Watching the Sun Set

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There is a great hill in Ottawa called Carlington Heights.   The hill houses a large water reservoir and has a uniquely flat top because of it. It's pretty close to our house so Katriina and I had some dinner and went adventuring on top of the hill to do a timelapse and take some pictures (see future post) as the sun set. I set one Canon 5D mark II on a tripod with a 17-40mm lens facing the sunset and thanks to the bubble level Katriina gave me in my stocking I was able to level the camera without much fuss. I started the timelapse a little late but the clouds still make a great effect. Photos were taken in 5s intervals and processed in Adobe Lightroom. I love making timelapses and I hope you enjoy this short one.

Timelapse taken in 5s Intervals from a hill in Ottawa, Ontaro. Camera: Canon 5D Mark II Lens: 17-40mm f/4L Intervals: 5s

Playing in the Rain

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Everyone hopes for a nice, sunny day on their big day but we all know the weather doesn't always cooperate with our plans. Rain or shine we want to be able to take great photos. Sunday proved to be grey and rainy here in Ottawa so we saw this as an opportunity to try some portraits in the rain. The idea was to really accentuate the raindrops and make them a key element of the photo. To do this I stuck a flash on a stand and put a freezer bag on it with an elastic to keep it dry. The flash was placed behind the subject and fired remotely from the camera to light the raindrops.

I think this worked out pretty well. You can see below the difference between shooting only with ambient light and than shooting with the flash back-lighting the raindrops. It really makes the photo pop.

No Flash - Ambient Light

Off Camera Flash - Backlit

Another one of Katriina.

Lefroy Visits = FOOD

On a weekend trip a few weeks back we went to a small-town garage-sale / street festival (Cookstown Wing Ding). As always, whenever there is samples available - we are both advocates for taking part. There was a meat-booth (yep - it's as great as it sounds) set up with quite a few samples so with Katriina's sister and brother-in-law we went to town. There are a couple rules to sampling though... 1) You can't be hungry 2) You're not supposed to get sucked in.

But.. but... MEAT samples. 

Yeah. We broke rule #2. Homemade Mennonite summer sausage. How can you say no? We ended up splitting a ... (tube? roll? stick?)... with Elisha and Nate and off we went happy.

It was just so authentic / pretty in it's cloth wrapping, and my mom had such a nice cutting board so I decided to try out some food photography. Food photography isn't really something we do, but boy, I (Katriina) would LOVE to be good at it. I drool at the photos in my Bon Appétit magazine. Maybe on day. For now, you can join us in drooling at the sausage/salami.

Here's a couple other food related photos from the weekend. For those of you who don't know - my mother is a genius. With food that is. And being amazingly crafty/frugal. That tablecloth? Oh - sorry I mean shower curtain (yup!) - As-Is section of Ikea. She's an inspiration to me.

Also, yes - that is filet mignon, garlic-butter shrimp, bacon wrapped scallops, stuffed portobello mushrooms, plus corn + baked potatoes (with all the fixings)..... nom nom nom. I hope I didn't just make you drool over your keyboard. Hope you enjoy the photos.