Flock

They are, in fact, flying in a southward direction...

Michael Snow's "Flight Stop" in Toronto's Eaton Centre.

Lohan in the Dark

This shot is a simple "point the camera and hit the shutter to see what the result might be" shot.

f2.8
1/125 of a second (with anti vibration to win me a couple stops of light)
70-200mm 2.8 AV at 125mm

At an ISO of 400 this shot is nothing but black. At 400 with a much slower shutter an image appears, but is too blurred at that shutter speed on the long lens to be usable. At 800 with the above exposure (2.8 & 1/125) you can begin to see The Buddha's faithful Lohan in the shot, but not in any detailed way. Those variable I tried after this getting this shot.

This was shot at ISO 6400. Sharpened for the web. NO noise reduction applied. Yes, grainy as hell with noise, but frankly it makes the shot of a 150 year old statue with its own textures of cracked wood and cracked and peeling paint.

Not an award winning photo, but the resulting effect of the noise is great, me thinks -- plus, of course, there is an image to behold in the first place with the luxury of keeping the shutter fast enough to eliminate most shake while the high ISO grabs every bit of light you've got...

A couple more

Toronto Winter Flora

Toronto's Allan Gardens Conservatory.

These are right out of the camera with some sharpening for the web, and some slight cropping. I have to shoot in jpg as there's no conversion software to read NEF (raw) files yet for Mac's new operating system. These are shot with auto white balance and without any in camera colour play (which the D3 allows for when shooting jpeg, so any manipulation is done before compression). Anyway, strong colours from the new D3 sensor as you can see.

Shot with auto white balance. Also shot with auto ISO (!) and one of thse shots is at ISO 1600!!!. Just amazing sensitivity given an absence of noise or grain in the finished shot. For perspective, ISO 400 can be considered high ISO on most sensors and most film for that matter.

Hwheeeeze. Hwhail

Shot my first wedding last evening. Confirmed that the last thing I want to do with photography is weddings. My brother's wedding. His wife's dad was too infirm to make the trip to Ontario (from BC). He, the father of my new official sister-in-law, was, by all stories, for most of his life an indefatigable piper. He could and would show up every- and anywhere with his pipes. Sadly, he no longer has the wind to play. The wedding was in an huge historical home, now B&B, and the bride (adult sons on either side of her) was piped down a main-staircase into the wedding. From the pipes was some tune, traditional to weddings so triumphant, but it being the pipes even I was choked up; it was a very emotional moment for the bride and her boys with the hwail of the pipes bringing father and grandfather to the place he couldn't be.

This piper, John, took up the pipes at age 58 -- "something I'd always wanted to do, so when I retired..."

Happy Robbie Burns Day, yesterday.

PS -- The D3 performed beautifully -- glad it knew what it was doing, as I did not!

NIKON D3

Thank you Nikon!

The very elusive Nikon D3 is now in my hands! The most lusted after camera on the planet at the moment (and for many, many revolutionary picture taking capability reasons) now lives at my home.

I have to shoot my brother's wedding tomorrow -- I think I'm too intimidated at the moment by the gorgeous camera beast that is the D3 to risk shooting with it at the wedding. My brother has made his living in the past as a wedding photographer and I need not screw up this shoot I think I'll just have to take both the D3 and the D200 and shoot and play both :)

For those into photography, the only playing I've done is to throw on a long lens and take a photo in THE DARK (the only light was that from behind me and leaking into the kitchen from the other room) and doing that was able to capture a shot -- @ ISO 6400! The ISO sensitivity and low noise hype is clearly no hype at all (not that I doubted it for a minute). Can't wait to figure out the new auto focus options.

Oh, and it feels like it is growing out of my palm when holding it, such is its ergonomics. And it is one damn pretty form of fabulous function -- designed it is by famed auto designer, Giugiaro.

That'll be the extent of any product review, btw. Let's instead see if the D3 is reflected in my output.

And now of course, as never before, the old adage that a great camera won't make even a mediocre photographer, has come home to roost :)

Under the Warming Light: Duck & Duck's friend, Pig

Duck, too late, glances left for the exit...

Pig looks, blankly, up toward the light.

LOL

The Buddha finds no suffering, only humour, in the price they ask for him in a shopping mall.

A very blue boat

In Newfoundland, but can't remember the name of the community.

Another from the files of my D70.

