Bird House

Home for the holidays...

Landed

He Who Is Here Now is from this point forward (and indeed for the past couple of months should have been) known as He Who Is Now Landed.

In a shockingly fast process (two months from processing fee being paid to letter arriving saying it was done -- ignoring the sluggish time it took us to get our "case" materials in place to actually get the application done) He Who is Now Landed became a permanent resident (landed immigrant) of this fair Dominion (oh, wait we dropped that from the official name of the country didn't we -- the Canada Act 1982 trumping the Constitution Act, 1871 and general practice; and I'm still pouting over it), so in fact, a permanent resident of this fair Canada.

We zipped over the bridge into New York State (to shop, of course) and re-entered the country. Once his papers were stamped I jumped around like a fool in front of the bureaucrats and others waiting to cross the border. In fact, the actual crossing guards aside, the folks at the border shared in our excitement, with at least bemusement at my excitement.

Been meaning to blog about this for some time, but wanted to wait for the photo and then had to wait until we had a wee flag. And yah, yah, the identical coats -- that itself (more like the reaction complete strangers believe they need us to hear) is the subject of its own blog; one which I've been meaning to write since LAST winter.

Anyway, Canada 1, South Korea -1 WHOOHOO!

Merry Christmas

When A Painter Says Thanks

Followers of this infrequent blog may recall that I lent a painting ("Icarus") for the retrospective of Daniel Barkley's work held this past spring at the UofT's Hart House gallery (whatever the official name of that gallery is). This week, Mr. Barkley sent me a homemade card to thank me for the lend. Fabulously, homemade by a painter means that the front of the card (a lovely water colour paper stock) featured this original water colour. It's 5x7 and just doubly wonderful because of its size.

(Which also reminds me, Nigel Nolan has also thanked me on a couple of occasions in the form of small sketches or paintings...)

Beats the hell out of Hallmark! :)

Snow

Challenge with photographing snow is trying to expose so as to get the camera's exposure system to see snow as white, not grey, while retaining detail in the highlights.

Except for a crop and a bit of sharpening, this is "as shot." shutter 1/100, f13, ISO 400 (handheld 105 2.8 Macro)

Distress

He Who Is Here Now was distressed enough by the first posting of one of these photos, that I post another :)

You Owe It To Yourself

You need to read a series in the Globe and Mail (globeandmail.com), "Boy in the Moon" by Ian Brown who writes about his son Walker.

Brown's work is journalism at its best, documentary writing at its best. The story told is honesty at its best, love at its best, humanity at its best, courage at its best. It is such powerful, overwhelming stuff I can only read small bits of it at a time.

There is lots of it, many words, but all of them beautifully, honestly, superbly placed before us. Wade in, and prepare to be changed. Ignore the video clips that might shorten the journey -- this ain't damn TV, despite Brown's broadcast competencies, this is a story meant for the alchemy of the reading mind.

Distortion

There's a built in Webcam in my new iMac. It has distorting features and can snap still photos.

With apologies to He Who is Here Now, I post the evidence of what I hope doesn't weigh too heartily into the price of my Apple computer.

If my new Nikon D3 would arrive I'd have something better to play with! :)

Only Steves!

Found the graffiti message included in one of the photos here vaguely sexual on a personal level somehow; all that posting of Steve... I also deny knowing just who "she" is, btw, although grammatically it would seem "she" is a Steve?

I was past the same construction hoarding of an earlier blog again this morning, this time with a much wider lens, so more of the dancing bears than the single clawed paw of the earlier post.

Almost Sunk

Among the items on my "life's list" is travel to the far north and the far south. Have been well above the arctic circle -- without a camera!-- several years ago. Luckily I was travelling with nature photographer and she got some fab shots. The ship I was going to go to Antarctica on famously sank a few weekends ago -- and I note all had to abandon ship WITHOUT camera gear. As that particular GAP tour caters to photographers I cringe at the thought of the cameras (and images!!) that rest now at the bottom of the South Polar Ocean... I cringe more at the thought of the oil slick the sinking would have produced.

Not to worry, my plans to get penguins in front of my camera lenses are still on track -- more details when things are finalized. With any luck I'll have some particularly kick ass technological help from Nikon also very soon. You can also expect some official word from me soon about my taking photography to a much more serious level. "Heipel Imaging" anyone?

With a nod to Antarctica, here's a bad shot in horrible light from Toronto's distillery district a couple of summers ago -- played with filters in photoshop as a means to salvage something interesting out of the shot.