I wanted to sell photos not only at a festival such as this – but to anyone, anywhere that may want one. Its nearing completion, so feel free to check out the website for Don Komarechka Photography: www.donkom.ca. Creating an e-commerce portal hasn’t been easy, but it certainly has been rewarding.

I’ve also made some pretty nifty business cards, brochures, banners, portfolio, etc. If you happen to be in Barrie this coming weekend (July 30 – Aug 2) come down and see me and the hundreds of other artists. I’ll be in spot 109A, which is near the park and washrooms.

Oh, and whats a blog post without a photo? Here’s one I took a recent Barrie Photo Club Outing (much more of these to come soon!)

… and you know what, I didn’t get a photo of the wonderful spread of food we brought. Wonderful sandwiches, cheeses and bread, and great dessert too! I did, however, try out some infrared photography, which was quite interesting:

It is interesting to see the world in a way that we can never see it. Our eyes cannot see infrared, yet it bounces around the world just like regular light. It acts a little differently though – it reflects heavily off of foliage, and almost not at all off of water and the sky. It can make for some very surreal looking landscapes – portraits too! (you’ll find one of Desi in the gallery below). Colour in infrared photos are always fake, so you can play with them and have fun, or make them black & white. Photos like that can help me open my eyes, a wonderful thing to do.

Desi and I had a great time, definitely going to do this again

The camp was originally built in 1929 as a reform school for young boys, and when WWII broke out it was a turn-key prisoner of war camp. Add fences and guard towers and you’re set. Because of this, the Germans had access to one of the best-outfitted camps ever – including a gymnasium and a swimming pool:

POW Camp 30 was completely self-sustaining. The germans had access to a nearby farm and grew their own food, prepared it and served it. They handled everything on their own with as little involvement from the Canadian military as possible, and this meant very little cost to keep the camp running. There are so many stories we heard about the place, from escape attempts to small riots, German vs. Canadian hockey games and how things ran inside the camp. All of it was fascinating to learn.

Brent and I both agree that the entire grounds should be considered a historic landmark, restored, and turned into a local attraction. A local developer that owns the land has other plans, but hopefully they can meet a compromise. This place should be here forever, for future generations to learn the stories of the past. Lest we forget.

For those unfamiliar with the place, it is essentially an entire village center with various businesses and workshops all staffed by people in period costumes. The village is circa early to mid 1800s and was simply fascinating to visit. We didn’t have very much time so we didn’t get to see it all, but we definitely want to go back and visit it again when we have more time. They even had a fully-operational microbrewery built to 1850 standards and a blacksmith heating and bending metal with period tools:

Our quick visit to the village was a fun adventure and reminded us both a little of our trip across Europe. Full gallery below:

There’s different crops of that one in the gallery below, too. I’m really enjoying my macro set-up, but it can be a real pain to use. The lens is manual-focus only, and on that scale your depth of field is a millimeter or less. Trial and error eventually results in shots like this:

Many of these photos were taken during an outing with the photo club to Milligan’s Pond here in Barrie. We went for the ducks, but I found my best shots were macro shots. It had been raining a little which helped to liven up the shots:

And yes, I found even more spiders.. you’ll find them in the gallery below. I’m hoping to get out and take a few more sets like this in the next few months, it was a great way to spend a morning.

I haven’t found much use for the camera in my iPhone except for occasional snapshots (mostly to send to Desi!), but when I was down taking photos at sunrise recently, I noticed my Canon 5D making such a nice silhouette against the sunrise. Without missing a beat I pulled out my iPhone and took this photo:

I was really happy with the results – even a tiny 3MP camera in my phone can take a great photo in the right place at the right time.

Oh, and a small confession about the sunrise photo in the post below. The ducks in the shot weren’t actually there, that was a little bit of photoshop magic. They were flying over Kempenfelt Bay, just in a different photo (from March 2009!). Thanks to Desi for helping me choose the number of ducks to include as well.

It certainly looks like those rowers have the best seats in the house! I need to go out and experience these sunrises more often… to think that such natural beauty exists in every day, and I am normally asleep until well after it is gone. A few more photos below!

I realized how expensive large prints are, especially on canvas. Buying my own large-format printer made sense in the long run, and printing for other people has already started to pay for it. Its a 24″ roll printer, so I can easily print off 24″x36″ prints, or even 24″x60″ or wider if I wanted. Here a shot of some of the things I’ve put together so far:

It has been quite the learning curve, especially with the canvas and applying protective coatings. I have all the kinks out of the process and I’m really enjoying being able to print any size I need on a whim. The control I have over the end result is wonderful, and the results are even better than I expected. A great investment for sure. I’m looking forward to reproducing some of Desi’s paintings with it as well!

The only downside is its size: this thing is huge! This is how it fits in my workspace:

The package contained something that I was quite happy to receive; inside was a great letter and a wonderful gift from Vietnam – Rose Tea:

The tea is effectively dried rosebuds in a package, such an intriguing idea to use roses as an herbal tea! Interesting fact: Roses are very closely related genetically to apples.

Anyhow, Desi and I decided to try out the tea, and I found it quite crisp and very aromatic, Desi found it wonderful as well – a great tea with a unique story! Desi and I both thought it was a nice romantic gift for us to share.

We also made a cup of it for Desi’s mom, and I think that out of the three of us, I enjoyed it the most – I love these special herbal teas. Thanks very much for the great gift James, I’m still shocked it made it through customs without a problem!

The poor spider was probably quite frightened, a giant predator is trying to trap it and blind it with the light of a thousand suns. Anyhow, I got the shot I was looking for and went on my way. The spider survived its close encounter and hopefully is now preying on mosquitoes an other annoying flies.

It was an interesting way to start my day.