I Sold My Boat

This was the ad that I had posted when I was selling my boat...

Now that I've finally had a chance to take pictures, I'm re-posting this ad. 

This boat is priced to sell!!  For $7000 You're getting a lot for your money.  

Here's what you get for your money:16 ft Lund Pike SS
35 hp Johnson motor (no need to mix gas and oil)
3 swivel seats - five seating positions including front and rear casting decks
Huge aerated live well
Lot's of locked storage including a rod locker
Minnkota Autopilot electric trolling motor c/w foot controls
Eagle Fish finder
Am / Fm / Cassette stereo
Two - two-piece paddles
Anchor
Fenders
One tarp for sure - maybe two (I might have another one in my garage)
Trailer and a Spare tire
Anything else I dig out of my garage before you take the boat away.

What do you need?
Boat is in great shape but it hasn't hit water for three summers.  You're going to need some stuff:
A new starter battery
A deep cycle battery for the Minnkota
A hub cap on trailer
Probably a tune up, (but this motor has always purred like a kitten)
Some new life jackets
A lake

Note... there is one thing wrong with the boat.  The tach does not work properly.  I'm guessing it's a loose wire because it works some times, but not always.  I just don't want there to be any surprises for the buyer.


This boat is currently on my driveway but will have to be moved soon before the city bylaw nazi's come around again.  If you want to see it, act fast.

Cash, certified cheque or money order only.  Local deals only - I will not ship this boat, cash your over-sized cheque and send you the difference or fall for other lame internet scams.  

Challenge #7: Summer Fun

You think a challenge like 'Summer Fun' would be a piece of cake in July!  Well, the first ingredient of that challenge would be summer.  We haven't had much of that around here this year.  In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to find three days in a row that have had real summer-like conditions.  Summer for us this year seems to be all about cold, wet conditions.  The May long weekend was snowy, parts of June saw sub-zero temps and highs of 10, 12 and 14 degrees are common in July.  Even the rodeo and chuck wagon events were canceled at the Calgary Stampede due to adverse weather conditions for the first time in anyone's memory.  Needless to say the Summer Fun challenge has truly been a challenge.

But hey, this is Canada and you have to take what you can get and make the best of it.  So, if the lakes and rivers aren't frozen, we'll call it summer no matter what it's like outside and we'll have some fun.  Which leads me to this weeks challenge.

My daughter agreed to pose for this shot under the threat of being grounded if she didn't.  Her mom happily agreed to shoot her with the water gun while I shot away.  This was shot during early evening and the light was still quite harsh, so I used the burn tool to recover some detail in her face and used a photo filter effect in Photoshop CS4 to warm up the overall image a bit, then used a mask to remove the effect of the filter from her teeth to keep them nice and white.  Some quick work with the spot healing brush got rid of some water drops that I didn't like and a couple of blemishes and that was it.

A simple shot capturing a moment of summer fun.

I printed this to an A4 sized sheet of Ilford Galerie Smooth Pearl Paper.  The Epson Stylus Pro 3800 successfully printed this image without issue.  The result was a smooth, warm and soft picture that looks great!  I'm really impressed with the quality of this printer when it works!! 

Challenge #6: Bloom

My first commissioned work!  Ok, it wasn't really commissioned... my wife asked me to shoot a Gerbera Daisy with the possibility of hanging the shot in our newly renovated bathroom.  Not sure if it will ever make the 'hanging' stage, but I shot the daisy in my studio.  Ok, it's not really a studio, just a bunch of gear that I drag into our family room every once in a while and play with my Nikon D300S or even my D80.  I needed to practice a little bit more with Nikon's Creative Lighting System so I used two SB-600's and the on camera flash as a commander to drive the two Speedlights.  I wanted as much control over the shot as I could get, so I used the amazing Nikon 70-200mm F/2.8 lens to give me a very shallow depth of field.

So, the original shot was the orange daisy.  I messed with it in Photoshop and replicated it a couple of times, each in a different color.  The current version is the last one I completed before I got bored.

I tried to print this on a large format (17x34") on my Epson Stylus Pro 3800 printer.  I continue to have problems with this printer and have lost confidence that it will work flawlessly every time I press print on my Mac.  In this case, it printed all of the orange daisy and about an inch of the blue one then it stopped.  The display panel said printing and the green light flashed away like it was doing something, but other than that, the printer was silent.  The Mac printer toaster poped up with the now familiar and very frustrating Communication Error and that was that.  Another print screwed.  More ink and paper wasted.  More nasty words. 

At least I was able to salvage 'something' from this print.  I ended up cutting the orange daisy off of the print (about 11x17") and giving it to my daughter.  I printed this on InkPress Luster paper.  The portion of the print that worked actually looked pretty nice!  It's a shame the Epson couldn't finish the job.  Maybe I'll try printing to the Epson from my PC and see if there's more success there.  Now onto the next challenge...

Challenge #5: Motionless

Credit goes to my wife for the inspiration for this shot.  We were out the other day when a motorcycle roared by us and I made the comment, "So that's what a motorcycle looks like when it's moving!"  It was at that moment that Shannon suggested my bike for this week's challenge.

Due to a lousy spring (weather wise) and being trapped by tools and materials for some renovations being done at our house my bike had been collecting dust - lots of it.    I wanted this shot to be stark and contrasty.  I also had to shoot the bike as-is, where-is since moving it even just the slightest little bit would show signs of handling the bike in the thick layer of dust.  That was a bit of a challenge, since the garage is full of stuff for the reno right now.

I hung a dark blanket on the wall to cover up the tools behind the bike.  I wanted a dark background and didn't want any tools to be a distraction.  I used a Nikon Speedlight SB-600 aimed directly at the bike on a light stand high enough to cast a shadow on the garage floor and door.   I liked how the light captured the dust at that angle and, for me, the shadow was critical to the shot, but the rest of the bike was being lost in the shadows.   I used a second SB-600 set to its minimum output and bounced it off the underside of a workbench that was right behind me.  The effect was what I was looking for... just a minimal amount of light on the tail light and rear fender to show where the end of the bike was with no effect on the rest of the bike or the shadows.

I did little post production on this shot.  I dropped the white balance a few hundred degrees to keep the overall feel of the image cool.  I removed a couple of distracting lens flares and I dodged the sidestand to make it stand out just a little in the shadows - an effort further convey 'motionless'.  The crop is as-shot.  Mostly because I couldn't get any wider, but I think it works well.

Right after this shoot I rolled the bike out onto the driveway, washed it and went for a ride.

I printed this to Ilford Galerie Classic Gloss Paper.  The paper has a bit of a graininess to it that I can't describe.  It's almost like the image has microscopic cracks in it.  I chose to print this image to glossy paper, but this kind of paper doesn't lend itself well to this kind of shot.   I expected more vibrant colors that I normally associate with glossy papers.