Tag Archives: ontario

HDR, Pentax K200D, Tamron 17-50mm f2.8, Urban

An Evening Walk in Koreatown

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Bathurst Street Theatre, originally uploaded by jezza323.

Golden Evening

Last week I was lucky enough to have some time to go for a lovely walk through Koreatown in Toronto in the late evening with the camera and take a few pictures. I haven’t been out shooting as much as I would like the last few weeks, but I am hoping to get out more soon. I haven’t even had a chance to use my newly acquired tripod yet! What about that photowalk you say? Well I may or may not have missed that due to some Jagerbomb caused, self inflicted illness…


An Evening at Bloor & Christie, originally uploaded by jezza323.

HDR

Both of these shots are HDR’s as I thought they would show off the lovely soft golden evening light the best. Both shots were taken handheld with my usual Pentax K200D, and I used a lens I haven’t used for a while, the Tamron 17-50mm f2.8. I took the 3 shots for the HDR using bracketing at +/- 2.0 EV. To process them I imported into Lightroom 3, then used the Photomatix Lightroom plugin to export the 3 base images to Photomatix for blending. I used the standard Tone Mapping method to generate the final HDR’s which the plugin automatically re-imports back into the Lightroom library for you. I made a final crop and adjustment before exporting to JPG and uploading to Flickr.

Pentax K200D, Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6, Urban

Yonge St, Toronto

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Yonge St, Toronto, originally uploaded by jezza323.

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Seeing Toronto

This is from when I first arrived in Toronto. My wife and I got ourselves a CityPass which allows you entry into the most popular attractions in the city at a reduced cost. I can highly recommend the CityPass, as you save an awful lot over paying the individual entry fees. One of the places a Toronto CityPass will get you into is CN Tower. The viewing area there gives an amazing outlook over the city, Lake Ontario and the islands.

The View

This is a shot looking North from the tower over the Toronto Entertainment District, with the Financial District on the right, and the line of building’s stretching towards the horizon is Yonge St. I had originally posted this shot to flickr in colour, but about 3 weeks later I was reviewing all the photos I had taken since we arrived, and decided to give black and white a try. I made a virtual copy in Lightroom, converted to black and white then adjusted the levels somewhat to come up with this image. I think it works much better than the colour version.

In Colour

Yonge St from above

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Now A Canadian (Life Update)

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As you might have noticed, my recent shots are all from Toronto, Canada and its surrounds. The reason for this is that I have made the move across the globe, from sunny Brisbane to not as sunny Toronto.

A Big Move

My wife and I decided to make the move in late 2010, and after much organizing, paperwork and hard work we were finally able to move in mid April 2011. Of course we had to get rid of most of our possessions, rationalize what we had and bring as little as possible with us. This meant that I had to get rid of, or leave behind, quite a lot of photography gear. I have updated my list of gear, and hopefully I will be able to acquire some new gear soon!

Replenishing Stocks

In particular I am missing my tripod. I have my eye on 1 at Vistek but I need to save up a little first, hopefully a tripod review is just around the corner. I am also looking to replace my point & shoot camera. At the moment the one which catches my eye is the Canon ELPH 300 HS (IXUS 220 HS). The reasons this one strikes me are it features a proper wide angle lens (24mm equivalent), the lens is quite fast at f2.7 (at the wide end) and being a Canon it will be able to run CHDK software. The camera is quite a new release, so currently CHDK is not available for this model (it is still being ported), but I believe it will be in the near future. Another bonus is the full HD (1080p) video recording the camera offers, and its relatively cheap price. Again, you can look forward to a review of this model as soon as I get my hands on it.

Suggestions?

If anyone has any tips for living in Toronto, places I should visit (and photograph) then please let me know.

Architecture, HDR, Pentax K200D, Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6

Great Library Memorial

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Great Library Memorial, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This is another shot of Osgoode Hall. This one is a Memorial in the Great Library of the building.

This is a bit of an unusual shot for me, because it is a black and white HDR. Not something I usually would do, but I have been craving some black and white, so here some is!

Again this is 3 shots taken at +/- 2.0 EV, with the Pentax K200D and Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6. I blended the exposures using Photomatix (in colour) then made the final edits and black & white conversion in Lightroom.

Architecture, Pentax K200D, Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6

Royal Ontario Museum

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Royal Ontario Museum 

Royal Ontario Museum, originally uploaded by jezza323.

This is another of the main tourist attractions in Toronto. The ROM (Royal Ontario Museum) is quite large! We were expected a 2hr or so tour of the museum, however it turned into an all day trek through the place, we walked through for over 6 hours!

The museum is huge, and has a great collection of pieces and displays. I highly recommend a visit to anyone in the area.

This is a single exposure, with quite a bit of Lightroom tweaking to bring out the detail.

Architecture, HDR, Pentax K200D, Sigma 10-20mm f4.0-5.6

Casa Loma

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Casa Loma

Casa Loma, originally uploaded by jezza323.

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I am now an official Toronto resident, have moade the move here with my wife. We are settling in, and have found the time to visit a number of the tourist attractions. This is the first I will post.

Casa Loma is a gothic style home, build in the early 1900′s by a wealthy Toronto businessman. It is now a tourist attraction and museum.

I grabbed this shot as we were leaving. It is quite hard to get a good angle on the building due to the trees everywhere, but I managed to find this spot at the edge of the carpark.

This image is 3 shots, taken at +/- 2.0 EV and blended using Lightroom and the LREnfuse plugin.