Cottage Trip in the Kawaratha Lakes area

I had a great opportunity to visit cottage during the weekend of Jun 4 the 2010. The cottage is located in the Kawaratha Lakes area. I was hoping this trip would be a great photography adventure for me but the weather was horrible preventing me from taking my camera gear outdoors. Still I manage to get a few interesting photographs and deal with my hyper destructive shadow (my rough collie) as well as my sister who was worried that the cottage was going to be destroyed by the dog.



My attempt at using HDR photography techniques to create this image. Looking at this image made me realize using a tripod would be the best method for the multiple exposures required for HDR images. Hand held images no matter how sturdy your hand is will have a bit of a shake resulting in a fuzzy HDR.



The dock leading to the water from the cottage property. This picture was slightly over exposed so I duplicated the image using Adobe Photoshop. I then pasted the duplicate image as a second layer of the image on top of the original image as a second layer to achieve this effect.



Relaxing on the dock enjoying the calm. This I though was a nice photo of people enjoying the outdoors.



The next few photos are the view of the lake. It started of as being nice and clear and as time went by we were able to see the rain clouds moving in over the lake.



Heavy clouds moving in on to the lake end a nice sunny clear sky day.



A Common Loon was swimming on the lake close to the dock for several hours. I regret not taking my long telephoto zoom lens as I was not able to get a closer photo of the Loon. also the position of the sun wasn't very helpful as it was in front of the camera making the image a bit dark like a silhouette.



My two nieces posing on the dock. The one was a bit worried as she felt like the doc was moving.



The two girls again posing for one last photo on the dock.



Looking like a giantess. I layed on my back for this photo it made the subject look like she was floating in the air.



Photo of the cottage. Shadow has finally decided that he can't run far as he was tethered to a peg stuck in the lawn.



The boat house of the neighboring cottage. I had to to take several photo in order to get the horizon of this image straight.



Nice calm scene of the lake with a duck swimming close to shore but not close enough for my camera lens.



Roasting marshmallows on the fire.  It was a nice evening for a camp fire as the night was getting cold.




She stuck a feather in her head and called it....


This was the last image of the weekend.  As the rains came down and the rest of the weekend was spent indoors.

To view more images of the trip please visit  Flickr- Cottage Trip