Inside Caledon, Ontario

I’ve noticed a lot of crows in the Caledon area the last couple weeks, they are ugly birds but I thought I’d take a picture of one anyways. Apparently Ontario’s crow population has been on the rise for the past decade and several communities have battled with the birds. In Chatham, Ontario for instance, 160,000 birds dropped in without warning in 1999. When noisemakers, bright lights and other scare tactics failed to work, the town was divided over whether officials should begin shooting large numbers of crows. In the end, a company was commissioned to frighten the pests away with birds of prey, like owls and falcons.

The above main photo is actually an HDR (High dynamic range imaging) image I created with a program called Photomatix. HDR imaging normally consists of taking several pictures of the exact same frame with each frame moving from a dark exposure to a light exposure, then combining the pictures. HDR photos can also be created from single shots using the original Raw image file. This allows for a photo in which the darkest and lightest parts of the picture have detail, where a single photo of normal exposure won’t have detail in these areas.

When processing a HDR image you will usually Tone map the image, tone mapping is a technique used in image processing and computer graphics to map a set of colours to another; often to approximate the appearance of high dynamic range images in media with a more limited dynamic range. Print-outs, CRT or LCD monitors, and projectors all have a limited dynamic range which is inadequate to reproduce the full range of light intensities present in natural scenes. Essentially, tone mapping addresses the problem of strong contrast reduction from the scene values (radiance) to the displayable range while preserving the image details and color appearance important to appreciate the original scene content. Not everyone like this technique. Some people think it is not real or it makes a shot look too fake, how you create a HDR image and tone map it is largely a subjective thing as there is many different styles and approaches to it that can be made. The image to the right is the original unedited image so you can see the difference.

Wild Turkeys in Ontario almost vanished and were not seen widely for many years due to years of logging and unregulated hunting. Fortunately the birds were re-introduced to Ontario 20 years ago and now the province wide population of wild turkeys has now reached over 100,000 and are a common sight in Caledon. You will see them in farmers fields, open spaces, along side roads and even in people’s driveways. For more on Wild Turkeys, click here. These particular turkeys I took pictures of were all walking up someones driveway, it was late in the day with the sun almost coming down so as a result the pictures are a little dark but it was the first real good chance for me to get some close-up shots.

Chickadees are everywhere in Ontario not just Caledon but its still nice to see them all winter when most birds are away. Here are some close up macro shots I took of these little birds with my Olympus 70-300mm zoom lens. They are easier birds to take pictures of as you can get fairly close to them without frightening them away.

Ever since moving to the Caledon area and now that I have a better camera I have wanted to play with taking some shots of the nighttime sky. Last weekend it was clear enough to take some pictures so I went outside into the bitter cold around midnight and setup my cam on the tripod. It took a while to figure out the right settings, this was actually my second attempt at taking pictures of the stars, the first time was not so successful but I learned a fair amount from that experience. This time it returned much better results. In the first photo you can see the light pollution of our urban cities on the horizon, Orion is also visible. In the next two pictures below you can see the Big Dipper. Click on the images for larger pictures. In case you are wondering, these are my camera settings: Manual Mode, Exposure 20 seconds, IS0-800, Fstop 3.5 @ 14mm

Does anyone know what happened to the Tim Hortons that was at Highway 50 and HWY 9 (Palgrave)?

I noticed it closed not too long ago and was then surprised to see them tearing it down this past week. This particular location has always been very busy especially in the mornings so I don’t think the reason was a lack of business. I don’t think they are putting a larger one in there as there isn’t much space available there, the majority of the business was drive thru anyways.

I took these pictures this past Monday morning fresh from the weekend thaw I caught this small herd of deer on outskirts of Bolton. If you are heading south this is the very last field before you hit bolton, the Albion-Bolton District Park is across from it. The deer were quite the attraction this particular morning, many people were either slowing down to look or stopping to watch for a moment and I wasn’t the only one snapping a few pictures. I took these photos with my trusty zoom lens (Olympus 70-300mm). Despite it being so close to the town of Bolton the deer do seem to frequent this field often, I have seen them here numerous times in the morning around 8-9am so you just need to keep your eye out for them.

While driving to work every day along highway 50 I often see a number of hawks. For the longest time I was trying to get a good close up shot of one but didn’t have much success until recently. The hawk above I managed catch just south of Bolton near the Toyota Dealership, unfortunately I only managed to get one close up picture before he took off. The larger hawk pictures below are from the Palgrave area, just south of Highway and the last picture is a baby Hawk also just south of Bolton.

Today I was just driving up and down several Caledon side roads hoping I might come across something neat. While on Coolihans Sideroad which is just south of Highway 9 and caught this little guy in the corner of my eye. He didn’t like me looking at me so fled up the tree initially but when he realized I only wanted to take a picture he reluctantly came back to his original spot and got back to his dinner.

I found this little guy a red headed woodpecker inside the Palgrave Conservation area. Unfortunately it had started to snow at the time but I was determined to get a picture of him so once I spotted him I slowly stalked him into the deep woods and with my brand new zoom lens (Olympus 70-300mm) for my SLR I caught these photos of him. Due to the low lighting and snow falling I adjusted the images in Photoshop and Photomatix to bring out the colour some more and smooth it out. Click on the photos to open larger images.

Welcome to my new blog “Inside Caledon” , I decided to create this new blog in order to showcase some of my photography which has become a new hobby as well as to share some of my experiences as I explore the Caledon and surrounding areas. I imagine most visitors to this site will be residents of the area most of which have probably been here a lot longer than I have. I decided along with my fiance to leave the city of Toronto just over a year ago in part because of a health scare I had but also to have more land and a larger house that was simply not possible any where near the big city. I welcome your comments and if you have any suggestions for locations to shoot photos please let me know.

– Andrew