Dog Days of Summer

Australian Blue Heeler

We are going through yet another heat wave in the city. Lori had dried laundry in the backyard. She must have brought in a Cicada in the laundry basket. We are seeing them everywhere right now. I took this opportunity to take a set of stacked images to increase depth of field. The image below is a composite of 11 images, each with a different focus point. This method works well as long as your subject doesn’t move.

Dog-day Cicada or Heatbug

It has been a turbulent summer for us and for Toronto.

Toronto Nathan Phillips Square

There are times when I feel like I need to just keep my head down and weather the storm. Music is often what I turn to when I need to escape. We went to see Brandi Carlile in June. She was one of the last few performers at Massy Hall before it closed for renovations. I have witnessed many great concerts in my life but this was the best yet and in the best venue in the country. This grand old hall has been a part of my life since I was in grade school. My first visit was to see a quintet made up of members of the Toronto Symphony Orchestra. I can’t remember what grade I was in but it was around grade 6. With many visits since, I have watched my heroes play their hearts out on this stage: Bruce Cockburn, Stevie Ray Vaughn, BB King and Emmylou Harris. So many great shows. I have really enjoyed Massey Hall.

Massey Hall Toronto ON

Massey Hall Toronto ON

We spent a bit of time in Eastern Ontario and Quebec this summer and visited Gatineau Park for a few days. It is an interesting place. There are many lakes and trails to discover. We hiked into the Carbide Willson Ruins, near Meech Lake. I hope to go back again this fall and photograph this scene in fall colour.

Carbide Willson Ruins, QC

To end off the summer, we spent a bit of time with family in Brockville.

Brockville City Hall, ON

We then headed north to Manitoulin Island via highway 17. It was quite smoky in some areas from all of the forest fires.

Manitoulin Morning

Summer is never complete without a trip to the north shore of Lake Superior. We spent time in Lake Superior Provincial Park and in Pukaskwa National Park.

Bathtub Island, Lake Superior Park ON

Bathtub Island, Lake Superior Park ON

Canoe in Pukaskwa National Park, ON

North Beach Pukaskwa National Park, ON

I hope things settle down for awhile. For us and for Toronto…

How Appropriate!

Ice and Water

When we picked this image for our holiday card, we had no idea how appropriate it would be. Lori and I had travelled to Brockville on Thursday to spend a couple of days with my mom. We drove through the ice storm to get home on Saturday Dec. 21st. The lights flickered a few times just before we went to bed. The power went off at 2 am. That’s when all hell broke loose. The tree in our front yard started to splinter. A big branch fell around 4 am. We jumped out of bed. It just missed the back of the van but took down our power line and laid it on top of the van. Another branch crashed to the front of the van. It was scary.

Ice Storm Fallout

The rain was still falling. Our neighbourhood looked like a war zone. We could see transformers sparking as bright as lightning all around us. The power came back on for about 5 minutes around 5 am. Our power line was still live. It was lying across the van and went up to the pole about half way across the street. When the power finally went out for good we watched the temperature in the house drop and drop. We could not get out our front door for the tree branches. In the morning, I went out the back door. The power stack above the meter was smashed to pieces. Lori and I are used to cold temperatures and living off the grid. We could charge our cell phone and cook food outdoors. We also had lots of flashlights, batteries and candles. My biggest worry was getting killed by falling ice and trees. I also worried about our pipes freezing. We called an electrical contractor. He came right away to assess and later that evening came back with a bucket truck to temporarily reconnect our power line. They came back the next day to repair our conduit above the meter so we were ready for the power when it did come on. They even cleared the downed tree behind the van so we were able to get out and get more supplies.

It would be dark by 4:30. We read books under blankets on the couch. With half a dozen candles burning we kept the temperature around 45 degrees F. We were more comfortable once we went to bed. I started writing limericks in the night. We were soon giggling. Lori joined in and we were laughing so hard we were crying. You make the best of it. It’s all you can do. And no, I won’t repeat the limericks. They were too dirty!

I looked at generators. There was one at Canadian Tire but it was not big enough to run much. I decided to get RV Antifreeze and winterize the pipes.

Ice & Snow

After 3 days in the cold we moved to Lori’s sister’s place. We had a warm bed and great company to keep our spirits up as we watched the news and waited. Thank you Marta and Joe for your hospitality! You made a difficult time fun and enjoyable. We came back to check on the house everyday. It got down to 34 degrees on the main floor and 40 in the basement. It never did freeze.

Friday morning, we got a text from our neighbour that the power was back on. We drove home and checked everything. To our relief, everything was fine. We will need to do some cleanup in the yard but all in all, it could have been much worse.

Happy New Year!

It's Spring!