Rebar Shores

The Leslie Street Spit has become one of my favourite spots in the city. One has only to wander off the road or newer walking paths especially close toward the shoreline to gain a somewhat apocalyptic sense of the world; one is walking on the detrius that comes from building demolition. For a very, very long time the spit has been formed by the dumping into the lake of construction fill. (Hard to believe when one experiences the considerable wetland habitat now well developed in the middle of the Spit) Again, however, as one wanders toward the edges of the Spit or onto the newly laid sections, cement hydro poles, bricks, entire sections of brick walls, steel duct work, more bricks, broken glass, asphalt chunks, massive cement boulders, and much else that one can think of from demolished human-made buildings is underfoot. That includes a great, great deal of tangled (and tripping!) rebar which snakes out of the edges of the Spit like some sort of steel vascular system...

My mission this morning was to get to the end of the Spit to catch the full force of waves--whipped up by a damn powerful (and cold) northwest wind--coming across the full length of the lake before hitting the harbour-less and thus unprotected nose of the Spit with sunlight catching water spray. Was too lazy to dig our my long johns, so I got about a fifth of the way down the Spit before I was forced by the cold to scramble onto a protected (from the wind) shoreline to point my camera instead at ice formations.

It was so windy it was hard to point and hold the long lens on a chosen subject.

Few living things about except the madness of diving water fowl and two insane cyclists.

Toronto Everglades

On the Leslie St. spit again this morning and the air temp was -15 C (minus good bye testes with wind chill). Despite the cold the sun was actually out and I thought it would be interesting to actually get to take a photograph in Toronto with some contrast, so off I went.

In the absence of my doing anything yet with those shots, here's a photo from the files of my old Nikon D70 (with the kit lens, 17-55mm). Toronto's High Park in warmer weather and a greener season.

Photographers Beware -- Apple Computers Screwed Up Royally

On this the day Apple announced its latest new toy -- a darling wee lapbook computer, btw -- let me warn anyone who wants to use an Apple to do their post production work on photographs or other creative suite software stuff.

That is, of course, THE space Apple has always owned. Well, the new shiny faced displays of the aluminum iMacs simply makes proper photo post production impossible. I ain't an engineer but it has to do with the shiny glass surface they put on the new iMac displays -- looks pretty, but screws up contrast/highlights depending on angle of view, so one doesn't know just what the photo actually looks like (which is, ah, just a bit important when it will be viewed on other monitors OR printed!!). Not sure how this will affect any attempt to calibrate colour on the machine, but I'm hoping it won't; have to wade into the ever so boring chat rooms on the issue.

Anyway, thought it was just me -- a techno idiot -- but finally took it into Mac, where I heard it has been a common complaint, but they "look great." The solution offered was for me to buy a separate Apple display or a MacBook Pro (as they refused my demand they take the damn thing back so I could buy for the Pro laptop and a separate display) Note that at the time of the purchase, however, it was recommended I should not get the MacBook Pro...

Lots of discussion of this on the Apple boards, but that doesn't help me. I'm just flabergasted that this sort of engineering fuck up, er, decision flies right in the face of Mac's very reason for surviving through the pre iPod days -- the use of the creative suite of software on its hardware (note Apple also produces one of the most powerful photo workflow softwares, which heightens the irony.)

SO, just don't buy iMac if you want to do design or photo work on your computer.

PS -- Anyone want to buy a nearly new beefed up RAM iMac (comes with a free printer)? Seriously.

The Lion in Winter

I'm not an engineer, but I think the mechanics of this pictured lion feeding mechanism is that the luncheon meat enters the feeding tube at the top and slides downward until it is deposited at the bottom, near the lion's mouth... ?

Vegetarian Photographer

Foggy Spit (with ducks)

Very foggy morning on the Leslie St. spit this morning.

Saw a couple types of hawks but none close enough to get any sort of shot. Had to settle for getting duck shit on my boots to scare these guys into flight.

Mandatory Photo of Snow Covered Berries (Take Two)

All that white, all that (different from the berries posted below) colour... zzzzzz

Toronto Irish Famine Memorial

We have here: "The Jubilant Man" "The Apprehensive Boy" "The Orphan Boy" "Pregnant Woman"

The sculptures are part of the monument park in Toronto, marking the 19th C. flight of tens of thousands of Irish to Toronto due to the Great Hunger.

It is among the most moving memorials you will ever see. Not easy to find, at all. Bottom of Bathurst Street, in behind the Malting Co. silos.