May 20, 2013 by Gail
So much for “the blogging will be light” declaration — I went silent for a week. I don’t think this has happened since I went to Cuba nearly six and a half years ago. I’m still downloading the week’s photos, here are a few for now from the quick trip to Portugal.
Posted in Europe, Portugal, Travel | 1 Comment
May 12, 2013 by Gail
Blogging will be light for a while…
Posted in Mobile Blogging | | 2 Comments
May 11, 2013 by Gail
I’ve got pipes!
A few preview images from the newborn shoot I did this afternoon. Baby Jackson arrived two weeks ago, and already he’s letting the world know he’s a force to be reckoned with! It’s bench-pressing for babies.
smiles for dad
Posted in Image Legacy, portraiture | | 1 Comment
May 10, 2013 by Gail
Remember how I said I was going to check out The Senator restaurant a while back? It’s been a few months, but I finally did. I should’ve taken a photo of the booth we were seated in because it was the weirdest configuration I’d ever seen — my friend and I were facing two different ways at the same table. Imagine a booth cut in half lengthwise with a wall separating the two halves. Now it’s become an L-shaped bench, and only person can sit at the short end. The two ways to be seated are either side-by-side facing the wall of the booth, or one sitting on each side of the bench at a 45-degree angle to the other. In either situation, speaking requires someone turning sideways. How did we manage this for two and a half hours without a neck ache?
Anyway, I just said nothing about the food — it was fully consumed, I suppose that’s enough endorsement right there — but I’m glad I went. It was more for the company than the restaurant, but at least I can check The Senator off my TO-resto list. I love diner-dining.
Posted in cameraphone, Food + Drink, Toronto, Urban Life | | No Comments
May 9, 2013 by Gail
David’s birthday flight (May 30, 2012)
You might’ve noticed I’ve been messing around with the blog lately — fonts, header image, some text in the pages and such. Small changes, kind of like changing the shower curtain or the magnets on the fridge. I like change, but change happens whether you like it or not (ageing, for example), so my attitude is that you might as well embrace it. Work it, even. Because it’s usually better when you choose the change rather than the other way around, especially if you are resistant to change in general.
The most significant change to the website this week is behind the scenes: I’ve upgraded my hosting account to a dedicated IP and a suite of features — none of which is evident or remotely exciting to a reader, only to a website owner. However, as a reader you will notice the site loads much faster. This is the one change I’ve been wanting to make for a while, but the Bluehost rep told me they were introducing another package between the standard and pro accounts soon. In the end I decided to bite the bullet and upgrade directly to the Full Shebang as this site has over a dozen sub-domains, and this domain alone gets enough traffic to warrant more bandwidth. After a few days, I’ve seen for myself that search engines (particularly Google) take websites with dedicated IPs more seriously — crawlers and traffic have increased exponentially since I upgraded.
Meanwhile, David’s birthday is coming up at the end of this month and I’m still trying to figure out how to commemorate it, whether to fly again, in what type of aircraft, or if I’m going to do something completely different this year. I’ve got a few weeks to decide. Here are the photos from the previous seven years of birthday flights:
May 30, 2012 – flew in a Cessna 206 float plane with Cameron Air from Billy Bishop Airport (Toronto)
May 30, 2011 – flew with Tyler Bator from AVP (Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Airport, Pennsylvania)
May 30, 2010 – flew over Mount Pocono Airport (where David got his pilot’s license) in a helicopter, which was also where I flew in a helicopter for the first time (Pennsylvania)
May 30, 2009 – flew with Alan Highhouse in a Piper Super Cub (Pennsylvania & New York)
May 30, 2008 – flew with Alan Highhouse in a Piper Super Cub (Pennsylvania & New York)
May 30, 2007 – took the controls of a Cessna Skyhawk for David’s 40th birthday (Brampton, Ontario)
May 30, 2006 – scattered David’s ashes from a Piper Cub stunt plane flown by the legendary “Flying Farmer”, Stanley Segalla over the Hudson River in upstate New York [RIP Stanley Segalla: March 5, 1914 - March 31, 2011]
Posted in Flying, gailatlarge.com, Unabashed Geekiness | No Comments
May 8, 2013 by Gail
This birthday cake was from a family party I was hired to photograph last weekend. The cake was for a 3-year old, but I know adults who are huge fans of Hello Kitty and would love it for themselves.
(Hello Kitty is a global phenomenon worth $5 billion a year and Sanrio enforces the copyright on their images. In 2006 I got in trouble for taking a photo of a Hello Kitty waffle iron!)
Posted in Food + Drink, Tales of the Absurd | No Comments
May 7, 2013 by Gail
I dashed down to High Park this morning for one last photo round of cherry blossoms in the lower grove, which bloom later than those in the upper grove. The parking lots were filled with cars even on a weekday morning, but the main crowds were in the upper grove, which worked with my strategy — to follow the sun, which happens to favour the lower grove in the morning. That’s why I went to the upper grove last night. If you go to High Park in the evening, the lower grove is completely shaded.
Here are some of my favourites…
Aaaaaaand, that’s a wrap! Today’s photos are best viewed as a full-screen slideshow or just sit back and watch the smaller version autoplay below (here’s the full Sakura 2013 set):
Posted in The Great Outdoors, Toronto, Urban Life | | No Comments
Copyright © 2013 Gail Edwin-Fielding