Today was pretty leisurely we were all tired so we just did a relaxing bike ride at Tommy Thompson park with the whole family this time. While we were there the airshow was on, I had the 300mm lens & extender and took some pretty awesome shots considering the distance.
I think the bike ride took about 2 hours, Brandon and Maggie was pretty tired but I could have gone farther. 😉 More planes for me tomorrow, I’m meeting up with Alan, Mario, Eddy & Brayden and it’s going to be awesome!
So today we went to the CNE, it’s an annual thing that we do and it was great. Estelle & Georgia were suppose to come with too but something popped up and they ended up cancelling, too bad the little one would have had fun. Anyway we got there around 10 and man CNE parking went up a lot this year, it was $35! I’m lazy though after a long day of walking around, I like the convenience of having a close cool car to walk to.
Even though Brandon is 9 now he’s still quite a chicken when it comes to rides and we skipped all the fun ones lol but that’s alright he’s my little chicken. 😉
I was hoping since we were going on a weekday that there’d be less people but no it was pretty darn busy lol. In the last two photos I tried something a bit more artistic with my camera, I set the shutter speed lower and tried to track Maggie & Brandon as they went by. They were in relative focus and the blur gives the viewer a sense of motion.
The airshow doesn’t officially start till tomorrow but some of the pilots were practicing in their planes and I was able to snap quite a few good photos. I was really annoyed with the first shot, the dark corner really ruined the photo, it’s still neat but much darker than it should have been. Sigh not sure what to do now, on Sunday I’m going with some of the guys to take more pictures, perhaps I’ll use the Canon 5D Mark II as my primary instead. 🙁
We left in the mid afternoon, walking around in the sun all day can be quite tiring and I know the little guy was beat. On the way home, I made a detour to Vistek to rent a lens.
I rented a Canon EF 300mm F2.8L IS II lens, natively it has more reach than my 70-200 and when I use my 2x Canon Extender on it, it’ll be a 600mm F5.6 lens and that’s substantially longer than what I was using today. Also the EF 300mm F2.8L IS II is so damn sharp, my Canon 24-70 F2.8L II & Canon 70-200 F2.8L IS II have best in class sharpness and the 300 is much better if you pixel peep… and I do lol. Even with the extender on, it’s sharper than my 70-200 so I’m pretty damn impressed. Maybe one day I’ll get one, after I win the lottery I think Maggie would go nuts since this thing retails for $9,000…
Great day, pretty tired but a lot of fun and I’m a lucky man.
I’ve been telling anyone who will listen that Toronto is an extremely safe city and we’ve come out at number 6 in a world ranking which seems pretty good to me. Yes there’s violence but per capita it’s so minimal that the average person doesn’t have to worry about it. Here’s the link to the report if you want to look at how they qualify things.
LOL I’m going to sound like Trump here but the news hypes up all the negative aspects of the city because that’s what grabs headlines but in reality Toronto is one of the safest cities in the world. It could be better so let’s deal with the root causes of violence instead of peddling easy answers or magic bullets that do not exist.
So the other day after visiting Megan, Frank & Lily, Brandon asked me where babies come from and here was my answer.
Brandon: Daddy where do babies come from?
Colin: Well you know how your body is made of cells? Inside those cells are genes and that’s what makes you, you. When mommy and daddy decided to have a baby I inserted half of my genes into mommy who supplied the other half, then you grew in mommy’s tummy till you were ready to be born.
Brandon: …
Colin: Do you understand?
Brandon: Yes daddy (while he looks out the window).
Haha score, love you son. 😀
So this weekend was pretty busy but a fun type busy so let’s start with Saturday. In the morning Maggie had a class to go to so after Kumon I brought Brandon to Estelle’s new home and took the kids to the park to play.
I’m really happy that Brandon is good with Georgia, he’s quite gentle with her and well she’s very sweet. The park is right behind Estelle’s house and pretty darn convenient if you ask me. The playground was a bit basic for Brandon but he had fun climbing a new yard. We left just before lunch and now that they’re so close I suspect we’ll play together a lot.
In the afternoon I met up with Mario to take some photos, we walked around Kensington market then to city hall (hoping there would be a protest but no dice) and it was great. It’s a very interesting part of town, small but full of fun little shops and since it was Saturday, super busy too.
As mentioned we walked to city hall and there was a Filipino event, not sure what was going on but it was interesting. Many stalls food, some insurance and new immigration information. While I was taking photos there an odd error popped up with my Canon 6D MK II, the lower right hand corner of the sensor would develop a dark spot. It happened with both my Canon 24-70 F28L II & 70-200 F2.8L IS II lenses and I tested without a lens and well it was still there. It’s intermittent but I think I’m going to need to have the body serviced. 🙁
Today in the morning I took the family to Primitive Designs, Mike said it was a fun place and he didn’t disappoint!
Brandon enjoyed it and thought all the sculptures were cool, lol they definitely were! They have all sorts of custom nick knacks at the store I kind of wanted to buy a minion but don’t know what I would do wtih it.
Last week Maggie scraped the front left side of the Lexus ct200 h on a column at work and well I was certainly annoyed. It looked like crap so I worked on it in the afternoon and thought it turned out pretty well!
I first sanded it down with 80 grit sandpaper, then moved to 120, 800 and 2,000. I have some 4,000 grit sandpaper somewhere but couldn’t find it but still turned out pretty well I think. From 2′ away you wouldn’t even notice it, I’ll get some finer sandpaper this week to smoothen things out further then polish and wax so it looks as good as new. 🙂
Yeah had a busy weekend, I feel pretty good and will relax the rest of the evening.
