» photos - Simon Lau

Niagara Falls (Ontario)

For those who live in the golden horseshoe area, the Niagara region is one you’ve heard of many times. From Toronto, you can drive to Niagara Falls in about 1.5 hours. From the US, it’s more or less considered Buffalo. To those who have no idea what I’m talking about, the Niagara Falls are massive waterfalls from the Niagara River. This river divides Canada from the United States and while there are technically 3 falls, the Canadian side is clearly the best. All three falls were created from glaciers during the last ice age. The Canadian Horseshoe falls drop a total of 157 feet (52m) and is 2600 feet wide (792m). It is an impressive sight to see as six million cubic feet of water flows over the falls every minute. It’s anticipated that 28 million visitors will visit the falls in 2009 and this year there has been 20 million. It’s an amazing sight to see during the day and you should stick around for the evening light show if it’s your first visit.

Here’s a panoramic I made on my last visit.

You can find lots of information about the falls on wikipedia or Niagara Park Fun Fact’s page.

Tags: Niagara Falls, panoramic, photos, Travel

. 12 Oct 08 | Photography, Travel | Comments (2)

Venice Travel Pictures

Venice is an incredibly beautiful city, it doesn’t take very long to get lost or to walk through the entire city. The best way to get around is via Vaporetto, basically the public transportation system of Venice. People hop onto one of the water buses and get off where they need to. The Vaporetto’s cover the main island (Venice) as well as the outer islands in the area.
We arrived in Venice early afternoon and took the time to wander around. On our first full day we took the Vaporetto across the island to San Marco. Here’s the view:

Here I am sitting on one of the many bridges that dot the city.

From San Marco, this is the famous Bascili. There are a ton of pigeons and people love to feed them and have them crawl over their body. Not my cup of tea.

If you looked at my panorama photos, you will have noticed a bunch taken of Venice. Those were all taken from the bell tower and here’s a view of the piazza from the top.

Back on the vaporetto, we kept passing by this museum with a skull made of our different pieces of metal, a photo just had to be taken.

The Grand Canal during sunset is truly a beautiful sight, here are a few pictures during dusk.

This picture was taken on the way back from Lido, one of the islands near Venice. Many of the workers in Venice don’t actually stay on Venice because it is too expensive, instead many of them live on the islands like Lido.
We spend one day on Murano and Burano, two other islands near Venice. Murano is famous for their glass work and Burano is famous for their colorful houses and lace factories. There are very few lace factories around these days.

No trip to Venice is complete without a Gondola ride so we took one. It cost 60Eur for 30 minutes but our Gondola guy also sang and give us a history lesson of the area while he rowed us around.

Tags: Burano, Europe, graduation trip, Lido, Murano, photos, San Marco, Venice

. 04 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comment (1)

London Travel Pictures

I promised I would share some pictures of my Europe Grad Trip, so let’s finally begin. The journey begins in London so that’s where the pictures will start.

After arriving in London around 7PM we made it into town and wandered with our bags until we could check in. Our first stop was at Piccadilly Circus:

We then moved onto the Big Ben where I observed how the clock was a few minutes fast.

Wandering along the waterfront we were able to see what the London Eye looked like, we didn’t actually go up.

From here, we continued wandering through St. James Park and made our way to the front of Buckingham Palace where we watched the guards changed. This is an hour long event and not a 2 minute job that I thought it was!

By this point it was approaching noon and we had been up for most of our flight and walked around for a few hours with our bags. After a quick lunch at Cheers we checked into our Hotel – Hilton. Outside the hotel was this yellow Lotus so I took a picture.

The next day we went down to the Thames Rivers and checked our the Tower Bridge, Tower of London, looked at HMS Belfast and a random piece of artwork in the area.

We also walked to the Globe Theater which we went back to later in the evening to watch King Lear from the 5GBP standing area.

On our way to dinner we passed by the Court house.

Our on next day we went to Regents Park.

We also stopped by at Camden Market and picked up panoramas of London.

Here’s a view looking down one of two elevators required to get to the tube from our station.

The day after that we went to Hyde Park, the Orangerie (where I stole an orange off their tree) and the Science Museum.

Early the next day we made our way out to Stansted Airport and flew with Ryanair to Venice.

Tags: Buckingham Palace, Changing of the guards, Europe 2008, graduation trip, Hyde Park, London, London Eye, Lotus, Orangerie, photos, Ryanair, Shakespeare, St. James Park, Venice

. 03 Jul 08 | Photography, Travel | Comment (1)

Europe Trip 2008 Panoramic Photos (Photomerge)

In sharing my manually pieced together panoramic photos with Nivedh Manohar of Overclockers Online we started to discuss ways the different panoramic photos we had done. He enlightened me with a feature in Adobe Photoshop that automatically merges photos into a panoramic, hence the term photomerge.
In total, I discovered I had 38 panoramic photos. At the original size, the combined size is exactly 200MB. To spare the ridiculous loading times, I have compressed them to a manageable 1024 pixel dimension. Click on the small 350 pixel wide thumbnail for a slightly larger. If you would like the full size image, drop me a message and I’ll make it available to you.

Venice

Florence

Pisa

Rome

Paris

I promise to start sharing more photos this coming week!

Tags: Adobe, Europe 2008, Grad Trip, Overclockers Online, panoramic, photos, photoshop

. 22 Jun 08 | Photography, Travel | Comment (1)

Europe Trip 2008 Panoramics

I have finally pieced together photos of our Europe Trip that covered London, Venice, Milan, Florence, Pisa, Rome and Paris between May 7th and June 10th. The photos were taken with a Casio Exilim EX-Z1050 (10MP) digital camera and pieced together using Adobe Photoshop.

London was the first city we visited but we did not visit any high points in the city that would allow for panoramic city photos.

Venice was the first Italian city of our trip and from the Bell Tower in San Marco (Campanile di San Marco) you get a wonderful view of the city, the water and the islands that dot around Venice.

Leaving Venice we took the train to Milan but like London, there were no good free high points that allow you to take panoramic photos. From Milan we went to Florence, where the blue skies, green grass and small city made for breathtaking views. The photos below was taken from Cimitero Delle Porte Sante on our way to Michelangelo Piazza.

From Michelangelo Piazza the city is a bit closer.

Karen and I both believe that Florence had the best view during our trip.

Leaving Florence we went to Pisa for one day where the most obvious thing to do is to visit the Leaning Tower. However, going up the Leaning Tower is quite the experience. I think it is the best way to fully appreciate the lean. You also get a great view from the top.

The final Italian city for us is none other than Rome. Rome is full of history and two of the most popular places include the Vatican City and the Colosseum. At the Vatican City we went to the cupola (top of St Peter’s Basilica) and I had enough photos for 2 panoramic, possibly more if I wanted to put the rest together. In addition to those two sites, I compiled a panoramic photo of some ruins along Via dei Fori Imperiali between Colosseum and Victor Emmanuel II.

The final stop on our trip was Paris and the most obvious place for panoramic photos would be at the top of the Eiffel Tower. There’s absolutely no doubt in my mind that the view from the Eiffel Tower was spectacular but at such a great height (300m above ground) some of the detail is lost. However, it is the only monument open late into that night allowing for pictures of the “City of Lights”. Before revealing the photos from the Eiffel Tower, we first went to Notre Dame, the site Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame. From here you can see large portion of Paris and its surrounding area.

The night of our boat cruise we also went up to the Eiffel Tower because the weather was finally starting to clear and we didn’t want to miss the opportunity. When we arrived at the top, the sun was setting.

That’s a wrap for all the panoramic I currently have. I am still selecting which photos from each city I will upload and share. Expect that to happen in the coming weeks.

Tags: Europe 2008, Florence, Grad Trip, panoramic, Paris, photos, Pisa, Rome, Venice

. 19 Jun 08 | Photography, Travel | Comments (3)

Toronto Earth Hour – March 29, 2008 @ 8PM

If you haven’t heard about Earth Hour, maybe you’ve already been living under a rock without excessive use of electricity. In which case, you’ve probably done an excellent job and keeping your carbon footprint relatively small.

earthour

In Toronto, Earth Hour was considered a huge success. I was at Nathan Phillips Square when it began and I didn’t think it was that big. The lights dimmed but around the city but visible light pollution still hung in the air. There was even a single office still lit in City Hall.

In an effort to curb the use of electricity, it was reported that Toronto’s electricity demand dropped by 264 Megawatts. The equivalent of 175,000 homes turned out their lights in a city of a little over 3 million. According to the announcers at Nathan Phillips Square, that’s a participation rate of 7% for the homes in the city.

I personally thought that was low and figured Torontoians should have done better and stepped it up to 10%.

Despite me saying the buildings around NPS were not fully dimmed out like the power outage of 2003, the aerial photographs captured SaveOurClimate show a very different story.

One of the beauties about Earth Hour was the ability to stare up into the sky and see the star from below.

Tags: Aerial, Earth Hour, Lights, photos, Power, Toronto

. 29 Mar 08 | Technology, Toronto, Zen | Comments (0)

Hong Kong Night View

Last night I took the tram back up Victoria Peak in an attempt to watch the 8PM laser show, but apparently from the peak you can’t see anything. Regardless, the view is quite nice. It would have been better with a beer in hand since it was still 17-22C outside. Click on any of the photos for a larger view.

After hanging out at the top, instead of taking the tram down again I took the bus. From the harbour I grabbed a beer at 7-11 ($6.15 HKD which is less than a $1 CDN) I think this view looks a lot nicer. The goal new years eve is to come back down and watch the laser and firework show. I’ll bring along my tripod to get some steadier shots.