All My Blogs

Green sea turtle coming ashore in Hawaii. As a young person, I did not have a lot of experience with travelling.  I can remember seeing my first tall buildings and being gobsmacked by them, and to my mind today, they were nothing extraordinary.  But I took photos of them because they seemed amazing.  The same is true for many other things that I take for granted today. I only started travelling in my mid-twenties to any extent, and the notion of what was special or unique started to change.  With it was my idea of what would make a good photo.  The now mundane would no longer be the subject of my images.  Instead, I began to look for the exceptional, and even that would change over time. The familiar was replaced with the uncommon.  My photographer's eye began to look at things from a different perspective.  My knowledge of photography and composition took me to new heights.  Travel provided me with opportunities that just weren't there at ho...

Leanne and Eric at Gold Creek in Golden Ears Provincial Park Before I was married, I knew I wanted to have children some day.  I enjoyed kids, having been a scout leader and a Christian Service Brigade leader for a total of 8 years.  I became a teacher with the same heart for youth.  But in all my interactions with young people, I never thought of what having adult children would be like. Life after high school had its challenges with the newfound freedoms and responsibilities.  We were there to applaud the successes and support them when times weren't so good.  And through it all came the realization that maybe mom and dad knew what they were doing all along, not that such an admission would ever leave their lips.  The amazing thing, though, was that a friendship started to grow beyond the classic meme. It can be difficult to think of your children as independent adults, capable of finding their way without your involvement.  Fortunately, two things h...

Peak to Peak gondola at Whistler/Blackcomb - how much stress is on the cable? You know that if you hang a weight on a clothesline, the cord will bend where the weight is.  The angle of the bend will depend on numerous factors, including the load, the tension on the line, and to some extent, the location of the mass.  The heavier the object, the greater the angle of deflection. Now, imagine pulling the cable taut so that there is no discernible angle where the load is.  In fact, pull it so tight that the line is parallel to the ground; there is no significant curve to the line.  It takes a lot of force, and the ends have to be well secured so that they don't rip out of the wall or pull the stanchion down.  For something as simple as a clothesline pulley system with a single center weight, that would be a lot of tension. What's impressive about the Peak to Peak ride in Whistler is the physics behind it all.  The span is just over 3 kilometers.  The steel...

Notice the tree in the center?  It's hard to miss.  It's also annoying. Compositional guidelines exist because they work.  They work because of how our nervous system responds to visual stimuli.  Pleasure is experienced with the release of dopamine in our brains, and when we see something we like, we are actually experiencing the release of this neurotransmitter. This is one of the reasons why composition is important.  The way an image is presented actually affects the pleasure center of your brain.  Now, there is a lot more to it than that, as our minds are complex networks of neurons that take and process information from all parts of it.  Visual memory, associations, learned responses, and many more.  But the central theme stands; the way a photo is taken impacts our nervous system. The rule of thirds is a good example.  In the photo above, the central tree is the first thing your eye goes to, and it tends to stay there.  Yes, you lo...

Me on our Alaska cruise.  The inset is the above original image, cropped and modified. Rarely do I take a photo and use it as is; there are always some adjustments.  The changes are done in two steps.  The first step is to work with the original image and alter it in a raw-conversion program to provide the preferred degree of colour, contrast, sharpness, and quality.  The second component involves using a pixel editing program and involves cropping and any necessary modifications. The large base image above shows the original photo after it was tweaked in the raw-conversion software.  There was numerous issues that I wanted corrected.  They included the following: my image was too far to the right and a bit low for my liking. the glacier and runoff stream took up the center portion of the image and not in a more attractive thirds position. the left side of the photo had little detail and had little value for the photo. a portion of the ship was visible behi...

Cherry-faced meadowhawk ( Sympetrum internum ) at Munson Pond, Kelowna. Inset:  White-faced meadowhawk ( Sympetrum obtrusum )- a similar species The young meadowhawk adult is dark brown in colour; the red tail and face come as it matures into adulthood.  The adult looks similar to other meadowhawk dragonflies.  You can see the inset above where the white-faced species looks similar to the cherry-faced meadowhawk, except for the colour of the face.  The former is true for only males, while the latter is true for both sexes. In Canada, there are approximately 154 species of dragonfly.  They belong to several different different groups, including clubtails, darners, and skimmers.  In the family  Libellulidae (skimmers), there is the genus Sympetrum (meadowhawks) .   Many red dragonflies belong to this subgroup.  So, if you happen to see a red dragonfly on your travels, you can announce with pride, "That's a meadowhawk!" Meadowhawks are co...