On July 13, we took part in the CHOUETTE À VOIR excursion organized by the Town of Mount Royal recreation center.
Chouette à voir! is the showcase that allows the public to follow the work of the Quebec Union for the Rehabilitation of Birds of Prey (UQROP). The mission of UQROP is the conservation of birds of prey and their natural habitats.
UQROP- Mission
I took lots of photos of birds of prey in flight!
Here is a small selection, You will be able to see: 1 Kestrel, 1 Great Horned Owl, 1 Red-shouldered Hawk, 1 Peregrine Falcon, 1 Broad-winged Hawk, and 2 Owls
I am experimenting with Pastel.
I attended drawing classes for several years, starting with simple drawing and moving to live model and portrait. I decided to focus on portraits. It is a bigger challenge; in live model (we do not take a photo of the model), we can make an exceptionally beautiful drawing that does not necessarily look like the model or the pose. On the other hand, for portraits, one can, and in general I do, take a photo of the model; it takes a lot of effort and skill to find the resemblance!
I had already drawn in pastel in some of the classes but nothing serious and the results were quite primitive.
As I said in another article, I am taking advantage of my time at home during this pandemic to draw. I continue with portraits and decided to try the pastel. I have several books on the subject and of course I am looking for tutorials on the web. Mastering it takes time but that does not put me off, I try all kinds of stuff.
I have several boxes of chalk and a box of 24 Faber-Castel pencils for details. Right now, I am drawing on Canson Mi-teintes paper in different colors.
At the initiative of one of the students, since we cannot attend classes, a small group decided to draw (at home) a model every week and to share our work.
Several sites offer photos of models for artists. We take turns choosing a model and each one chooses the pose and medium he/she wants. On Wednesdays we email our work to the group. It is very stimulating to see what other people are doing. As far as I am concerned it encourages me to improve and try other techniques.
One of us volunteered to put this on the web, here is the link.
Here is what I have drawn so far, in chronological order:
Latest update Feb 26 2022:(click on an image to start slideshow)
Every Saturday since May I go on an image hunting expedition at the Technoparc in Montreal. It is a preserved wetland where birds of all kinds swarm. I have listed 25 species and I am sure there are many more!
I am using a Nikon D750 with a 200-500 zoom lens. Usually I take my pictures there at extremely high speed, typically between 1/1000 and 1/2000 of a second. And often I “shoot” in bursts of 3 to 6 photos per second. This is how I managed to take some intersting sequences that I present to you here.
Some shots are not as sharp as I would like them to be because either the birds are really very far away and therefore I do a lot of cropping to represent them, or the light conditions are not ideal and since I am working at very high speed necessarily the ISO increases and the grain too! For “post-processing” I use Adobe’s Lightroom.
The sequences
(Click to see)
Egret taking flight
Egret landing
Egret fishing
Woodpecker the mating season
I have also prepared a slideshow of a selection of the best photos from this season. You will see photos of the following species:
Egret, Goose, Night heron, Cardinal, Blackbird, Goldfinch, Greater Yellowlegs, Starling, Falcon, Canadian Jay, Heron, Green Heron, Swallow, Black Swallow, Waxwing, Kingfisher, Blackbird, Tit, Sparrow, Flycatcher, Warbler, Woodpecker, Flaming Woodpecker, Common Tyrant, Hawk
The slideshow
The most beautiful photos
In this period of confinement because of the COVID-19 virus, I spend my time drawing portraits from sketches or photos.
I created a slideshow using JSSOR. I used the opportunity to try to understand how it works, it’s not obvious, especially if you want to use it with JQUERY. Here is the result:
Drawing Portraits
Photography | Nabil | 
Friday July 15th, 2022 03:47 PM | 
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