Bill Ford-Smith
Hilton Falls
Hilton Falls is a rather pleasant conservation area a few miles inland from Oakville, featuring a number of nice and easy walks in the woods that cover that part of the Niagara Escarpment. This picture is of the falls themselves, shot using a variable ND filter; timing was critical, to find a gap of several seconds when people weren’t clambering around or behind the…
Distant seagulls
This image was a result of an assignment from the class I’m currently doing; the idea was to produce more of an environmental picture of seagulls, giving a sense of the open and quite harsh conditions in which they live in the winter (even a mild one as we’ve had this year). Having the Toronto skyline looming out of the mist in the background…
Frozen Niagara Falls (kind of)
This winter has been another rather nippy one (although, so far, rather less long drawn-out than last year’s), with one result being that the American Falls at Niagara have largely frozen over. All the headlines in the news made it sound like it was the Horseshoe Falls that froze over; naturally it wasn’t! Regardless, the American Falls are still pretty impressive with this much…
Niagara Falls – not blasé yet
When one lives about an hour’s drive from Niagara Falls, one tends to end up visiting the place quite a lot, with extra visits whenever one has guests from out of town. The first time I saw the falls with adult eyes, I was expecting to be a bit underwhelmed: as has been frequently observed by others, the world’s greatest wonders are prone to…
Toronto Skyline At Night
This was taken from Hanlan’s Point on the Toronto Islands, utilising an ND filter to allow a longer exposure; Toronto at night is almost verging on pretty… Unfortunately, I’d missed that last ferry back from this end of the islands and had to walk back to Centre Island to catch a later ferry, with a scavenging raccoon (who seemed especially keen on pizza) to…
Tiffany Falls
Tiffany Falls is one of the many waterfalls that drop down over the Niagara Escarpment around Hamilton; this was taken on the second trip out to find the falls – I’d failed miserably to find it the first time! This image is a fairly straightforward long(ish) exposure; the overall effect was generated via Color Efex Pro.
Seagull against the Toronto skyline
This image was taken on a beautiful sunny afternoon in the middle of March last year; I had done a walk along the lake-shore to Rattray Marsh and was heading back to the car – although it was beautifully sunny and the water was crystal clear, it was also d**n cold (to use the technical meteorological term) and strategic bits of me were starting…
Toronto from the CN Tower
A regrettable oversight by the builders of the CN Tower was their not using non-reflecting glass for the windows (!), which can make it harder to get shots from the viewing decks at night without at least one light-bulb reflection in shot. There are other possibilities, however: this shot was taken whilst descending in the lift; the red light comes from the tower’s own…
Health & Safety
Webster’s Falls used to be one of the finest places to visit in the Hamilton area: a lovely waterfall, with character varying with the seasons and a host of fantastic photographic opportunities. A stairway led down to the base of the falls, from where one could enjoy the river below and, in hot weather, the cooling spray from the falls themselves. Unfortunately, the curse…
Litter!
One thing that never ceases to amaze me is how much litter gets dropped by Canadians in their wild places; if you walk in almost any conservation area, you will find litter somewhere – the ubiquitous Tim Horton’s cups or some plastic snack wrapper or similar. How hard is it to pack your litter out with you? Remember the adage: leave nothing but footprints….
Bill Ford-Smith 