Filip Hasson Photography

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Filip Hasson Photography Toronto based photographer mainly shooting Wildlife, Astro, Nature. Also interested in Concert, Sport and any Action Photography!

I'm a Toronto based photography enthusiast who's all about capturing the simple joys of nature, the charm of wildlife, the vastness of the night sky, and the beauty of landscapes. While I have a soft spot for the great outdoors, I'm also diving into the world of portraits, architecture, street, and macro photography. Join me in documenting the everyday wonders and unexpected moments that make life a visual adventure!

Walking the north coast of San Francisco was an oddly familiar trip, at least from a birding perspective. Almost all the...
06/28/2026

Walking the north coast of San Francisco was an oddly familiar trip, at least from a birding perspective. Almost all the birds are ones we see regularly here in Ontario!

To start off this is a great blue heron flying just a few metres overhead!

Killdeer, rather aggressive name for such a small cute shorebird

Snowy egret attempting to catch a fish

Red-thoated loon, or so iNaturalist thinks, nobody has corroborated yet

Western gull

Brandt’s Cormorant. There’s all sorts of debate in the birding community about whether birds named after people should be renamed to more descriptive names.

European starling. These were allegedly imported to the United States due to one man’s mission of ensuring all of Shakespeare’s birds are discoverable in the new world. The word invasive species wasn’t around yet.

Great blue heron preparing to strike

A wee little baby killdeer with its weird long legs

A western gull juvenile. Crazy how different their entire collocation is from the adults

White-crowned sparrow

Arguably one of the two birds that got me into birding, the red-tailed hawk

A pair of turkey vultures. The 200mm+2x teleconverter really struggled with how high these were flying

Snowy Egret mid strike

Red-throated loon

Western gull

Snowy egret moments after missing a fish

Snowy egret on the beech

First stop after the ferry building was the fisherman’s Warf, specifically pier 39 and the sea lion viewing area. The th...
06/27/2026

First stop after the ferry building was the fisherman’s Warf, specifically pier 39 and the sea lion viewing area.

The these California Sea Lions really just live the life. Going for a swim, showing off for tourists, chilling in a giant cuddle puddle.

While walking the coast, I found this Anna’s Hummingbird and probably spent a good 20 minutes getting photos of it! It m...
06/26/2026

While walking the coast, I found this Anna’s Hummingbird and probably spent a good 20 minutes getting photos of it!

It moved crazy fast, I only managed to get one photo of it flying and it was at a distance too. I got super lucky and it perched on a branch maybe 2-3m away from me and stayed there for a while! It was in near perfect light though unfortunately not flashing its pink feathers at this angle. Though I did get a few long range shots where it did!

This was one of the first big tests for my new 2x teleconverter. All these photos were shot on my 70-200 GMii with the Sony 2x teleconverter to get to a range of 400mm.

I’d read feedback online that the 2x teleconverter isn’t good for zoom lenses and is best reserved for the “big primes”. Well I’ll happily disagree with that. I did get some mixed results, 400mm at a distance on ny main lens does get much better results than 200x2 but when the subject is close enough to fill a quarter of the 400mm frame or more the teleconverter really shines! Paired with the 70-200 f2.8 it loses two stops of light to f5.6 which frankly is where my 200-600 sits anyway if not f6.3!

Paired with the longer lens light becomes critical as it’s f13 at 1200mm. Similar to the 1.4x that lens requires a very bright sunny day for the teleconverter to outperform just cropping.

Back in May I had the opportunity to go down to San Francisco for work. I debated for a while whether I should bring any...
06/25/2026

Back in May I had the opportunity to go down to San Francisco for work. I debated for a while whether I should bring any camera or how many lenses I should take. For a previous work trip to Arizona I hauled a full bag of stuff and only came back with a single picture of a great tailed grackle.

Ultimately I decide I would bring just my a9iii, my 24-70, 70-200, and a 2x teleconverter for better birding. This felt more reasonable than two camera, or hauling a 600 for no reason again. Learnings from the kit, if I’m bringing multiple lenses I should just always bring multiple cameras.

In order to make sure I had some time & energy to actually take pictures I booked my flight out of Toronto at 8am which meant getting up at 4am the morning after a late night where we got home at midnight. Suffice to say when I landed in SF, I was dead. Fortunately the weather was too. Thick fog coated the city and wouldn’t lift until 1PM. The perfect opportunity to get some sleep before heading out!

Too tired to make serious decisions I decided to walk to the ferry terminal, and then just follow the coast until I got to the Golden Gate Bridge.

Here’s a series of pics of the bridge from the walk! I’ll share some of the other things from the walk over the next few days!

Brown pelicans but can you guess where they’re from? It gets easier as the series goes on! This one flew right on top of...
06/24/2026

Brown pelicans but can you guess where they’re from? It gets easier as the series goes on!

This one flew right on top of me! Had to zoom out from 400mm to get it in frame!

Squad rolls up on the breakwater

Nice Sunday for the pier.

Almost looks like they’re escaping

Major landmarks are getting very recognizable now!

The bridge should give it away! The title of the song is a hint if you’re not sure which bridge it is.

First time trying the new multiple captions feature. If you actually read them all leave a comment lol 😂

“Someone on the outside might think all these shorebirds are just little brown birds, that all look identical to each ot...
06/23/2026

“Someone on the outside might think all these shorebirds are just little brown birds, that all look identical to each other. And they’re right, that’s kinda the whole thing” - Owen Reiser

At the same time as yesterdays loon chase this spotted sandpiper. Was working its way down the shore just a few meters away.

Every few seconds I was swinging back and forth between the two birds

Not the greatest photographs I’ve taken, but a unique behaviour I haven’t seen before! It’s rare for us to see even one ...
06/22/2026

Not the greatest photographs I’ve taken, but a unique behaviour I haven’t seen before! It’s rare for us to see even one Loon off the water at Lions Head, much more common is a cormorant tricking us into thinking it’s a loon.

But this past weekend there wasn’t just one or two loons but three.

They were making quite a racket and were far offshore. Suddenly two of the loons bolted and took off, but not flying. They chased each other across the surface of the water for a good half hour looking like little power boats far in the distance.

When I say distance I really mean it! I shot these photos with a 2x teleconverter attached to my 200-600mm lens and all these photos are right at 1200mm and then cropped further! For comparison to an iPhone 120mm is about the equivalent to zooming in to 60x which your phone won’t actually even let you do!

A wise meme once said ants and the British have a lot in common:- weird loyalty to their queen - innate instincts to lin...
06/21/2026

A wise meme once said ants and the British have a lot in common:
- weird loyalty to their queen
- innate instincts to line up single file and travel in a queue
- love for crumbly pastries
- taking things that aren’t theirs back to their colony

Another ant snacking on pollen.
06/20/2026

Another ant snacking on pollen.

Obsessed with these ants. So far the iNaturalist community has narrowed it down to Fusca-group Field Ants and Allies. I’...
06/19/2026

Obsessed with these ants. So far the iNaturalist community has narrowed it down to Fusca-group Field Ants and Allies.

I’m resisting the urge to just jam 20 photos of ants into this post, going to try something new and space them out a little.

Here’s a few different crops of the same ant!

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