It was ad-hoc organized trip to Niagara Falls Parks to see the first-time bloom in Canada of Titan Arum flower. It is about 90 inches in height and after web news that the Amorphophallus titanum, or Titan Arum located inside the Floral Showhouse in Niagara Falls, flower blossomed late Friday night, we decided to get there early on Saturday morning (Floral Showhouse opened at 9:30). It was hard to photograph as many visitors arrived for this event in in a tradition of all visitors they wanted to take their or their kids pictures. Anyway, it was a good experience and some images turned quite good and perhaps a long monopod would have provided me with better image of inside the flower. More photos of the this flower and other ones from the Flotal Showhouse are available at my Gallery site.

Read it on Global News: Global Toronto | World’s tallest flower blooms at Niagara Parks

For more information and excellent video look at this web site at LifeLeak.com.

This outing with Toronto Camera Club (TCC) followed next day after Tony Sweet presentation and quite frankly I had a hard time to get up early (5:00) to catch the first light. I have never been at this site so I got lost a little, but nevertheless arrived around 6:30 and after a short scouting for site and set up my cameras, tripod etc., I was ready and in the spite that the sunrise wasn’t spectacular one, some good images came out.

* All images can be seen in my Gallery here.

I was back just 2 weeks after my fall hike on October 9th, 2011 this time with my son Adrian and his fiancé Nicky. What a difference two weeks can make! There were hardly any leaves left on the trees so that an opportunity to capture some fall colors were almost gone. However, it was a pleasant walk with Adrian and Nicky as I don’t have many opportunities to do so.

As almost to be Adrian’s signature to do something mischievous  (goes back when he was young) he found a small garter snake and started to play with it only later realizing the stench left by the snake was hard to shake off. This resulted that both Nicky and I were walking ahed of him to escape this unpleasant “snakiness” , only after using water and some sanitizer in public washroom, he was accepted back to our group!

The turning point of our short hike was a crossroad just by the Credit River where we had a short rest, small picnic and took some photos of the running water.

On the way back we drove to a picturesque hamlet  of  Belfountain but didn’t stopped there since it was crowded with weekenders and bikers as alway is on nice weather weekend. The only sane visit is during weekdays!