By The Fire

While I'm waiting for my flickr upgrade so I can add more images you can watch this little video I quickly made up yesterday. I'm just trying to learn the limits of my camera and figure out a few basic techniques for video...

By The Fire (there is audio too)

Last Year's Colours

Eli and I had another fire this evening and as we sat by the warm glow the sun began to set. It cast long shadows and a warm light through the trees and lit some of the grasses and plants from last summer. Away from the fire the air was quite cool but by the fire the heat kept us warm and comfortable and we talked until past my boy's bedtime. Yet another good day.

Ice

It hailed today while Eli and I went out walking. We walked across the ice on the river shore, kicking it into a million crystal shards. As the hail fell it settled on into the ice; whiter specks against the old, sun-dimpled ice.

Variation

A variation of last night's photo with some texture added. Now it looks more like a painting.

Paint The Evening Sky

Just as the sun dipped behind the hills the sky lit up. It was cooler today than yesterday and the wind had been blowing all day. Rain had been threatening earlier in great, black clouds. Those same clouds broke not too long ago and the sun painted them spectacular evening colours as it fell.

By The Fire

Eli and I made the most of it yesterday. We went for a walk, had a picnic outside and then finished the day off by the fire under slowly darkening skies. We both didn't want to go in even though it was well past Eli's bedtime. The crescent moon had risen quite high by the time the fire burned low and I figured we should head back in. It was a nice day yesterday.

Signs of Spring

Went down to the river again today to watch the swans resting along the ice-stewn shores. On the way down we saw our first butterfly, our first robins, squawking seaguls and felt an actual warm breeze. Whew. Spring is finally here.

Last week the river was frozen solid but today it's running free but the shore is still covered in huge, cracked slabs of crystallizing ice. It's always fun along the water this time of year.

Returning Home

The swans are returning home. Tanya and I went out to Swan Haven to see them in their thousands and the racket they make is amazing. The ice has cleared from Marsh Lake enough for the swans to land on the open waters and rest before flying further northwards. It's hard to approach them because they are quite far from shore where it's unsafe to walk. I did manage to catch a pair flying over head.

The original image was quite flat and boring so I added a lomo-like effect which is supposed to emulate an old Russian camera called the Holga.

Rough video of the swans. Make sure you have some audio :
Swan Haven video

Topper, By Eli

Tanya and Eli went out to visit Topper for a while last night and I told Eli he could take the old camera with him. When they came home he handed me the camera and went to bed. I looked at the photos a little while later and found this one. I blended a texture in with it to try it out and some slight tone-mapping and this was the result. I couldn't quite bring out Topper's eye for the deep brown but it's still a cute picture taken by Eli - all by himself.

Cool Ride

The kids and I waited after work for Tanya to come and pick us up. She was coaching badminton so we had to kill some time until her arrival. Eli had his cool truck with him and he was playing with it outside in the warming weather. It looked like an interesting picture when he put it atop a cement and stone wall so I snapped a couple and this one kind of turned out.

Feathered Ice

When we wake up in the morning the temperature is usually hovering at about -4C. That's when a crust of ice forms on the puddles and some of it looks etched and feathered.

Going For A Walk

We went for a walk down to the river again because I wanted to see if it's begun to melt yet. The river was frozen still but we seem to have found a lake in our driveway. Lake Eli is even bigger than it was a couple of days ago.

Shadows on Snow

Spring still seems like a long way off. The sun does warm the ground, and Lake Eli is forming quite nicely in our driveway, but there is still enough snow on the ground that it makes walking difficult and cold on the feet. The back of our lot is full of small poplar trees; dense and spindly which cast long shadows across the crystallizing snow. I've been playing around with black and white so I thought I'd try to catch a picture of it. Not sure if it worked out well or not.

Sunny Day by Lake Eli

Every year, when the sun warms up enough, the snows begin to melt and pool into the ruts of our long driveway. And every year Lake Eli forms. We went out later in the afternoon to play around in the murky waters of the Lake and I tried out a few shots with my camera. The barn in the back of the property faces south so the sun warms up the wall of it quite a bit. The flies start to buzz around its surface earlier in the year than any other place.

By The River

Eli and I wandered down to the river today again. Two days ago the snow started to fall and didn't stop until last night. Today, however, the clouds are gone and the sky is bright blue. There are few signs of spring right now besides a bit of warmth in the sun and some pussy willows popping out on the less patient trees.

Friends and Family

We had a busy weekend and had the nice dinner plates out a couple times for our friends. The plates belonged to Tanya's Grandma Alice but she gave them to Tanya a few years ago. We don't know when she bought them but I think they may have been purchased through the Sears Catalogue. Some how it seems right to bright them out for friends because I remember a few big, loud family gathering at Grandma Alice's with loads of great food served up on these plates.

Self Taught

Erica has been teaching herself piano on the keyboard we bought her a few years ago. She found some sheet music and just started to work on the songs and now she can play a few. It's nice to hear her practice.

I took this photo in dim light so I tried bouncing the light from the flash off the roof. It helped quite a bit to get a more even lighting but the colour was thrown off. I need to do some colour calibration on my monitors I work on so I can get the photos fixed up properly. I do most of my post production on an older laptop which runs Linux but monitor colour calibration looks a bit tricky so I haven't tackled it yet.

Above Whitehorse

A friend phoned up this morning and asked if I wanted to go on a small hike today. Sounded good. Got my camera gear together and went to town to pick him up with his kids and we all drove out to Fish Lake. It's a fair climb to the lake from town by car and from there it's another 1500 feet or so by foot. The trail runs up the west side of the lake into the hills and breaks out into the open, windswept ridges once we passed the treeline. When up that high the wind is strong and cold and huge hummocks of snow drifts ripple from ridge to ridge. The trail was quite packed so walking was easy even though the climb was steep. The wind was so strong and cold that I only snapped a few pictures and didn't put much effort into those. I only managed to marginally save this one photo of Daren taking some shots of his son. Over all its a 2 to 2 1/2 hour hike. I'll have to try that one again in the summer when I can take my time with the camera

Coast to Coast Memory

It's hard to believe that it was almost two years ago that we walked past this old church near Patterdale in the Lake District. We were close to the end of that day's walk and all of us were quite tired. We were passing by this spot and just as I turned on my old point and shoot camera the batteries died. I stopped and rummaged around in my pack and found my backup batteries and snapped this shot. I've always liked it but the old camera could never handle the heavily overcast skies of the UK. Since I've learned a couple of tricks for fixing up photos I thought I'd try it on this one and it's done a pretty nice job.

Northern Lights

I tried taking a shot of the northern lights last night. This is about the best I've seen them in a couple of years at least. They weren't spectacular but still quite nice to see. The photo is darker than I would like so I opted to back light the trees and see if a panorama would work.  It mostly turned out. I put the camera on manual focus and tried to get the stars sharp. Aperture was set as large as possible, ISO at 400 and exposure to 30 seconds.

Topper Dude

Here's that photo of Topper. It's not a perfect picture but still captures who Topper is. I think he looks like a surfer dude with his mop of blond/dark hair. I wish the shed wasn't in the background though. I did some basic tone-mapping on the photo which made the colours and details pop out a bit more.