It's the most wonderful time of the year..

Merry Christmas to all...

Work is a mess. Today was the last Saturday before Christmas, and as such the throngs were out in full force.

Christmas brings out the best in people. It also makes them irritable, uncharitable, angry, frustrated and clinically insane.

I've never understood why people simply CANNOT accept that 5 days before Christmas we might be sold out of a few things. Oh that $69.99 camera, or that $179.99 Avril Lavigne Canon camera aren't here anymore? What do you mean?!? RAGE.

Customers seem to have this idea of this mystical place simply, and universally called "The Back". If the item they want is not on the floor, then in their minds there is at least an 80% chance that some enterprising employee has got it out for them PERSONALLY, and is hiding said item in the magic caves of the store that contain all manner of goodies forbidden to hit the floor - for fear that we might sell TOO MUCH, and thereby right the economic ship of our country.

In reality the back is much more dull. We have customer units in and out for repair, items purchased waiting for delivery, an awesome bailer that will compress cardboard to a cube and could sever your arm without blinking. But no where in The Back is your Malibu Stacy doll with matching pink mustang convertible.

By the way, if you wanted a Wii before Christmas and waited until December 20th to buy one and now we don't have one, and you just HAVE to have one for little Timmy or Billy, or who ever, well I have no sympathy for you. It's your own damn fault.

We had Wii's all year. All. Year. Now, 4 days before the Eve of Christmas, you must have one and we cannot provide. Well that is not my fault. It's not even Nintendo's fault.

The blame rests squarely on you. The consumer.

I doubt I will ever understand such a thing. I have a small amount of shopping to do.. mostly stocking stuffers, and if something I really wanted to put into the stocking (which is not the most crucial thing in the world..) I will accept that it is my own damn fault for waiting until now.

On to what I want to share photographically, which is the true spirit of the blog. And the primary reason why this time of year I don't get to update it as much - being that I have precious little time to take pictures.

I took some pictures to share with my mother and father in law, of our house all gussied up for the season. It's been a nice change being able to find the time to decorate with my wife this year. And we have a real tree this year, which is equally cool.

Here are a couple of pictures from the decoratorium.

Something a little more ordinary

So that picture I posted a couple of days ago was definitely unique as far as my usual content, and I haven't tried anything like it since.

I had an interesting conversation with a customer today. He asked probably an hour's worth of DSLR questions, which was an okay thing because it was slow as heck at work. No one knows we're open to 10 (except my boss), so my evening routine right now consists of reading up on product and entertaining myself and my coworkers with the wonder that is my iPhone.

He claimed to be interested in a Rebel T1i, a nice new Consumer DSLR, and started asking what lenses he should buy, explaining he was on budget, if the kit lens was any good, what I thought of flashes etc... at first it seemed like he knew a lot about cameras... but as the conversation dragged on, it became increasingly apparent he was killing time... kinda like I was...

It was one of those illuminating conversations whereby you think you're talking to someone in the same language and you slowly realize that you're speaking English and they're speaking Cockney. (please no one take offence) At a cursory glance you both say the same words in basically the same patterns, but you're ordering glazed ham with scallopped potatoes, and they look hurt when you don't appreciate the deep fried hotdog and fries they bring you.

He knew enough of the technical stuff to keep up, but not enough to appreciate the answer and left no more enlightened than when the conversation started. Which would not be so bad, but it's 9:30 at night and I'd REALLY like to go home. I have better things to do. Like sleep... or like tonight, not be able to sleep and be busily updating my Blog.

So perhaps todays topic has a double meaning. I had intended to post some chickadee pictures and I will, but I think there is a deep and unfortunate truth contained within that pleasant if somewhat bewildering conversation with my customer today. That truth is either: 9:30 is a good bed time so send me home, or some people have nothing better to do than pick my brain on technology they have no inclination or desire to understand beyond the two facts they already know. Maybe it's both...

I don't say this to sound conceited, but just mildly dissappointed.

Here's my chickadees.

Something a little different.

So I'm trying a new technique.

I got this magazine and it had some stock photos in it. Lots of cool stuff. There is this one photoshop technique to make it look like your subject is disappearing into smoke or the aether or nothing or something like evaporating...

It looked cool, but I didn't have a good picture to use with it. Part of the problem of not having studio quality lighting and backdrops. Should be relatively easy to do in retrospect though, now having done the picture...

Anything taken with a relatively uniform background could easily have this effect reproduced.. and if you really wanted a background you would just have to spend a lot more time healing and cropping the subject out of it.

I hadn't had the chance to shoot much lately though.. working 11 hours shifts at work and what not...

Christmas in the retail world is a wonderful idea... unfortunately it can be very draining.

Here is the picture though.

