December 9, 2010

A quick little vlog I made today about snow. Blooper at the end.

Angry photog shoots himself.

Not really angry just goofing around with my camera.

Photos in October

The last three or four weeks have seen me with my camera lots. Well over eleven hundred images since the last week of September. Some landscape, some birds, a wedding, a grade 2 event, a church family event, and a birthday party, along with some impromptu kind of portraits of my wife and kids.

Rather then dump all the photos on to a website, I thought a slideshow with one of the songs that's been on my CD player in the van a lot this month too would be good.

Hope you enjoy them.

Wife and Kids

A few photos of my wife and kids.  

Daddy Daughter

Tomorrow Olivia starts pre-k.  We went to the park to play, but it ended up being cold enough that we didn't play much, but we had a little tea party by the lake and watched a pair of ducks, a sandpiper, a seagull, and on the way out saw a deer!

We sat and just "were".  

Here's an arm's length shot of us together.

She's going into pre-k?  Time goes faster the older I get.

Take a flying leap

One day at the park with the kids Aiden did some jumping.  Pretty good air...

Some photos from holidays

Some photos from our recent family vacation.  Some of them I'm quite proud of actually, others I just like.  Enjoy...

Leaving on a jet plane

but I know when I'm coming back, well, I'm back already... if you don't get that look here. I was in Ottawa a little while ago and on the trip home I had a layover in Toronto.  I took my camera out and made some images from what I saw around me.  Hope you like 'em.

Catching up - lest you think...

This is my photoblog. Lest you think I take pictures of everything but my family, I submit these to you.

Catching up - our trip - slidetastic

A little bit ago we traveled to Winnipeg for me to attend a training seminar with some folks from our church.  My wife recapped at least one or two funny things from that trip here.  I didn't take many photos, but here is a few of the kids playing on the slide in the hotel.  They had a great kids area....

They had so much fun...

Catching up - Photoclub Mavis road shoot.

A little bit ago, before my camera came back, Tara lent me her camera to go on a little photowalk with some of the Dryden Photoclub folks. This was probably my favorite picture of my time up with one of the guys. This was before we got all the rain and it was VERY dry.   Here's a few more.

Catching up - Hip Hop Friends

So just before I got my camera back I was asked to take some pictures of some friends kids after their hip hop dance class. So check these out!

repairs and other stuff

While my Nikon D90 is getting repaired.  Which, thankfully is being covered by Nikon themselves.

I took some photos yesterday, except I took them with my Nikon FE.  I'd show them to you, but I have to finish the roll of film and then get it developed.

If you're looking from something to look at, check out my friend Thomas' site.  He grew up down the road from me.  I'm a little older than he so I moved away to go to school and make a life for myself before I ever knew he was into photography, but somehow, via the internet we've reconnected and talk photos often on Google Talk/Chat.  It's his fault that I'm trying out the film again...

He's just finished a photo program at Algonguin and I really like his stuff.  He also won an award during the final exhibition.  I'll let him tell you what award that was if he wants.

My drive to Upper Falls

Upper Falls Timelapse v1 from salguodbocaj on Vimeo.
This is from a little while ago.  Setup my camera on a tripod in the van.  Hooked my laptop up to the camera and used a program to remotely trigger the shutter every 5 seconds. Then I just drove. Over 400 images.  Put together in Windows Movie Maker because it worked.  Would've had it up earlier, but I decided to ask for permission from Moby to use one of his songs as the soundtrack, via his mobygratis.com website (the song is "we start").  It's kind of silly, but I like it.

Made me laugh out loud

This made me laugh quite a bit.

service

So back in January I was taking a picture (the picture above was likely the picture that the latch broke on) and the latch for the pop up flash on my camera ceased working. The flash itself was fine, just the little hook thing that held it down stopped working. It did not appear broken. I have dragged my feet to send it in for it to be repaired under the warranty (hopefully). Although yesterday, I sent it in. Yes, I insured it, for just a little more than what it will cost to replace it. It should arrive on Tuesday, as Canada Post doesn't deliver on Good Friday or Easter Monday- which I'm ok with. Then likely 5-6 weeks later I will get it back. It's always possible they'll send it sooner.

It feels strange not having my camera. Maybe that's why photo nerds buy lots of cameras, so when they have to get one serviced, their hands are not empty. Maybe that's why photo geeks become professionals, because then if one camera doesn't work, they just grab another from their trusty bag of tricks.

So, I will miss you my D90, and while I will be taking pictures with other cameras while you're gone, I won't really mean it.

