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How do you photograph wildlife without leaving the house?  Live where the wildlife comes to you.

After I took early retirement from my job as Photo Editor for CBC News, some of my friends were wondering why I chose to move back to my home town of Kitimat, British Columbia (on  the northwest coast). There were a whole lot of reasons, financial (I could buy a house for cash); I have plans to start a wilderness photo workshop studio here, But most of all I love the outdoors, the wilderness, the clear air.

For the past three weeks, I have pretty much been stuck in the house. (I did get out to shoot one assignment). The movers who gave me an optimal delivery window of August 23 to 24 and who were carrying much of my gear actually arrived on Saturday, September 4. (I am still unpacking). Waiting for the delivery of my new furniture and my new computer. Waiting for the tech to fix my snail speed internet connection to the high speed it is supposed to be. Waiting to get the car.

As I waited, the wildlife came to me.

Last Wednesday,  September 1, a hawk was soaring over my front yard.

The hawk then swoops down over the parkette across the street, hunting for prey. the lead photo in this blog.

The next day, Thursday, September 2, the ravens came.



One pair of ravens kept together in a display of tandem, precision flying.


The two reminded me of the close tandem aerobatics I shot  at the Toronto International  Air Show on previous Labour Day weekends.

Sunday, September 5, was cold, cloudy and rainy.

This bird was busy in the rain, grabbing berries from a bush that grows on my back fence.

This little bird puffed himself up against the cold as he stopped on one of my fence posts.


This bird also took shelter on my fence.


 
A stellar jay likes to hang out on my the posts of my back deck. Finally managed to grab the shot on Monday, September 6.


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Photoshelter's Grover Sanschagrin's blog 15 Digital Point-and-Shoot Cameras Used By Pro Photographers:

Do professional photographers really use point-and-shoot cameras? Surprisingly, yes. 
Using Facebook and Twitter, I just completed a little of my own unscientific research. I wanted to find out which digital point-and-shoot is the camera-of-choice among professional photographers. Just over 50 professional photographers responded, and most of them are included...

The blog includes my contribution, on my favourite point and shoot, the Pansonic Lumix FZ28. And for more indepth information here is the original blog post on shooting the FZ28 during the Olympic Torch demonstration in Toronto.

You have to contrast the peaceful and professional way the Toronto Police Service contained that anti-Olympic demonstration in December 2009, with attacks by various police services during the G20 in June 2010 in Toronto on peaceful demonstrators, on the supposed free speech safe zone at Queen's Park and the blocking of hundreds of people during a thunderstorm at Queen St. and Spadina Ave.

Here is a photo gallery from the News Photographers Association of Canada of the G20 events, including images by accredited photographers just doing their jobs (and not interfering) who were attacked by the police.

There's a huge controversy in my Toronto neighborhood at the moment over plans by the Toronto Transit Commission to build second exits at a number of the subway stations on the Danforth line.  As the engineers explained at a stifling and noisy public meeting last night (July 12, 2010) in this security conscious era, second exits are necessary if subway stations and trains have to be evacuated.  However, this was not taken into consideration when the subway was originally built and so now it appears as if the second exits may have to be built in residential areas at the expense of some people's homes.

I shot last night's meeting for Openfile.ca.  You will find reporter Janet Money's story at Residents fight back against TTC plan.

Some of the photographs are part  of that story. Here is my gallery of the evening's events.


It was a stifling hot night at  the crowded and unairconditioned Danforth Collegiate and Technical Institute as neighborhood residents demanded answers.


The early part of the evening was a highly technical and sometimes confusing engineering technical briefing. Pat McCarthy, who lives on Strathmore Blvd. listens to the presentation  on the expansion of  Greenwood subway station. Later at the  information and protest meeting, McCarthy asked for clarification.

Bruna Amabile, whose parent's home on Strathmore Blvd  was threatened by expropriation, listens to answers from TTC officials.

Elaine McLellan  of Strathmore Blvd raises an objection. (Robin Rowland)

Community activist Lisa Dymond, Strathmore Blvd,  outlines objections to the TTC  plans

In the last blog, I mentioned that a friend and I went to have a relaxing day at Humber Bay West park in the west end of Toronto.