It was a basic picture, just a portrait of the woman. I've done all the post processing on it.

November in Canada

November is one of the more interesting months we have. Animals are putting food away, the fall colours are in full force at the start and often all but gone by the end. We may or may not see snow..

I feel great to have discovered at long last somewhere that features a full compliment of fauna to capture. There is a conservation area in the south end of Whitby, which for a modest parking fee of $1-$4 (depending on your stay) you have an abundance of things to photograph. The park was replete with ducks, geese, chickadees, chipmunks, squirrels, even a heron.

We didn't venture in deep this time. We didn't need to, or have time for that on this trek, as we were required at church to take more head shots.

I haven't had much time to edit them yet, but there are three that I've touched and cropped and I'll share them here with you.

I'm sure you'll recognize all of the subjects. They are nothing unusual. Just closer and more candid than sometimes they'll let you get.

Taking stock..

Well a bit of a play on words...

I haven't posted in a while because of work being rather hectic. We just did our full inventory count. Something that happens 4 times a year and I rather detest.

It's just awful. Not only do they underpay us for it, but it's from 1pm to 1am with nothing but the sound of "bee-doop.... bee-doop" to keep you company. No music allowed. No cell phones allowed. Nothing that will distract.

We used to have a nice bonus at the end of the year to look forward to if we did a good job. But times are tough and they nixed that last year, and I doubt it'll make a re-appearance when things level out.

Consequently I haven't really had time to do much in the way of picture taking.

Courtney and I finally managed to snag a bit of time to ourselves and went out for a walk on the shore of Lake Ontario at Rotary Park.

There were some nice fall colours out. Not much in the way of wildlife unfortunately.. I don't think I saw a single squirrel the entire time.. so I resorted to shooting seagulls.

So in light of that. Here is one of my seagulls, and one of the fall pictures.

HDR

Photofinishing is a daunting prospect at the best of times.

I've tried certain techniques before, but one that continues to elude me is HDR. High Dynamic Range pictures are actually 3 pictures taken in variable exposure then compiled into a 4 Billion:1 contrast ratio or there abouts. Nothing out there other than $50,000 HDR monitors can see all these colours but we can compile it into something that lets us see more colour and contrast while eliminating all the block shadows and burned whites.

It is hard to master though. I'm starting to play with it.. but I've met with mixed (very mixed) results.



For now, what I've had some reasonable success with is Sepia, so here is a picture of that, and I'll update on the HDR progress as it comes.

Oak Ridge Moraine

My mom is in town for the holiday weekend, and she'll be cooking a turkey for us.

I love my mom. Not only does she come visit but she brings the big meal with her :)

The three of us went out for a drive after church this morning. I was taking picture after the service again, although we finished quickly this time.. only a few passport photos to take for the church site today.

The fun was heading up to the Oak Ridge Moraine, an area in the North of the Durham Region, that is replete with Conservation areas and trails and quarries and the like. It was Courtney's idea, one I am very thankful she had, she seems to be subtley (or not so subtely sometimes) encouraging my creativity. We trekked up Westney in hopes of finding some areas to take nice pictures up there. Now.. that sounds great but once you get above Highway 7 on Westney it turns into a dirt hell of a road full of potholes. Pavement cannot be found for miles in any direction so getting up there was not enjoyable. On the way back however we found an ENTIRELY paved way that would have saved a lot of aggravation. lol.. Oh well.. the fall colours weren't especially resplendant anyways today, so we'll take another trip some time and probably take the much easier way up Brock.

We went out in search of fall, and found only a fraction of it. However we did see a few other very interesting things. Some cool birdhouses that I'm sure you'll see soon, and a couple of nice plants. Some daisy like things, and a snap dragon that tried to hide, but Courtney spotted on our way back to the car.

On our way home we found some horses, and that was probably one of the highlights as they were right on the other side of the electric fence. I managed to not shock myself, and snap a few nice shots of the group. There were 3 of them all cozy in their little horsie blankies.

So in honor of my first trip up to the Oak Ridge Moraine, here are horses and daisies (sorta)

THAT's not a duck!

Just a quick note.

So apparently after a little insight from someone else, we've discovered that my duck is not a duck.

My duck is a Double Breasted Cormorant in actuality... which makes me really happy actually...

At one time in Ontario there was only about 125 nesting pairs of the birds and they were not considered ecologically viable anymore meaning they would die off without direct intervention.

Now there has been an unexplained population boom of cormorants in the great lakes region, to the point where ecologists are concerned about the damage they are doing to the local flora and fauna.

MUCH more interesting than a duck..

So here it is again.

We want....a shrubbery!

We are the Knights who say Ni!

Well not really but they were very entertaining.

