Iain Leitch Photography

Via Rail is what I consider a national treasure that gets forgotten about more often than not. It used to span Canada but due to cutbacks, it is a fraction of what it once was. I take Via Rail every time I come home from university and whenever I am travelling on my own within Canada. These pictures were taken from the Woodstock station where my brother takes the train back to college in the GTA. This was VIA Rail number 72. The train comprised of engine 6401 and 5  LRC cars. 

Last weekend before the weather was too crazy I was able to go out for a walk on the frozen Trent-Severn Waterway. This body of water is always the first to freeze as there is little water movement and it is relatively shallow which allows for the ice to form quickly. The pictures shown here are a little bay/lake area of the canal just south of Trent University. I have always been interested in this little stand of pine trees shown in the first and third picture and thought I would check them out. It was a relatively sunny day with decent cloud cover which allowed for great shadows to appear which set the mood for a couple of photos and it wasn't too cold either which helped.

December is a busy time, people have to start holiday shopping, students are finishing assignments and doing exams, employees are trying to meet end of year targets, and animals are trying to eat as much as possible to survive the winter. This is exactly what these black-capped chickadees were doing when I took their picture. I took these pictures at a local environmental education center that has a bird feeder. I was able to get close to these chickadees as they are used to humans around them and did not seem bothered by me. If you are lucky like I was you can even get them to eat out of your hand. I saw some other birds while I was around the feeder but they were too quick or far away to get a good picture. I saw a couple american gold finches, a downy woodpecker, nuthatch and a blue jay along with a red squirrel or two. I think I will be heading back to this center soon to try to develop a better relationship with the birds and for some more pictures.  ...

This is part 4 of the Hunting Camp series and will also be the final post in this series as well. The theme for this post as the title suggests is mushrooms. When I went up to the Hunting Camp it seemed to be the perfect conditions for mushrooms to appear as there were tons. I want to apologize because unfortunately identifying mushrooms is not my strong suit and therefore I know none of the names of the mushrooms in the following pictures. There isn't much of a story behind these picutures other than I took them all on an ATV trail by the Hunting Camp. Other than describing each picuture to you I'll just let you look. Thanks for reading the Hunting Camp series, I'm not sure when I will be posting next but hopefully it will be soon.

This is part 3 of the Hunting Camp series that I am doing. Part 3 is about mist. That morning I woke up early because in the past there had always been mist on the lake when I woke up and this time was no different. There was a lot of mist, a lot more than I had seen in the past probably due to the fact I got up earlier than what I normally would have.  The first two photos are taken from the shore overlooking the main lake we use. The mist is so thick that it is hard to see more than 20 meters out into the lake. However, in these photos, you are still able to see the reflection of the pine trees in the water. The third photo is taken from the dock looking out at the diving platform we have out on the lake. You are also able to see the reflection of the pine trees in this photo as well. The remaining two mist pictures are taken from the channel that connects the two lakes together. The first photo is looking down towards the main lake that the camp is based on. I like this pho...

This is part 2/4 in the series called Hunting Camp. This part of the series focuses on the stars and the night sky. The Hunting Camp is just south of Algonquin park which means that the night sky is amazing. Without any city lights to interfere it is possible to see almost everything.  The first photo is just a normal star picture that I took overlooking the main lake that we use. The bright star down near the bottom right is Jupiter, you are also able to see Saturn and Mars in this picture too but they are over on the bottom left and not as bright. It is also possible to see the milky way on the left side of the picture too. The bright glow is what I think is city lights coming from possibly Bancroft or maybe even as far away as Ottawa or Toronto but I'm not too sure. The second picture is a star trails one. This one photo is over 200 photos stacked on top of each other using StarStaX. I had to crop this photo on the left due to the sheer amount of planes. This...

This is part one out of a three-part series I'm doing. Every year my moms side of the family goes up to what we call the Hunting Camp. No one actually hunts up there but in the past people did. The history of this camp goes back to my Granda who was one of four original owners of the Hunting Camp. The Hunting Camp is now owned by my uncle and each of the other three oldest sons of the original members. The reason we go up to the camp every year is to honour and remember my Granda and Grandma.  The reason this is a three-part series is just that even though I was there for about 24 hours I took so many pictures I can't fit them all into one blog post.  The first picture is taken from the dock overlooking the main lake that the camp is based on. This lake is the last of three lakes just Southeast of Algonquin Provincial Park. The second picture is showing the passage that connects the main lake to the one above it, which is just a bit of marshy area. The third picture is of...

This past weekend I was in Stratford to visit my parents. In Stratford, there's a really nice garden called Shakespeare Gardens. It has a lot of bee-friendly flowers down there so I knew it would be a good place to go for some pictures. The first picture is of a bee at a sunflower. The bee is just about to land on the flower. I had seen the bee around the other flowers so I was following him and guessed right as to which flower he would go to next. That resulted in getting this photo. The second picture I took was right outside my house in Stratford. I had just gotten back from the garden when I saw a monarch butterfly outside on the milkweed we have in our front yard. I tracked it with my camera for a while until it got bored of the milkweed and headed for the flowers which is how I got this photo. The last picture in this post is one I took on my phone. I have a Google Pixel so it takes decent photos but this one turned out really well. I was heading to ...

Last week I was on vacation at Red Pine Camp. This is a family camp located on Golden Lake in Ontario. I didn't manage to get as many photos as I would have liked due to the weather and the moon being full which ruled out any star pictures. However, I did manage to get some pictures hence this post. The first two pictures are my favourite ones I took during the week. Near my cabin was a dock that was used to refuel the boat the camp staff uses. I set up my camera on my tripod with my ND filter on and set out to get some still water pictures which I think I succeeded in getting. In the first picture, I had the shutter open for 2.5 seconds while in the second picture the shutter was only open for half a second. That is why the first one is darker and moodier than the second which is brighter and happier. The third picture is of a group of Red Pines looking up at their canopies. The camp itself is named after these trees. The fourth picture in this post is of...

On Canada Day which is July 1st, I was up in Ottawa with my girlfriend visiting her parents. We went down to Parliament Hill to see the fireworks that were going to happen that night. This was my first time being in Ottawa during Canada Day which was special for me. The fireworks there were the best ones I had ever seen. The first picture is of Center Block which is on the left and of West Block which is on the right of the picture. The following two pictures are of the fireworks we saw that night. The settings I used were f/11 shutter for 4 seconds and ISO 100. These were the two best pictures I was able to get.