems to capture the lake better

Nothing very colorful to be seen there, except on hot summer weekends when the bikinis come out.:smoke:

[Placebo]

5. #2 is definitely my fav!

So many textures. :o

[JeffR]

8. None so blind as me

It hadn't occurred to me that this pic is really about textures... d'oh!

[insane_cratic_gal]

6. I love your black and white shot

it's a nice scale of allowing the eye to drift off the levee and follow the vastness of the sea. It's a great angle for that shot!


I thought the first one was ship! I guess i've seen my share of navy ships and i thought it was the bough of one lol.. I'm a goof!

btw the girls shot is endearing, what we all do with our friends! Though its usually "You go first!, I'll follow... not!"

[JeffR]

10. The ship resemblance was probably deliberate

The attention to detail in this complex is so obsessive, I'm sure a plain old straight wall would have bored the architect. Here are pix from the other side of the seawall a few years ago:





You can just make out the railing of the wall at the bottom of the second shot.

______

The girls were actually venturing knee-deep into the water as I moved on down the beach. Future charter members of the local Polar Bear Club!

[F.Gordon]

7. Love the B&W treatment on the first two

Do you mind if I ask what Cookbook recipe you're using for those, or is it one of those old secret family recipes?

Love the puppy photo.. and I suck at identifying bugs and such so I have no idea what kind of Butterfly that is. Definitely unusual though. Did you manage to get a shot of it flying?

[JeffR]

11. It was too windy that day to use a tripod

So if the butterfly actually took wing, she must be an Iron Butterfly... (cue idiotic riff)

The recipe for these was optikVerve's Virtual Photographer plug-in:

http://www.optikvervelabs.com/download.asp

After adjusting curves, I ran the pix through the 'Hollywood' filter with some of the settings adjusted. Then converted to grayscale, messed around with the curves again and applied a little USM, oregano, sea salt and white pepper.

The B/W filters seem to work especially well with really overcast conditions. The color ones aren't so useful, but always give me a handy excuse for spending hours at the computer trying different permutations.;-)