Holiday Cheer Pt.5

Holiday Cheer Pt.4

Holiday Cheer Pt.3

Holiday Cheer Pt.2

Holiday Cheer Pt.1

Christmas dinner this year was a special treat. We usually celebrate at Samantha's parents place, but this year we did it at her brother Pete's house. He and his wife Julie had spent most of the year renovating after gutting the place because of water damage. The light fixtures over the dining room table were beautiful and were perfect for capturing the rich colors of the season.

This is the first in a series of table pictures.

Christmas Dinner Portraits

These are a few portraits I took around the dinner table on Christmas Eve. I was happy to be able to work with the available light from the fixture over the table. The photos are of my nephew, my brother in laws wife and my mother in law.

The World In A Christmas Ornament

I caught this image by accident. I was just taking the picture of the bulb. I was 8 feet away from the tree and working in low light. I strolled the 55 - 250 mm all the way out and snapped the photo. In post production, after a small crop and a little bumping up of the exposure I realized that the bulb was mirrored and the room was reflected in it. That is me in the center of the bulb sitting behind the table in the corner. 1/15 sec, ƒ5.6, ISO 1600.

Christmas Light Bokeh

This was a real treat to shoot and to have it turn out right. My sister in law had some light fixtures hanging over her dinning room table that had these pretty pieces of crystal suspended underneath them. They were at a perfect height for me to catch the Christmas tree lights in the background. This was taken at 1/20 of a second, ƒ5.6, ISO 800 with the 55 - 250 mm lens. For some reason the 18 - 55mm lens was having trouble auto focusing this night.

Bus Stop Graffiti

This shot is of some graffiti that was being back lit by a street lamp and some headlights. Taken at 11 PM at 1/5 of a sec, ƒ4.5, and ISO 800.

Ice On Driftwood

The Last Flower of the Year

This is definitely the last flower picture of the year. This brave fellow held on until almost Christmas. Now it is time for him to lay down and sleep.

Beaver Stump.

I saw this tree that had been felled by beavers and was drawn to it by the green paint sticking out of the reeds. I don't know if it was painted by the city to designate it for removal or if it was tagged by a kid with nothing else to do. Strange looking though.

Blue Bush

This image is another late afternoon shot of a Tiger Eye Sumac plant that has lost all of its leaves. More striking in silhouette.

Red Berries Hiding Under a Rock Ledge.

Protected from the worst of the cold and the wind, this splash of color screamed "hey! Over here! "

Ice Over The Grass

This image is off ground ice after a nasty bit of freezing rain that left a sheet over all low dips and gulleys. It is just starting to melt the next day when I snapped this.

Shadows In Late Afternoon Light

These images were taken during the cookie making marathon. The afternoon sunlight coming in the patio doors and through the open vertical blinds was creating some great shadows on the dinning room wall. Good quality subjects for the shadows to play on didn't hurt. The painting is an original by my father in law's sister Helene.

Cookie Production Part 2

These are a few shots of Mona's end of the cookie production triangle (no one could get shots of the third leg, the shipping department, because they are all business and move way too fast to capture on film). Posting of these images got a sizable response on Facebook. The black and white image of Mona's hands kneading dough took people back to their childhood and Grandma's kitchen. At least that is what it did for me.


Apparently, the below pictured scalloped cookie cutter was lost at the end of production this year, so an internet search for a suitable replacement had began. If anyone knows of a source feel free to tell us about it in a comment.

Cookie Production Part 1

Once a year, my mother in law goes a bit batty and cooks about 8,000 cookies in a couple of weeks. No, seriously, she make 420 - 450 tins of 35 cookies and sells them during the holidays for $20 a tin. She does the 60km Walk To End Women's Cancer with another family member each year and the target is to raise $2,000 each. So Mona gets her fundraising done early.




She usually starts the last week of November. She bakes small batches on weeknights, but on the weekend, total war breaks out in Cuchina del Mona. She never has trouble finding people to help her out and speed up the process. She makes dough and cuts the cookies while the help loads the oven with two trays at a time and starts the ten minute timer. When it dings, we have to switch the trays up for down in the oven to help with the evenness of the cooking, then run to the dinning room, take the cooling batch off the trays and stack them in rows on the table, then run back to the kitchen, wipe the trays, reload them with 70 cookies, take a small sherry glass and tap a design on the top of each cookie and have that all done before the timer finishes it's 10 minute trek. And that is the easy job compared to mixing the dough, rolling it out and cutting the cookies.



Then its back to the dinning room and start loading fully cooled cookies into the wax lined tins, placing a wax cutout on top with a thank you card, snapping them shut and stacking them in large boxes of twenty tins. When a box is full we place a call in to the shipping department (my father in law downstairs) and it is picked up for distribution. This process goes on for about two and a half to three weeks. It seems every year the orders push the output number up a little more. But hey, who doesn't love shortbread?

The Flag

The wind conditions were just right on Sunday to capture this image. W e stand on guard for thee.

Baited Birds.

