2026 Ottawa - Two City Walks

Gallery (40 images): 2026 Ottawa - Two City Walks

This gallery contains photos taken on two different days, one a walk in the evening to meet Emily after an event, and the other a walk along the newly reopened Ottawa River Pathway, part of the Trans-Canada Trail. It is the first time we've seen the newly revamped Cliff Energy Centre with some interesting architecture and two huge, nearly flat, mirror finished exhaust stacks that look like something out of a sci-fi movie. There was also the interesting Thunderhead memorial, part of the 2SLGBTQI+ National Monument, which is a large white tower that looks like it was attacked with an enormous ice-cream scoop, having unevenly shaped openings and an interior finished in small glass tiles. The evening light and shadows made it even more interesting.

Web Gallery Transition

An example of my previous web gallery look (left) vs. the new look with jAlbum (right)

Finally, just about a week ago with the latest update to Adobe Lightroom (v.15.5.1), the TTG Highslide export module that I had bought, extensively customized and had been using for the last 16 years, has stopped working properly. Exporting a gallery gave messed up formatting and visible XML code scattered all over every page, so finally it became totally unusable. I can’t really complain too much, since I did manage to eke out 16 years of use from that plugin!

Interestingly enough, a few weeks prior to the Lightroom update, I had already started hunting for alternative web gallery software since I had a feeling I might need something in the near future. Since I no longer wanted to be at the mercy of Lightroom updates, I tried a number of different stand-alone web gallery export programs and emailed a few companies for details when they didn’t have free demo versions. Unfortunately none gave me the flexibility and features I was looking for either, and no company I contacted even bothered to reply back to my questions. With some more research and more specific Googling, I finally came across jAlbum (https://jalbum.net) the other day. After some promising tests with the free, feature limited version and seeing some sample galleries online that seemed to do most of what I wanted, I decided to give it a go and bought the mid-tier package.

2026: Ottawa Fireworks Finale

 Gallery (40 images): 2026 Ottawa Fireworks Finale

On August 15th, Emily and I went to see the Les Grands Feux du Casino Lac-Leamy fireworks festival finale at Kiweki Point Park in Ottawa. We only managed to get there about an hour before the fireworks started, so there were no more spots with an unobstructed view. Any spots with a direct view of the Ottawa River and the fireworks barge were taken, so after scoping out a few early teaser bursts (which Emily also helped me with since she knew the area better), I decided on a spot with some foreground trees and no crowds of people right in front of the camera. The vast majority of the fireworks were plenty high enough to see from that vantage point, and it made for a different framing than my usual. As the show progressed, the fireworks got progressively higher, so I adjusted the camera up a bit, shooting with my widest lens that I had with me. Due to the height and spread, I also decided to crop all the fireworks shots to a 5:4 aspect ratio, instead of the native 3:2 of my camera.

2026 Ottawa Summer Walks

 Gallery (20 images): 2026 Ottawa Summer Walks

The linked gallery contains photos of a few excursions Emily and I went on in late July and early August. These include a hike to Meech Lake in Gatineau Park, two photos from the patio overlooking some falls on the Mississippi river (not related to the river in the US) at a fantastic Italian restaurant in the small town of Almonte, then a bunch more while hiking around the historic Mackenzie King Estate in Gatineau Park, which include some faux abbey ruins (seen in the headline image above) that Mackenzie King had constructed as a relaxing place to meditate. The components of the ruins were taken from a variety of places, including the former Parliament building that were destroyed by fire in 1916, Mackenzie King’s grandfather’s printing shop, and even pieces of buildings of the British Parliament.

2024 Southwest Trip - Days 5 & 6 - Death Valley

Gallery (25 images): 2024 Southwest Trip - Days 5 & 6 - Death Valley

This gallery covers a few days in and around Death Valley. Driving through the Panamint Valley, we were struck by the immense carpet of yellow wildflowers in the valley. We then visited a variety of locations, including Badwater, the lowest point in the US at -282 feet below sea-level, Zabriskie Point and the Artists Palette, which takes one along large multi-coloured sandstone sections of the hills that one drives by. Sadly, the sky was a bit hazy to the west and only got worse as the evening progressed, so we did not stay for late evening/sunset light there. Lastly, we camped near the Inyo Mine ruins, and we spent some time at the ruins after dark with lovely clear skies, doing some night sky photography and light painting.