Tracking the Sunset

Photoclub Portrait night.

The other night our Photoclub got together and we had some volunteers be models and we had all kinds of gear set up and we played.  Took all kinds of photos.  Here are a few of mine.

Time Lapse of Photoclub event

Our photoclub had a meetup Saturday night.  Everyone brought a whole pile of gear, we had some volunteers to be guinea pigs, er, models and we made pictures!  I spent a few minutes setting up a camera and a laptop (believe or not the computer was in a canoe on display) and had the laptop trigger the camera every 30 seconds.  This timelapse is likely missing about 45 minutes of time as my computer, which was firing the camera went to sleep... but it's a feel of what all happened.

An idea... for a camera manufacturer somewhere

Okay so I had an idea the other day while reading some stuff on the web about cameras and how people use technology.

Now this idea has a lot to do with photo nuts or people a little frustrated with the quality of photos coming out of  mobile phones.  The appeal of camera phones is how we already are carrying them around with us ALL the time.  People buy dedicate cameras because the images coming out of them look better.  I own a DSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera because it takes even better pictures and I can choose what lens to put on it.

So essentially the idea that struck me is this.  Why doesn't someone make a really cool relatively compact "micro four thirds" digital camera and slap a phone with GPS in it?  As long as there was an integral body cap or it shipped with a really small pancake style lens, I think there must be people clever enough to make it small enough that it would slip into a jeans pocket and yet still be able to swap lenses from the micro-4/3rds system.

For instance, the current Olympus PEN E-PL1 micro 4/3rds camera is 115 x 72 x 42mm  (excluding protrusions) .  In way of comparaison, my Nokia E71 mobile phone is 114 x 57 x 10 mm  So without a lens that particular camera is still a little thick for a jeans pocket and that's without a lens on it.  So maybe it can't be done, I realize that physics plays a part in this.  But consider this, if someone made this with a decent pancake lens on it, and was able to get it small enough to fit into a pocket, that's one device you could do everything with.  I would be willing to bet that if it just had an integral sliding body cap for when you don't have a lens on it that it could be popular.
Perfect for taking trips, your connection to the outside world, your map and navigation, your music player, and your camera all in one device.  Obviously, you wouldn't want to lose it...  but for someone like me and many other photo enthusiasts, if I could go walking and be able to take great photos with a device I'm already carrying and maybe one or two more lenses, both of which would likely fit in the space a large water bottle would take?  I would think you'd sell 5 or 6 of them.

There's all kinds of things you could do help people manage the content on a device like this too.  You could have two memory card slots, one for the phone half and one for the camera half.  With the SDHC memory cards you can currently get 32GB per card, and in time the SDXC format will bring up to 2TB of storage.
You could go with a touch screen kind of thing (ala iPhone) or hardware buttons, or maybe even both.  I think interchangeable batteries would be a must.

Four thirds cameras seem to be getting some traction worldwide, and being a relatively open platform you could easily get all kinds of accessories and lenses for such a system.  I can think of all kinds of cool software hacks that you could do with a device like this.  Think remote time lapse where the phone emails pictures as it takes them.

Anyways, I think that if someone just sat down and started to think it all through there could be some really neat things that came from a camera with a phone in it.

Just an idea though... thanks for even reading it.  If they ever make one, you'll know I thought of it first.

not moving

So here it is March 10, 2010 and I haven't posted a single thing on my photoblog since January 26th.  You may think I've forgotten about this space.  Not true.  This time of year is hard for me photographically though.  I get to this point of the year and I feel like I can't make another picture with snow in it.  Not that I haven't tried.  Have gone on several little photo walks and came up with nothing.  So this is how I'm feeling photographically.  Some time ago my camera developed an issue, but I have been lazy deliberately dragged my feet on sending the camera in.
It's funny the relationship we can have with things...

Note:
For those who know about my little encounter the other week, this photo was taken before that and though the vehicle is running, it's also parked in my driveway at the time this photo was shot.

sunshine

Can you tell when this was taken?
Just the other day.  Sunshine is sunshine, and I'll take it.

eagles

I found it a little amusing how it appeared this eagle is putting on a very dignified air, while sitting next to a dirty diaper.

Christmas 2009

A few Christmas photos.  Christmas Eve through evening of Christmas day.

Snowy Squares

Happy Belated New Year's

  

  

  


I took all of these today at Aaron Provincial Park, with my D90 and 35mm 1.8 lens.  Rocking the square crop.