Tina and I headed to a couple of small towns around Ottawa. She had her Nikon and I was armed with my new Canon 5D Mark II, which is a full frame camera and gives me such wonderfully wide angles. You can see her shots at her flickr set. They give me great ideas on how I can look at things from another perspective because they’re so different from mine, approaching shots from closer ranges and composing with more diagonal angles.

This is by far my favourite shot (above), and I’ll probably get a large print of it when I have the money. There’s a series of acrylic paintings by Ken Vincent at the Koyman Galleries in Ottawa, and I’ve always wanted this one in particular because the colours and the moody clouds speak of pure emotion to me, and I never believed I was capable of capturing such moments with my last camera¹. The price — $2300 for a 28"x61" painting — had always held me back, but now I’m confident I can get that elusive look I’ve been trying to capture, myself.

It was the perfect day and time of year for photography. The weather was very mild (though it got colder as the sun was setting), and the fall colours made everything both dead and vibrant.

These pictures don’t do justice to the way they look full-size on a large monitor. There are so many tiny details and textures that are lost when downsized.

Tina getting a similar shot to the one I took above.

I like how you can just make out the reflection of the sky on the water, through the stalks.

Tina looking very cold.

I like how the shadow on the road implies that someone’s there, without being too overt about it.

We got a lot of looks from small town people. All white. I guess they weren’t used to the Asian-Persian combo.

Obligatory. I love fall leaves, so even though I already have pictures very similar to this, I never get tired of taking more.

You can just make out Tina on the right there.

We found a pond with a tiny island FILLED with Canadian geese, as well as a gazebo that took up about half the area of said island, in the small town of Casselman. Unfortunately, we didn’t have the right lenses to capture it. This is what we got instead.

I love the way her slender body bends in this photo, against the remnants of sunset in the background. Best viewed on black, so you can just make out her shoes and the yellow road stripe in the bottom. Just above, the moon makes an appearance.

1. A Canon Digital Rebel Xt [↑]