Read: All the blog postings from my 2024 Southwest Trip

2024 Southwest Trip - Day 3 - Alcatraz

Gallery (60 images): 2024 Southwest Trip - Day 3 - Alcatraz

This gallery is still from day three, after our walk through the city and Chinatown, but during an evening tour of Alcatraz Island (managed by the US National Park Service), and inside the well kept ruins of the infamous maximum security federal prison known as "The Rock."

I absolutely love photographing old decaying buildings, and the old prison gave many wonderful opportunities for photos with colours, textures, dramatic light & shadow as well as impactful subject matter. I shot everything handheld and the in-body image-stabilization (IBIS) of the Fujifilm X-T5 I was using was indispensable in getting sharp photos with my wide-angle prime lenses without taking the ISO up to crazy high levels. The success of these photos was instrumental in finally giving me the nudge to upgrade my X-Pro2, which did not have IBIS, and buy the X-E5 which came out in 2025 and more or less has the same image quality, IBIS and performance of the X-T5, but in a far more compact rangefinder style body. I would not have been able to get photos with the dynamic range and needed depth-of-field had I been using the X-Pro2 handheld; I definitely would have needed a tripod, and tripods are not allowed on tours there...

Read: All the blog postings from my 2024 Southwest Trip

Hawaii 2023 - Botanical Gardens

Gallery (50 images): Hawaii 2023 - Botanical Gardens

Somehow, I had thought that I'd already posted all of my 2023 Hawaii galleries, however I realized I had one more day to do, so...

On the second-to-last day of our Hawaii trip and honeymoon, we decided to visit the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Gardens just north of Hilo. The variety of plant life in the lush jungle was amazing! We wandered around for several hours, marvelling at all the exotic plants and took lots of photos.

Finally, on the last day of our honeymoon, we went to an acclaimed and recommended tattoo artist in Hilo and Emily and I both got a matching Polynesian/Hawaiian sea turtle tattoo on opposite shoulders. Emily had numerous tattoos already, but it was my first. Why? Well on the first morning of our honeymoon in Kona, Emily and I went out to the rocky beach right in front of our room and saw a large sea turtle feeding in the water, close enough to touch. We watched it for maybe 10 minutes. It didn’t seem bothered by our proximity at all and we both were touched by the experience. In Hawaiian mythology, the sea turtle stands for good health, longevity, peace and tranquility, amongst other positive attributes, so we thought it a fitting symbol and a wonderful reminder of our wedding and Hawaiian honeymoon! We both felt that the tattoo artist did a wonderful job and it was interesting hearing him describe the various components of his design and their meaning...

2024 Southwest Trip - Day 3

Gallery (30 images): 2024 Southwest Trip - Day 3

This gallery has images from our walk through San Francisco's Chinatown and down to the Powell Street Cable Car Station just east of the Tenderloin district. We rode one of the famous, historic San Francisco cable cars (wikipedia link) all the way back to near Fisherman's Wharf, Hyde Street Station, so the Powell-Hyde route.

The cable cars are rotated by hand on a large turntable by two or three burly people, to change direction at the ends of their route. I have some videos of our trip on the cable car, which I will upload and link to in the future. Sadly it started raining during the cable car ride, with dimmed daylight and wet droplet covered windows, so I did not bother to take any photos. I only shot video during the ride.

Read: All the blog postings from my 2024 Southwest Trip

2026 - Dow's Lake Tulip Festival

 Gallery (20 images): 2026 - Dow's Lake Tulip Festival

On a sunny and warm spring weekend, Emily and I visited Dow's Lake in Ottawa for the annual Tulip Festival. It was very busy, but somehow I expected even more crowds than there were. It really didn't take long to get close to each flower bed and take photos of the tulips. There were many vendors set up as well and there was a Dutch pop-up store that sold lovely painted wooden tulips too, seen in the last photo in the gallery.

2026 - Montréal in April

Gallery (40 images): 2026 - Montréal in April

In late April, Emily and I were off to Montréal for her to attend a conference. That gave me the opportunity to wander around the city during a warm spring afternoon taking some photos in and around Old Montréal. I visited the Notre-Dame Basilica but sadly, parts of it were covered in tarps and scaffolding. It was also closed to visitors except on a guided tour. I went to the Port of Montréal docks on the St. Lawrence River and photographed the sights there, including an interesting glass viewing tower (not yet open for the season) as well as catching some views of Habitat 67 (see photo 27), a housing complex seemingly made up of random stacked cubes, built during Montréal's Expo 67 world's fair. I will have to make a point of checking it out in the future, since I suspect it will look far more interesting up close.