I’ve finally had one of my first photo published in print and by Adobe no less. The director of Club SAW in downtown Ottawa asked me if she could submit a couple of my photos for their portion of the Adobe Community Report 2008. That was the better part of a year ago. I called back and looked in to it once or twice but nothing had happened with yet.  By now I thought the chance had long come and gone. Surprise, surprise I was emailed a copy of the report this morning.

Adobe in the Community 2008

Met up with the Ottawa Flickr group this week for an impromptu night time long-exposure photography tutorial. We went through a lot of technique just hanging out and taking some very nice photos.

It was nice to meet up with some people that are into the same hobbies that I am.

Still a little miffed that the day after I created I’m Flickr Pro account, Rogers canceled the promotion that they’ve been running for a decade now.

The long exposure photos require a lot more commitment per shot than the point and shot approach. Setting up and moving the tripod, manually focusing, taking high ISO test shots I only took 30 shots that whole night but I think the results speak for them selves.

The Dow’s Lake Pavilion at Sunset.

Now it Looks Like it’s Really Getting Late.

Got that Photo in One Shot. Ever Happy with it.

Clearly not Long Exposure but it Goes well with the Water Theme.

Earlier in the year I posted photos from my first cave exploration experience. This time around we made it down a little deeper, actually a lot deeper.

Last weekend’s photography trip brought us 10 miles north of Buckingham to the middle of nowhere. No town, no road, nothing but a truck, a GPS and only the slightest idea what we where heading into. From about 200 feet atop the cavern wall to 200 feet underground we explored the mines.

We also revisited the abandoned hotel at MSM. This time I was geared-up for it. Cameras, flashlights, tripods, ready for anything.

My photography over the last month or so has started to take a more technical direction for the first time. I’ve been doing this for about a year now … well, actually it’s been exactly a year now and I feel I have quite a bit to show for it.

Explore the caves through the photo album of
~ ~ ~ The Abandon Mine ~ ~ ~

The inside of the cave shot in cinematic 1×2.3 format

This is the effect obtained using photo bracketing

Long-Exposure photo taken using light painting effect created with a flashlight

We celebrated Tashia’s 21st birthday at the Richmond Fair. Rides, Horses, Cows, they had all the ingredients for authentic County Fair.

I think our favorite part were the BBQ Ribs straight off the farm.

Next year well be back for the demolition derby.

It was a fun day and we came home with some great photos to add to the album.

Richmond Fair Photo Page

I’m finally holding it in my hands. I’ve been wanting this camera for 3 months now and here it is.

Fujifilm FinePix S100FS

I took my Fuji out to an old mill in the Meech Lake area for a first photo shoot. It was a good start but I’ll need to read the instructions to figure out what this thing can really actually do.

I also got all the little extras to go along with it. Most importantly the digital picture frame. I can show off my 11 Megapixel photos to the world on a 600 by 400 screen.

Meech Lake Ruins, 1911

There’s a fantastic cliff to the east of Skyline from the top of Camp Fortune. I found this place a while back as I was hiking in through forests. Ever since then, I’ve wanted to come back to this exact spot for a picnic.

We hiked up and across the hills then through the trails to this bench overlooking Gatineau park.

The chair lift at the ski hill was running for the mountain bikers, so we got to take a scenic ride down the hill on our way back from lunch.

It was 6 feet tall and he ate my sandwich

Hide ‘n Go Seek … FAIL

Check out the FAIL BLOG. Hopfully you’ll see this guy posted there soon.

I’ve wanted to post these photos form my trip to Niagara Falls for a while now. Seeing how it was the first week of summer and today was such a hot day out, I thought reminiscing about a frozen water fall would help cool things down.

I took over 400 pictures while there and then cut that down to 180 during editing.

Winter is without a doubt the best time of year to visit the falls. The Ice flows and frozen lakes make for awesome photography.

These were some of the photos that had turned out best.
Click an image to go to the Niagara Photos Page.

See the rest of our Niagara Photos here.

As you can tell, this one below isn’t actually one of my photos. The red line is the GPS track we took while GeoCashing on the American side of the falls. We crossed over to Buffalo for the day and found this cash on the 3 Sisters Island.

I have to say if these islands were on the Canadian side they certainly would have been closed to the general public to keep people from swimming into the falls, especially in the winter.
But to be honest, the Americans took every safety precaution necessary to make sure nobody uses these islands as a jumping off point to plunge them selves in to the falls.

“DANGER Do not enter water”

It seemed to work. I read the sign and a didn’t jump.

Check out what I’d managed to dig up this week.  These are some of the old photos I developed during my year in the St. Pat’s Photography Club.

These are from back in the days of darkroom. Before PhotoShop, when we were developing picture straight from roles of 35mm film.

It took a lot back then to get one right. No auto focus, no digital tuning. And then if you managed to get all that done properly, you had to hope some moron didn’t open the doors to the darkroom while the lights were out, wiping out everybody’s work in a hell-fire flood of ambient light.

These pictures were kept in much less than ideal conditions however it seems that scans turned out well.  So even if the originals do end up going back in the box, I’ll have these around for a long time to come.

Click on any of the photos to enlarge

This weekend was Doors Open Ottawa

The busy bees were working hard at the SunTech Green house.

I Had a lot of luck with the macro lens.

The only problem with taking shots of bees with the macro is you have to get a little to close for comfort to the hive.

Tomatoes are much less prone to attack. Unless they’re of the killer tomato variety. As you can see these ones were forming a swarm.

Then from the macro to the binoculars. We watched the kite surfers on Britannia beach after visiting the water purification plant.