January 2, 2012 by Rob Huntley

A Winter Walk by the Ottawa River

I’m fortunate to live a few minutes walk from the Ottawa River just west of Westboro Beach. I often head there with my camera when light or weather conditions present an interesting opportunity. I went to the river on New Year’s Eve, prompted by huge globs of snowflakes falling from the sky in the hope of capturing some action blurring of falling snow. By the time I got out there the conditions had changed so that plan was off, but I was thankful to have been prompted to get outside because the conditions were still quite nice in other ways.

This first image was taken on the way to the river. The trail to the right is a bike path in the summer. The trail to the left is a short cut taken primarily by dog walkers and people heading to and from the Dominion Transitway station.

Split in the trail near the Ottawa River Parkway in the Westboro area of Ottawa, Ontario

The river is frozen over now as we enter the coldest time of the winter season here in Ottawa. Snow levels are still lower than one would expect but there is still lots of time for more. The tree in this image and several others has been photographed many times by me. It is the point of the shoreline that is more or less closest to my home.

Ottawa River shoreline in winter.

Here’s another shot including the same tree but a bit further away and including a nice clump of freeze-dried cattails.

Cattails along the Ottawa River shoreline in winter. This location is just 10 minutes by foot from my house.

Freeze-dried cattails and a view across the Ottawa River. Québec is on the far side.

Cattails along the Ottawa River shoreline in winter.

Desolation. A lonely shoreline weed on the Ontario side of the Ottawa River and a view across the barren, frozen emptiness looking towards the Québec side of the river.

Dried plant poking though the snow along the Ottawa River shoreline in winter.

Run off from city of Ottawa streets makes it into the Ottawa River through a number of storm sewer outlets. In the winter, road salt may be included in the flow. In summer, soap from car washing, pesticide runoff from lawn treatments, … In the distance is the same tree shown above.

Storm sewers along the Ottawa River.

Not far from Westboro beach, this tree stands just far enough from its neighbours to give a sense of isolation in a tightly framed photograph.

A tree along the Ottawa River shoreline in winter.

Click on an image to go to the same image on my website.

cattails art / cattails photos / cattails greeting cards
bullrushes art / bullrushes photos / bullrushes greeting cards

Like Rob Huntley Photography on Facebook.

January 22, 2011 by Rob Huntley

KAP 2011-1: Petrie Island, Ottawa, Ontario – January 16, 2011

Winter Scene at Petrie Island on the Ottawa River.

This was my first KAP session (Kite Aerial Photography) in many months for various reasons and I was feeling a bit rusty. It was also my first session for the 2011 calendar year. I was fighting a cold/flu and the temperature was very cold (-27C with wind chill). Nevertheless, there was a Camera Club of Ottawa outing planned for Petrie Island in the Ottawa River and I enjoy the club outings with or without kite aerial photography equipment. Also, I’d recently had a request from a Carleton U. journalism student who was interested in a KAP demonstration for a school project. Check out the resulting video clip she prepared in a separate blog post titled Kite Aerial Photography – a report on yours truly.

I KAPped for about an hour and a half using my Fled kite and the fully remote controlled rig using my Dunecam system. Technical issues were on hand with cold batteries and the like but I did manage a few interesting shots. Most of my shots were of the ice fishing huts in the bay just downstream of the islands and off the beach. I had to reel in the equipment several times to restart the remote shutter even though the batteries were operating well enough in the cold to shoot pictures. I’ve found even on warm days that if I fire the shutter too rapidly between consecutive shots there is a breakdown in the link between the camera and the ground remote. This seems to be amplified by the further away the camera is and/or by how low the battery charge is. Although I have used the system to over 600′ on a summer day with strong batteries, on this day I was having problems with sending the camera more than 150′ away, presumably because of the cold effect on the camera batteries. The batteries for the rig and the remote seemed to respond fine.

Lots more possibilities in terms of subjects and angles were on offer but we bailed out with enough blood flowing in the hands to allow for the time it takes to retrieve the equipment. We joined up for coffee with the rest of the outing participants at Orleans Mall.

In hindsight, I might have done better with autokap gear on this day, and perhaps there are some lessons for future really cold days:

1. My autokap rig would have been quicker to set up, exposing my hands to the cold for a shorter period of time (I wear sailing gloves with the end of the thumb and forefinger exposed to allow me to deal with the intricacies of setting up the camera and rig).

2. I could have done most of the session using the sheepskin type mitts that I sometimes slip over my gloves to warm up my hands which are pretty useless for controlling the remote control but with autokap I would simply have to hold the spool.

3. My issues with losing communication between camera and my remote due to low battery power would have been eliminated. Although the batteries suffered from the cold, the camera would probably have lasted much longer by itself on the autokap rig than with it having to communicate with earth in the remote controlled rig. I wouldn’t have had to wind in to restart the remote shutter function, losing time and getting colder in the process.