Where did January go ??

Its mid winter here , lots of snow, cold temperatures, and grey/white skies. Its been an interesting week of taking photographs, I've started shooting in RAW , and using the semi manual settings on my camera.  Aperture and shutter speed was my focus this week.   Ill keep this brief, as for the first time. Im adding captions :)) Ill let them tell the rest of this weeks story .

Winter horizon , On a clear day the CN tower is very pronounced, today its just a fuzzy stick in the far background.

Im guessing this bird had flown south :) 

Fence posts and dark cold water are two of my favourite subjects 

Dark water on a cold grey day , this shot was an Ah Ha moment for shutter speed.  

Snowy Calm, A view of the woods, it looks so  peaceful.  

You know the snow is deep when :)) 

Post in a snowy field.  This was my Ah Ha moment for aperture.  Fence posts make great practice shots. 

Little Miss Chicken , Id been taking care of a Farmer Friend's  chickens while he was away!

Roast pork Dinner, my other life as a food blogger :)
http://richfletchersgoodfoodrevolution.blogspot.com/

I hope you've enjoyed this weeks pictures.  All comments, critiques,  or suggestions are welcomed.  Happy Shooting , see you In February :)

Thirty Below , and lots of snow :)

It snowed almost all day yesterday, was quite a nice day .. not too far below zero , lots of fluffy snow.  Then came the night ,  and the cold !  Woke up to -33C with wind chill today . COLD!  Of course, Id left my truck window open !! Hahahaha it was frozen and had a good amount of snow in it, and even worse I forgot to plug it in.  So my whole day was delayed by an hour while I waited for the block heater to do  its job.  Had another coffee , and even managed a food post while waiting. You can check it out here :) http://richfletchersgoodfoodrevolution.blogspot.com/ So finally , I get to leave , and that's were the photos start..  with a quick view of my truck, then off for a frozen hike...  so cold i could only manage two or three shots at a time, before my fingers wouldn't work properly. The snow banks looked great today , frozen, but with blue skies and sunshine. Then , just to show how used to the cold  me and my dogs have become, the last one was taken at a stop sign..  I didn't even have to roll down the window, it was already down.  6 Layers can keep you pretty warm.  Enjoy :)) I know I did.  

Great day for hawk watching !

I have been chasing a pair of hawks around for several months,  finally getting a good shot last month...  I'm sure it doesn't help that i have two large boisterous dogs with me when trying to capture them :)  But its been fun, and the dogs need to be walked anyway, so I have kept trying. A couple of days ago ... I found not two but FIVE different hawks, I wasn't able to get good shots of all of them.. but did manage to get a few good ones.  Have a look and let me know what you think.   I'm thinking I want a newer faster, better camera lol . I have been looking in the last couple of days, can't quite swing the Dslr I'd really like..  so, I'm thinking a Canon SX30 si will get me a bit closer to the action.

Today was a good day :)

Its my birthday today, and I was debating posting anything... but I had such a fun day shooting .. I just have to share a few pics with you,   they are all in chronological order starting at about 7am this morning when I let the dogs out, till around 8pm with my dinner at the Keg :) I think that will be my first food picture on here, which is really quite funny as I didn't cook it .  ( For those that don't know me , I also have a food blog. Links is at the bottom of this page ) So here you are , I hope you enjoy :))

Snow, Tracks , and my Truck

I hope you all like snow :)  Pretty much every picture from now until March will have it in there some where! We are just getting to the deep freeze portion of our winter,  temperatures will continue to drop for the next month.   The only bonus is the days are getting just a little longer each day . 

I hope you all enjoy , as always comments and editing suggestions are much appreciated.  ( These are all untouched shots ) 

First Snowy Day of the New Year

I was so lucky to have great shooting weather for our late fall and the beginning of winter,  crazy clouds,  amazing sunsets , wild weather , -25C and below days,  we had everything in the span of a month,  Then it all melted and became a gray, brown very blah landscape.   I know overcast days can make for good shots , but for about a 2 weeks it really was hard to find something interesting.  Now its the New Year , and the snow is back. Hiding all that brown under a blanket of white :)   Today was fun, it was -7C or so with a nice fluffy snow coming down. I hope you enjoy these :)

Happy New Year ! Im back :)

Happy New Year!! 
I'm happy to say my New Year has started off great :)  After the disaster I had on Boxing day :( it didn't look very promising .  I was just about to install a back up hard drive, when my main drive mysteriously FAILED ...  most things were backed up well,  with the exception of the last 4 months.  Some where around 4500 shots were lost.   I managed to dload around 600 from various sites ( not full quality but a picture at least ! ) Then on New Years Eve, when I had given up on it ever working again ... it just started working again!!  The only thing i lost was all the tags i had applied, since i had reinstalled Picassa since :) 
I'm looking forward to my best year of photography ever !  I'm taking about 1000 shots a month now, compared to 100 before I started blogging about food and photos. 
I'll be back to regular posting soon , I have a lot of photos to reorganize now lol :)  Ill  leave you with these shots I just recovered ! 

Have your self a safe and happy year !!  and DON'T forget to back up your important files !!! 
Rich