Posts Tagged 'snow'

The Morning After the Deluge

Tito and I are taking off to Montreal today :) I promised I wouldn’t take my camera or computer (knitting, of course, is still coming. To do otherwise would be madness). To get my shutterbug out of my system I went out an hour before dawn this morning to snap some shots of the beautiful snow we got yesterday.

Who says we don’t have white beaches in Canada?

PS – For those interested – here is my set up this morning. I shot everything RAW, at f.10 for sharpness, and processed the details in Lightroom.

Canon 7D, Lee Filter, Sigma 10-20

  • Canon 7D
  • Tripod
  • Remote Release
  • Lee Filter System with .6 Graduated Neutral Density Filter
  • Sigma 10-20mm, f4.5 Lens

Snow, Toronto, Canada, Winter, HTO Park

Snow, Toronto, Canada, Winter, HTO Park

Snow, Toronto, Canada, Winter, HTO Park

Snow, Toronto, Canada, Winter, HTO Park

Snow, Toronto, Canada, Winter, HTO Park

Snow, Toronto, Canada, Winter, HTO Park

Snow, Toronto, Canada, Winter, HTO Park

 

Weather with Benefits

This morning I found a snow drift high enough to attempt a vertical snow angel =D

photo3

Of course, I had to take a bit of a run at it – which means it was less like making a snow angel and more like trying to make a cartoonesque Shireen-shaped-hole in the Skydome, but still. Good times.

Enjoy the weather today folks!

At Last

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Yesterday we were promised snow, and lots of it. Because I am short sighted and forgetful, when 7 pm passed and the snow failed to arrive I went out for dinner… in heels. Cue the snow! By the time I got home (thank goodness for the mobile, heated, oasis-on-wheels known as cars) it was a world transformed.

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

I was hoping to get up just before dawn and shoot the blue hour but when I woke up the snow was still piling on, so I waited until later this morning to go a-shootin’ with my camera. What a treat! I hope very much that this lovely weather, now that it has finally arrived, is here to stay for at least 2 months.

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Best moment of the day: finding a giant patch of untouched snow, perfect for a snow-angel (read: snow-overweight-butterfly). I couldn’t resist. Afterwards I just lay there in the snow for a good 5 minutes, staring at the sky and thinking ‘damn, this is awesome’. If you haven’t made one of these since childhood I highly recommend it.

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Another delightful discovery is that the lake is finally starting to freeze over. It’s been 2 winters since that happened, and I miss it.

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

I love the way snow piles up on every little surface…

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Nothing inspires me to knit quite like this kind of weather :)

Winter in the Music Garden ©Shireen Nadir 2012

North Ontario Road Trip day 6 – returning south, into even crazier weather.

Day 5 we stayed in Hearst all day, but didn’t really do much. I think it was more about spending a day off the road and giving the car (Tito) a break! Day 6 we left Hearst heading east and south trough Kapuskasing,

Kapuskasing ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Cochrane,

Cochrane ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Iroquois Falls, Timmins and then making a massive loop back to Wawa for the night, where the skies were incredibly clear.

Wawa ©Shireen Nadir 2012

To that point in our trip, it had snowed, wet snowed and fluffy-but-it-melts-when-it-lands snowed but once in Timmins it began to capital S. Snow.

Highway 101 ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Shortly, visibility was nil.

Highway 101 ©Shireen Nadir 2012

It was gorgeous…an unexpected treat.

Highway 101 ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Highway 101 ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Highway 101 ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Highway 101 ©Shireen Nadir 2012

But you can bet this was more of a concern now.

Highway 101 ©Shireen Nadir 2012

Tito’s gotten quite good at the late night, long haul, strange highway, bad weather, pitch black, moose threatened highway drives ;) On the homeward haul today!

To the snow, and beautiful Manitoba

Selkirk Manitoba

Because, though my heart is in eastern Canada, the prairie provinces are gorgeous in their own austere way :) These were all taken in Selkirk, Manitoba.

Selkirk Manitoba

Winter by Walter de la Mare

Clouded with snow
The cold winds blow,
And shrill on leafless bough
The robin with its burning breast
Alone sings now.

Selkirk Manitoba

The rayless sun,
Day’s journey done,
Sheds its last ebbing light
On fields in leagues of beauty spread
Unearthly white.

Selkirk Manitoba

Thick draws the dark,
And spark by spark,
The frost-fires kindle, and soon
Over that sea of frozen foam
Floats the white moon.

Selkirk Manitoba

Winter shooting – and the inspiration behind the camera cosy!