Winter's thaw, Murphy's Point - Click for larger

I can remember when I was a kid growing up in the Ottawa Valley. Our home was on a rural side road near the village of Lombardy. Winters were long and cold. A friend took me ice fishing on Big Rideau Lake in late March one year. There was so much ice we had a hard time cutting through it so we could fish. I wouldn’t go near the ice these days.

Bon Echo Provincial Park - Click for larger

It should be an interesting spring this year. It will be hard to predict when and what will be in flower. The trees in our area are already starting to bud.

Mayapple flower - Click for larger

Will Mayapple have to be renamed Aprilapple? I hope not. Everyone seems to be so happy to be done with winter. It is hard to not get caught up in the great weather.

Dutchman's Breeches - Click for larger

However I feel a sense of loss. Without a real winter, I’m not sure I appreciate the coming of spring as much as I usually do. I'm also worried about the record temperatures. This really is a game changer. We received half the normal snowfall this year in our area.

It was 22 degrees last week in Winnipeg. WINNIPEG! That can’t be good…

Lori and I were out for a walk this week. I could hear a Mockingbird singing. We looked around and saw it sitting in a bush at eye level. We walked 3 blocks back to the house to get my gear. It was still in the same spot when we got back.

Mockingbird - Click for larger

I also had a good shoot with some students last week on Algonquin Island, one of the Toronto Islands. It was quite warm and we had good light for a Toronto skyline shot.

Flag Waving in Toronto - Click for larger

I have to wonder though with all this warm weather, will we be seeing Palm Trees on the Toronto horizon?

Toronto - Click for larger

Go Big or Go Home!

I have been using Photoshop to create digitally stitched panoramic images for many years, even back in my days of using film. Now I often shoot 5 or 6 overlapping digital images to create a large panorama.

Tombstone Viewpoint - Click for larger

They print beautifully and Photoshop stitches single row images so well that I have very little work to do to finish the images.

Cloud Reflection - Click for larger

We have had several single photos printed as very large panoramic images for corporate interiors. Our images have also been used for billboards. Most recently this image was reproduced as a billboard in England:

Kayaks at Inverness - Click for larger

The above image was shot on Medium Format slide film and scanned with a film scanner. These scans are 500 MB 16 bit images. They look quite beautiful blown up bigger than life size with the largest reproduction being over 20 feet wide. The largest single digital image I have had commercially reproduced was 17 feet wide, shot with my 1Ds Mark III. It looks great a long as you don’t Pixel Peep too much.

Thomas Moran at 44 Wide introduced me to the Gigapan Epic Pro. The images he is shooting with this device are stunning! Large beautiful images that have astonishing detail. I have been testing this Gigapan and plan to add it to my landscape workflow. Although it’s not practical for some situations, the Epic Pro allows you to stitch several rows of images creating mind-blowing resolution. I have stitched up to 88 images together, creating a 1.67 GB image.

Toronto Gigapan - Click for larger

The set up is quite simple.
Here is my work-flow:

1. Charge batteries.



2. Mount the Epic Pro on the tripod.



3. Mount the camera on the Epic Pro and connect the release cable.



4. Determine the zoom setting for the lens.



5. Level the unit.



6. Camera Setup. Pick a point in your image. From the main Menu, select Camera Setup. Adjust so that an object in your scene is at the top of the frame. Once you set this point, move the camera down so that this same point is at the bottom of the frame. This will determine how much the unit must move to overlap the images.



7. Focus your lens and then switch to manual focus.



8. From the main menu, select New Panorama.



9. Set the upper left of the scene. Then set the lower right.



10. Shoot the panoramic.

I always shoot in RAW. This gives me the best image quality and flexibility when processing. I process the images in Lightoom and output them as full resolution jpegs and then bring the images into the GigaPan Stitch software. Once the images are loaded the screen looks like this:
Once processed the image will need some editing and cropping:
There is still a lot to learn about the Gigapan. It certainly slows you down when you are capturing over 70 images. I will continue to share my results as I progress.

The Canary: Almost Gone

I have been driving by the old Canary Restaurant in Toronto's Distillery District for years. I've also dropped in and had coffee with a friend, or driven by when they were using it as a movie set and I have recognized the place in several films and TV shows.

The Canary closed down in April 2007. I'm not sure of its fate.



We were heading home on Sunday and decided to stop and take a few photographs. I shot with a Canon 1Ds Mk III and a 16-35mm lens. Later I converted them to Black and White and added a diffused glow in Photoshop.

These old buildings hold so much character and texture.








(The 2 images shown above and to the right are the same image - just adjusted differently in Photoshop. Which do you prefer?)













I must get out and do more of this around town. So much to do and so little time!