The first weekend in December I was over at my mother in law's place helping her bake cookies for a cancer walk fundraiser. The day before a family friend and one of her sisters had been over helping with the same task. They had gotten in the habit of opening the bags of flour, cornstarch and sugar outdoors to reduce the mess inside. Mona's sister Diane had noticed how many birds were outback, and later when they had a flubbed batch she broke up the cookies and took them out for the winged beggars.

On Sunday when I went by there must have been one hundred to one hundred twenty birds in the back yard, taking turns landing on the utility bench and feasting on the frozen flour and checking for cookie pieces. They waited all day, but to our credit, no batches of shortbread were harmed in the making of this image.

Time Creeps On

This was another shot that I waited for. When I first spied it as a target, it was 10:30 AM and the shadow was almost nonexistent. An hour and a half later and it was almost there. I waited another eight minutes to make sure the bottom of the clock and the shadow were on the same slat of wood. I was also happy that even the hands of the clock had shadows.

Late Autumn Afternoon Skyline

Reed Stalk in the Water

This image of a reed stalk that had fallen down into the river took a few different vantage points before it really popped. I am very happy with the shadows and water texture. Sometimes waiting the extra 30 seconds or a minute can make a huge difference on what the lines in the water look like and is totally worth it.

Fading Daylight

This image was one that got perked up in post production. A little up on the lights and dark areas to give some texture to the sky and that accentuated the blue which wasn't this visible.

Reed Stalk

This image is the stalk of a common reed. I found the color pattern interesting and snapped a shot. I was losing light and working with how slow a shutter speed I could use in windy conditions without losing clarity. This was at 1/50 of a second.

Grass Shadow Over Water

Something I have been trying to work with lately is shadow and reflections over water. This image was trying to capture the reflections of reed grass on the water. I think I needed to get a slightly shallower angle on it to have it work out right. And maybe more still water. i might try this on the lake at Angrignon and see if it works out better.

Goldenrod Ball Gall

I captured this image of a goldenrod growing up through a short pine tree and when I googled the ball protrusions on the stalk, this is what I found out. pretty interesting. Shot at 1/50 of a second and ƒ5.6 from 4 feet away.

Fall Sunrise Pt. 2

This shot was taken less than two minutes after the last post, but I had to reduce the exposure time down by 4 seconds to keep it from washing out with light. Still at ƒ11. i like that I could catch some light coming off the water in this one.

Fall Sunrise

I woke up around 5am this morning and it was pretty clear that I wasn't going back to sleep, so I got dressed and grabbed my gear and headed to the river. Within minutes I regretted it. It was -10C and I hadn't brought any gloves. But the tripod was all set up and the camera in place so I toughed it out. next time I will bring a hot coffee to keep the hands warm.

The sky started to lighten up around 6:15 AM, and within five minutes I was taking the first shots. This image was taken facing down river with the sunrise to my left. This was a 6 second exposure at ƒ11 to bring out the colors a bit. It would have been nice if there were a few more clouds for dark accents in the sky, but there are tons more opportunities for that.

The Golden Alley

This alley of maple trees beside the Auditorium is Nalin's favorite place to play, hunt squirrels and sniff for traces of other dogs. We always walk this corridor to get to the waterfront and she can usually get rid of half her pent up energy before she hits the high grass. This time of year it is a huge pile of leaves that she likes to plow through like some dogs do with snow. The colors are pretty enough.

The Lone Berry

Clear Sky On A Warm Afternoon

Yellow Flower

I'm not sure what kind of flower this is, but I will edit the post and title when I do find out. I do know one thing - the center looks sticky and gooey.

Burdocks In The Sun

Lest We Forget

A shot of the Verdun cenotaph commemorating the soldiers who were called to three wars.

Who You Gonna Call.

I was walking by the new Police digs behind Verdun City Hall and snapped a couple of pictures of the sign out front. Finally photos are starting to turn out like I see them in my head. Exactly the depth of field and amount of shadow I wanted.

Bixi Shadow

This shadow of a Bixi bike looks like the Aflac Duck being pedaled around by E.T.

Corporate Cycles

I love the fact that the City of Montreal logos are all scratched off of most of the Bixi bikes, but the corporate sponsorship space is pristine. Help the environment by riding a bike and whore product for Telus at the same time.

The Fine line Between Church And Education

As with most communities in Quebec, where you find a school, there is a church right next door. In the first half of the last century the two were not easy to separate for Catholics. This image was shot on De L'Eglise street.

Occupy The Fence

This gang has been protesting the lack of parity between themselves and myself as I tease them by tossing my sunflower seed shells into the yard for them to swoop in and find empty. I can only hope that 99% of the shit falls into the other yard and my side of the fence stays clean.

Squirrel Hunter

Nalin is on high alert and constant patrol for tree rats this time of year. Our safety and well being depends on her diligence. Or so she would have us believe.

Colored Leaves In The Window

This was done the same afternoon as the previous post. I had collected a bag of leaves and used a glue stick to adhere them to a sheet of printer paper. then I hung it in the window. I think it would have worked better if I had worked from light to dark from the middle and had the reds around the edges. Oh well, I learned something for next time.

Golden Leaves

I was out walking Nalin one afternoon and decided to collect some leaves and try taping them in my dinning room window to catch the late day sun shining through them. Turned out pretty cool except the dust on the outside of the window pane got accentuated.