North Forks

Topper the horse lives out at North Forks Arena which is only about a mile from our place. Tanya goes over there quite regularly to work with him and do a bit of riding. The Arena is huge and kept at about zero celsius year-round. I went along with Tanya a little earlier this evening to try and take some shots. The lighting is awkward and horses don't really pose when you want them too. I got maybe one photo of Topper while he was in his stall (I have yet to post it) but nothing of him while in the arena itself. I did get a picture of a lady on her horse riding through the sun from the sky lights though. It turned out semi-well. I'll keep trying to get a picture of Tanya with Topper and maybe one day it will work.

Experimenting

I'm just experimenting with Picasa for photo editing. It's quick and easy and looks like it might be another fairly decent tool. It partly saved this snowy shot but I'm pretty sick of snowy shots now. I'd like some spring and some green. Even a good summer storm would be better although it did rain today for the first time this year. It blew hard against the windows and then turned to big, fluffy flakes.

Temperance

This picture is from the old family bible, published in 1890ish. My, how times have changed. If you click on the image and get the large version you can read the pledge.

We went out for supper tonight and Eli looked over at me with his blue eyes. I'm trying to figure out how to tone down pale skin but I haven't gotten there yet...

Fire

My friend had an idea I couldn't resist. He wanted to light a kerosene-soaked board on fire in the dark and take pictures of it. It involved two awesome things: fire and photography.  He came out about 8pm tonight but we had to wait for over an hour until it was dark enough to try it out. He stapled a towel to a large propped-up piece of plywood and then soaked it in kerosene and we lit it up. Wow did it burn. Had some great pictures from it too. Having a stock of fire images could be a good thing for other photo composites. Fire, on its own, is very beautiful too. My friend got more shots than me and ended the experiment with "what am I going to do with all the pictures?". I dunno either...

Spring Time

It's always exciting when the season officially changes from winter to spring. Anticipation of warm summer days, birds singing, holidays and beaches. Too bad we woke up to -3C and a snow flurry this morning. I'd go out and take some pictures of it but I don't really feel taking more pictures of snow. To put things in a Yukon perspective: a couple of years ago it was about -30C out there. This is certainly an improvement although I still feel that it's time for the winter to end.

Painting With Lasers

Eli and I did some more light painting but I had a different idea this time...

Laser pointers are pretty cool.

Smile

Eli and I tried some light painting in his room. I think it worked out fairly well. Eli took the photo (tripod, F11, manual shutter) and I swung the light. Smile.

Older Photo

I changed the blog format a bit because the old format was too constricted. This is much nicer for posting photos to now.

I took this shot on Jan 31st just as the sun was setting at about 5pm. You can see the orangey glow of the last few minutes of light in the background. With daylight savings our skies don't really darken until after 8pm now. I've grown to like the long, long days up here in the North. If we go canoeing or any other outdoor activity there is no rush at all to be home in the summer.

I'm still learning the finer points of post production for images. Too much to know in a short period, and really, I don't know what I'm doing yet.

Break Dancing Part II

This is about all I could save from my photos of the photo shoot. Daren had the power because he was plugged into the flash units so the studio lights were all turned down which didn't help me out at all. Low light conditions equal slow shutter speed, wider aperture and high ISO settings. Daren has some flash units that run off a specialized power supply which can channel up to three separate flashes (I think it was) at different power settings. By adjusting the settings he can control the intensity of the light (flashes) to manage the level of shadow/light. The flashes are controlled via remote with the master remote being on the camera. It's a small unit that attaches to his camera and gives him the "Power of the Flash". Without that I ended up with the blurry and dark photos that I did. No problem. I learned a lot just by watching. He had three lights; two back lights with screens and one main light with a diffuser on it to soften it. The back-drop was just a large piece of cloth he purchased and dyed a darkish brown. The back-drop allows him to remove the subject during image production on his computer. He can then substitute any colour he decides. In this case black worked quite well.

I, personally, won't be doing a lot of studio work. I prefer landscape photography and for me it's only a hobby (at this point) but studio lighting is still pretty interesting to learn about. It's surprisingly easy once some basic rules are known. One day I'll buy a couple of flashes and a remote trigger and go from there.

