The Scouts and I seemed to enjoy the chickens, ducks, geese and assorted poultry. I found them more than a little frustrating to shoot--as they moved quickly about. My poor Fujifilm point and shoot struggled to focus and keep up with them. I decided that I would have to live with shallow depth of field, blur and the general impression of being out of focus.
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| Cooped Geese |
Whilst looking for something interesting to shoot and still thinking of poultry, I stumbled upon a display of chicks. Cute, fluffy, yellow chicks. Time to use the super macro feature on my camera. Get in real close. As I mentioned to Georgette on Flickr: "They were actually quite scary up close--with their beady black eyes and long beaks."
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| Chick Fluff |
One of my favourite subjects from past visits to The Royal is the cleaning/washing/showering area, where the cattle are brought in for a good scrub. I didn't get any shots of water spraying about this year, but I did manage to capture the stare of a steer[?].
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| Bovine Gaze |
The butter sculpting lady was in the refrigerator working on her art. I was able to photograph her as she was about to move a tray/platform containing three intricate butter trees. Amazing work, and fun too.
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| Butter Treeos |
And of course, there were the displays of the largest and the tallest, the perfect and the ideal. I took some photos of the gigantic pumpkins and the glowing apples, with the results not being very interesting. However, I did take some shots of perfect prize winning cobs of corn. The results were ordinary and rather uninteresting. Converting to black and white, and adding some colour (toning) in Photoshop Elements gave it new life. The kernels look three dimensional.
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| Prized Cobs |
* "The Royal Agricultural Winter Fair, colloquially called The Royal, is an annual fall fair in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, which takes place over two weeks in November. Inaugurated in 1922, and originally housed in the Coliseum, on the grounds of Exhibition Place, the event has expanded to also take up the Direct Energy National Trade Centre, and remains an important exhibit for livestock breeders."
Wikipedia
This is my first blog posting. Kinda fun. Kinda frustrating.
Great blog Jeff with an interesting collection of images and words. You've set the bar high :)
ReplyDeleteCongrats on your first blog post.
ReplyDeleteI think the key is to add entries on a schedule -- like 2-4 per week. I love doing photo posts because the pictures do 90% of the work. It's the wording that frustrates me.
Cheers to entry #1. J.