After being long time city folk living in the west end of Toronto, in Swansea to be exact, my wife Barbara and I decided to sell our Toronto home and cash in on the high prices that were to be had for real estate at that time. We were told by very smart people that the Toronto real estate prices would probably take a hit in the next year or so and being a prudent couple we decided to pickup and move to Cambridge, Ontario. We have been in Cambridge for five years now and the Toronto real estate market is still on the upswing, a little bit of a nag for us but we now have Cambridge. Now Cambridge sits on the Grand River in the county of Wellington and though it was quite a transition moving here, no subway, can you believe it, we have managed to fall in love with the natural beauty of this area. In Toronto it used to take well over an hour to get to the countryside, here it's at the end of the street, what a treat. There are many lovely areas to go, by car, by bike, by foot you can always find an amazing country vista, a number of large rivers and the big sky's that you forgot about living in the city. Wellington County is a perfect place to live for a photographer and when living in Toronto I had no interest in landscape photography but moving here it seems like a perfectly good discipline to explore.
Travelling around this area alway's yields terrific natural scenes and while driving walking or riding my bike I always carry a camera, there is always something to shoot around the next corner or over the next hill.
The banks of the Grand River are always a great place have a camera with you, any time of the year there is opportunity to capture images, it's a very beautiful place.
Any time of the season can offer up another interesting or naturally graphic scene the just begs to be photographed. The photograph above was taken in very late fall just before the freeze and it is of one off the many small streams that flow into the Grand River. I'm not a fisherman but I often see them with waders on throwing a fly rod, always looks like a peaceful thing to do, maybe I should try it one day.
The photograph above was taken of the same stream as the previous photo and I only had to cross over to the other side of the bridge I was standing on to get another view. It was cold outside but worth the effort.
I love going out when the weather is a little wild because that is when you can capture graphic natural images, a little fog is always a great visual element and really sets the mood for a landscape.
Just about every winter we get a day or two of hoar frost and it's always neat to get a shot on these days as the extremes of weather are a time to be out shooting, get out there!
Above is a photograph of the Paris, Ontario dam shot in high summer, the blurring is from using a perspective control lens which can also be used to draw the viewers attention to a certain part of the scene.
This photo is a composite of two images, one being the old railway overpasses that dot Wellington County and of coarse the cow who never thought it would find itself standing in the middle of a road. I love the idea of landscape photography and I will explore this style of photography further, there is something calming about taking time to see your surroundings to appreciate the natural beauty of the country side. Rural Ontario is a great place to live.