Cherry Trees and other photogenic things at High Park in Toronto

This past Saturday I took a little trip to High Park in Toronto to shoot the blooming cherry trees.  No, that's not a cuss word there, the cherry trees are in full bloom at this time of year.  Last year, Sonia and I went out to shoot them on Mother's day weekend - since they were late last year due to the late spring.  Well, let's just say that it was busier than I thought a park could possibly be.  It took us almost an hour to find parking, and then I had to settle for pictures with lots and lots of people in them.

This year I got up early, at the crack of dawn so to speak. I was at the park at 6:25 just prior to sunrise.  There were people there, but not nearly as many as before, and every one of them had a camera.  But as many people as there were, we were all there for a purpose, and pretty much stayed out of each other's way ...

Got some really cool shots :

Robin peaking through the blossoms

After a while, I had shot all the cherry blossoms that I came to shoot, but the park is much more than that.  I took a look at the flowers poking their heads out in the lawn, and the newly bloomed daffodils and hyacinths.  That's when I broke out the old macro lens - Nikon 60mm F2.8.  I love this lens ...  I took some shots with by Blackberry to show my setup on some of the shots as well for documentation purposes.

Thesetup to get the Violet shot. 
Note: Flash is turned off.

Rear Lit Daffodil

Lighting setup for the Daffodil shot

Yep, the camera is upside down

The last couple of shots of the Hyacinth were pretty cool.  The very last one was done using the setup above - the camera is upside down.  I framed using liveview and then auto focus as I could not get in close enough to use the viewfinder.  A lot of people stopped to watch me do this one, lying on my stomach trying to get the shot just right.  It's entirely worth it though, as I love the shot.

The tripod is a Manfrotto 190CXPRO3 carbon fibre with an 804/RC2 ball head.  It's nice and light (bought it for Banff).  IT goes almost flat and the centre coloum extends horizontally - what I used for this shot and the others.  It's an awesome tripod for this kind of thing, and it's rock solid - good enough to hold my D300S with a large lens on it.  Rock solid.

The Mount Jackson bridge - or whatever it's called ... :-)

I spent a lot of time in Virginia last year due to commitments with my job. On the road to the worksite, there is this covered bridge. I have shot this bridge a number of times, some of which are shown below. I am still not 100 percent satisfied with the shots, but it is getting closer to what I see in my head. I won't stop shooting this bridge, it's now one of my favourite subjects.

It is a source of great frustration as the bridge is currently in use, so you get set up for a shot and then a couple of cars come down the road and you have to move or take down a light stand, relatively quickly.  Also, there are other "tourists" looking at this bridge, walking along it, enjoying it.  They just don't realize that my ideas are more important than theirs ... :-)

Inside the bridge.

Under the bridge

An early attempt at the bridge.

Like I said, still not perfect... I won't stop until I get it the way I want it.  I'm going back in the spring this year so I will attempt to get some more.  The work at this site is pretty much wrapping up, so the trips down there will be fewer and far between as time goes on.  So I will have to make the most of my time down there.  Oh, and I have to do my actual job that I get paid for too ... stupid real life getting in the way of creativity ...  ;-)

Prophetic Fondant

My wife and I don't seem to have a lot of free weekends.  From shooting weddings to friends birthday and anniversary parties, we're pretty busy.  It's a good busy, as we really enjoy the company of our friends, and I am always happy when I have a camera in my hand.  A couple of years ago, my wife started making cakes for our friends and family.  It started off when she made one of our friends a cake for their son's birthday party.  Then she took a class - then another one.  Now it has grown to something that sees her making 30 plus cakes a year.  So now our weekends are NEVER free.  :-)  But again, at least it's something we love doing.

I want to take you back to my childhood very briefly.  My father was a police officer with Toronto, but his real passion was trains.  He was a model railroader.  He loved to build scenes and paint these little tiny characters.  It was a stress releif for him, after a hard day he would come home and "play with his trains" as my mother used to say.  But those trains were not toys, and we were not allowed to "play"  :-)

He modeled HO scale, which is pretty small.  My father was not a small man.  He had huge hands - something I have in common with him. I could never understand the patience he had to paint faces on these little figurines that were no taller than his thumb nail.  I could never figure it out - that is until recently.