The most interesting moments were late in the afternoon. Sitting quietly at  a picnic table, I noticed a groundhog stick a nose out of the long grass.  Kept very quiet, except of course, of the click of the camera mirror.  Turns out there was a family of three groundhogs nibbling away at the grass. 

After about half an hour, one groundhog was just about a metre from the table, munching on a leaf.


A groundhog sticks a nose out from a grassy trail  .

(I took early retirement from CBC News on March 31, 2010 and embarked on an new career as an independent visual journalist.  But I haven't been blogging as I should. I was caught up in last minute renovations and now, so far, I haven't been able to sell my house in Toronto, which means my life has largely been on hold. Now I am starting up again)

So Toronto is now on G8/G20  security lockdown  And since I am not really working at the moment, because I can't make any commitments until  the house sells, I didn't look for any G8/G20 related assignments.

It's a beautiful June afternoon, so a friend and I decide to get away from it, as far as way as possible, without leaving the city. We went to Humber Bay Park West to enjoy the sun and photograph the birds and flowers.

But security was evident in the park as well.  A Canadian Coast  Guard boat went by first.


Sometime later it was a Toronto Police Service Marine Unit rescue boat.


I guess they were hungry after a long, hard day.  And why not? After all the newsrooms of Toronto keep Pizza Pizza in business during crisis periods and summits.  These guys, of course, apparently got to stop for a pizza.  Just wondering for all those journalists who are locked into the security zones. Is it delivery (e.g Pizza Pizza) or Deliciso?

Slideshow from the News Photographers Association of Canada conference 2010

How many times do we say "if I had a chance to do it all over again...."

Well, if I had a chance to do it all over again, I would have shot more Kodachrome.  Joni Mitchell was right, "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone."

In all those years, I only shot a few rolls. Why? For a poor student back in the 70s, I thought it was too expensive.  It was also more convenient to get Ektachrome and take it to a 24-hour custom lab in Toronto rather than mailing it away and waiting a couple of weeks. (Or so I thought back then).

A couple of coincidences came together in the past week or so.
First,  I love old steam engines and the age of steam on the railways. The current issue of Classic Trains magazine celebrates the end of steam in North America 60 years ago.  The magazine style are stories of rail fan memoir and personal experiences.   To my surprise , these memoirs by men who were teenagers (youngest 14) or college students in 1960, shot Kodachrome. There were lots of those rich Kodachromes in the issue, capturing those last days of  smoke belching black engines. So it shows, I  probably should have shot more Kodachrome.

Second: I was looking for an old shot for possible use in a story I was writing for CBC.ca. Although the shot eventually wasn't used, the image was in a yellow plastic box of Kodachrome slides that I had taken during my post-university  backpacking trip to Europe.
I scanned that one image, then decided to scan some more.

My visit to Pompeii in September, 1976..

I wasn't assigned to cover the Olympic torch relay on the evening of Thursday Dec. 17, 2009, but ran right into it as I was heading from work to work out at the downtown YMCA.

I got to College subway station and saw the crowd waiting for the torch. 
As I was preparing to make my way through the crowd to the Y, I heard yelling. Then I saw that a group of demonstrators had rushed onto Yonge Street south of College yelling slogans like "No Olympics on stolen native land"  and waving signs.

I didn't have my main photo gear but  had the trusty small camera I always carry in a fanny pack, the Panasonic FZ28.

With the FZ28, as I have in the past, I pushed the Panasonic Lumix to its limit to shoot the demonstration using available light.  ISO 1600, EV +1.5, shutter priority at 1/40 and 1/50 of a second.

The crowd then congregated at Yonge and College Streets.



Demonstrators opposing the Olympic torch relay gather at Yonge and College streets in Toronto on Thursday night.  (Robin Rowland/CBC)

As the demonstrators moved up Yonge Street, I called the CBC news desk to tell them what was going on. 

Brett Gundlock of The National Post grabbed shot of a demonstrator as I passed by talking on my cell phone to the CBC Live Desk.



Toronto police at first tried and failed to stop the demonstration at Yonge and Grovesnor Streets when the protesters ran into the first two police cruisers escorting the torch parade.  (Robin Rowland/CBC)

Further up Yonge Street, a cordon of police officers with bicycles stopped the protest a block south of Wellesley Street.