Category Archives: Toronto

A Garden of Spring Flowers in Paint

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….in this part of the world spring is not close at hand

Looking at blogs that originate in Ireland, the United Kingdom, parts of Europe and the west coast of North America I’m amazed to see so many gardens that are already in bloom with beautiful spring flowers. With some luck we may see our first daffodil in late April but most of our flowers won’t appear until May.

To get us in the spring mood I painted some simple made up flowers using watercolours and circle shapes. For the background I used a scraping technique that I learned from Carla Sonheim. Once the paint was dry I added more detail, sometimes with  more paint but mostly with black ink from a Sharpie. I liked the final product so much I adapted it for my students and when I return to school this week I will plaster the walls with their beautiful gardens of flowers. I will share their work with you later this week.

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A Happy Accident

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….this happened when I tried to get a photo of the moon and failed

After taking Photography 201 I was hoping I was better prepared to take shots of the full moon. If it hadn’t been so cold I might have persevered with different setting and tried again. Instead I sat on the park bench and turned the camera towards the city skyline. As I held the shutter down I could tell that something different than normal was happening but I wasn’t quite sure what it was. At least I knew that the camera was taking pictures.

When I got home I realized that the shutter was open for a full 10 seconds.

A few days ago in my on-line art class with Carla Sonheim, we were instructed to take artistic shots of bright lights. I couldn’t figure out how to do it. Fast forward to the night of the full moon. I got my artistic light shots without even knowing it. Here they are:

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Another Bitter Cold Day

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….but lovely enough for taking photos

My husband has been suffering all week with a miserable cold and sinus infection, so when the dog barked non-stop to go outside and no one moved from their cozy chair in front of the TV I knew that I would be the designated dog walker for the day.

If I had to go outside I might as well take my camera and make the best of it. I bundled up, knowing that the temperature had plummeted to well below freezing and I tucked my camera inside my coat.

Now taking photos with a dog at the end of a leash is not easy but I did manage to take a few interesting shots close to home. I’m still experimenting with my macro lens and sometimes it’s very hit or miss but with a digital camera it really doesn’t matter. There’s no waiting for film to be developed and you can see immediately if the shot worked or not. In the photos below it’s difficult to see but I started tracking a couple of geese but as I got closer they flew down to the water.

Later in the day I had to pick up a library book so I drove and left the dog at home. I decided to park the car by Sam Smith Park after getting my book in hopes of getting a few more shots.  The lake side was ice free but on the pond there was a thin sheet of ice across most of the pond. P1020948P1020951P1020952P1020969P1020971P1020972P1020981

After an hour or so of hunting around for interesting shots my fingers started to freeze. This is the one downside of taking photos on such a cold day. Wearing mittens is impractical and my leather gloves are fine when I’m moving a lot but they don’t do a very good job of keeping the cold out when you’re standing around, fiddling with dials on your camera. Keeping the camera inside my coat helped preserve the battery somewhat. Batteries don’t like the cold either.

Do you have any tips for taking photos on freezing cold days? I’d love to hear about them.

Playing With the Camera and Getting my Steps In

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….losing the lens cap and having to retrace my steps helped my reach my walking goal 

Despite having the special attachment on my lens cap that fastens itself to the camera body I still managed to lose it. Unfortunately or fortunately, depending on your perspective, I didn’t notice that the cap was missing until I was almost all the way home. I started to retrace my steps but since I was close to the house I decided to pick up Frances and take her for her walk. At least this way I was multi-tasking and hopefully I could get in enough steps to make her happy and find my lens cap.

Luckily I did find the cap close to a park bench where I had taken a moment to try to figure out why my camera wasn’t working. I guess I was so excited when I was able to shoot some more photos that I didn’t notice that the cap was no longer attached to the camera body.

Frances seemed content to turn around and go back home at this point and I knew that I was going to be close to my 10 000 step goal for the day and it was still morning.

Here are a few of the shots I took yesterday. It was a beautiful sunny morning.