sunset - moonrise

This is a nine image, three panel, stitched panoramic HDR image that I took just over a year ago. (What a confusing sentence that is!) It was a lot of work to get it, and it looks fine I guess, but for some reason I just don't like it. I can't figure out why...

Any thoughts?

wintry spring.

the last couple of weeks had been this weird dance, of shuffling back and forth, between spring and wintry weather. what a tease. but it's okay really, as long as we get sunny days like what we had today.

i took these pictures while out on a walk this afternoon. i liked how the shadow of the tree on the snow crawls up the door of the shed and connects with the trees behind.



the boy and girl statues are pretty cute. though, i'm not sure i would have them adorn our backyard to be honest. plus, we don't have a backyard anyway. but if we did, definitely no statues like these, cute as they may be.

Sunday Collection 4: Even Sunday-ey-er

Coming soon to a theatre near you!

A super long video of snow collecting on our window. Yup, the weather continues to be great here.

I'm still doing simple D5000 tests... Now that I have a video tripod head I can actually do pans and tilts that look acceptable. This is a veeery slow tilt. Gravy.

alka-seltzer gold

Okay, not Alka-Seltzer.

I've just finished reading The Picture of Dorian Gray and, right before something beastly happens, the title character offers someone a hock-and-seltzer. As a snobbish wine drinker I thought the idea sounded rather like a boorish method of ruining German wine, but the more I thought about it the more interesting it became. It seemed more like poor man's champagne than something "society" ought to be drinking. I had to try it.

Due to my generally high rate of susceptibility to suggestion I immediately went out and purchased the cheapest* bottle of Hock I could find, shaped like a cat no less, and added some club soda to it.

Ta-da!

Not sure what to make of it really. Watered down sparkling wine comes to mind... But it's definitely not the season for cool refreshing drinks, and that is what hock-and-seltzer is probably meant to be. However, the experiment has got me thinking that I should probably be adding seltzer to virtually every cold drink I can imagine. So I guess I like bubbles well enough?

_____

*Actually no - I was bamboozled. As it turns out, the kitsch kitty-chimney-bottle-thingy only holds 500ml, not the traditional 750ml. Curses!

brrr.

instead of birds singing and flowers blooming, this is what we got last night.


oh well. a girl can still dream of sunny skies and soft serve ice cream, right?

in between days.

waiting for spring.

sunday collection the third

Today's Sunday collection is brought to you by the anonymous person who put these beach rocks on a picnic table outside By the Beach restaurant. I had fish and chips, E had cod bites. The batter was thick but somehow still light and crispy. Quite good.

early Sunday.

we were up super early this morning - before sun rise early. i had to go and decorate the walls at the Holiday Inn for the International Food and Craft Fair and m was most awesome for helping me out with it. the IFCF is organized by Multicultural Women's Organization of NL and is a biannual event. crafts from different parts of the world are sold at IFCF, but the main draw for this event is the food.

today is also International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. Now, go and hug someone who comes from a culture other than your own.

picture embed test

Here's a macro I shot a while ago.

Secret: this post is just an excuse to test picture embedding size.

best bagels ever.

for bagels, croissants and sometimes bread, Georgetown Bakery is, hands down, our go-to place. on top of the usual staple, they bake certain things on a particular day. Wednesday is the day they make brioche. today being Wednesday, plus i was out and about anyway, i stopped by to try to get one. unfortunately, it wasn't ready yet at 9:30 this morning. but they had plenty of fresh bagels, so i bought us our usual half dozen of sesame and plain bagels. they were still warm when i got home! okay, you can practically throw a stone from the bakery to our place, but still.

the guy working at the bakery was kind enough to let me take a couple of pictures inside.
too bad this is a little out of focus.

one of the bagels just minutes after i got home.
breakfast time.

it's really cool as well that Georgetown Bakery is now encouraging its customers to bring in their own bags/containers when buying. as an extra little incentive, customers get 5 cents off their purchase when they provide their own bag. i know, it's not a huge amount of cash, but it's really more the idea of being environmentally responsible.

speaking of environment, today was garbage day in our neighbourhood. rows of garbage were waiting to get picked up. there was quite a lot of it, too.

hello sunshine.

today felt almost like summer. i said, almost. the air's still on the chilly side but it was sunny all day long. a lovely day indeed, just like these flowers.
taken in Flatrock last summer.

neither the leaves on the trees have started budding yet in our neck of the woods, nor have the flowers started blooming for that matter. but one of our little plant is showing signs of life.
i'm crossing my fingers for a proper and warmish spring!

time-lapse

Here's a time-lapse test I shot this weekend. If you squint at it on this page you might see Cabot Tower and, if you watch it at 720p and full-screen and squint, you might even see people running around Signal Hill.

The reason the light levels vary so much is because I tried using the same shutter, aperture, and ISO for every frame.

Music by Logan Pepper!

sunday collection #2

2nd of the Sunday Collection series. wow. two collection posts down. hope we can keep it up!



yay. it's Sunday. also, i'm waaaaaaay too tired to write anything coherent. so, goodnight!

one door, three images.

i took these sometime last week. the door itself is not super interesting, but i love how the house across the street is reflected through the glass and the lace on the door.







well, hello. it's been a few days since we posted last. my time has been eaten away by work it seems. it will likely be the same in the next few days. but today, i was off and got to indulge in a little bit of sleeping in and then going for a walk and eating a late lunch at the sprout. i had pad thai and it was tasty. i enjoyed my lunch but m thought his was just so-so.

m took loads of photos on our walk today. maybe he'll post some in the next bit!

p.s. Edward the Hamster.

sunday collection #1

Here is a collection of parts that will eventually combine like Voltron to create my ghetto steadicam. Good times.

More Sunday collections to come?

dogberries.

rain. and more rain. that's what mother nature has had on the menu for us here all week. we did have a short reprieve from it on Wednesday. so, i was able to lug my camera around our neighbourhood and take a few pictures. finally, a photograph outside our apartment!



correction: wait, we have posted photos that were taken outside the apartment! i meant to say, it's the first photo taken outside the apartment since we started this blog. nuance, meaning and clarity -- a trinity of sorts not to be messed with.

tea biscuits...

...or scones as they are commonly known on the mainland, which is to say the rest of Canada.

m's post yesterday about our picnic in Ferryland last summer made me yearn for sunny days, homemade iced cold lemonades, and blueberry picking even more. since we have none of these things at the moment, i bake.

i made tea biscuits yesterday. the recipe was for plain tea biscuits but i added blueberries to mine. they turned out well considering how ancient and tiny our oven is. the batch made loads. we had them for breakfast, have been snacking on them ever since, and we still have plenty left. m eats his with butter melted on it and i like mine slathered with cranberry jam.















delicious.

Let's have a picnic!

A picture taken at our Ferryland lighthouse picnic that has been seriously overcooked using Picnik. I even applied a "sticker" to it...

Before on top, after below - click for more bigger-ness. The whole thing took around ten minutes.

So I guess I'm a little late to the game on this thing, but sweet mother! Do you like taking pictures? Are you getting to the stage where you would like to start "retouching" them? Are you not interested in paying several hoji for Photoshop? If so, you need to give this a try. Picnik, in combination with Picasa, is an incredibly affordable (read: free), versatile, and fun photo organization and editing solution. Check 'em both out!

You don't need Picasa to get on with Picnik by the way, I just like them both.

Note: this is not a replacement for Photoshop and Lightroom or other more "professional" tools. Picnik is much more limited and does not support raw files (yet?) for example. What it is, however, is the cat's pyjamas! Or is that the bee's knees?

windows.

the last couple of posts had been grey and rather dreary. so, just to change things up a bit and inject a little splash of colour, i thought i'd post these:

these two photos were taken last summer from my old apartment in Calgary. it was early in the evening and the lights were reflected prettily in the living room window. the colours and the mood remind me a little bit of what Wong Kar-Wai would use on his films.



the two pictures underneath were taken yesterday. the first one was taken from the bedroom window or is the bedroom window.


this one was taken from the living room window. the bird is a mobile that i got from Chiang Mai four and a half years ago. this wooden bird has had its wing broken and glued a few times already but it's still in good shape.


oh my. windows. they get dusty and dirty.

part 2.

accompaniment to m's video post. rain, drizzle and fog in photographic version.



the photos above were taken from the turret part of our place. our turret is not grand in the castle kind of way, but it is surrounded and hugged by trees, which is pretty amazing.

new camera

I have a new SLR that can shoot video. Here is a quick test @720p.

Another dreary day in St. John's. Thank goodness it's not snowing though!

conundrums.

the crow-penguin, as seen in its natural habitat. known to occasionally shit on your windows and, if you're unlucky, your head.


it's first day of March, it's Monday and it's been raining all day. a perfect day for rummaging your cupboards and fridge for something to eat all day long, having a cup of tea, reading and apparently wondering what "Florence Nightingale complex" is all about.