I had the amazing experience of attending a photography workshop recently. Though rather time consuming to get to from Toronto, it was worth the 11.5 hour journey down and the 13.5 hour journey home.

After we arrived, I went down to the beach:

The next day we did some shooting with one of the instructors:

The next day we did some shooting on the beach. At first Ella was nervous and wanted to hang with her mom:

But then she warmed up to the group:

And then the shoot was over:

Some shots from the last night, the calm before the storm that blew in the next day:

We couldn’t get out and about the next day, due to rain and wind, but I managed to captured the following two photos of my roommate, Josée, before we had to head to the airport:

Virgil, our next door neighbour, hung out with us most of the time as well:

And as nice as it is to get away, especially to somewhere so beautiful, it sure is nice to come home again!

Some shots from this month’s EatSavvy shoot. EatSavvy will be published once a month, see this post to learn more.

It was another fun shoot, and I’ve included some out takes this month…enjoy!

We didn’t end up using this first shot, but I love the bokeh in it:

Can you guess what was on the menu? You can see the recipe here.

The dessert recipe can be found here:

You may remember our child model, Spencer, from this blog post on my old blog. Spencer’s mom, Denise, works at SavvyMom and is the EatSavvy editor:

Trevor Bond is the Creative Director during the EatSavvy shoots. Here he is impressing us with his ability to toss the pizza dough like a professional:

I can’t wait to see what’s on the menu for next month!

Since the family shoot I had scheduled yesterday was rained out, I decided to play around with off camera flash and take some photographs of my son’s beta fish for an assignment I was working on. The ‘theme’ for the assignment was ‘Shadows’, you can see my entry here, as well as all the other entries.

I choose this first one as my entry as I thought it had an interesting element, with the fish’s fins curled round as they are. Almost looks like a flower, and it isn’t obviously a fish at first glance.

I was shooting in a very dimly lit room, with only window light to see by, so I had to focus manually. I stopped down my aperture to f8, and reduced my flash output so as to only illuminate the fish but not the surroundings. I think the effect worked quite well.

I used to be caught off guard, in previous years, that soccer would start off on the FIRST week back to school, but I’ve learned now, so we were one of the few people who were actually at the first game. (Thankfully they slowly trickled in so we were able to have a game! I don’t think that it helped that there was confusion with the schedule, it changed at the last minute, so we had people showing up to the wrong park for their game!)

Noah decided to play goalie, his favourite position, for the first game of the season:

Ok! Let’s play (soccer) ball!

I think he’ll play a different position next game, he spent a lot of time waiting for some action…

…and waiting…

…watching…

…and waiting…

Am I ever going to see any action???

Yeah! The ball! Finally!

He still enjoyed himself, my son is a natural athlete!

I’m sure I’ll be posting more soccer photos as the season progresses…hopefully we’ll have a nice warm and dry fall! (Fingers crossed!)

All of the following images are from a recent PhotoWalk I participated in.

Wow! Didn’t realize I was so far behind in posting some images!

This one is from about two weeks ago, out and about running some errands:

We stopped by the local vet’s to visit kittens, again:

This past Sunday, once we determined that the weather was going to hold, we decided to make use of a free family pass to Centreville on Centre Island. Here’s a shot of Rebecca on the ferry on the way over to the Island:

Rebecca and Noah exit the Haunted Barrel Works ride at Centreville:

Rebecca on the Log Flume Ride:

Rebecca and Noah enjoying the roller coaster:

During dinner Noah was creating steam from his iced drink, can you see it?

Here Rebecca holds up what Noah choose to get instead of dessert, and funnily enough he named this little guy “Dessert”!

“Dessert” even went for a ride with Noah, see him there? They both had a great time!

At 8:15 pm we caught the ferry back to the mainland, I caught this shot of the skyline:

Then this shot of Rebecca with the skyline in the background:

And who could resist shooting this sky? Beautiful colour and amazing cloud formation as well!

Noah, with Rebecca in the background:

On Monday afternoon we went to the park and I caught this shot of ‘Maggie’s’ nose:

Here is Maggie, a 9-year-old Golden Retriever that Rebecca just LOVES, she is a very sweet dog:

Maggie’s paws:

One more of Maggie:

Rebecca against the fence at the baseball diamond:

As we were leaving the park the children pointed out a beautiful sunflower right beside the school:

On Tuesday we went for haircuts, here is the after of Rebecca:

And here is the after of Noah, isn’t that a great haircut?

And one more of Rebecca, who was happy to show off her new do:

That’s all for the moment!

Meet Teddy! She’s a sweet apricot standard poodle, and we had a great session this past Saturday, perfect weather!

I love this first shot, such a water dog activity!

Teddy was a bit excited, so it was a bit of a challenge to get her to lie down and stay put! But I managed to capture this shot of her:

Teddy is extremely protective of her owner, Liz. Whenever someone came along the path she would watch them until they were out of sight. Here she is watching a gentleman that came past while we were shooting. Of course the very positive side to this behaviour was that I could capture her standing still…if not always facing the correct direction!

This was at the end of our hike through the ravine, she’s still a bit wet from the water she played in:

Back home Teddy hangs out on her front step:

Then I caught this shot, which I love, inside on the bench at the back of the kitchen:

She is such a sweet dog, and by the end of the session had really warmed up to me, so much so that it was hard to photograph her as she kept coming right over to me, nuzzling me and looking for love. Thanks Liz and Teddy for the wonderful session!

Some shots from this month’s EatSavvy shoot. EatSavvy will be published once a month, see last month’s post to learn more. As always, it was fun and we all enjoyed the delicious meal after we finished cooking, preparing and photographing (the dessert was especially yummy!):

I think we in Toronto (and I’m sure elsewhere!) have had our share of rainy weekends this summer. We are almost half way through the month, and then summer will be over. So, not having had the chance to get outside to shoot today, I was going through some older shots that I thought I would post on my blog for fun.

The rainy shots caught my eye, so I posted a few of them:

Shot with a macro lens:

And then a shot of Harry from the last day of school, as I hadn’t posted it as of yet. He’s tricky to catch as he’ll often ham it up if he sees me pointing the camera his way…but he’s hard to resist with that red hair and green eyes! (Of course I didn’t manage to capture a shot of my son on the last day of school…oh well!)

I’m keeping my fingers crossed that they are wrong about the weather forecast tomorrow…hoping for a sunny day for most of the day! (positive thinking!!!!)