Capt Mondo's Photo Blog

I had a full day before the DITA Europe conference started, so I met with the Schengili ladies at my hotel and we headed off together to the Kunsthistorisches Museum down by Museum Platz. (A central place for museums! Heaven!) 😉

The chief goal of visiting this museum was to visit its Ancient Egyptian collection, primarily to get a good look at and photograph one of the rare Reserve Heads from the Old Kingdom in its collection. Teresa and her daughters were very good-natured for putting up with me and my interest in this area, and am hoping I made it up to them somewhat by explaining what I knew about the context for the objects that we saw.

The first thing that greets the visitor to the wing of the museum is the mock-Ancient Egyptian facade done in marble by the entranceway, with a distainful looking Pharoah looking down upon would-be visitors to “his” gallery; definitely not the beatific look of a typical Thutmosid bust. He is flanked by a couple of snakes, though he has no Royal Uraeus on his head-dress — so definitely a Viennese confection. I was also told that the wording for the gallery above him is in an old form of German, which somehow seemed to fit with the grand imperial-era look of the museum itself. The entrance is flanked on one side by a life-sized figure of the lioness-headed goddess Sekhmet, presumably one of the several hundred fashioned for the funerary complex of Amenhotep III, and consequently nearly ubiquitous in Ancient Egyptian collections world-wide (there were two more such statues inside the gallery).

We took our Jack-o-lanterns for the “parade” of other carved squash that’s held in the west-end Sorauren Park.

A lot are inventive, and this year my favourites from this year’s parade o’ pumpkins (pictured below) was a crocodile made from a bunch of pumpkins, and the crazed killer pumpkin-man:

Goldfinches are very flighty birds, and it’s rare that I get close enough to be able to take a decent picture of one. Maybe it’s something to do with the lateness of the season, and getting some last-minute food before migrating south, but there were a couple of Goldfinches in Woodbine Park that let me get close enough to take pictures:

Goldfinch in a Tree

Goldfinch Eating Seeds

Took the girls to Great Wolf Lodge in Niagara Falls, and while we waited for our room to be ready, we headed to down to see The Falls.

I had my telephoto lens with me, and put it through its paces while at The Falls.

Top of The Horseshoe Falls

Edge of The Horseshoe Falls

Looking Down on Travelers Aboard the Maid of the Mist IV

Hurricane Deck by the American Falls

Cave of the Winds by the American Falls

I read that the Moon was going to be close to Jupiter this evening, so I set up my tripod, got out the telephoto lens and took a number of shots of which this is the final result.

This is not one shot, but an mix of the best of the shots I took of the Moon and of Jupiter. Jupiter is actually slightly larger to scale (though not by much) so that you can see the relative positions of the moons. And the pic has also been tweaked so that the pixels representing Jupiter and its moons are clear — basically I “knocked out” the representative pixels that appeared, making them completely white. It’s not cheating, it just enhanced! 😉

Still, the resulting shot is effective:

Moon + Jupiter and its Moons (Ganymede, Io, Calisto, Europa)

Took the opportunity to head down to the Canadian National Exhibition in order to catch The Warrior’s Day Parade. Took my telephoto lens with me and tried to concentrate on taking pictures of the people in the parade, especially the older vets, who are often very expressive.

I didn’t take note this time as to which units appeared, but from what I understand from their website, the parade members follows this sequence:

Members from various regional Royal Canadian Legions
Public Service Veterans, Police War Veterans, Fire Fighters War Veterans Associations, Unattached Veterans – 1939-1945, Korea, Peace Keeping, United Nations Force
Dieppe Veterans, Regimental and Corps Associations, Hong Kong Veterans, Dunkirk Veterans, Burma Star Association, Royal Navy Association, Royal Marine Association, Merchant Navy Association, Canadian and British Airborne Forces Associations, Guards Division Association, Royal Canadian Naval Association
Allied and Visiting, and Re-enactor/Living History Contingents.

Last year I had a vantage point from almost the middle of the parade, and this year I took a vantage spot that wasn’t far from the official stands near the Princes’ Gates.

Here’s my single favourite pic, of a female vet beaming at the crowds as she is being driven in a lovely old green Bentley:

Warrior's Day Parade 29

Here’s the rest:

Here’s the pics I shot at last year’s parade.

Another fun night out at Streetfest, with the highlight of the evening for me being able to finally see Big Rude Jake perform. Since I was sans kids, for the first time I managed to go the length of the Streetfest, all the way from Woodbine to Beech Avenue and back.

Had a fun time at the Ojibway Club, watching the kids compete in various events during the Pointe au Baril Islanders’ Club Junior Regatta.

I got some fun shots of the Canoe Tug-of-War (where two canoes are joined together by a length of rope, and, well, it’s a tug-of-war using paddle-power), and of the “Decades” race, where four people are in a canoe who were born during different decades. Lots of fun.

Here are the pics:

Am lucky enough to be at a localization summit in Shanghai just when the World Expo is running. My hotel was actually relatively close to one of the main entrances, and since I had a day before the summit started, I took the opportunity to spend what time I could there.

My colleague Keith Cai (who is resident in Shanghai) was very kind and managed to go very early in the morning in order to get me some timed tickets/passport stamps that would save me time in line at some of the pavilions on the grounds of the Expo. This was a good things since I had read report of people waiting up to seven hours in line in order to get into some of the pavilions.

Was amazed at just how extensive it all was; a day’s visit really didn’t do it justice.

Here’s my modest photo gallery of what I was able to see on my visit there:

Had a great time with David Roy as we headed to the Hamilton Airshow and admired all of the planes flying by for what was a perfect day for flying (and for taking pictures). Here’s a selection of what I shot with my camera: