Christmas 8

Christmas 7

Christmas 6

Christmas 5

Merry Christmas!

Christmas 3

Christmas 2

Christmas 1

More Food

Yum!

The Moon Looks Bigger and Brighter than Normal

There's good reason for that. Last Friday night (Dec 12 '08) the moon was at the closest point to the Earth on it's orbit and it was full. Those two things together aren't due to happen again until 2023! I was quite disappointed Friday when I saw that it was raining and therefore, cloudy. But when I got up Saturday morning to shoot the sunrise again the clouds were mostly gone and the moon was still out. I couldn't find a spot where I could see them both at the same time. There were trees on the very top of the hill that I was on with a clearing on either side. So I'd take a few shots of the sunrise and then run down a short path to the other side to get the moon and then run back again. I kept warm.

Another Try at the Sunrise

This one worked out a little better, I think, there were clouds this time to capture and reflect the light, which makes it much more interesting.

Up until now I haven't put much/any time into editing or enhancing my photos, but I'm slowly learning more about it. I've attempted to liven up the colours a bit using the Levels and Curves tools in the GIMP. I also adjusted the saturation for yellow and blue on some of them and I tried sharpening the last two. And I added my name to them just to copy the professionals (does that make me a dork?). Let me know what you think. Is there something else that I should be doing? Should I just leave them alone?

Lens Flare

Experimented with lens flare the other day. It was a little tricky. There seemed to be a lot of variables: zoom, angle, aperture, the distance from the subject (which affected focus), and luck. I didn't really get it figured out, though managed to get a few good ones. Now if I could do it while actually taking a picture of something nice it'd be even better.

Frost

Not much to say. It was cold.

Sunrise

Got up early Saturday morning to get some sunrise pictures. It went all right. I went to a near by hill that overlooked the city. It would have been better if there were more clouds I think.

What's This? (Part 4)

Here comes round 4?

Guess what the objects in the pictures are. Leave your answers in a comment. Take a look at all the pictures first, before looking at the comments as someone may have already made guesses.

Star Shot

It was fairly warm last Monday night and the sky was mostly clear so I went out to take some pictures of the moon and stars. I didn't get anything real spectacular, or so I thought.

Tuesday I was looking through the Flickr Most Interesting Photos feed and found that there were quite a few other people that did the same thing. What a coincidence, I thought. With a little more research I discovered that I was photographing a very unique occurrence. Turns out that the two stars that were near the moon aren't stars at all, but Venus and Jupiter. And to have all three that close together and the moon not so bright that it overpowers the others is quite rare. Here's some more information if you're interested.

I'm not real happy with the quality of the photo, but a lot of the Flickr photos weren't a lot better, so I don't feel so bad.


I tried a long exposure shot of the stars as well that turned out all right. The shutter was left open for 7 minutes. The stars leave streaks as the earth rotates. I'll have to try this again sometime away from the city.

It Snowed Some More! (part 2)

Here's some more of my walk. When I got back we made cookies and had hot chocolate. Yum!