Iain Leitch Photography

These are the only two good none bird pictures I took of animals on my camping trip the Pinery. The first one is of a frog I took well hiking a trail. The trail had a board walk that bordered the river for a short distance and it was there where I got the picture of the frog. The second picture of the chipmunk I took well on a hike on a different trail and my dog scared the chipmunk and then the chipmunk just sat there for a bit well i took a couple pictures then scurried off in search of food. I took both these photos with my 70-300mm telephoto lens.

At the Pinery there was a far bit of fungus growing on the sides of trees and they were often orange i'm not sure what kind they were but I also noted that there was little to no mushrooms growing on anything I think i saw maybe 3 mushrooms in total which was disappointing for me. But there was also a lot of moss growing on fallen logs and what not so I got a few pictures of that also.

The past five days I was camping at Pinery Provincial Park. I got a whole range of pictures and while I was camping I got a Macro lens for my birthday. I'm hoping to get a lot of cool new pictures of bugs and things like that with the new lens. At the visitor center at Pinery Provincial Park, they had a bunch of bird feeders set up, including a hummingbird one. While the hummingbird feeders were set up too far away from me to get an up-close shot, I noticed a hummingbird was sitting on a branch right beside me. I was able to get close and get these two pictures of the bird before it flew away. 

A couple days ago we went to a march which is about an hour away from where I live it wasn't all that great the trails were all overgrown and i didn't see anything worth well taking pictures of and anything i did was to far away or flew away. This is the only decent picture i took that day. Hope u enjoy it.

Last night was a meteor shower which was able to be seen from all over the world. I thought ill try to make some star tails with meteor in it and I got a few of them in this picture. In the top left there is one then there is a faint one in the bottom right and a few very faint ones in the middle.(you may need to turn up your brightness to see). I used my Canon Rebel T5 on a tripod with a remote shutter to get this picture. I used Shutter 30, F/3.5, ISO 800. I took about 49 shots of the same spot and then combined them all in StarStaX which is the best program for this kind of picture.

A couple days ago we were doing some house cleaning and opened up the back windows. Later on when we were done and were about to shut the windows we found this little green guy doing some sunbathing on the window. I don't know much about what type of grasshopper he is or even if it is a he at all but he made for a good picture. 

Most people when they think of a beaver they think about the North, that's what I though too until I saw one right before my eyes in the Avon river. I was down by the river tying to get pictures of kingfishers, which I did but there not all that good so you won't be seeing those, I was walking along the river bank looking up in the trees for the kingfishers, I then heard a splash and looked to see some water splash up and thought it was a kingfisher taking a bath but it was a beaver eating on a fallen branch. I at first thought it was a muskrat as I did not think beavers lived on this river at all but I guess I was wrong as I got proof beavers do live here.

Last night it was clear without any clouds so i figured i might go out and try my luck trying to make star tails. I moved down to my neighbors driveway because that was the darkest part of the street, pointed my camera up at a group of stars, set my shutter speed at 30, f/4.5 and ISO at 1600, I then set up my remote shutter as not to move the camera on the tripod in anyway and went away at it I took 16 shots of 30 seconds each for a total of 8 minutes of photos. I then used StarStaX which is a program that can stack images on top of one another for free. I combined my 16 images and got a pretty decent photo. I then went over to Adobe Photoshop Express and messed with the light and dark and clarity. This is my good copy of my first attempt at star tails. I plan on doing much more of this.

One day I was outside and I thought that I saw a leaf beside a flower pot so I went to pick it up but then it moved and it turned out to be a moth. Normally when I see a moth they are no bigger then a loonie but this one was the size of a maple leaf. I got a couple pictures of it but this is my favorite one. It was there for about 3/4 of the day but then I went outside and it wasn't there. Then i found its wings over my front step with the body no where to be found. I assume ants got it and cut off its wings and took the body to the ant hill.

For the last two days of the trip we were in the capital of Croatia, the city of Zagreb. We toured around the city the first day and that is where I took the three photos I'm showing here. The first photo is of a stature/fountain just outside a cathedral. This cathedral is the only cathedral where the two towers are no the same height. The second photo is of a building I thought looked nice and to show the street lights they use here. The final picture is of a church on a square beside the parliament and prime ministers office. The church roof is made up of tiles showing the crest of Zagreb and the crest of Croatia.