Photography

Hummingbirds!

Posted July 31, 2013 by Eden

Mysterious, elusive creatures still take me back to the easy excitement of youth and while some are mythical like unicorns; others, like hummingbirds, are very, very real…

I still get a huge thrill when a hummingbird zips by although my feeder is not frequented very often. But during a recent visit to my friend Joyce’s house, I was delighted not only with her breathtaking property, house and view but by the activity in her feeders, especially the hummingbird one. I had my camera with me and was able to get a few shots but it was tricky as they sure do move fast.

Some hummingbird trivia:

flap their wings 12-80 times per second
fly at speeds up to 15 m/s (54 km/h or 34 mph)
like bees, can sense the sugar level of a flower, and only drink nectar if greater than 10% sugar
only birds that can fly backwards
average lifespan around 3-5 years although some can live as long as 10
typically 3-5 inches in length

Summer Video

Posted July 23, 2013 by Eden

This short video was produced for a Vimeo Challenge showing the weather in my area so far this summer. Hope you enjoy it.

Duck Families

Posted July 17, 2013 by Eden

Mallard ducks are almost as common as the Canada Geese, although not quite as intrusive.

I haven’t been chasing the babies around this year as much although I still have been delighted to catch a few images of duck families at our golf club, Osler Brook in Collingwood.

Timelapse Photography

Posted July 16, 2013 by Eden

Timelapse Photography – taking hundreds or thousands of pictures on a specific time interval (usually between 1 and 30 seconds) and then pulling them together into a video which is typically shown at either 24 or 30 fps, is a fascination of mine.

I’m amassing quite a collection of these little clips and hope to use them in some of my videos. Here is a video with a collage of timelapse scenes:

Timelapse of Fast-moving Storm

Posted June 1, 2013 by Eden

Here’s a short timelapse video of a storm at Osler Brook Golf Club in Collingwood, Ontario on May 31st.

We were about to go out on the course but the horn blew before we started.

Image in Canadian Geographic Magazine

Posted May 29, 2013 by Eden

People have been asking how this photograph of mine ended up in the May 2013 Special Edition of the Canadian Geographic Magazine on “Wicked Weather”.

Here’s the story. I joined the Canadian Geographic online Photography Club last year and have uploaded the odd photo based on their monthly requests but very few, actually. I’d like to get more involved but I am running in so many different directions at once, as it is. 🙂 Anyway, on one of my rare visits, there was a call for photographs of extreme weather pictures in Canada for a contest with The Weather Network. I uploaded a few pictures and a couple of them were from the same day in Toronto.

In August 2012, I went to a wedding for my long lost friend, Jola on her father’s boat, the Island Princess on the Toronto Harbour. She had moved out west 20 years ago. We lost touch until we reconnected on Facebook. I was very excited to go to her wedding, see her again, meet her wonderful husband, and go out on the cruise.

But it was a stormy day in Toronto. The skies were foreboding, winds were strong and it rained on and off all day. Still, her father Bob is sea captain and he took us out anyway, and found a calm area to park in the Toronto Islands. On the return cruise, we were greeted with beautiful double rainbows all across Lake Ontario. Stunning and great omen for Jola’s marriage, I thought.

So, back to the Canadian Geographic Magazine. I uploaded a few pics and forgot about the contest. There were thousands of photos submitted and many of them were quite stunning so I wasn’t really expecting anything. Then, a couple months later, I received a request from the magazine for high resolution versions of two of my pictures for this issue. Just one of them actually made it but it was also under consideration to be the cover.