Iain Leitch Photography

This past week I some how managed to get three days off in a row. That meant I could take a little vacation up to my aunt's cottage, after a quick stop in Peterborough to drop stuff off at my house for next year. The trip to the cottage was much needed. As I now feel recharged and ready for another month of work until I go back to school. In the first two pictures, you are able to see a Great Blue Heron. One of it standing on a log, and one of it taking off from the log. I got these pictures by sneaking up on it in a canoe. The third picture is just a classic Canadian shield picture. Pine trees and rocks reflecting on a lake. The Fourth picture is a rather large beaver pond at sunset. I used my ND filter for this photo. The fifth photo is of the Milky Way. This was my first time actually seeing the Milky Way. I have spent my life in cities, and because of that, you can't actually see the Milky Way as a result of the light pollution. The last photo is star trails over the lake ...

Back in May, I planted a garden with seeds that are supposed to attract bees. I'm not sure if the garden is attracting them or not. The garden has large amounts of poppy flowers including the two down below. I have seen a couple smaller bees at the poppies. My garden has only recently started to flower in the past two weeks. I am hoping for more flowers for greater variety in color and species in the garden for the future.The last photo in this post is a Monarch Butterfly which I sported as I was in my front yard. It stayed still on the flower and allowed me to get very close up to it until it flew away. 

Stratford Summer Music Festival opening night always has an amazing fireworks display. The fireworks display is often the best of the year, even better than the Canada Day one. This year was no different and easily was the best display that I have ever seen. I am able to see them from my street but for the past couple of years, I have gone to see them down by the lake, where the fireworks are set off from, and that is where I can get the best pictures. Down below there are 4 of the best pictures that I was able to get. The settings that I used was a shutter speed of 5', an FStop of 11 and ISO of 200. I used a remote shutter and a tripod to minimize shake. In total, I took 150 photos of the fireworks, but some were out of focus or not in a frame. My editing process has changed from just using Photoshop. I now upload them to Google Photos so I can use Snapseed on my phone, then I send them back to my laptop to use Photoshop for the finishing touches. 

This past week I went up to Ottawa to see my girlfriend again. I did all of the tourist stuff my first trip up to Ottawa, which proved a challenge for pictures, as I don't like taking pictures of the same things over and over. So this trip we stayed clear of the main tourist spots and instead we went down to Petrie Island, which is what the first photo is of. It's a turtle sunbathing on a log at the island. The second photo was taken when we were trying to find MosaiCanada. It is the Parliament Buildings from across the Ottawa River, which provide a very different view then most people see. The next four photos are from MosaiCanada which is located in Gatineau. The first of the four photos are a pair of Atlantic Puffins. The second photo is Mother Earth-The Legend of Aataentsic. The third is of the Canadian Pacific Train 374, which was the first train to travel from Montreal to Vancouver. The last photo is a pair of red foxes from Prince Edward Island. MosaiCan...

The first photo that you would see here is the garden hose in my backyard. There are a bunch of plants growing in and around it but one flower has come through the slots to grow in the center of the hose, to frame it very well. The second photo is a swallowtail butterfly caterpillar. For some reason, there is a fennel plant growing in the garden and because of swallowtail butterfly's plant their eggs on herbs. The butterfly planted some eggs on the fennel. The caterpillars grow very fast and can easily eat a whole plant. There were some of these caterpillars last year on dill plants but they all vanished before any crystalises could be found. The last photo is the same caterpillar but with a gold reflector as the background instead of the fence.