might as well face it you're addicted to nikon

i have been having fun discovering some of the different things that can be done with a digital SLR camera.

as i mentioned in previous blogs i have been trying to learn how to capture birds in flight. there is a park along the waters edge that has a lot of airborne avian activity. my last attempt of bird in flight or BIF photography was thwarted by an overabundance of human traffic. the poorboi suggested that i needed to get an earlier start to my shooting day, he actually suggested a 5 am start... and no, i have no idea when he started smoking crack. although i was at the water's edge earlier than the time before i was still sawing logs at 5 am.

there were more birds out and about when i got there but they weren't necessarily flying. it was closer to 10 am before the birds actually got active. i did have a couple of new challenges that day; first it was a fairly overcast morning which was causing me a lot of difficulties with exposure settings and if that wasn't enough the auto focus feature on my zoom lens went tits up. up until that point the simple act of tracking the bird in flight, the art of keeping the bird within my viewfinder was almost more than i could handle. unfortunately with the AF on the fritz i was forced to rely on my ability to quickly master manual focus BIF photography. as there were 140 shots attempted and only 20 that turned out, i guess i didn't master it all that quickly.

lather that evening i decided to mess around with a little long exposure photography and specifically a technique called 'painting with light'. the basic premise is that you shoot at night with your camera set up with an exposure time that lasts several seconds. if your shutter is open long enough you can actually shoot pictures in the dead of night. the paint with light part comes into play when you move a flash light, torch or other device of illumination over areas of your subject. those areas can get a glow quality to them which can really make an interesting and dramatic image.

it is also possible to get the trails of light within the shot, the trails come from whatever device you chose to light your subject.

i was outside between the hours of 10:30 and 11:30 pm and i was well away from the street lights. i was shooting in an area that was really quite dark. up until the point where my eyesight finally adjusted, a good 30 minutes after i started, i'd been tripping over every single thing around. for future endeavours i will ensure that there is clear space within a 3 foot radius of where i intend to work and around my subject.

yesterday's subject of choice was my motorcycle and i was quite amazed at how clear the images were, even though it was pitch black out i managed to photograph some very dramatic looking blue skies.

here are some of the shots from yesterday's shoots. i do hope you enjoy.

birds-in-motion fail

there were supposed to be thunder shower activity for most of this past weekend. a weather forecast that had me pretty bummed out. i had spent most of the week researching bird in motion photography and i wanted to go out and practice some of what i had learned.

to my surprise sunday did not actually appear like the scheduled rain and thunderstorm activity was going to happen. so i grabbed my trusty nikon and headed out to my favourite bird site by the lake.

i guess i wasn't the only person who was looking to make the most of the fortuitous weather as there were a bevy of folks sunning themselves, picnicking or fishing on the rocks. i can only assume that because of the increase in human traffic the birds made themselves scarce. there were a scant few birds out fishing but they seemed quite content to stay well away from the shoreline and far outside of the range of my 70-300mm lens. i gamely tried to shoot anyway but there wasn't anything worth saving from my bird in motion efforts.

i was able to catch a few smaller birds lounging about in the trees and i also shot a couple of landscapes just so the day wasn't a total waste.

reasons why - part deux

well it looks like somebody got to work early to do a little parking lot painting.

there was another image but it was painted onto the private lane way that leads to the building. i thought about taking a picture of it for you all to enjoy but it would actually require a bit of a hike to shoot and frankly i wasn't that invested.

i should add that the bruins logo was painted onto the parking space he uses. the image that i did not shoot was another painted version of the bruins logo with 2013 written below it. to the right of the logo there was a figure that i believe was supposed to represent lord stan's cup.

when i got to work the bruins fan was all kinds of motivated to 'talk' to me. he felt that i was the only person in the building with the photoshop skill set to create the images that he was tormented with all day. frankly i am insulted. most of the images he was sent was done by suits and to be honest my photoshop is stronger than that. regardless i neither confessed nor dimed out the guilty parties.

oh and bruins fan still does not have his travel cup back.

i swear to god we work.

reasons why...

reasons why you shouldn't leave your travel mug unattended - a photo essay

as i mentioned previously the folks at work take their hockey seriously. yesterday one of the employees left his travel mug behind on day he was out of the office. his email was inundated with several emails, a few of the attachments are included below for your enjoyment.

he should be back in the office today so i am sure there will be some form of revenge or rebuttal to be had.

woman vs beast(s) - the sequel

well my friends not only is my father locked in the eternal battle of supremacy man vs squirrel, or de skee-wirl dem as it is pronounced in my house but it would appear that it is my mother and father united against the neighbourhood squirrel population.

my mother however has stepped up the game and introduced weaponry to the conflict. it seems that my mother keeps a small bag of stones near the front door in a bag. when she see's a squirrel in the front yard she hustles out to the front door to grab her ammunition as fast as her senior frame will allow. she then arms herself with the projectiles.

now before you feel inclined to report my mother to PETA allow me to finish describing the event. she then opens the front door and tosses stones underhand! somewhat in the general vicinity of the squirrel, give or take ten feet. now what concerns me most about the stone throwing is the concern for who might actually be harmed by the tossed stones that land harmlessly in the grass on the front lawn.

here's hoping my dad doesn't find the stones later with the lawn mower!!

i finally got out with the camera today, i hope that i was successful, i tried to play with the new lens and i was trying to use a feature that i haven't been successful with before. if anything turns out i will be sure to share.

all in all today's experiment with the new lens went pretty well

the walking dead

you may have noticed that i disappeared suddenly. now while i would love to tell you that i had won a lottery and had been gallivanting across the countryside with my millions that simply was not the case. first and foremost i have never gallivanted a day in my life and anyone who said i have is a damn liar!

the reality is that i have been working on a couple of projects that had me burning the candles and both ends and a bit in the middle. since last friday i have been stumbling around as though i had wandered off the set of resident evil. as luck would have it both the writing challenge and pixel poker in were temporarily put on hiatus and not by me!

even thought i was finally able to finish everything late last night and i still resembled an umbrella corporation casualty for the better part of the day. i managed to dive into my bed for a bit this evening where i spent some quality time staring at the inside of my eyelids with such focus and attention that you would have thought i was watching an IMAX or an ultraAVX presentation.

i am hopeful that things will be back to normal from here on out.

my last complaint is that for two weeks i have had a new camera lens that i have not had the time nor the energy to go play with. here's hoping that is something else knocked off the to-do list this week.

there seems to be a strange trend of late around here separate families sharing a single dwelling.

to a point you are supposed to pay attention to your neighbours and your world around you. i don't pay attention as well as i should. at best i guess you could say that i might look up one day and notice something and think... hey?!

there is a black family living in one of the houses across the street. they had a couple of vehicles and it was not uncommon to see someone outside. recently i noticed a second row of vehicles in the driveway and some new people. to be honest i thought the black family had moved out but every now and then i would see one of the family members. then i thought maybe somebody was involved with a caucasianbut now it seems like there are a bunch of people in that house. it has to be the dwelling version of the clown car.

a couple doors down from that house there is yet another multi-family dwelling. the occupants of this house frustrate met. it would seem as though they have yet to divvy up the household tasks. well since i have never been inside the house i probably shouldn't have phrased it that way. but suffice it to say that i struggle daily not to go over there to ask when the goat is showing up. to suggest that the grass on the front lawn is a tad lengthy is an understatement. i believe at this point a small child or a purse dog could easily be lost in the hay they have out front.

the question remains will they cut the grass at any point this year or will they just wait till it dies off naturally in the fall?

210 words monday night and 126 words tuesday

you can run but you can't hide

this was the weekend of the toronto pro show and it might be a surprise to learn that i didn't attend. that i didn't follow the results or look at any pictures. to be honest i haven't attended a bodybuilding show in several years. have i lost interest in the sport? no. the problem is it is still too painful for me to go.

the first show year after my injury i went to a couple of shows, mostly because i had helped another competitor with his posing. being in the audience knowing that i could not compete was really difficult for me. it was salt in a wound difficult. not long after that realization i also ceased and desisted on the bodybuilding message boards.

i really thought it would have been a temporary measure but here we are 5 years later and i am still a ways from getting back on stage. the desire is still there, the dream is still there but alas the left quad is not there... yet

when i got to the gym today i learned that competitors had booked the gym for post-show photo shoots. so while the rest of us trained there were the tanned and oiled flexing and lifting among us. i caught the scent of protan in the air and frankly it all made me kind of sad. in fact i'd be lying if i didn't admit that thought seriously about leaving but i will be damned if i let anyone run me out of my gym.

in other news a very healthy 477 written words today.

lack of exposure

i was given some free tickets to henry's digital imaging show. the exposure show was an expo, presentations by guest lecturers, hands-on demos and tips shared by some renowned photographers and videographers.

i thought it might be interesting so i went to check it out. i was a little disappointed to be honest.

i am still at the point where i predominantly need more one-on-one sales assistance than was possible to get during this event. the sales counters all had a 4:1 customer to salesperson ratio and there was never a free salesperson.

i want to make another purchase but at this point i am not sure what it should be. lens? filter? flash?

there were lots of product on sale and on display but since i don't specifically want anything... suffice it to say that for me the show was an exercise in futility.

at least the tickets were free.

i am behind on my word count reports so let me take the time to catch up now.

125 words thursday
166 words friday
190 words today

if i only had a dollar...

...for every time some one came up to me in the gym and confided in me what they were taking, what they used to take or what they wanted to take i would be a very wealthy woman.

i am not entirely sure what it is about me that makes these people treat me like father confessor. am i supposed to absolve them of their sins and then tell them to go squat ass to ground? should i be impressed? should i feel somehow closer to these people who's names i don't even know because they told me?

and why do most of them say the weirdest things? like the guy who laments about how he took what he took and then he stopped and he got all small again. yeah? research much? or the ones who complain about expensive it is to buy protein, creatine and the like to supplement training. are they under the misconception that gear is somehow cheaper? do they believe that by taking gear they are no longer required to take protein and such? i suspect in fact they do because a lot of people who have spent a lot of money clearly do not have physiques to envy.

don't they realize that it makes no sense to put indy car fuel in the smart car you only drive on sundays to the supermarket? if your going to use the high octane gasoline at least make sure your putting it in a high performance vehicle.

but mostly if you do, if you did, if you want to... keep it to yourself. it really is none of my business. but mostly don't tell me because i don't know sh*t about it and i can't help you.

265 words today.

rampant foolishness abounds

from time to time i will get in here and bemoanthe stupid, useless training practices performed by some of the population at my gym. i am not sure what the hell happened this evening. it was like there was a mass of bodies warming up for their cirque du soleil audition.

guys hanging off of all the equipment. some were either inverted like bats. others were hanging in the pike position and shifting from the left to the right and my personal favourite the idiot who felt the need to do inverted pushups at the cable station.

seriously who in the hell left the gate open?

back when i first started training there it was a muscle-head gym. there were huge guys and gals lifting big ass weight. back when people were actually trying to build muscle. these days it is like the males and females of the population are scared to death to actually engage their muscle fibres.

i almost forget about the goober who demonstrated a new way to do cable crossovers. first he raised the tail of his shirt over his head to expose his chest. he then proceeded to perform a set that didn't even cause a single muscle to contract.

again i ask what is the point?

and now that i have that foolishness of my chest i will conclude today's rant with the news of 119 written words.

in brief

i'll keep this one brief.

169 words.

i know it wasn't worth the trip to acton. i'm sorry, i promise to do better in the future.

if at first you don't succeed?

i took the camera out again today. i went back to a sites i had been previously. i wanted to try to shoot some boats and i had really hoped to catch some reflections off the surface of the water. i got some reflection but not quite what i had in mind. it is likely that it was just the wrong time of the day to be shooting for that. but nevertheless i did get some shots that i am pretty proud of so the day was a win.

if you are keeping track back in early february i sent the game scene from my basketball story to a woman who had played collegiate ball, coached and refereed. she promised to take a look at my scene and provide feedback. she confirmed receipt of the scene but i never heard from her again.

in early march i sent the game scene to a woman who is the head coach of a collegiate women's team. she promised to take a look, provide feedback and answer any further questions i had. a month passed before i sent a follow-up email she apologized for not responding earlier and promised to reply by the end of that week. i never heard from her again.

today i sent the game scene to a journalist who covers collegiate women's basketball. my fingers are crossed that the third time is the charm.

much of what i wrote today was just re-working the game scene before i sent it off and that is why i am recording a mere 15 words.

and some pictures for your amusement... or maybe just mine.

the song remains the same

the bloke and i discussed my failing and we have decided to continue the challenge however the new end date is the 2nd of july. an extra 30 days tacked on for those who are counting.

i went to see the fast and furious sequel. fast and furious 6, again for those who are counting. the american muscle car is a beautiful thing and i for one believe you have to support a movie franchise that plays homage to some of the best that ever was. the '69 stang briefly starred in this sequel and that beauty had my inner car chick salivating like one of pavlov's dogs.

i had a discussion with a guy at work who could not believe that they had enough material to make six fast and furious movies. as long as they keep showing the classics i will happily be spending my money on fast and furious seven through to seventy!!

it was a pretty pathetic 31 word showing but the important thing is that i didn't blow it again.

hopefully tomorrow i can get out with the nikon, i itch to shoot.

doh!

well i done did it. i failed.

i run a dual monitor computer set up. when it comes to graphic applications i just prefer to have on screen dedicated to the file and the other monitor for the sub-menus. 'flash', the new machine has a video card that supports the dual monitor set up but unfortunately the second slot was for a hdmi connection.after work today i went back to the store to buy two new cables; a dvi-hdmi cable and a dvi-dvi cable.

back at home i was busy setting up the dual monitors. since the machine is new there are still frequent updates that have to be run. i lost a half an hour getting the update for all components of my CS6 software. the updates finished a scant five minutes before the start of the wnba pre-season. i intended to watch the 8:00 game and head to the gym at its conclusion.

i stepped onto the gym floor around 10:30 p.m. when i was back in the locker room after my workout i suddenly remembered that i had not yet written anything for the challenge. i quickly checked the time and to my horror it was 12:24 a.m. which meant that i had officially failed to write every day for 30 days. i immediately sent the bloke a congratulatory message and now i await the trash talking and the victory dance... although based on the way the bloke walks i am sure it would be more like a victory shuffle.

now i maybe a loser but i am not a quitter. so even though i lost i did write 207 words.

i'mmmmm baaaaack!!

well that did not take long at all. i guess there is a bit of a difference between how fast a machine with 2 MB's runs and one with 10 MB's. i had my files uploaded onto the new machine in no time at all. i have yet to re-installed all of my software as the first order of business was to get the poster completed. which i did.

part of my ability to get up and running quickly was aided by yet another sick day. i am really starting to wonder what the hell is going on. i never used to get headaches frequently and when i did get a headache it usually meant i was about to get sick. but even then the headaches weren't much to speak of. it feels like i am getting them more frequently although it is probably because they are more severe these days. i don't really want to use the m-word because i don't experience the haloing, the vomiting and any of the other gnarly symptoms that accompany a migraine.

hopefully my head will feel free from the vice grips tomorrow, perhaps my throat will not ache and if i am truly lucky perhaps there will be no nausea.

my fingers are crossed.

now to catch you up on the writing challenge. it was 185 words yesterday and i added 254 tonight.

my next challenge

over the next few days i will be backing up machine a and getting it ready to take it offline during that same time frame i will be loading information onto machine b and getting it ready to go online. i hope to have machine b up and running by sunday late afternoon so that i can finalize the poster art and deliver for monday.

does anybody have a delorean and a flux capacitor i can borrow for a few days?

although that might not be a good plan since hitting 88 m.p.h. would have me flirting with a street racing charge. i suppose i'd be ok if i went for it on one of our super highways at only 42 kms over the limit i might be just shy of the automatic impound street racing charge. i'd sure as hell hate to lose marty's delorean to impound.

f.y.i the writing will continue during the machine switch. it will just have to be done manually and there likely won't be any blog updates until it is complete. blogger and my cell don't work together too well.

be back soon!

a little research is a dangerous thing

well it is little wonder that i was experiencing such difficulties with my files yesterday. according to what i read today 8 MB of RAM is recommended for CS6 applications. it would appear that i am still working with 2 MB's.

TWO!!!

what the hell was i thinking? i might as well be just tryin' to chisel sh*t outta stone!!

so guess who is currently pricing new machines?

yeah you guessed it the woman who very clearly needs to join the rest of y'all in 2013!

and 205 words.

posters, pictures and pixels... oh my!!

i spent the balance of the day fighting with the poster design. but eventually i got something that i feel comfortable enough to submit for approval.

it has become apparent lately that it is time for a new machine. uploading, copying and or organizing my digital picture files are far too RAM intensive for the machine i have now. and that doesn't even begin to cover the challenge of working on a 3' x 4' poster. frankly all the calculations was giving my computer fits. which meant that i was having fits my damn self. it was one 'application not responding' error after another and trying to save the file was no picnic either. it is not uncommon when i am designing for me to have illustrator and photoshop running concurrently. trust me when i tell you there was no concurrent today.

my hand in digital poker has been played. interestingly enough it was one of the first shots i took. no wait it was the first shot i took on the first day i went out. i went out on three separate occasions and i just never got the shot i wanted.

sometimes you get an image in your head of the shot you want but try as you might it is just not there. and even though you have taken some shots that are esthetically pleasing and interesting in their own right, because you didn't get the shot you have in your head, you just aren't happy. it probably isn't a bad thing to go out with a target shot in mind as long as you are smart enough to shoot other things while you search for the elusive shot. you just can't let yourself get so focused on what isn't there that you overlook what is.

i also had a decent word count today 135 words. i will take it!!

you can't always get what you want

one of the hardest things to do, i find is to force creativity. it doesn't matter the medium. you can't force a good shot. you can't force yourself to write an engaging scene and you sure as hell can't force yourself to design something.

unfortunately for me i was trying to do everyone of those things today. if i had to grade my level of success using the standard 1-10 scale i think i would be generous if i gave myself a score of 3 or better.

i tried to used the ontario trails councils website to help me locate interesting sites along the trails systems for photo opportunities. today's excursion along the etobicoke creek turned out to be a bust. also i have to deliver a poster design monday and i am currently flying without a net. i don't have a concept, i don't really have an idea and so far it is an exercise in futility. as for my story i seem to be blocked again. for the third day in a row i have struggled to put together 80 words.

here's hoping tomorrow is a better day, creatively speaking.