Hey everyone! I wanted to share some pics I took a few days ago – the very day in fact that I decided my camera needed it’s own cosy.

These are the snowy steps leading down into the ravine by my place. For those of you fixin’ to berate me about ‘being careful’ on those stairs let me assure you I exercised utmost caution – what makes you think I would ever risk the safety of my camera?

At the bottom of the ravine is a little creek. I love how the little piles of snow on each rock make it look like tiny round mountains are in the water!

Another creek shot – I couldn’t get enough of how the sides of the creek, and the dark water, created this textural flowing landscape through the snow.

This bridge went over the creek  - but my favourite detail is how that fallen tree created an arch over the path leading up to the bridge itself.

I love winter shooting – though it did occur to me in the middle of all this that my camera was getting snowed on, and that my battery was not lasting nearly as long as it does in warm weather. That was what led me to crochet a cosy for it that night =o)

While I was at it I took a photo of a house in my neighbourhood that I drool over daily. If crafting and photography somehow lead me to be able to afford a house one day this is the one I would want.

More gorgeous houses near me.

I love the colour the sky turns when it’s snowy like this – the reflection of the city lights on all that white gives the sky a warm tinge at night.

More winter shooting coming up soon! In the meantime all kinds of other exciting things are happening;

  • I came sooo close to putting in an offer on a condo this past weekend – but it had turned into a bidding war with multiple offers and my agent advised me to stay out of that for now. I’ve got to say, while it does have it’s fun aspects, I find home-hunting to be very exhausting. Particularly emotionally for some reason. Luckily I have a really great agent to work with, and all the places I want to see are close to my office so I don’t need to travel much.
  • Tito and I are both taking lamp-working classes at beadfx next weekend (a belated birthday gift) – I’ve never tried it, I’m so excited!
  • The weekend after that we’re going up to Tobermory for a weekend, that camera cosy will definitely come in handy!
  • I picked up a gorgeous skein of dark turquoise sock yarn from TFA – I’m going to try knitting a beaded shawl. I foresee all kinds of stress ahead, but with a gorgeous result at the end.
  • My blog is on the cusp of 10 000 hits! Amazing! It’s small change compared to some of the mega blogs out there, but I am humbled and amazed that so many people have found my crafting to be so interesting =oD

 

Snow… in Toronto!

Newsflash, folks – It does snow in Toronto.

It snows frequently in fact, despite what other Canadian cities, the news, our previous mayor, these guys, and even some Torontonians, seem to think. The past two days we’ve been warned of this impending doom, only to wake up to a very pretty morning with some lovely white stuff on the ground. My parents, who’ve been in Canada virtually all of their adult lives, were nonplussed and drove to work as usual. Tito unconcernedly drove to Ajax this morning. It’s a regular day here in the T-dot, except that half the city stayed home, which I just do not get.

Here are few snow stats to back me up ;o)

  • Winter 07-08 – total snowfall in downtown Toronto – 194.0 cm
  • Winter 08-09 – total snowfall in downtown Toronto – 119.1 cm
  • Winter 09-10 – La Niña year – ok, so there wasn’t much snow, but that’s rare
  • This winter so far  – 120 cm, and it’s only February.
  • Average annual snowfall, according to wikipedia – 133 cm

For comparison sake:

  • The average annual snowfall in Winnipeg, MB is 110.6
  • The average annual snowfall in Calgary, AB is 126.7
  • The average annual snowfall in Edmonton, AB is 123.7
  • The average annual snowfall in Vancouver, BC is 46.5

Ok, so Montreal royally trumps us in snow with an average of 226.2, but still, we’re up there. So take that, Western Canada!

(source)

To celebrate our proven snowiness I’m posting some of my favourite winter photography from the past few years, enjoy!

Winter 08 – I took this photo at Harbourfront at 5 am, just before the sun came up after after a lovely storm.

Did I mention that it also gets quite cold here? This is Lake Ontario – responsible for moderating much of Toronto’s weather trends, on a frozen morning.

Earlier this same winter =o) Doggies love the snow!

Winter 07 – in the Toronto Music Gardens

Winter ’10 – This is the Leslie Street Spit – the breakers were totally coated in ice.

Another shot from that same day – just gorgeous!

Another lovely dawn shot.

From the Toronto Music Gardens.

We had a good 30 or so cm today, so I’ll be going out tonight, yes, you guessed it, shooting. I can’t wait – winter is just another opportunity to wear all kinds of knitted goodies and drink lots of hot chocolate – what’s not to love?



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