Windblown

The last few days its been quite windy. Last week the wind blew so hard it rattled the roof and blew the doghouse over. Poor old Tessy lay curled up where her house used to be and look at me so sadly that even I felt sorry for her. It's still blustery today but not as bad as its been. I just hope its a precursor to the unpredictable spring season.

Day Light Savings and Break Dancing

Why do we have daylight savings in the Yukon? It's supposed to extend the daylight hours for our artificially maintained circadian rhythms, but way up here there is so much sun in the summer that really, it makes no sense. This time of year we already have a longer evening than way down south (like in "Northern" B.C.). Soon the concept of night is going to be very similar to day.

Last night my photographer friend and I went to a dance studio so he could photograph some kids break dancing. He's doing it to promote his business. We set up the backdrop and the lights and the young guys came in and started to do some of their moves. Pretty amazing what they can do. Most of the dance moves involve some kind of anti-gravity effect or friction defying spins. They are strong enough to do handstands and while vertical they can knock off a few free standing push-ups. Impressive. The only downside is Daren had the lights hooked to his camera so I couldn't get any pictures. I'll see if I can recover a couple photos to post.

10 AM Meetings

10 AM meetings. Ugg. Meetings are bad enough but at 10 am? That's coffee break time. I wonder if anyone would complain if I took my camera in and took a few shots...probably shouldn't.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

I'm trying to see if flickr can post to my blog...

Tail End Of Grey

It's not cold out, at least not for the Yukon at this time of year, but it's certainly grey. Old snow at the road side from the countless plow runs. Grey trees from the blowing dust. Dirty snow in the driveway. We are getting close to the end but it's still a while away. Today we even have a wind storm blowing in from the south with gusts up to 90 km/hr. It adds some much needed ambiance but that only takes me so far. A friend echoed my sentiments and said "I can't wait until its warm out and I can take some pictures". I've got a nice new tripod and a camera but one snowy scene starts to look like another.  At least it's been a warm winter up here.

What Eli Likes To Do

Eli will spend an hour at a time reading out Calvin and Hobbs to us and laughing like mad at each strip he reads. Pretty cute. There are hints of Calvin in him too...

Lovely Lady

I was playing around with my camera, trying to get shots which worked in the bad lighting that I had but this one turned out fairly well. It's a photo of my Lovely Lady, Tanya.  It's always easier to take pictures when you have a nice subject.

The Three R's (reduce reuse recycle)

Over-all I'm not too happy with the compact fluorescent bulbs that are attempting to replace the old incandescent ones. The light from them is mostly too harsh, they take time to reach peak luminance after being turned on and they burn out quite quickly. One other thing I don't like is they can't really be used for an outdoor patio light in the cold because the colder it is the dimmer they burn. There is one redeeming feature though; they have good electronics in them. They have a small transformer, a few capacitors and a few transistors. It's simple enough to take apart. A flathead screwdriver is enough to pry apart the bottom from the top fluorescent tube to reveal the electronics inside. My guess is its a simple step-up transformer which takes the 110V wall current and steps it up to a much higher voltage which is used to make the gas in the tube glow. Pretty neat concept really. Just a poor design not really ready for the mass market yet.

Budding?

Over on Daren Gallo's Blog he calls me a "budding photographer". Ya, okay. I'll go with that. It's better than some other names I suppose (winky grin). The fireworks photo that he posted is oddly similar to mine because we photographed the show only about 5 feet from each other. I guess we triggered the shutter at the same time as well.

Also, you can see E¹ in her modelling debut on his main website. Click on "Portfolios" and then "traditional". Wow.

Facebook Juxtaposition Failure

I logged into Facebook this morning and saw that I had a few suggestions so I thought I'd take a look to see what Facebook figured I should do. Judging by the juxtaposition of Barack with the "Fan" suggestion I'd say Facebook doesn't pay close attention to what gets published in this way...Unless, of course, the Facebook folks don't care much for Obama.