To the incredibly large:

Check out the gallery and read the descriptions for a little insight. I have many more of these still to put together and winter is far from over. It’s going to be a great year! Check out Google+ if you can’t wait for more, I post one every day.

The halo and Sun Dogs around the sun are caused by a cloud of ice crystals, and I found it near the Alliston area. I drove there hoping to find snow, but this was a much nicer surprise!

I set my sights on Bracebridge as a snow system was moving in, only for it to move off-course by the time I arrived. I chose my location wisely however – as a back-up I knew that Potts Falls would still be flowing and I was treated to quite the landscape.

Finally, I tried a different approach with this last image. I don’t often create “pan-blur” images, but this is one that I liked. It is an extremely wide angle of view and I rotated the camera to blur the details and make it look painterly. Please tell me your thoughts!

I’ll make a snowflake post soon too For those eager to see my snowflake images, I am posting a new one every single day over at Google+, check it out!

If I had to choose a favourite, I would have to say its “Barrie Under Fire”:

Creating this image was equal parts luck, skill, and stupidity. I’m thrilled with the results and I hope for such amazing luck in the future.

The past year has seen my career really get started. Great success at art shows and exhibits, publications, three cover shots, my first book, teaching at Georgian College and so much more. It has been very hard work, and I’m pleased with where it has brought me.

I’ve put together an gallery of 30 images from 2011 for everyone to look at,

please leave a comment with your favourite!

The article is a detailed and easy to follow how-to on snowflake photography. I give away many of my secrets, and if you’ve been wanted to try to photograph some for yourself this winter, I highly recommend running out and picking up a copy!

Better yet, get a subscription. This is one of the best photographic magazines around right now, certainly the best in Canada and I am honoured to be a part of it.

I’ve also been hard at work on more snowflake photos! I post one daily to Google Plus, and here is my latest creation:

Winter certainly is keeping me busy! I want to do a look back on the year of 2011 here, which I’ll be posting soon. The past year has been one of success and growth, and 2012 is already promising the same. I want to give a very big Thank You! to everyone who is supporting me and my endeavors, it wouldn’t be possible without the encouragement I constantly receive.

Snowflake-a-Day on Google+ (Add me to your circles!)

The above image is my favourite snowflake image so far this year. While snow seems in short supply so far this winter, I race out every chance I get to photograph the falling crystals. More exciting news soon!

Awesome, isn’t it? I have a special device for triggering my camera at the precise time, as well as coordinating the water droplets. The Camera Axe 5 with the valve sensor is very much a necessary tool to make these collisions happen, but even still I took over 700 images to get the 7 that I am showing here. Lots of fun experimenting, especially with background refraction:

Check out the gallery below, and let me know what you think! (and I know – it has been forever since my last update. Don’t worry, there are interesting things to post soon!)

These pillars of ice are snow crystals that form at warmer temperatures. Because the snow was clumping together, occasionally I noticed these pillars of ice in odd structures worthy of photographing. So there you have it, the first “snow flake” of the season – with many more of them to come!

These two photos are taken from the black trim around my car’s windows. This one shows what appears to be rectangular crystal formations. Interesting, as water usually freezes into 6-sided crystals. One study published in 1954 shows ice forming rectangles at very cold temperatures, but I think the more likely explanation is that this is the rectangular edges of hexagonal crystals. Science!

The below photo shows growth of a much more smooth design, almost looking like leaves.

Much more to come at the temperature continues to drop. Stay tuned!

It was a great day, even though it was a little chilly and rainy. I could have spent twice as much time there, if my arms could handle the weight of carrying that lens around!

Check out the gallery below, and let me know what your favourite shots are!

I grabbed a friend, Ben, who’s camera has a higher pixel density than mine to get the most detail possible, and headed to the only region in Ontario last night with “variably cloudy” skies – we’d certainly need luck on our side. We ended up at the Cheltenham Badlands, as I knew the area was slightly remote and had a great view of the horizon. We were greeted with clouds.

Through equal parts luck, skill and stupidity, we managed to find a few breaks in the clouds after waiting nearly an hour with the cold dark wind keeping us company. Right after we got a clear shot, the rain started to roll in… we packed up and headed home.

I haven’t shown you the picture yet, because as fate would have it I had another chance later that evening. It was late, passed midnight I believe and I was in bed… I looked up at the sky and Bam! There it was lighting up the night sky. The clouds were breaking even though the forecast called for complete cloud cover and rain. I jumped out of bed, frantically assembled the camera, and headed outside to take this image:

I was thrilled. This image is taken with Canon’s EF 800mm F/5.6L + 2x extender II + 1.4x extender III, effectively giving me a focal length of 2240mm. A very expensive telescope. The detail, however, was incredible:

If only I had Ben’s camera to test the difference for this shot – we’ll have to try again some time. It’s amazing how much detail I could grab on an object 384,399 km away (420,383,858 yards for some! hah – inside joke).

Satisfied with my moon image, I was about to pack up when I decide to spin my camera slightly down and to the right to a bright star in the sky, just to see what I could find. To my surprise, that was no star.

I’m not an astronomer, so I have no knowledge of where the planets are in the night sky. Randomly pointing the camera at a bright dot and finding not only Jupiter, but all of its moons was a very fun surprise.

And off to bed I went.