Some of you have commented via e-mail or other means that my blog has been a little dry lately! Well, I have been so busy lately that I haven’t had my usual time to take photos and share them, but I figured I would at least share what I have been up to.

In mid-February, while my photos were still on display at the Barrie City Hall Rotunda, there was an evening when SNAP Barrie  came to take photos of the winners. I stopped in that evening for the photo op, later joined by mom and Walter (thanks for the support!). It was a great little bit of exposure, and I got a copy of the pics to share:

And here is a photo of all the winners that were present that evening. Thanks very much to Mark at SNAP Barrie for the photos. Check them out for cool local community stuff! :

Another interesting thing happened recently. I was approached on Flickr (a place where I also share some of my photos) by someone claiming to have seen my Maple Leaf Flag photo submitted in a photo contest – in Vancouver! I was able to track down the photo store running the contest to inquire about it:

The owner told me that he purchased the photo through iStockPhoto to put up as an example to inspire people for their own submissions. I have had the photo listed in iStockPhoto for some time now and it has given me a constant trickle of revenue over the past year or so. Glad to see it finally out in the “wild”, especially in such a patriotic context (and even more especially during the Olympics!):

Ron, the owner, was kind enough to share these photos with me.

For reference, here is the photo:

I am not sure if the display is still up, or for how long it was up – but I thank Photo Express Foto Source for including me in a very patriotic display. I hope my photo was inspirational to those that saw it.

I have also been working recently on a photography portfolio website! The site is not completely finished yet, but you can check it out by clicking here. A lot of work has gone into it so far, and it is specifically tuned to display on mobile browsers (like the iPhone and soon-to-be iPad) so I can show off my photos on the go, and maybe get a little bit more exposure and possible a few print sales. I’ll be working on this in my free time (ha!) over the next month or so to complete it.

But that’s not all! On February 25th I talked at the Barrie Photo Club and did a presentation on travel photography (from my trip to Europe) that was very well received. I also did a three-hour seminar on photography basics this past Saturday for the photo club as well.

I’ll post again when I have time to take some photos, hopefully this warm weather will inspire me to get out with my camera a little more.

In Eastern Europe there are many cats and dogs that live without homes, and our heart always went out to them. I photographed a few of them in our journey, some with stories and some that we were just passing by. In every case, however, they made us smile.

 

Desi and I both kept a watchful eye for interesting birds to photograph, and across Europe ended up with a few. Many ended up just being pigeons, but it was fun all the same. There are quite a few birds (especially from London) that I hadn’t seen before, so that was a real treat. But my absolute favourite would have to be this little duckling:

 

I took many photos of flowers through Europe, both wild and garden-variety. We found ourselves along a few forested paths in our travels. These paths were full of various wildflowers in bloom, and I took the time to photograph as many as I could. These flowers were found all across Europe, from Varna to London. See how many you can recognize!

 

Our trip through Europe was a fantastic experience, including all of the different foods and drinks we tried. Many of the dishes in Bulgaria were familiar to Desi, but nearly all were new to me. I’m sure we both enjoyed trying new foods throughout our travels, even when we didn’t know exactly what we were getting: