All My Blogs

iPhone Crib Game - my 29-point hand I have played cribbage for many years.  I think my dad taught me back when I was a teenager, although I don't remember playing any games with him until I was married with children.  I do, however, remember a rainy day in the dorm at college when I played 7 games in a row and my opponent tore up my deck because I skunked him on many of those games. I have played thousands of games over the years and maybe have had 40,000 or 50,000 hands.  In all of those games, I have never gotten a 29-point hand, until today.  The math says the chance of getting a 29-point hand is 1 : 216,580.  That sounds atrocious, but it's a lot better than the chance of winning the 6/49 jackpot, which is around 1:14,000,000.   So really, I am way ahead of the curve.  Instead of taking over 200,000 hands to win, I did it in a mere 40,000.  That's 5x better than the average.  If I apply those odds to the lottery, I could play the 6/4...

While waiting for a meeting with a local notary public, I noticed the view from the 12th floor was somewhat extraordinary.  It was the first time I had seen the city from this vantage point, and I was somewhat enthralled.  I took my iPhone and photographed the scene as a panorama and ended up with the above image, although the original was much bigger being 46 megapixels in size.   I rather like the large central rooftop as it points towards the background.  I shot this using the 2x camera which has a relative focal length of 48 mm which gives it a perspective similar to the human eye.  If you click on the image you will get a better view of it all. Have a look at the image below.  It shows the object selection tool in Photoshop that I used to select the sky so I could darken and enhance it.  The original shot shows it somewhat blandly.  Normally, I would have to use the brush selection tool and go through the entire sky area carefully, selec...

Red necked grebe and chicks, Edmonton, Alberta My first SLR was fully manual with an external light meter that only worked outdoors during the day.  Focusing was manually done with a split-finder and depth of field was estimated by using either the depth-of-field preview gizmo on the lens/camera or by looking at the aperture/distance bars inscribed on the prime lens. There was no such thing as TTL flash metering, and my first automatic camera had only 2 hotshoe pins - the second was so you would know if the flash was properly seated and ready to fire.  Wireless wasn't even a word back then and you had to manually advance film - unless you could afford a motor drive.  Even then, the 3fps rate you could get would eat through a roll of film in mere seconds. With the merger of computer technology and light-sensitive media, the world of photography has changed.  And every year things become even more user-friendly.  I have a dozen automatic shooting modes I can choos...

If you are using Windows 10, you may want to consider this.  I am old enough to remember having to learn DOS.  My first computer was a Commador 64 that my dad brought home.  Once at university, I had to learn DOS because they only had PCs.  Then came a series of Apple computers, mostly because I was a teacher and could buy them through the district.   It wasn't until the early 90s that I bought my first Windows PC - a Bill Gates special running Windows 3.1.  I learned basic, Pascal, and a couple of elementary pixel-editing programs such as Paint.  Eventually, I sold it and bought another machine using Windows 95.   Then came the series of upgrades.  Better platforms, but you couldn't keep the old OS because of the rate of technological advances.  So, 95 became 98 and then XP and then 7, 8, 10, and now we are up to 11.  And the problem is that you can't just keep the old OS because it will no longer be supported.  What...

Mission Creek in Kelowna - before (inset) and after white balance adjustment. I photographed this today with my iPhone 15 Pro.  Although digital cameras have an auto white balance features that corrects for off-white lighting, it is not always perfect.  This is a common occurrence in many situations and there are a number of ways to correct it.   As you can see, the inset (straight from the camera) has not had any adjustments to it other than resizing.  The main image had some alterations, mainly colour, some effect changes, contrast, and sharpening.  The greatest impact on the image was the alteration of white balance. Why was the image blue to begin with.  It was a sunny day, and although the sun was present (albeit at a low angle), the scene was lit by light coming from the blue sky above.  To our eyes it looks white, but that's because of the brain's processing ability to alter reality.  The camera sensor uses an algorithm to produce the ...

Silver Lake near Hope - using the water's reflection to make a stronger image Although I have often used reflections of landscapes to produce appealing images, I have never taken the time to realize that it is a wonderful composition technique to intentionally look for. I frequent areas around water bodies and often find myself using reflections to improve an image.  There are a few things you can do when considering this. Look for bodies of water, regardless of how small, to use for reflections. Even small puddles can be exploited for this effect. Shoot early in the morning or at dusk. Shoot from a low angle.  The lower the angle, the better the reflection. Try not to put the sun in the reflection unless it is low to the horizon. Shoot when there is little wind so there is little wave action. Consider using a polarizer filter to enhance colours.   You can use a tripod if you like - to get really low you can reverse mount the tripod's stem so that the camera is mount...