random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

287/365: Big and Hairy.

Went to the Exposure Photo & Video show put on by one of the two big camera retailers in Canada, namely Henry’s. I bought my first and my second DSLR at Henrys actually. Anyhow, while walking around the show they had some exhibits set up to play with your camera gear at. This is a tarantula that was hanging out at one of the exhibits. Since there was a few people there  with ridiculous lenses jockeying for a spot to shoot this critter, I didn’t spend a lot of time here with my little 18-200 lens. The D800 picked ISO 6400 to keep it quick and I let it go with that setting. It was that or get closer, and exhibit trained or not, I’m going to keep my distance from a spider this big and hairy thank you very much. 

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

286/365: Toronto from Milton.

People ask why I go geocaching at night. Well, here’s your answer. This is the view one gets looking east from the Bruce Trail in Milton, at night. That’s Toronto over there in the distance. 

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

285/365: Scotch Block Whereservoir?

This is what’s left of the Scotch Block Reservoir in Milton, Ontario. Sky effect is from taking the photograph as a long exposure well after dusk. We had a bit of a dry summer here, normally I’d be standing in 10 feet of water if I tried to take a picture from this vantage point. 

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

284/365: Yellow Maple Leaf.

Just a quick bit of fun with a yellow maple leaf that fell from my front yard’s maple tree. Here, the leaf is positioned on a piece of plexiglass that has my LED headlamp sitting underneath it (lighting from below). This is essentially a quick n dirty continuous light source. I love autumn 🙂

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

283/365: Connected.
This is a fun little experiment. I happen to have two iPhones… One is mine, the other is my employers. What I realized recently is that gives me a handy macro trick – portable macro studio if I want. What I did here was put the Olloclip macro lens on the 4S, and use the 4 as a “flashlight” keeping the led flash powered up, and using that to provide light up close. The subject here is an Ethernet cable I am just holding.

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

282/365: Waterloo Crossing.

Today was another travel day, this time heading home. Since I wasn’t in a hurry, this time I took a more scenic approach passing through London, Stratford, St. Jacobs, West Montrose and Erin instead of just blasting down the 401. Of course I stopped to take photos all over the place, mainly concentrating on the autumn colour display. When we arrived at St. Jacobs we were surprised to see this steam locomotive chugging along on the tracks that parallel King Street as we entered the village. Looking ahead we saw the tracks crossed the road up ahead and fortunately for me I’d been lazy putting the camera away at the last stop. When we stopped for the railway crossing I put the car in Park instead of just hitting the brakes, reached around the seat and quickly snapped a few photos as the train crossed the road in front of us. The steam locomotive belongs to the Waterloo Central Railway, and it does offer passenger service between Waterloo and St. Jacobs. 

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

281/365: Discover Ontario’s Blue Screens.

Today was a travel day, Canadian Thanksgiving and all that. Since the preferred travel method was “car” and I had the role of “driver” I didn’t get a lot of photos along the way … as usual we were in a bit of a hurry to get to the dinner in Chatham. We did stop along the way for breaks and coffee and being an IT guy at work I naturally noticed that they were having a small problem with the tourist kiosk video at the OnRoute service centre in West Lorne/Dutton. Looks like the hard drive crashed and took out the Windows registry file. 

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

280/365: Autumn in Georgetown.

This is the view from the industrial part of town. I have a geocache here, GC2DN1K Leaf Peeper Leap. The basis of this geocache is that this hidden spot boasts the best place in town to view the fall colours along the Credit River valley. Today I’d say the colour is at peak so here’s a photo of the view off Armstrong Avenue, at Sinclair. 

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

279/365: Wormhole Traveller.

This is an image of my friend, Kelly. He’s posing for me at the other end of a culvert we encountered while pursuing a geocache in Hamilton. The only light here is from a flashlight I placed on a rock and his headlamp which is off his head and aimed to illuminate him. The photo is handheld. 

random thoughts, Uncategorized
Posted on

278/365: Pushing the Mill.

Given my success at handheld low light photography lately with RAW images, I decided to push my luck a bit tonight, and shoot the Barber Mill at night with no tripod. In fact, this photo had the camera in my hands extended up and over a fence on live view. I popped the shadows a bit and dropped the highlights a bit. That darn light gave me a fair amount of grief that AE-AL lock didn’t mitigate. I’ll have to experiment more with spot metering on it and cranking up the shadow detail perhaps.