A friend and I went to Sunnybrook Stables, here in Toronto, the other day to capture some horse photos. (Something I’ve been wanting to do for a while now!) We were lucky enough to run into an owner of one of the horses who invited us into the stable to take some photographs. Thanks Cindy!

Here are a few from the afternoon:

Our friends Ken, Deborah, Alison and Harry (who live just around the corner from us), recently brought home a BEAUTIFUL black standard poodle puppy, whom they call “Madeline”.

Isn’t she just gorgeous???

She is just so perfectly proportioned too! Perfect miniature of her future adult self.

Her face is a bit messy after her meal!

She’s chewing on the tail of her stuffed toy rat, in case you’re wondering what the heck that is!

Their cat’s are adjusting very well! Misty has no problem hanging out on the couch with puppy, kids and strangers all about:

Roblin is chilling as well. (Yes, Roblin is missing an eye, she was adopted from the Humane Society, and her eye had to be removed due to infection.)

And then, I thought, I should take some photos of my daughter’s pet hamster, Norbert, especially since I had photographed her brother’s pet beta fish, Dragon, quite a while ago!

Here Norbert tries to escape—that’s my theory anyway!:

LOVE the bokeh in this shot!

Photographing a hamster in low light is very challenging, they twitch very fast! Would love to do some more photos of Norbert, but in better light next time!

Catch up time again! Kids and I went out the other week, hoping to get haircuts for both of them…unfortunately our haircut place was closed (due to construction on the street and no hot water!), so we ended up just running some errands.

Noah, on Yonge Street:

I can only catch fleeting glances of my daughter at times!

Had Noah pause for a moment, as I knew the out-of-focus ties in the background would offer an interesting colour backdrop:

At the dollar store a fellow asked if we could watch his dog while he ran in for a few minutes. Love how dogs just watch and wait patiently for their owners, you can tell that their owners are their lives, too cute!

Noah, in front of a Christmas light filled tree:

Rebecca, giving me the ‘look’:

In one of my son’s FAVOURITE stores, “Kidding Awound”, Rebecca checks out the merchandise:

Noah enjoys the garden/park in Yorkville:

Colourful holiday shop windows make for a very good background:

Finally, we return for hair cuts!

Don’t you just love it when your children discover the love of reading? Noah works on finishing his book while we wait for his sister to be finished with her haircut:

Rebecca, with her new hairdo. (Unfortunately she hates it now! lol)

That’s all for the moment, but will be posting more in a day or two!

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.

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!

Well, I thought I should finish the tale of the baby robins, even though it pains me to do so. It has turned into a sad story, and even though I know this is the way of the animal world, it’s still really hard for me to look at these images without feeling sad.

Read on if you’d like to hear the story…or just skim over the words and keep your eyes on the photos if you’d like to enjoy them but not know the outcome.

This shot was taken on Thursday, July 24th. Babies are still growing fast and the mother is keeping a close eye on them:

The next six images were taken the next day, Friday, July 25th. The older ones are becoming more aware of their surroundings and not as quick to pop-up looking for food as the youngest.

Noah hangs out with me, just inside the front door, to watch the babies on the Friday.

The next images were taken on Saturday, July 26th. I think you can start to see one of the issues…the nest is quite small for the growing babies.

Noah is watching the babies with me, and I manage to catch some shots of him:

This is the last shot I have of the runt of the brood, at some point Saturday night, or Sunday during the day (as we were out all day…images to follow), the baby of the group disappeared. I’m sure that the two larger siblings pushed it out of the nest, though I’m not sure what happened to it at that point as we could find no sign of it.

It still makes me sad to see images of the baby, as it was my favorite. I can’t help thinking that if the little guy could have just lasted in the nest for another 24–36 hours….

On Sunday the children were sure that the smallest one was under the two largest ones…the next day it became obvious that that wasn’t the case. Whenever we came out of the house the two remaining babies would hunker down in the nest.

That night we had a rain storm, the mother came to watch over, and sometimes hovered overtop of the two remaining babies protecting them from the rain.

On Monday, July 28th at first there was great excitement, as Noah looked out my office window and saw one of the babies out of the nest, on a branch. We all ran down to see, and I grabbed this quick shot.

The excitement quickly turned to screaming and tears though. Rebecca and I went back inside to finish getting ready to go off to camp. Noah came back in to put his shoes on, to go outside and watch the babies. I soon heard screaming and crying, that one of the babies was on the road (for those that don’t know, Avenue Road is a large North/South road in Toronto, where we are it’s a very busy four lane section), and dashed down and outside. Indeed, one of the babies was on the road, I at a loss as to what to do as I waved the northbound traffic around the baby, and then, not knowing what else to do, scooped up the baby to get it off the road. It was dead, likely hit by a car as it tried to practice flying. Unfortunately, rather then keeping close to the houses along Avenue Road, it made the fatal mistake of flying straight out into morning traffic. Maybe because the parents often flew across and perched on a house across the street.

