Smorgasbord

This weekend I have a smorgasbord of loose ends to tie up for you.

First of all, I continue to process my images from my trip to Arizona. I guess that the last half of the week I spent there I did a lot less landscape/nature shooting than during the first half of the week. I hope you find these shots interesting. This wall abstract is one of several similar shots that I took in various places throughout southeastern Arizona. Many of the buildings and homes had colorful stucco siding, common throughout the Southwest. Shots like this always make me think of my friend Sarah Underhill who I wrote about in a previous post. I learned so much from Sarah as a photographer. Colorful walls were some of her favorite subjects.

Like I said, you will find a smorgasbord today. In my Recent Additions gallery, you will find several photos from Arizona, a handful of shots from my safari in Kenya last summer, and some shots from the monuments in downtown DC. I've been (figuratively) all over the map lately. :-)

Please also notice that I have added an Arizona Gallery. Arizona shots will eventually end up there after they've outlived their welcome in the Recent Additions gallery.

Enjoy your weekend!

Toronto

Yesterday morning I got up super early (like 3:30!) and drove to Toronto. From where I live the drive is about two hours and change. So I after one wrong turn (doh!) and a foolish error (didn't realize that I needed to pay for the ticket with Canadian coins only) I missed the earliest ferry that would have taken me to the island where I could get some great sunrise photos. I missed some great light. But I got some nice daytime shots of the skyline and had a nice walk. I loved the fact that the Toronto Islands have a rural feel in an urban setting. If you ever get the chance to visit Toronto, spend a half a day walking the Toronto Islands!

I also spent a bit of time walking around the city. It was a gorgeous spring day - no clouds and lots of sunshine. I also visited an exhibition at the University of Toronto. One of the photographers with whom I interact on photo.net, Ian Cox-Leigh, has several award-winning pieces being shown there. Take a look at the online gallery. Check out Ian's work. You'll enjoy it!

I also got outside the city to visit another Douglas Cardinal building. He's the architect of the Smithsonian American Indian Museum that I mentioned in a previous post. He designed a municipal building about an hour north of Toronto. So I took a nice drive and shot a bunch of images of that building, too.

Finally, I returned to the Toronto Islands to catch the skyline at sunset. In the evening, the ferry only runs once an hour. I would have loved to stay for about 20 minutes more, as the light was only getting better. But I wasn't about to sit on the dock for another half hour in the pitch black all by myself. The shot you see here is the very last shot I took yesterday.

PhotoBlogs ... and the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, NY

What is a photoblog? You know what a "blog" is, right? A "web log" ... a sort of personal online journal. Well, a photoblog is a blog whose content is primarily photographic in nature. I suppose that this "photoblog" that I'm starting may end up being just a "blog" about photography. But I will try to refrain from typing too, too much. :-)

Therefore, getting to the "photo" part of this "photoblog", I want to tell you about a brief photo side trip that I took this afternoon. We had about a foot of snow last night (give or take a couple of inches), which meant that if I wanted snow photos I would need to get out soon before the snow got muddy and all stepped on. And, as is unusual for the Buffalo, New York area this time of year, we had a few hours of puffy, friendly clouds this afternoon. Perfect! I have been wanting to get downtown to shoot the Albright-Knox Art Gallery, which is one of Buffalo's most wonderful examples of fabulous architecture that this city has to show off. It was built in the first few years of the 20th Century, and should evoke images of the Acropolis in Athens.

I love to shoot architecture and landscapes when there are puffy clouds in the sky. I use my wide lens, a 10-22mm zoom, set to the 10mm width. I try to get the horizon around 20% or 30% from the bottom of the frame, which gives a really unique look to the sky.

There are a few images from today's shoot in the gallery (see links at the top of this page), and I have a lot more in my files. If you'd like to see more, let me know.