Capt Mondo's Photo Blog

“Never shoot in to the sun” they say. Sometimes rules are made to be broken:

Tall Grass Set Against the Sun

Sometimes on cold days down by Woodbine Beach, water droplets splash onto trees and plants close to shore, encasing them in ice. Here are some shots I took:

Ice on Branches

Ice on a Small Branch

Ice on a Small Plant

Walked the dog down by Woodbine Beach this morning, took the following shot of a dead tree dangling out over the bay.

Dead Tree Hanging Out Over Woodbine Bay

Nobody was in a hurry to move after staying up late the previous evening to toast the new year. I was up semi-early, and took advantage of the good light to wander the vineyards and shot photos. When everyone woke up we headed out for lunch at a place on Pampelonne Bay, and then to the St Tropez itself.

Here are the pictures:

I remember seeing a book at the local bookstore last week called The Curse of the Labrador Duck. I took note of it since it sounded like a book I would be interested in reading (it’s about one person’s quest to learn more about an extinct species of duck) and I also noted the the cover of said duck against a red background.

The Book’s Cover

I paused and wondered why it looked familiar, and a figured it must be the same specimen of a Labrador Duck I remember seeing at the Redpath Museum in Montreal the last there a year ago. I remember taking a pic and posting it to Wikimedia Commons.

So today I was given the offer of a Google Wave account, and I asked the sender to pass it to my captmondo email address on there.

I haven’t checked that address in months, but I had reason to check it today.

And there in my inbox is an email from a contact at HarperCollins publishers requesting permission to use the WikiMedia pic for their book “The Curse of the Labrador Duck”, sent during the summer.

Yes, the are using the same image I shot and posted to Wikipedia for the book’s cover.

The Original Picture I Took

Some Context: The Rest of the Duck

I responded to the publisher, who has apparently already given me credit on the book jacket and now that they know where I am, are going to send me a copy of the book as well.

So now I can add a book cover credit along with that for National Geographic and for a couple of other book illustrations.

Also in my inbox was a similar email from a zoologist from the Netherlands who studies Homotherium (a type of extinct sabre-toothed cat) asking me for more info of a shot I took of a specimen while visiting the dino museum in Beijing last year. Apparently he thinks it is a specimen that has gone unpublished in Western literature on this type of cat, and is very interested in seeing any other pics I may have of it.

These really made my day.

This grasshopper posed for me on a boogie board down by the river. It was cold, and rather than hop away from me and my macro lens he opted to stay put, warm up, and take his chances. This was the best pic I managed to take of him.

Detail of a leaf turned orange

Part of a ruined wasps’ nest found on the ground

Curly orange leaf

Red dragonfly on an orange leaf

A holey orange leaf

A red salamander. I think it is a Redback Salamander

A grass snake doing a bad job of trying to hide under the leaves

Another orange leaf flecked with green

A red leaf in the mud

My office shut down for the day which extended the long weekend by another day. It was a rainy, miserable day. I wanted to see if I could get a good bird picture entry for the Themed Photo Contest on Facebook, so despite the weather I decided to head to the zoo. I figured that the crummy weather would likely keep most people away, and that interior lighting would mean that I could get some decent shots of animals without having to resort to flash.

Wrong on both counts, as it turned out. I hadn’t accounted for the school-group option, so there were hordes of kids around. Not so bad really, as in most cases I just had to out-wait whatever group was passing through so that I could take the shot I wanted. The greyness of the day meant that whatever interior light was also severely reduced, so I opted to use a fill-flash on a few occasions. In the end the images you see below were culled from a much larger number of pictures taken, many of them blurred or where the focus was not as good as I would have liked because of the poor light. I was also disappointed to find that many of the exhibits were being revamped, with fully half of the Africa Pavilion closed off, leaving the Gorillas in the other half as the main attraction, with the colourful Chiclids in there huge aquarium being the only other major thing on view.

Am happy with what I came away with below, but I think it will be awhile before I willingly return to the Metro Toronto Zoo.

Butterfly

A Jumbo Gourami

Gorilla

A pair of Spectacled Owls. I took a zillion pictures of this pair but the lighting was so poor (and I didn’t use flash) that I could never quite get the picture I was hoping to get. I’d hate to be a mouse under that stare.

A tiny mouse found scurrying outside of the exhibits in the African Pavilion

I was invited to join in for lunch at a local Dim Sum place in Markham (near where I work) by some of my colleagues who hail from mainland China. The lunch was to celebrate the mid-Autumn festival, also known as the “Moon Festival”.

One of my favorite dim sum dishes is squid. I saw cuttlefish on the menu and asked for that. It wasn’t what I expected, and though it may look unappetizing to some (Bill didn’t even touch it 😉 I enjoyed it thoroughly.

Cuttlefish tentacles

Another pic of them

One of my colleagues mentioned that they liked jellyfish, and asked if I would like to try it. I was game, and tried it as well. More tentacles, chewy and a bit crispy in a light vinegar-based sauce, served with slices of beef. Yum!

Beef slices and jellyfish tentacles