All My Blogs

View of a junior run at Big White - I used my live histogram display to determine an exposure. I have been snowshoeing a few times, but never on trails quite this challenging.  Big White has several trails for snowshoers.  I was on four named trails that took me a distance of about 6 km.  Now, six km doesn't sound like a lot, but on snowshoes in deep snow, I was done in by the end. The fact that I am somewhat out of shape didn't help.  This fact was brought home to me when I fell sideways into a snowbank and found myself flailing about like a fish out of water.  It took the help of a kindly passerby to extricate me from the humiliating condition in which he found me.  I thought that safety was better than humiliation; besides, I was very tired at the time.  When I got out, I discovered that my snowshoes had managed to find the bottom of a stream.  Thankfully, I didn't get wet. I had hoped to get access to the top of the ski hill to take some photo...

What sorts of things hit airplane windows while flying? You've heard of bird strikes on planes - specifically on their engines causing engine failure and crashes.  But a question came to me - what sorts of things crash into airplane windows - especially those necessary for pilots?  I decided to look it up on the internet.  Here's what I found. Bird strikes are a major problem, not only for engines but for cockpit windows too.  Complete failure is uncommon due to their strong design, but any damage can cause depressurisation at high altitudes.  Fortunately, most bird strikes occur at low elevations. Although it is unlikely for insects to cause significant visual obstructions on pilot windows, they can foul up air speed indicators through building nests inside instrument intakes.  Mud daubers have been known to impair airspeed indicators this way. Hail is known to cause pitting and damage to aircraft, but modern design prevents it from being catastrophic....

Where's bear? - I did a series of photos where Bear was somewhere in the image. I have taught photography for over 30 years now.  I started with film and darkroom, then switched over to digital imaging sometime in the early 2000s.  One of the things I used to do was to have my students photograph "stuffies of some character" in a series of photographs telling a story.  It was always a highlight of the course, and I have to applaud many of the entries as being very well done.   Another thing I did was to take a small stuffed bear and photograph it in a variety of places.  The idea was to use the photos in an exhibition for children.  I have worked with kids for over 40 years and always like having interesting things to engage them.  I have Bear hidden in stores, outdoors, and in the street. I met a lady who travelled to Europe and brought a favourite stuffed toy with her.  She photographed it in numerous famous places with the idea of putting ...

Guisachan Heritage Park in Kelowna - Milk shed window, woodpecker holes, and nest. I visited and photographed some of the buildings at Guisachan Heritage Park today.  Given that my current blogs have been on window photos, I thought I would take some images of those very structures on my excursion.  I came across one that was particularly interesting in that it was nearby evidence of woodpecker activity. You can see just to the left of the above woodpecker nesting hole; there are two holes, likely created by woodpeckers in their bid to extract insects, that have been covered up with something like chicken wire.  This is a problem that some buildings with wooden exteriors have.  Woodpeckers can detect the presence of insects underneath bark or even further into the wood of the tree.  They detect would-be meals by hearing the insect activity, by sensing their vibrations, and by smelling them (albeit to a lesser extent). What's interesting is that the insects may n...

Photographed near McCall, Idaho, in 2008, with my Nikon D70 camera. This easily could have been the photo that started my obsession with windows.  It turns out I also have an obsession with benches, if you caught my earlier blogs on the subject.  But, I have to admit, I love this shot.  Not only that, but it was taken with a 6 mp camera - My first DSLR made by Nikon - and I have made numerous prints of it. This brings up a good question about pixel count.  How many pixels are enough?  With cellphone and some digital cameras, pixel count has gone through the roof.  You can now take 200 mp photos with some Galaxy cell phones, and medium format cameras often provide 100 mp capability.  Full-frame mirrorless cameras are often around 50 mp, with some of Sony's cameras boasting 61 mp.  The truth is, do you really need that many megapixels? My Z7ii has a 45 mp sensor while my D500 is limited to 20 mp.  Yet the truth is that this is often enough....

Geraniums in a window box I liked this photo because of the appealing framing going on with the plants and the tidy nature of the whole scene.  It was the geraniums, though, that really caught my eye.  I quite like them because of the deep red colours of the flowers, the fact that they seem to bloom all year long, and how easy they are to care for.  There are some white ones there too, although I am not a fan of them. I have always liked the colour red in my photos - there is something dramatic about certain shades that always captures my attention.  The scene would be quite bland without the central colour boost to the photo that just adds the right amount of oomph. Although I plant new ones every year, geraniums are easy to take care of over winter.  The key is to remove them from the garden before the first frost and to shake the soil from their roots.  You keep them in a cool, dry place until the spring and replant them.  They have to be cut back s...