September in Toronto has had more beautiful days than both July and August this year. To take advantage of this gorgeous weather, Tito and I went hiking in Caledon over the weekend.

We left home at 6:30 and were rewarded by arriving at the park just as the sun was creeping over the tops of the trees. There was a scrubby little patch of grass in the patch, with some weeds sprouting out of it. Charming, right? The weeds were New England Astor and Red Clover. Here’s a pic of my setup.

I’m using my Canon 5D Mark III on a tripod, with Canon’s 100mm f2.8 macro lens and 2 keno extension tubes. The flowers don’t look like much. But as the sun crept over the trees, under the setup of my macro lens, you could see the morning dew collected on delicate petals, petals which still hadn’t opened for the day.

These were shot with no artificial lighting and processed with minimal colour correction, and no special effects. Just the natural interaction of morning dew and a rising sun.

We continued our hike, seeing the waterfalls at the end of the meadow trail, the mist coming off the pond, and tiny little frogs sunning themselves, but these shots were definitely my favourite. I took one final shot as we were retracing our steps a few hours later.

I was grateful for the chance to see some of the beautiful stages these tiny little flowers pass through before they open and dry out for the day :) These photos have all been added to my photography site at Smugmug.