I finally managed to get out shooting again, this time at the Toronto Zoo.  Although not my most successful trip there, I did come back with some keepers.  This is one of them.

The original colour version

These are moon jellyfish, lazily swimming/floating in their tank at the Toronto Zoo’s Australian Great Barrier Reef exhibit.  I really love the black background and translucent nature of these fish.  There is so much texture in the fish, yet with subtle tones.

I had a tough time deciding on the monochrome black & white version, or the original colour version.  You can let me know if you agree or not in the comments below.

It’s hard to believe that jellyfish can be so beautiful, yet potentially so deadly (I don’t think moon jellyfish are terribly dangerous, but there are other jellyfish that are much smaller and much more lethal).  The box jellyfish is feared in Australia as it is one of the most painful and deadly jellyfish on the planet.  After being stung, severe agonising pain will ensue, which can be followed by cardiac arrest leading to death.  But they sure are pretty to look at!

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Another abstract shot of some abstract art.  This is the same piece of sculpture from the last post, but looking up this time.  The sculpture is located at the historic Distillery district, where they used to make whiskey.  It’s now a nice venue for artists, events and various boutique shops.  It’s a great place to wander on the weekends, or  just to grab a coffee and sit on the brick-paved roads and take in some culture.

This wire mesh is part of a large sculpture on display at the Distillery District in Toronto.  The sculpture is made of various forms of industrial materials and sort of resembles some distilling equipment you might see in a laboratory, with spirals and cones.  I’m guessing it symbolizes the district’s historic past of being an industrial factory that produced whisky.  At any rate, it is an interesting sculpture.

I have a thing for abstract, yet symmetrical images.  The parallel lines of the mesh play with the shallow depth of field which sort of leads the eye in opposite direction.

Rushing through the rain, with heads held low under umbrellas, we sometimes miss the obvious.

Shinjuku, Tokyo, Japan.

Since it is now autumn, I thought this photo was somewhat appropriate. It’s the roof of an auditorium at MIT, in Boston. It has a striking resemblance to a leaf (it’s even green in colour). Not sure if it’s the architect’s intent, but I think it’s fairly eye catching.

A look up through the stairwell of the Pilgrim Monument in Provincetown, MA.

Taken just after dawn, the water was almost as smooth as glass. Post processing was done to give the photo an aged look to warm it up and add a timeless sense to the photo.

This is a panorama of Irving Oil’s Saint John Refinery located in Saint John, New Brunswick.  This is Canada’s largest oil refinery according to Irving.  The refinery is truly massive and took 6 images to capture this image.

The six images were shot hand-held and were stitched together in photoshop using automatic adjustments.  The resulting panorama was converted to grayscale in Lightroom and slight toning adjustments were made for contrast.

The image above is shown using Microsoft’s Seadragon technology. Scroll and pan inside the image to reveal more detail. You can see my images here

The Chrysler Building in New York City as seen from the observation deck on the Empire State Building (taken back in June 2008).  I was playing around with split toning and thought this gave the image a nice warm and historic tone.

The image is actually a panorama made from three shots of the building and stitched using Photoshop CS4 (which does a lovely job if I might add).  Although this blog won’t do it justice, the level of detail in the image is superb, and I’m definitely going to be shooting more panoramas in the future.

Edit: I’ve embedded Microsoft’s Seadragon viewer so you can click and scroll inside the image to see more detail.

It seems I have run out of new photos to post today, which I’m going to attribute to the fact that it’s winter and I haven’t really been inspired to do any shooting lately (or at least nothing that I’d bother sharing here on RAWpixels).  Not to worry though, as I apparently still have a lot of interesting shots from 2008 that I can share, like this one from New York city.

This is the arch in New York City’s Washington Square park.  When I was there in June, it seemed that every landmark or tourist attraction I went to was under some form of renovation.  I think this image sums up my trip pretty well.

Fresh snow covers Lambly Lake near Kelowna, B.C.

The tops of plants stick out of fresh snow in a marshy area next to Lambly Lake, outside Kelowna.

A rack of wine at the Mission Hill Winery in Kelowna.  Unfortunately we didn’t take any home with us, but that’s because I knew I could most likely pick some up at the LCBO (if luck is on my side).

I found this snow-covered stone carving of a family of pelicans at the Mission Hill winery, in Kelowna.  This is the keystone in their main entrance.  The pelican is their logo, so to speak, and it appears on many features and items found at the winery.

Wallaman Falls, known to be the tallest waterfall in Australia with a drop of over 250m.  On our way up to the lookout, we saw a cassowary and four babies cross the road in front of us.  It’s said there are only 1500 cassowaries in Australia (and possibly the world) so we were quite fortunate.  

As for the image itself, I felt the monochrome was a bit more dramatic than the colour version.

These balls of sand are made by little crabs on the beach at Cape Tribulation in Australia.  These tiny little crabs (maybe half an inch big) would roll out these balls of sand from the tunnels they were digging.  They made some interesting patterns, almost like fireworks in the sand when viewed from a few feet away.

I waited for a minute or two for a crab to pop out of the hole, but he never came out.  But he’s in there somewhere…

I thought the close-up of the hole and sandballs made an interesting macro-landscape of sorts.

Kata Tjuta, Australia

This shot looks great in colour as well (you can see it here on Flickr), but I’ve got so many pictures of red and blue Australian outback that I wanted to mix it up a bit.  Maybe it’s the Ansel Adams in me, but I think this scene looks pretty good in monochrome.  Agree/disagree in the comments?

Amazing architectural detail above the entrance to Westminster Abbey in London.

I found this interesting rock on a walking path near Bondi beach in Sydney.  The sandstone is eroding in such a way as to form these interesting honeycomb patterns.

This is the second of two shots of the Sydney Opera House roof.  (click here for the first shot)

I really love the lines and texture of this roof.