My wife comes up with the cake ideas - she is the baker and creative director.  I am just labour - colouring fondant and icing, washing the bowls and mixer, that kind of stuff.  But I get DO to help with the details of the cake.  This is where I now, once again, find myself connecting with my father.  I can spend hours modelling fondant trees, or beer cans, or "angry birds" and not even notice the time.  It's very often that I find myself up late on Friday night rolling a bunch of fondant pearls for a wedding cake that we have to deliver on Saturday afternoon.  Here's one of our most recent cakes - one we did this weekend for a friend's son's 11th birthday.

Bird in the tree.  

I really enjoy putting the time and effort into a cake - but what really makes me smile is the look on the person's face that gets the cake.  In this case, Alek was very happy with his cake.  It makes all the late nights and all the back pain worth it.

Here's another cake we made last weekend for our friend's 40th birthday party.  To put the cake in context, you should know that this friend refers to herself as a "princess".

So when I'm not shooting or editing, I'm colouring fondant or modelling trees or trying to figure out how to support a four tier wedding cake.  But it does keep me out of trouble ... ;-)

A wedding cake that Sonia and I recently completed.  The lace is modeled after the bride's dress.

Who knew that a piece of pink fondant would help me understand my father just a little bit more.  I wish I would have come to this understanding while he was still alive, but if he was around he would probably tease me about "playing with fondant" or something ... :-)

BANFF in February --- Yeah, you heard me!

I love photography.  It's a passion of mine.  I read a lot about photography, I research techniques and tools - basically I try to get as much exposure as possible to the world of photography.

I subscribe to some magazines about photography, and one in particular runs a two page ad every month for something called the Mentor Series.  It's a company that arranges outings for like minded people, those that want to get that shot of a lifetime but don't really know where to start - or want the seminar feeling.  Before Christmas, they started running an ad for Banff National Park in Alberta.

One day, I came home from work and my wife had the magazine.  She said "you need to book this" and handed it to me, open to the page for the Banff trip.  Seemed like a lot of money to me at the time, but she was insistant - saying that it could be my Christmas and Birthday present all wrapped into one.  So I booked it.

The trip ran over the past two weeks, and man, was it ever worth the money.  The group was 30 people, plus two mentors and one organizer - our tour guide if you will.  Did they ever take good care of us.  Michelle from the Mentor Series was on the ball every day - our itinieary would change from day to day to deal with the weather (who wants to take a shot of a grey sky in the am).  She made sure things ran smooth and on time.

Our two mentors,  Layne Kennedyand Daniel J Cox were excellent.  They both had different styles, and would have different suggestions on how to make your pictures better.  It was an excellent experience by all accounts.

The way it works is that you shoot all day, take a dinner break, download your images, select 5, go to a digital review session with either Layne or Dan, get pointers from them, then do it all again the next day.  4 days of this.  It's more like work than a vacation, but how can it be work when it's something that you love?

The shots below are just a sample of the 200+ images I came away with.  I shot about 2000 images, but I weeded them out to this sample. 

Info hut in front of Lake Louise.  The lake itself was frozen, and the sky would not co-operate that day, but this gives you an idea of what it looked like.  Oh, and that's a mountain in the background in case you were wondering ... :-)

Michelle hired these three snow boarders to go up and down the mountain for us for about 2 hours.  Tough job, but someone's got to do it.. ;-)

Vermillion lakes at sunset.  There is no real conventional sunset in Banff, as it's too high and ringed by mountains.  But you do get some nice colour on clear days - this was not one of those days ... :-)

Alpineglow.  This is what goes for a sunrise.  The sun catches the top edge of the mountain.  Fleeting moment, lasts for about 10 minutes.  You better have your camera dialed in.

A (new) blog is born

Recently I took a photography class, and as part of that class, I had to create a blog and keep it updated. I have had blogs before, but never really found things to write about. In this class, I wrote mostly about wedding photography, but I also threw some personal stuff in there.

Over the coming days I will be transferring those blogs that I liked here. Sprinkled in with those blogs will be new blog entries. But only those of you (the 7) that followed the Placeandtime weddings blog will know the old blog from the new .... :-)

Stay tuned, this oughta be fun!