Photo Monday on Tuesday

I know… It’s Tuesday! But seeing as yesterday was a statutory holiday in Canada, I took the liberty of taking a day off from Photo Monday. Ha ha! While traveling to Montreal, I took a bunch of pictures, but i haven’t had the time to sort through them and process the ones I want to share, so here is a little post to make you dream for your next holiday. The subject this week: Palmtrees. Enjoy and have a great new years party!!

Ahhh palmtrees
Palmtree, Jamaica.

Sunset on Railey Beach
Sunset on Railey Beach, Thailand.

Tonsai beach!
Tonsai beach, Thailand.

Check out all the photos from our Thailand trip. It’ll make you want to leave tomorrow!

Cheers,

Calvacade of Lights and the Olympics

Last Thursday, December 17th 2009, the Olympic torch slowly made its way to downtown Toronto. By sheer luck, I was also making my way to Nathan Phillips Square to catch some of the Christmas atmosphere for one of my Photo Mondays. The unfortunate part of the story is that I made it maybe 30 minutes too late and I missed the whole ceremony… Ha ha!

Luckily, I was able to sneak my way upstairs and get a couple of nice shots of Nathan Phillips Square once they opened up the ice rink and started the fireworks for the Calvacade of Lights 2009. If you are around for the Holidays, I strongly recommend you go ice skating downtown. It was a super cool atmosphere!

One last thing. In the last two shots, if you look carefully, you can see two guys sitting on the far left arch over the ice watching the fireworks (check out the original size to see them). Of course the cops were there waiting for them when they climbed down… Ha ha! Poor souls! I wonder how much their seats cost…

Anyways, here are some shots I was able to get.

Olympic Torch in Toronto
The red carpet for the Olympic Torch, minus the Olympic Torch… I like the policeman just chilling there on the ice.

Fireworks at Calvacade of Lights 2009
The Fireworks added a little something to the atmosphere at Nathan Phillips Square. Very neat!

Fireworks at Calvacade of Lights 2009
One more for good measure!

I hope I get to go ice skating down there once this year. I also want to try out the ice rink by the waterfront. Both look like super cool places to enjoy our winter season downtown.

Cheers,

Photo Monday: Christmas Bokeh

With the holidays knocking at our door, I went out this week with the intention of photographing a ton of Christmas decorations around town. Turns out that Toronto doesn’t really decorate its streets the way Montreal does. At least not in our area … so I had to be creative this week.

If you are wondering, Bokeh refers to the aesthetic quality of the out of focus area in a photograph. It’s often used to describe the rendition of out-of-focus points of light, but I think it really applies to all out-of-focus effects. Anyways, here are some Christmas Bokeh for you.

Have a wonderful holiday!!!
Cheers,

Night lights on Spadina
Night lights of Spadina – View On Black

Cold as ice
Cold as ice – View On Black

Christmas Bokeh
Tiny depth of field across the counter – View On Black

Photo Monday: High Dynamic Range

It’s hard to track down the history behind High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography, but the idea has always been the same: to allow a greater range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image. So, specifically, this technique was originally used to take photos of indoor scenes with windows or highly contrasted scenes, like seascapes. It’s only in the past 20-30 years that it’s been used in a more artistic way (like mine!).

I learned about HDR photography roughly two years ago on a trip to Paris (an amazing place to learn!!). I’ve dabbled in it for a little while, but it’s only now that I realize how interested I am in the technique. For this Photo Monday, I wanted to share my latest experiments with HDR.

Enough with words. Here are the photos:

The King Car
The King Car — View Large On Black.

Gotham Lofts Entrance
Gotham Lofts Entrance — View Large On Black

Toronto under construction
Toronto under construction — View Large On Black

As before, there were some photos that didn’t make the cut, so make sure you check them all out on flickr: Photo Monday #7.

Have a great week gang!
Cheers,

Smoky Monday, Part II

There was so much hype (mostly on my part!) over this past Monday’s post, Smoky Monday, that I wanted to share some of the runner up photos today. I also found an amazing (and simple!) way to post-process smoke photos that I just had to try out and share with you!! As you can imagined, it was very difficult last week to choose which photos to post for the photo Monday, so I’m glad to have the opportunity to share some more of my photos today! Anyways, here are some of the runner up and some post-processed photos, which I think are potentially cooler than the original photos.

Hope you enjoy this mid-week post. Stay tuned for next week as I have something very special prepared you guys and gals! I’m pretty happy with the result so far!

Cheers,

Silky Sheet
Silky Sheet

Smoke Bird
Smoke Bird

Smoke Jelly Fish
Smoke Jelly Fish

Inverted Smoky Beast
Inverted Smoky Beast

Inverted Flowing Silky Smoke
Inverted Flowing Silky Smoke

Don’t read this. It’s something I need to put on my site once for technorati: MJW5Q72QJVHC.

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