Photo #7

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Last night Todd and I finally got together to shoot some photos together. We had planned on going out somewhere but we had a hard time getting inspired. So instead of venturing out into the cold city night, we decided to shoot some photos from Todd's scenic front yard, at least compared to mine.

I've always liked the view off this porch. Rivard Avenue twists back and forth and disappears between the houses. I've shot some photos here before and really liked the results, so I've always planned on doing more.

In my main photo I was trying to do something a little different. This is the stop sign in front of Todd's place, on Haig, where it intersects with Rivard.

The Bonus photos are just a couple different angles. The first is Todd's front yard, the second is looking North down along Rivard's twists and turns.

Click here to check out Todd's Photo

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Photo #6 - Full Moon

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Once again I spent my Saturday night in the cold amongst the darkness. It was a full moon and well below Zero, so I piled on layers of clothing and headed out with my camera and tripod. I didn't know where I was going, so I headed in the general direction I usually go to take photos, along Riverside Drive.

My first idea was to go to the beach and see what it looked like out there. But once I got there it just didn't do it for me. Then I remembered a place I've been meaning to check out. One of the 3 hills this city has to offer, just off Banwell road, which I believe is the border between Windsor and Tecumseh. So I was technically just outside of Windsor.

My photo this week is fairly simple, a tree with the full moon and stars hanging overhead. I wanted to get the moon in more shots, but at the time (around midnight) the moon was almost directly overhead, making it hard to get it into a photo with any kind of foreground, even with the fisheye lens.

Bonus Photos from the same night.

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This photo is looking West, across the top of Windsor. I really liked the way all the houses in the foreground looked. They're all new identical duplexes laid out very symmetrically. For the rest of the night I had the theme song from "Weeds" stuck in my head.

When you look at the large version of this photo you can see the Ambassador Bridge way at the back, miles away. It also shows how flat this city is, and why I was so excited to shoot some photos on a hill, even if its only 40 or 50 feet high.

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Not to much to say about this last photo. This is looking North across the landscape of this small hill. What I really like about this photo (more so in the large version) is the stars in the sky. Not a bad collection of stars considering the city glow creeping in from the East. Thanks for looking.

Don't forget to check out Todd's photo(s) for this week.

Photo #5

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With nothing to do on Saturday night after work I decided I better make the best of the night and go light hunting. I waited until about 11:30, hoping the clouds would lift a little so I could get a low hanging moon in my photos, but it didn't happen. Although as soon as I got home, I went out for a cigarette and saw a huge setting moon breaking through the clouds over the rooftops in the direction of Detroit. Thanks Moon.

I already knew where I wanted to go. A place I've always had in the back of my mind but never actually bothered to go for photos, Goose Bay. It's really nothing special in relation to the many places along Riverside Drive but its a nice quiet place aside from the traffic along the Drive.

Right away it lived up to its name as there where about 30 Geese sitting along the ice in the bay talking amongst themselves. I spent about 2 hours there which seemed like less than one. My main photo for this weak is a little cliché but I think it is the best of the series for impact and technical quality. The ever present Detroit Skyline. As a Windsor photographer I've shot this skyline many times but this is my favourite so far. I was hoping for a ship to pass along the river while I was there but no such luck, another time perhaps.

On to the bonus photos. The first is one of the last I shot. I tried to get as close to the Geese as I could without disturbing them, but they started honking and slowly made their way into the safety of the open water. This is about a 10 second exposure of the Geese leaving.

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This last photo is one of the first I shot on this outing. This is a seven-photo panoramic stitched together in Photoshop. This is Goose Bay, looking south-east with headlights streaking along Riverside Drive. The very left of this photo (on the other side of the bay) is where I shot the skyline photo from, facing the opposite direction...if that makes sense.

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Thats it...I think that's more than I meant to write about this week. But thats a good thing, I've been meaning to do more writing, if you can call it that.

Don't forget to check out Todd's Photo(s)

Photo #4

I had shot some photos Friday night around sunset but I wasn't really happy with them. The sunset itself was completely hidden by overcast so I hung around until twilight set in, adding some pink and blue to the overcast clouds. The colors were nice but I still wasn't very impressed with any of my photos (But I included one below as a bonus anyway).

Last night I was walking home from my friends place at about 10 pm and it was quite foggy. So I started brainstorming places to go shoot some foggy night photos. I got home and browsed around on Google Earth for some ideas. I decided to go to a nearby marina where there's a lighthouse.

I headed out at midnight, but by then the fog had lifted and the sky was full of nothing but stars. When I got to the marina the lighthouse wasn't lit up. So no fog and no lights on the lighthouse squashed my brainstorm. Instead I headed down Riverside Drive to a place I've shot at a few times before, St. Rose Beach. Why they call it a beach is beyond me. Its more of a cove with lots of large rocks along the shoreline with a small peir jetting out about 40 feet into the Detroit River.

I wanted to try something a little different with my night photography, so I attempted a panoramic perspective (above). This photo is four separate shots stitched together in photoshop. This is the only pano I attempted and I think it turned out pretty well.

Bonus Photo

Check out Todd's photo.

Weekly Photo #3

I went out last Tuesday to shoot some photos of the sunset but there wasn't much of one. So instead I waited in the cold until it started getting dark enough to shoot taillights. With each photo the sky got darker, allowing progressively longer shutter speeds, (thus, longer streaks of taillights). I wanted to keep shooting well into nightfall, but fearing for the health of my frozen feet inside a single layer of sock/skate shoe, I headed home shortly after this photo.


Here's a few bonus photos from last week as well. First two are from Lung Diary's band practice at Kev's new house in Stoney Point on Saturday. The last is just a nice quiet spot along the train tracks near Todd's house that he told me about. Well I knew about it, but he helped me shave off some time getting to it. Every fence has a hole.

Week One

Here is my contribution for week one of Todd and I's "Area 53" photo project. There will be 53 Photos in total by the end of the year, a photo a week for the whole year, plus the bonus one. There may be some other "bonus" photos along the way too. I'm certain to have more than just one photo to post some weeks.


I shot this photo last night on a table in my bedroom. I used black bristol board for the background and shot 3 different photos of the same candle. I used a flash overhead with a snoot and a different color gel for each position. Then I brought the 3 photos into photoshop and stacked them together. I didn't alter the position of the candles in photoshop, I actually shot them where I wanted them to be in the frame.

Check out Todd's photo

New Website

After about a year with my old simple website design I figured it was just about the right time to step it up a little.I spent the last few weeks of 2009 working on it and I launched it yesterday. That's why this blog has been so quiet.

My friend Todd Shearon and I decided to challenge each other with a Photo of the Week project to keep us motivated and help us become better photographers. The plan is to post a new photo every Monday that we shot the week before. Here is my first photo I posted as a kick off.


This is kind of a bonus photo because the actual thing won't actually start until this Monday.

Check out Todd's Blog or his website for his photo.