The RedBarn & Family
We went up to the Red Barn north of Kenosee Lake a couple of Sundays ago. It’s quite the place. They have live entertainment, a market with all kinds of sellers and crafts and all around fun atmosphere. We checked it out for a while and used the opportunity to test out my 23mm f2 WR lens from Fuji. As I mentioned in my last blog post, it’s a stellar lens. Not too wide and not too close, that 35mm on full frame is nearly a perfect lens for human group life.
It allows you get a cool perspective on life. If you back up, you get more. If you get closer, you get more.
From the Barn we went into Kenosee lake park. I wanted to take some maternity pics of my wife before she had the baby. (This is the ideal way to do maternity photos. lol). For the maternity shoot I relied upon my 50mm Fuji lens. It’s a really sweet stunner at an oddish 76mm full frame equivalent. Not many lenses were made at that focal length which adds to the unique feel of the images it produces.
We went to the beach and let the kids splash and play a bit and I captured a few more candids using all the “FujiCrons”.
We finished out our time at Kenosee by capturing a few more family pictures by the chalet. It’s such an incredible building and asset to the park! I shot a lot in ACROS film simulation which I LOVE. I have no problem ditching Fuji’s amazing colour for Black and White when using ACROS. I know I could shoot RAW and have it all but I love the Fuji JPEGs so much that I don’t even bother. There is something magical about ACROS!
Scout Camp
As a kids I was involved with Cub Scouts. So when Oxbow got a scouting program we were keen to get involved. Our kids are in Beavers this year and we just had our first camping trip up to Kenosee Lake. It was a blast! We had such a great time and perfect weather. I threw in the trusty FujiFilm X100s. It totally held up in the winter conditions despite a lack of weather sealing. All in all it was a total blast!
X100sB&W
I must confess, ever since I got the Nikon Df, my X100s has been on vacation. I still love it to death. But I find that the Df gives me more versatility with my DSLR lenses. However, every time I go and re-pick up the X100s, I think I could totally sell all my DSLR gear and just go mirror less Fuji. They are so light and wonderful in almost every way. So compact. So handy and versatile. And of course, the B&W. I love shooting the X100s in black and white. I just love how the Fuji renders the files. I have to do virtually nothing to them providing I shot the exposure right in camera. I had it along as the image maker today and shot primarily in black and white. Most JPEG and a few RAW files – which are easy to edit into Black and White gold since Lightroom has got the Fuji camera profiles now. Quick user preset of wee exposure tweaks and you are golden. I love this camera!!! It was the perfect camera to enjoy a day up at Kenosee Lake with the family. 😎
Geocachin’
We went for a little adventure today that was close to home. Newborns have a way of halting any and all progress in life. heheheeh… 😉 So we grabbed the GPS and went to do a little geocaching. If you’ve never heard of geocaching before, its a high tech treasure hunt using satellites and the internet to locate caches hidden by other people. It’s a super fun, low-cost family activity. We found five caches today and got to see some pretty cool places up in the Moose Mountains and around Kenosee lake. The majority of the caches we found were at old one-room schools. It was neat to drive into the middle of nowhere and bam, there’s a school were oodles of kids went years ago. They’ve become the haunts of birds and coyotes now (and nerds with GPS units). 😎 The last site was in a beautiful open field where we had a picnic and nabbed some photos of the kids. I had a flash with me so we put it to good use in the middle of some dandelions. All in all a super fun day!
EDIT: Here’s the video we made from the day!
