Wallpaper November 2009

So does this mean I won? The last screen saver I shared with you back in May stumped everyone! I don’t remember that ever happening before.

I have to admit the aerial view makes this place look entirely different than it does from “terra firma.” The silhouetted trees in the foreground aren’t on an island, they’re on a point. It’s Kring Point State Park. Perhaps some of you will now recognize it. I don’t know much about this area as I was hoping you’d fill me in about it, but that's the east end of Goose Bay in the background, just a few miles downstream from Alexandria Bay.

Seeing as how no one offered an explanation and story to share, I’ll take the opportunity to share some of my news. Despite a slow start to summer weather wise, it didn’t disappoint. No summer on the River ever does. What was exceptionally pleasing was capturing several new “keeper” images which gets ever harder to do.

 As my good friend, Carl Hiebert (an award winning Canadian photographer and author) once observed to me; “The more you work at capturing quality shots of a place, the more difficult it becomes to shoot better ones.”

He’s quite right. The higher the bar gets, the harder it becomes to nudge it still higher. Increased effort brings diminishing returns. I recently did an analysis of my library, collected over a dozen years to see how many shots I needed to take to capture good ones. Note that it’s not about quantity, but about getting the right light and circumstance, which doesn’t happen often and isn’t predictable but tenacity is occasionally rewarded.

More than half of the shots I take get discarded immediately. What remains numbers a little over 30,000, so well over 50,000 shots would have been taken in total. My personal rating system gives out one to five stars for the best of these. Only 4,231 (1 in 7) of the 30,000 shots I felt worth keeping warranted a single star or higher.

Realize that when you do hit the right conditions, there may be a dozen or more similar shots of the same subject, all earning some number of stars, so the number of unique images of merit is significantly less than what follows. Here are the numbers:

1 star = 2970 (one in 10 shots)
2 stars = 776 (one in 39)
3 stars = 299 (one in 100)
4 stars = 166 (one in 180)
5 stars = 20 (one in 1500)

I had captured only eighteen 5-star images in 12 years of pretty intensive photography and until my last week on the River hadn’t captured one in three years. Then I got incredibly lucky, getting two in the final days! What a great way to end the season.

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I have a new book in the works in which I will share them. I’ve been planning it for some time, but this summer Volume III sold out, so this project moved to the front burner. I’ve kept a few of those books to service the web site and most stores still have some, but the warehouse is empty.

Rather than reprint it, I decided I should publish a new book, a compilation of the very best photographs I’ve ever taken. I’m happy to say that almost half of them will be entirely new, not making the cut simply because of being new, but because they made it through a very fine sieve. I’m really excited about this book and looking forward to getting it into the hands of 1000 Islanders who might appreciate it, early next summer.

So for this month’s screen saver I’ll leave you with an image that didn’t make the cut, but was captured on one of those rare mornings when everything came together to produce another image that did. As always, a set of prints awaits the person who can identify the location and share an interesting story about it. 

Download in the following sizes: 1152 x 864, or wide format  1680 x 1050 

Enjoy!

Ian Coristine

P. S. Immediately prior to this first image of the winter season being posted, Great Lake Swimmers released a new music video of their song "Palmistry." It is the first track from their acclaimed album "Lost Channels" which was recorded in part at Singer Castle, the Brockville Arts Centre and Rockport's St. Brendan's Church during the fall of 2008. Thanks to Simon Fuller and Bytown Brigantine, the filming of Palmistry took place aboard their tall ship "Fair Jeanne" as she sailed through the Thousand Islands in September 2009.

Take a couple of minutes to enjoy Vision Entertainment's brand new music video of Palmistry by clicking on "CAM" in the menu bar or use this direct link: http://www.1000islandsphotoart.com/Cam/GreatLakeSwimmersPalmistry.aspx
 

Download wide-angle version

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