Spring Walk

Well, spring has officially begun! The trees are just starting to bud. On Saturday it got up to about 13 degrees Celsius on my thermometer (55.4 Fahrenheit for those living in one of three countries that still does not use the metric system). That seemed pretty warm compared to what we're use to so I grabbed my camera and a sweater and went for a walk. The snow is melting quickly, but there was still quite a lot in the woods. It had a pretty hard crust so I could just walk along the top without sinking in too much. After a couple hours in the sun, though, the snow warmed up and my crust softened causing me to routinely sink up to about mid-thigh which slowed me down a bit. It turned into quite a workout.

More Smoke

Went back to the smoke pictures and edited a couple more.

Jay and the Lovebirds

I volunteer at a youth group at my church doing sound. Last week we had a band from Alberta, Canada put on a concert called Jay and the Lovebirds. It was quite entertaining to see them perform live. They're a great bunch of guys and I had a good time working with them.

Silhouette

My wife's getting bigger closer to her due date. I thought a silhouette would be cool so here it is.

I Got a Dent in my Car

I hit a snow bank the other day and put a big dent in my bumper. Sorry, haven't had much inspiration lately.

Sick Shots

I've been sick all weekend and today so I haven't spent much time out of bed. I managed to stumble around the house and find a few shots.

Fire

Here's some interesting flames Alain and I got when lighting matches.

Deer

Saw some deer over the weekend.

Slacking

Sorry, no photos today. I was out of town this weekend. Normally, I do all the posts for the week on Saturday, hopefully I can do some tonight.

I found an interesting service the other day to share photos. It's completely anonymous and unlimited and free, there's not even ads. I don't know how he can afford to do this, it may not last long, but I thought I'd share anyway. Anyone can upload as many photos as they want and link to them on blogs, in emails, IM's, or whatever. I think Blogger has a limit of 1GB, which is pretty high, but if you ever run out, this could be an option.

imgur.com

Playing with Fire

Don't try this at home, kids!

Actually, this is more about playing with smoke. My friend Alain and I got together the other day to see what kinds of things we could do with smoke.


I thought this one cool, I call it "48". I just messed with the colors, the shape is natural.

I messed with everything on this one.

A Walk in the Park (Part 2)

We found this poor, lone mitten hanging in a twig. We tried to come up with something clever for the caption, something about being lonely makes you blue or something to do with being bent over, but couldn't get it to come out just right.



This cabin is beautiful, inside and out. It's owned by the city and is available to rent for parties and meetings or whatever. I've been in it a few times, but don't have any photos. Maybe someday.

A Walk in the Park

My wife and I went for a walk in a local park a few days ago. I took some pictures.

Yummy Trifle

My wonderful wife made this wonderful dessert. It was yummy!

Pinhole "Lens"

The Pinhole camera or Camera obscura is the most primitive camera, invented about a thousand years ago. It was a simple device, basically a light-proof box, big enough to sit inside, with a small hole to let light enter and project an image onto the opposite wall. At first, recording of the image was done by manually tracing the projected image. A less manual method of recording was not discovered for another 600 years.

I made a pinhole "lens" for my modern camera. Although it's not really a lens, because it has no glass. I took the lens mount from my extension tubes and cut out a piece of cardboard to fit snugly inside. Then I got a pin and made a hole in the middle and attached it to my camera. The smaller the hole the clearer the picture. My first attempt at a hole was too big, the pictures were quite blurry. The cardboard was too thick to make a good, small, clean-cut hole all the way through, so I removed a larger piece of the cardboard and then covered the space with aluminum foil, since it's very thin and blocks 100% of light. Then, with the cardboard laying flat on a table, stuck the pin in again. This way I got a hole that was only the size of the tip of the pin. The pictures are still a bit blurry, but good enough, I guess. The depth of view seems to be infinite, there's never a need to worry about focus. Objects near and far look the same. Due to the small amount of light, all these pictures needed a 20 - 30 second exposure. Below is the first attempt:

I'm not really sure if there's any point to all this. It makes for an interesting effect, although, you could probably get the same effect by editing the picture afterwards. I just thought it was a cool experiment, it makes you think a little bit about how light and cameras work and how easy it is to take a picture now compared to long ago.

Here's some with the smaller hole. For some reason the dust on my sensor becomes very visible when using the the pinhole lens, not really sure why. I've never cleaned my camera since I got it 3 or 4 months ago. I should learn how to do that sometime.

Candles

Here's some candles.