It’s been a while since I’ve posted a photo post, so here is a newish one from a couple of recent shoots with TSG (Toronto Strobist Group).

First a sample from our Holiday 2010 shoot (Full flickr set can be viewed here).

Next is the Stroboscopic shoot which was a lot of fun (Full flickr set can be viewed here).

The final set is from a quick get together with a couple of the members to try and produce a sport/jogging commercial photo (Full flickr set can be viewed here).

These were taken a while back, before I moved to the new house. I thought it might be a good visual review of the Hipstamatic and Lo-Mob Apps for the iPhone. Ofcourse there are literally a bazillion combinations of effects between these two apps. The complete set  is on flickr.

I finally got a chance to go through 3000 frames of TIA2010 this weekend. Here is a sampling of what was buzzing/roaring around Toronto…..The full set is on flickr as usual.

Yep, new pics from a recent trip. If you ever get a chance and you’re around Wyoming, you might want to drop by these two parks. They are absolutely awesome. Best time is probably May-September. We were there on April 16th (for 4 days) and some of the roads (actually a lot of them) were closed due to snow. Check their website for road closures…..they are not kidding, there is tons of snow up there :-) The rest of the set is on Flickr as usual.

Wow I just realized I hadn’t posted any of my recent photos. I think the last set was from my trip to Portland. Anyways, I guess this will be a combo post. I’ve been busy shooting people for a bit before the holidays (Toronto Strobist Group and a private shoot) and while that was fun, I also gave food a try recently. I have to admit Food Photography looks easy (light from the back, blah, blah, blah), but it’s damn hard to get a good shot. Getting the food to do what’s in your head is another mammoth task, all hail the Food Stylists, they are (potentially) more important than the photographer. Last but not least, was my night out with the Toronto Photographic meetup group. More than a hundred photographers decended on Markham Theater for Performing Arts to photograph Ballet Jörgen Canada’s dress rehearsal for Cindrella.

As always the full photosets are here, here, here and here :-).

It’s been a little while since I’ve posted any pics. I’ve been transfering my workspace from my old Macbook Pro to the new 27″ iMac, so things have backed up a bit. Here are the pictures from a recent trip to Portland Oregon to attend the Super Computing Conference.

As usual the complete set can be viewed on flickr.

Had sometime to kill on the weekend and a couple of Pomegranates were asking to be eaten :-). So I decided to photograph their trip to my tummy….complete flickr set here.

It’s late fall here in Toronto and I thought I give my M42 Russian lens, Helios 40-2, one more test. This time going for colour and as much swirly bokeh as this thing can produce…..

The colour reproduction of this lens is muted. It needs a bit of a kick, but once you kick it up a notch and add some contrast, it rocks. Check out the swirly bokeh in the out of focus leaves. Full flickr set is here.

This is slightly old, but it’s still officially fall…..so here are a bunch of fall colour shots from a recent Toronto Photographers Meetup Group trip to Hockley Valley, Cannings Falls, Hogg’s Falls, Eugenia Falls and Old Baldy Lookout Point. Complete flickr set can be viewed here…..

More fall colours to come…..stay tuned…

I finally had a chance to take my newest acquisition — a Helios 40-2 85mm/1.5 Lens — out for a shoot. Nothing fancy just stuff in the backyard. This lens for those who don’t know has a specific optical aberration that allows it to produce the so-called “swirly bokeh” effect. Check the out of focus shot of leaves below to get an idea of what it looks like. The complete set as usual is on flickr.

As you already know Mike Lawrie and I had a Art installation for Nuit Blanche 2009 called Multitorch. We spent the entire night at Ryerson University’s Rogers Communications Centre where the installation was located. I found a few minutes to sneak away and take some pics of our installation and some of the other installations at Ryerson. You can find the full flickr set here.

• inCENTive:
  

• Multitorch:
  

• Of Plastic Circumstance:
  

• Rogers Communication Centre:
  

This is a couple of weeks old, because it took a while to sort through all the pics. They are pictures from a recent visit to Toronto Zoo. The complete flickr set can be viewed here.

While I was on holidays (two weeks ago), TPMG (Toronto Photography Meetup Group) had a Strobist event that took place up at University of Toronto’s Victoria College. We ended up shooting well into the night (12:30 am) and walked away with a nice set of Pics. Here is a sampling of the entire set located on flickr:

This is a bit of a backlog clearing job. The Toronto Photography Meetup Group recently visited The EX (Canadian National Exhibition) in Toronto. I thought it was a good chance to try out my Lens Baby Composer Lens and do some weird black and white pics. Here are a couple of the good ones…..

The complete flickr set is here.

So the other day I had a bit of time and decided to paint the back of my Rokkor Lens. The lens originally had a Monilta mount, but with a lot of patience and tons of sanding I’ve modified it to fit the Canon EOS mount. The only thing that bugged me about the conversion was the fact that I was getting these weird flares in some of my shots and most of my “good” shots had really low contrast (washed out colours).

To remedy this I decided to grab some black car touch up paint from canadian tire and carefully touch up the inside of the new mount (which was silver since I sanded the aluminum down). Well I’m happy to report that everything went well (ie: I didn’t destroy my baby) and the image quality has improved considerably. Here are a few test shots:

As you can see the depth-of-field is razor-thin, but once the contrast goes up the images are quite pleasing. The complete flickr set is here.

Okay so chronologically this post should come before the Airshow post, but hey better late than never right? Anyways, I had a couple of days off in august and decided to check out the Toronto Buskerfest again this year. For those of you who don’t know, since its inception the buskerfest has featured hundreds of the best street performers from around the world, hosted hundreds of thousands of amazed spectators and has helped raise close to one million dollars for Epilepsy Toronto. Not only is it now the largest festival of its kind in North America it is also the largest Epilepsy awareness raising event in the world! The festival turned 10 this year and as part of their 10th anniversary celebration, the festival featured some of the best performers from it’s past 10 years. Here are a few pics to give you a taste…..

The full set can be viewed here, as usual.

Celebrating Canada’s centennial of flight and it’s own 60th anniversary, the CIAS roared across Toronto’s skies last weekend. It was a great show and it was made even more special, since it also marked the return of U.S. Navy Blue Angels to T.O. I was there on Saturday and came away with the following images……

As usual you can find the complete set of pics here…..

I just received this lens this morning. Purchased it from ebay seller in Greece (I’ve bought lenses from him before), and I have to admit, these old CCCP lenses are definitely different. They have a magical look to them. This specific lens has 20 Aperture blades and it’s bokeh (as you can see) is fantastically smooth and beautiful. I’ve taken lenses apart a couple of times before (they usually had 5-7 aperture blades) and can not believe that someone actually managed to stick 20 blades inside this lens’ aperture mechanism. Anyways, enough talk…..here are some images…..enjoy.

You can check out the complete set here….

Well, I guess I need to catch up with the picture postings since I haven’t updated anything here for a while….I’ve got a couple of new flickr sets posted. The first one is from a shoot I did at the Filmport studios in Toronto….

This place is absolutely huge….

You can see the rest of the set here…..
Next was the Toronto Strobist Groups shoot in a warehouse complete with Classic cars, Motorcycles and Models….Lots of fun all day event…

The rest of the set is here. And last but not least is the TPMG Ad-Hoc Prime Lens walk through King Street to Spadina, upto Dundas and back to Yonge. I went a bit crazy with my new Jupiter-9 Lens and did some crazy bokeh shots.

Again the rest of the set is here…That’s all for now.