There are quite a few photographers at work and yesterday 6 of us went to the Manulife center on Bloor St. E to take some pictures of the flowers & bees.
These were all taken with the Canon 100mm F2.8L IS Macro lens and man that thing is so much fun to use. Another nice thing about being downtown, the bugs are relatively use to people so you can get pretty close without spooking them. I was shooting at F11 so even though the sun was out, the ISOs were relatively high and that’s why there’s some noise but ya so much fun I absolutely love it!
So I’ve said it before but I kind of hate August for how busy it is. My mom, Estelle, Brandon, Imran, dad & Frank’s birthday (in that order) is during this month so we had a small celebration at Megan’s house, minus my father.
Just the family and I really enjoyed it, Saturday also coincided with Lily’s first month so it was an extra joyous occasion. Little Georgia is sweet as ever but unfortunately while she was in the kitchen, Frank moved her after lighting the candles and the lighter burnt her in the arm pit. Sigh the first aid kit in my car came in real handy and she’s a sad baby but she’ll recover. While it’s a bit of a pain in the ass times like these really do make me feel special, especially since I got a great son like Brandon. 🙂
Today we went over to Jason, Lisa, Savannah & Caleb’s house for a play date with the kids and it was also really nice. They treated us to a BBQ which was really good and I’m pretty stuffed now lol. Despite the rain we had a great weekend and yeah I have it all. 😀
Just wanted to do a quick update about Brandon’s birthday party on Sunday. It was held at Laser Quest on Eglinton and all the kids had a great time, you could tell because they were all sweaty lol.
Brandon is a great kid and I feel fortunate to be his father. Sigh again I can’t believe he’s 9 already, it’s been a great ride so far and I can’t wait to see what the future brings for him.
So gun violence has been in the news, a bunch of people were shot while we were away and Mayor Tory immediately reiterated his call for a handgun ban which I thought immediately was stupid because Toronto Police chief Sanders said the shootings were gang related, do we expect gang members to forfeit their guns? Anyway I do have a bit of hope because of this response by the police chief.
“We are not going to arrest our way out of this,” Saunders told reporters at police headquarters Friday morning, calling for a “multi-faceted” approach to addressing gun violence in his second news conference about the surge in violence in the past week.
He said of the recent shootings, they “by and large have street gang connotations to them or are street gang related.” He said that doesn’t mean at times innocent people are not impacted and acknowledged it has been traumatic for those people.
There have been 19 incidents since Aug. 3, including a daytime shooting in East York on Friday that killed one man and injured another person.
Saunders said the shootings are a reality for many communities and are primarily located in areas that form a “U” shape of neighbourhoods in the city — parts of northwest Toronto, downtown, and Scarborough — that are stuck in a cycle of poverty and where people lack access to opportunities for education and jobs.
Source: Toronto Star
I don’t like Chief Sanders because I think he’s too much of a politician but he’s right here, if we truly want to deal with the issue of gun violence we need to look at and deal with all the factors that lead to someone picking up a gun in the first place. This is a start, I’m glad that the police chief is saying the right things and hopefully other politicians follow suit with action rather than just words.
Throwing money at more policing will not solve this problem but at least our leaders are starting to get the right idea.
So from the August long weekend and all of last week, we were away on a road trip out to the Maritimes and it was absolutely awesome. We’re doing a lot of road trips recently because it’s just so darn cheap to drive the Toyota Prius around, all in all we travelled 5,200 km and spent ~$220 on gas. I only averaged 4.7L/100km (50 mpg) because driving along the Appalachian mountains was bad for gas consumption but still it was a lot of fun. We didn’t spend any time in New Brunswick except one night in Fredericton but stayed two nights in Charlottetown PEI and the rest of the time in Cape Breton Nova Scotia.
PEI is very pretty with rolling hills and man is life laid back in the mainly rural province. Even in the capital things seemed to move by a bit slower and we found it rather relaxing. Nova Scotia was much of the same but prettier, so darn scenic and we did a lot of outdoor activities. Did a hike, a couple of boat tours to see the birds & whales and just mingled around. On a side note, everything closes at 9pm so I hope you’re not a night owl or it’ll be pretty boring lol.
I told Maggie, PEI is probably a good place to hold up during a zombie apocalypse since if you destroy the main bridge, there’s no other way to get to the island but by boat. While we were in Cape Breton NS, we did two boat tours, one with the Bird Island Boat Tours where we photographed most of the birds and I’m particularly proud of the bald eagle flying pictures. I saw it flying and had about 2 seconds to capture things and well it turned out pretty well. Even Brandon had a great time taking photos, Maggie was a sourpuss and decided not to join, too bad because it was great.
We also went with Oshan Whale Watch and there I was a bit more disappointed. I understand finding whales can be difficult but the boat developed problems just after we spotted the animals and had to return home. While I did enjoy myself, the lack of seeing whales after we did find them was a downer and I think it would have been better if we didn’t see them altogether. I understand that animals might not work on our schedule but the fact that there were problems with the boat was a bit unacceptable and we weren’t offered a make good. If we go back to Nova Scotia (and I’d like to), I’ll go with someone else instead.
We also drove the Cabot Trail and my god was it beautiful! Those are the pics with the mountains and the scenery was stunning. We stopped off many times to take photos and to check out the small tourist outposts for fun activities, all in all if you’re going plan on a good 5-8 hours and have a full tank of gas too. Gas stations are sparse, I have no problem with my Toyota Prius but if I were driving a normal car I would be sweating a bit especially since the gas stations do close up early too!
It was an amazing trip and while I was behind the wheel the whole time, I feel really rested and relaxed. It was good to get back to work but man I’ll have memories for a lifetime. 🙂