The only reason I bring that up, and this will probably be short, is here is a picture of the shrub from the front of my house in the rain.

Further Ministrations..

I'll be posting some more shots from the walk on Sunday, so here is a lady bug again, and a duck.

There is always a duck of some kind it would seem available to be snapped up. Unfortunately he was out on that post in the middle of the water so he was hard to get at a decent size, and with what I own that was as good as it was going to get.

I ended up shooting some headshots for the church, for the new community website. It was strangely unnerving.. maybe because it was the first time I was required to take decent pictures rather than for my own sense of self indulgence.

Regardless, they weren't anything special.. but they will do the job. creativity is somewhat limited when the mandate is to shoot a passport style photo...

Out in the rain

Courtney and I went out for a brief walk along the waterfront, and it really highlighted why I want a macro.

The weather was ugly, it was hard to harness the beauty of birds in flight when you're shooting seagulls against a grey sky...

But there is a much smaller world out there, that is very vibrant if you can find it.

I took this with my 55-250mm IS, or the nifty two-fifty...

It turned out quite well, but I can only imagine what I might have seen if I'd been shooting with a macro lens.

Post Processing

Yesterday I learned a new side of the art of photography. I'm sure it'll take a long time to perfect, and I would not pretend to have it down pat, however it isn't that complex.

Post Processing.

Some people I've talked to make it seem like a dirty word, and to be honest it does feel a little like cheating. Sharped this, saturate that, oops a little too much colour here, de-sat! Quick!

But apparently with photography shifting from analog to digital a number of years back, all the cool kids are doing it. Now my mom told me not to give into peer pressure, but it does have visible differences.

To highlight this, today I'm going to post the same picture pre and post processed.

It's another of our trip to the zoo. It's Ben, I've vignetted the picture, sharpened it a little and resaturized him a teeny bit.

Here we are:

Canon 70-200mm L F2.8 USM

I wants it.

I wants it now.

But alas it's not to be. I went to my last Blue Jays game of the year on Sunday with a coworker. I was supposed to go with my wife, but her back has been out for a few days. I've never had such a hard time in my life giving something away, but it was nigh impossible to give away this (pretty decent) baseball ticket. I finally managed to sucker, errr, convince once of my coworkers to come with.

I was originally going to bring my camera with me to take some photos at the game, something I had yet to date done. I decided for whatever reason not to, but the mere thought of it got me looking again at lenses. I'd love to have a nice sports photography lens, and it's really too bad that I don't have the coin for it at the moment, because I'm in love with a few of the Canon L series lenses.

I could also snag a Sigma 70-200mm 2.8 for my Canon, which is more attainable price wise but still out of reach at the moment.

I feel like my current equipment wouldn't do what I want, and admittedly I haven't tried but I do feel I have a valid concern in that my lens would not be fast enough. You see, with f-stop of only 4-5.6, reality is I would not be able to go to the shutter speed I want without horribly horribly underexposing my pictures most likely. In retrospect I do wish I'd brought the camera because I should have tested it out but oh well... There is always next year right? I know that's what the Jays are saying after finishing under .500.......

Today's picture is one a friend asked me to take for his class. He had to get a picture taken of him that he felt best represented himself. I'm told it is well composed and that stylistically it's in the right 3 thirds or some crap position... So.... Go me!

Traitor.

According to my co-workers I'm a traitor.

Not because I'm jumping ship.
Not because I'm quitting. (I'm not)
Not for any reason other than I no longer wear a blackberry around my hip.

I switched to an iPhone. *gasp* *shocked look* *blank expression* *sound of a woman screaming and fainting* *a small baby crying* ooook...... enough of that.

Yeah I did it, and honestly even without the lack of pin, which is what blackberry is. A Pin messaging system wrapped in a pleasing design, and if you say differently, then you are provably wrong. Lots of phones do what Blackberry does, and do it better. But anyways, even without pin, I'm finding myself maybe a little happier with my iPhone. Time will tell if the euphoria will last or if I'm just kidding myself. They call them crackberries for a reason...

On an unrelated note, here is another sampling from the zoo.

The African Zebra.

Old Habits...

Once upon a time I had a Live Journal.

I spent hours and hours setting it up all nice like.

One day, the same people who decide if hem lines are above the knee this year, and below again next year. The same people who decide if denim is cool or if we're all going to wear Khaki for a while. The same people who decide if hatchbacks are the in thing or if full size sedans are hip.

Well those same people decided that we were all going to move to mySpace. No I said. Forget that I said. I refuse I said. And I swore off "blogs".

I have no mySpace, I have no facebook, I have no live journal. I have my thoughts and my pictures and all I want is somewhere personal to share my favourites.

This is that space.


So here is my friend Chloe's son Ben, from our trip to the zoo.