An Epic Weekend Of Photography

This weekend I put everyone of my photography skills to the test and had a blast doing it! The best part? It was completely unplanned.

It all started on Friday. I was watching the crypto market continue to drop while editing video when I started to feel extremely restless. BTC took another large drop, and then I saw that my favorite alt coin (Stellar XLM) was finally starting to drop as well. I bought some more XLM, grabbed my camera and headed out the door. With no plan on what I was going to shoot, I finally decided on going to a waterfall, but which one? After some back and forth in my head I decided on Sherman falls, It has been a while since I have been.

Classification: Ribbon / Waterfall / Terraced

Height: 55.76 feet / 17 metres

Width: 26.24 feet / 8 metres

Coordinates: 43.2381 N / 79.9729 W

Being able to sit down and relax among all of the fall colors with a little bit of ice and the gorgeous view and sound of the waterfall was a perfect contrast to the chaos of the markets etc. After soaking that in and feeling nice and calm, I started to make my way back into the city.

When I got downtown (Hamilton Ont), the landed banking and loan building (the first bank in the city) looked spectacular and I started to shoot. Although I wasn't happy with my shots of it, I was now set on shooting architecture.

Less than a block away from that building is St Paul's church. One of the oldest churches in the area and has the tallest stone steeple remaining in the country.

I wandered around for the whole afternoon taking shots of buildings, signage and historic sites. I will be writing in depth posts on a lot of them in the future, so that's why I'm only posting a couple of them here (and honestly this post would be never ending if I put them all in it lol).

After a full day of shooting I went home made dinner and planned on kicking back and relaxing. That idea lasted long enough for me to eat my dinner lol. @mikeheinhold messaged me wanting to get out to find some abandoned places to shoot. Well who am I to say no to some urban exploring.

The problem was that we have done so much of it, finding new places to explore is becoming tricky. But regardless we met up at 10pm and started to wander around the city. We checked a few abandoned buildings that we want to explore (some very badly) but have never been able to, and still had no luck with them. We wandered and wandered some more, ending up at a fairly new train station in the north end of the city.

This train station is a shinning example of how well bureaucracy works lol. Built several years ago when the city hosted the pan am games, the station and rail line was planned to have all day express trains to and from Toronto. But there was a "slight" oversight. Go transit (a government transit "corporation") runs the train service, built the station and had it all set. Without consulting the actual corporation who owns the train tracks. After finally consulting with them the company said no you cannot have all day service and the express trains to Toronto have been limited to two in the morning and two in the evening. Millions and millions of dollars spent for inferior service, Nah that doesn't sound like government service at all! lol

Before I start ranting about government lets get back to the photography. We made our way underneath a bridge at one end of the useless station, that we had never been under. We checked out some of the graffiti, did some light painting, got a light trail shot of a train going by and even played around at the end of the line of a couple of tracks.

We moved on from the station with no idea what to do next. We walked for a while brainstorming and although I had a couple of smoke grenades with me. I was hesitant on using them because it is difficult to shoot at night. But eventually came to the conclusion of when do I ever turn down a challenge? We made our way to a walk bridge of the train tracks and gave it a go.

I scored that decent shot but honestly it was this behind the scenes pic that I find funny and memorable! The smoke grenade left a very large cloud of smoke and we have several large lights set up. As Mike bent down to check his camera, two guys walked across the bridge saying wtf lol

Now set on doing another shot with more smoke we made out way to an old train tunnel (We use this tunnel often). Set up and gave it another shot. These ones did not turn out as well.

After this round of shooting we realized the time. It was already 4am lol time flies when having fun! We decided to call it a night, but with the plan of shooting with more smoke grenades later that morning. We parted ways and I got about 3 hours of sleep before getting up in the morning and getting ready to shoot again.

Mike his young son and I met up around lunch time and hit a trail that is close by. The weather was perfect! A very light rain and fog, which gave the trail a fantastic look. Mike's son really liked the idea of the smoke grenades and could hardly contain his excitement lol it was so damn cute! We decided to do some shots of the two of them on the trail and then some of his son off of the trail.

After the first grenade was finished, the little guy was so excited he immediately said daddy lets do the blue one! Ran over to Mike's backpack and got it out.

Completely exhausted, we finished up and I went back home. I was thinking okay good, now its time to relax! Which again lasted all of 5 minutes lol. A good friend of many years messaged wanting to hang out. Since his work (VR gaming) has him constantly traveling the world and barely ever in the city. I couldn't say no. We hung out for a few hours and consumed way too much cannabis, so this time when I got home. Not a single thing happened past me jumping into bed and crashing hard.

After a perfect 12 hours of sleep I woke up a little groggy but surprisingly still with a feeling of desire to get out and shoot more! I started brainstorming again and decided on going to another waterfall, but while I was getting my gear ready Mike messaged again. This time with a link about an event at Dundurn Castle in Hamilton. Called a Victorian Christmas, and well my plans changed right away lol. The Victorian Christmas event runs for the whole season but had free admission for the opening day. Dundurn castle was the home of Allen Macnab, a man that played a huge role in Canada's history and was a very strange and eccentric character (Which I will be going in depth about in future posts).

We arrived at the estate to find this.

After about an hour in that line up we got close to the building where people dressed in vintage Victorian attire were signing Christmas carols.

Finally we got inside and even though it was packed with people, no tripods were allowed and no flash photography was allowed (the lighting is very dim). I was able to snap some decent shots.

After spending more than two hours is the historic home we went outside to the yard and this little guy landing literally only a couple of feet away.

It was a hectic, tiring, spontaneous and wicked weekend! Light painting, smoke grenades, waterfalls, animals, architecture, graffiti and portraits. It had a flavor of so much! I wanted to keep it going but it had started to catch up with my body lol. All great things must come to an end right? I can only hope that next weekend will be so epic lol