Noah was very upset, crying and crying. It was so sad and tragic. We buried the robin in the front yard before making our way to camp.

Of course the thing that became very obvious to me, upon my return home (as I watched the nest to confirm) was that indeed the runt of the brood was no longer there. Sigh. I was so sad to confirm my suspicion.

That evening I caught this shot of the remaining baby, as it perched on the nest, ready to venture out into the world. Noah was taking no chances with the remaining baby, and spent much of the night between the baby and Avenue Road, so as to block the baby if it decided to follow the fate of its’ sibling.

Caught this shot of the baby out of the nest and further south on Avenue Road.

Then this last shot, at about 7:45 pm. I managed to convince Noah to come in for the night at about 8:20, telling him he simply could not stay out all night keeping the baby safe, even though he wanted to.

The mother and father were watching over their last baby, swooping down to feed it wherever it may have been. That is the last we’ve seen of the parents and baby, though I’m very happy to report that we saw no sign of a baby robin dead on Avenue Road the next morning. I’m hoping that this one, at least, has survived and could very well be full grown by now.

Sorry that this had to be a sad post, for those who have been following the story. It is very strange to go out the front door and have the empty nest sitting there. I miss having the babies around.

I’ll have some fun shots of a visit to Kensington Market last Sunday posted later today or tomorrow….

The following were taken on the 23rd and 24th of July. The babies continue to grow, and as you can see the largest is really getting his feathers in. It probably won’t be long until he leaves the nest.

Here you can see the difference between the youngest, on the right, and the eldest, in the middle.

You can see how much the feathers have come in, they are growing fast!

I love this shot of youngest and oldest chest to chest, you can really see the difference in their developmentL

The eldest almost looks like he’s got the whole nest to himself in this shot! The little nest is getting quite crowded:

Thought this was a bit of a funny shot, as the babies are all facing the wrong way, and not towards their mother, but they could obviously sense that she was there!

If you enjoy these images keep watching the blog! I will be posting more in the days to come….

Back in late June I happened to notice that we had new neighbours, a robin had built a nest in a tree right in front of our house. Frankly I was questioning this mother bird’s ability to mother as I don’t think she could have picked a more unstable tree if she tried! This evergreen tree makes me think of the sad little christmas tree in “A Charlie Brown Christmas”. It is quite droopy and seems to be anchored to the house, allowing it to remain upright.

Nevertheless, shortly after we noticed the nest we saw a beautiful blue egg, followed by three more.

Well, last week the babies hatched! We are not sure what happened to the fourth egg as there are only three babies. They are growing very fast with the first images taken last Thursday and the last of the images take yesterday.

Here the father hovers over the nest:

One baby looks for food:

It’s hard to see in this image, but there is one baby behind the front one, and then the beak of the third to the right:

A bit of a mumble jumble of babies:

Time to have a nap (this shot, and the next six, were taken on the 20th):

They have grown so much in only three days!

Mom arrives:

They’re still hungry!

And in between feedings they nap:

The father looks on from a nearby tree:

A closer macro shot:

I had to wait for quite a while, very quietly, to frame this shot:

They look rather alien like to me…what do you think?

They are now stretching quite far out of the nest in search of food from their parents, so much larger then when they were born ~6 or so days ago:

The three babies really fill up the little nest now:

This one is the smallest of the three, and looking for more food to catch up to the siblings:

Snoozing:

Looking for food, but not making too much of an effort at it:

Check back soon as I will continue to chronicle the babies growth, until they leave the nest (which will probably be soon given the fast growth!), I should have some new images in the next few days.

Hmmmm, yet another week’s worth of images…I really need to try to build some time into the week to upload on a more regular basis! Well, I do have some more images to upload, so I will aim to do that in the next day or two…certainly before the end of the week in any case!

The kids and I had an errand to run up at Yonge and St. Clair the other day, so had a quick bite of some sushi (actually Noah passed on the sushi, and had McD’s instead! Crazy kid! lol).

I decided to throw the Lensbaby G3 on the camera, but forgot that I had the star shaped aperture disk installed, which explains the star shaped bokeh!

With this shot I realized I had the star shaped aperture disk installed…kind of hard to miss in this one!

And in this one too!

Then I switched back to the regular round disk:

Back to my fav 85:

Shot this one of my sister in very low light conditions, gotta love a fast aperture for that!

Diane is a really old friend of my sister’s and mine from high school days. I haven’t seen her in about 23 years or so! And she’s just as beautiful as she was back then!

Shot wide open under an overpass:

Just out and about on the street somewhere:

Ran into this good looking kitty in a back alley on the way home. Managed to get a few shots before he became much too interested in just saying hello and jumped off the car to visit with us.

That’s all for today…more to follow tomorrow!