Miscellaneous vacation shots...

Well, I'm back home but I'm not quite ready to take up the mantle of the 365 again tonight. Unpacking, laundry, settling the kids... Well, my night is pretty full.

Anyhow, I have a few more miscellaneous shots from the vacation to share, and just to get back in the rhythm one of them is a backyard songbird!

We visited a hobby farm called Puck's Farm which I remember visiting from my childhood. The place seems a bit more rundown than I recall as a kid, but that may just be the haze of childhood nostalgia at work.

Here are two landscape/animal shots I took that day:





I took one family shot there as well. My mother and daughter were sharing a quiet moment in an old building on the back side of the property, and I wanted to shoot it as a silhouette. It worked out fairly well, but the foreground was still fairly strongly lit:



When I was shooting the backyard portraits, the kids were also quite enthusiastically enjoying the swingset, and I took a few shots from the deck at the long end of the 70-200, and I liked this little gem:



Finally, as promised, a backyard bird. My parents are also bird lovers, and they are lucky enough to have some wonderful specimens visit their house regularly. On this trip, a male Cardinal was visiting quite regularly, but he never got particularly close. This was the best shot I managed with the 70-200 and the 1.4x TC:



Thanks again for reading!

Portrait Day

Well, shooting the grandkids' portraits went pretty well all in all. There was a certain amount of time that was spent herding them, and trying to get them all to look in the same direction at the same time, but the results are good overall.

The rental studio was set up with four AB400s which were very nice to work with, two softboxes for the key and fill lights, and straight reflectors for the background lights.

Here are the best of the shots taken today, all taken within 40 minutes or so. We got in and out way faster than I expected:





This has a guest appearance by Po, the stuffed Hippo:






Another guest star, Javelin the stuffed cat:


Mid-air shot!


Mid-air, part two!


Any comments are welcome!

Critters!

Just popping in to post some favourites from a few trips in the last few days. We visited Reptilia and the Toronto Zoo as well.

Everything here is shot with the 70-200...

Nile Crocodile


Black Mamba


Monitor (forgot to note the specific species)


Plumed Basilisk


Blue Poison Dart Frog


Cayman


White Rhino


Hippo Yawning


Sumatran Tiger


Butterfly and Blooms


Alpaca


I'll be back home in a few more days, but I have the portrait shoot with my kids and nieces scheduled for Monday. I'll be packing that night, but I'll try and get shots posted.

Cheers!