The Barrie waterfront is one of my favourite spots to spend the day in the summer. However, April visiting is another story. Despite the warm sun it was horribly cold with strong bitter winds, we weren’t there for long. There is a beautiful large fountain on one of the penninsula’s that I wanted to photograph but it was not running this early in the season. I was disappointed to find that it was the same throughout the Barrie area – the interesting places I had hoped to photograph were not yet open to the public.
The Spirit Catcher Sculpture, an impressive Barrie Landmark at the waterfront. It dwarfed my three grandchildren, who were very good sports about yet another photograph even though they were freezing! I liked the distortion of the city in the background in this one, taken with a wide-angle lens; I’m thinking a fisheye just might be a fun addition to my equipment at some point. More on this sculpture and Barrie, ON here.
Despite the cold there were still people boating, fishing off the shore and walking the many pathways on this sunny Sunday. Even though we live in a more northern area of Ontario, we found the Spring dampness and cold strong winds of Barrie much harder to take!
Spotting this gorgeous green dress through the window drew me into our local art gallery, where I found much more than I had anticipated. Turns out I was looking at one piece of the Queen Elizabeth District High School’s, Grade 12 - Visual Arts Show. I thoroughly enjoyed the remarkable talent of these young students, not to mention the opportunity to photograph something very different for me.
This collection was my absolute favourite. The young artist is Nicole Maxwell, whose dress designs are based on the Alice in Wonderland character sketches you see behind them. In most cases they are works-in-progress, mounted on unique mannequins which really added to the display. A very talented young lady!
You’ll need to enlarge these first two thumbnails to fully appreciate the texture and design detail.
The “Mad Hatter” “Queen of Hearts”
Exposure and light were the big challenges here – I dispensed with room lighting and experimented with natural daylight and a combination of natural light and fill flash. I found the fill flash most effective for lightening the shadows and for those darker corners.
These are more of my favourites from the QEDHS Grade-12 Visual Arts Show. It was unfortunate that none of the young artists were available while I was there; after experiencing their talents I would have liked to learn more about them, their work and aspirations.
I’m not sure of the medium used for these portraits but I loved them and the arrangement of the collection on the wall. The artist is Alina Pringle, another very talented young lady.
Artist: Rebecca Crane Sections of a tree carving by Kyle Durante
From experience I know that the small art lights blow out in my pictures and I did not want to use flash on any of the wall art; I continued with only the natural daylight, the result being uneven lighting. I did break out a bit of flash for the wood carving images.
