All My Blogs

  The first Pygmy Nuthatch I ever saw. There are four kinds of nuthatches in North America.  I have seen three of them.  Most commonly I see the red breasted nuthatch, an energetic little bird that works its way around pine and other coniferous trees in small groups.  I see the occasional white breasted one, but it wasn't until I was camping near Princeton, BC, that I caught sight of the pygmy nuthatch.  The fourth type, the brown headed nuthatch, I have never seen. Nuthatches always work their way down a trunk, although I have seen them on branches and at the end of limbs in just about every position you can imagine.  They typically make a quiet short ratcheting sound; I have never heard one singing the traditional sense. It always pleases me though to hear a group of them foraging, their little sound generators buzzing with activity. As I was walking along a trail, nearly finished my hike, a small bird swept past me at about eye level.  The gray and ...

Math is a common language. I have always enjoyed math, something which most people would never say.  While at UBC working on my education degree I chose to do an assessment on a random group of adults to see what their math skills were like.  Could they answer the questions properly and how did they feel about re-immersing into another math quiz after so many years.  I found few people got all the answers correct; many left portions of the sheet blank.  What surprised me the most though was the anxiety it produced.  It seemed that math was not their friend and its absence was not missed. I taught quite a bit of Math in high school, mostly trades related, but also held classes for mainstream students.  There were those who got it right away and those who struggled the entire time.  A lot of success depended upon completing assignments and understanding concepts.  Regardless of what their level of success was, there always seemed to be an underlying...

Self portrait at Hope Slide. Being the one behind the camera means that there aren't a lot of shots of me.  I have hundreds of photos of my family, but relatively few of yours truly.  Every once in a while though I do a self-portrait.  I know that selfies, a relatively new term in the world of photography, tend to be all the rage with cell phones, but I did this with a full frame DSLR camera.  There is nothing really special about that, but there are some interesting facts associated with the image which I feel are worthy of putting in text. First off, notice the great depth of field.  The flowers in the foreground and mountain in the background are all in sharp focus.  There are three reasons for this.  I was using an ultrawide 20 mm lens, shooting at f/11, and picked a focal point just behind me to maximize depth of field.  The shutter speed was 1/160th of a second.  There is nothing special about that, but it had to be high enough ...

Being able to access your photos is an important part of taking them. I have lots of photos.  Thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of them.  Millions would be an exaggeration, but you get the idea.  Tons, heaps, piles, or my favourite Back to the Future  reference, a googleplex of them.  So, what do I do with all these pictures, and how do I find the one I am looking for? I have a system that I have developed over the years.  I organize them into two groups, the originals, and the special ones.  The originals are all the photos I have taken, the good and the bad, the ones I have processed (I shoot in RAW file mode), and the ones I have not.  They are saved in a folder with the event name.  We were just in Princeton and my photos there are in a folder named Princeton .  That folder then is nested in another folder called Summer 2020 .  It has folders in it with other events I was involved with during that ti...

Photo of the stars from Texas I thought I would do another blog on stars to compare it to the last one I posted ( click here to see it).  There are a number of significant differences.  Understanding how they are different and the end result will help you shoot your own images.  The previous image will be referred to as image 1 and the above shot image 2. 1.  20 mm vs 28 mm lens - Image 1 used a 20 mm which is considered an ultrawide angle lens.  The extra field of view allows you to see more of the night sky than the 28 mm lens does.  Both images were photographed on full frame DSLR cameras. 2.  Away from city vs near city - Image 1 was photographed far away from any town and had little light pollution.  As a result the stars appear with greater contrast than in image 2.  You can see the orange glow near the horizon - those are from the lights of San Hosea. 3.  f/8 vs f/14 - Image 1 was shot at f/8 while image 2 was shot...

The Silk extended family, November 2005 - Celebrating the life of Mrs. Silk. If you have been reading the blogs I have posted on this page, you will have noticed a central theme running through them all.  Dell was devoted to his family. His close friends were included in that category, for he loved them all with the same dedication.  I can say that with a large degree of certainty because I was one of them. I have had the privilege of belonging to the Silk Clan as an outsider.  It was my introduction to Charles in September of 1979 that opened me up to the people that made up the family, originally just Mrs. Silk and her children.  Through the years the family grew, each new addition discovering what I had experienced now 41 years later.  The Silks are a diverse bunch with a wide range of beliefs, personalities, and opinions.  They are held together by the bond of blood.  Each member gives and takes as there was need; no need is too great and no ...

The night sky photographed from Sunshine Valley near Hope, BC. I have always enjoyed photos of the night sky.  There is something mystical about the way the stars turn in an arc.  The pattern appears this way because of the rotation of the Earth.  In my photo above the single point is the North Star, also called Polaris.  It appears as a fixed point in space while all other stars appear to rotate around it.  If you hung a ball on a string and made the make-shift globe spin, you could imagine Polaris being somewhere along that length of string.  Placing a camera on the ball pointing upwards would produce a similar photo, with the center of rotation appearing as a fixed point in space. Unfortunately, it is not possible to take such a shot from anywhere.  It is very difficult to produce a decent image in populated areas because of light pollution.  The further away from cities you are, the more contrast there will be between stars and the surro...

From left to right, Mrs. Silk, Dell, Delight. I have been fortunate to have known some amazing people during my life, but in my mind, Mrs. Silk is at the top of that list.  Although she is gone now, her resume of accomplishments would easily put most of us to shame.  Not that she would ever flaunt them; she was humble about her position and saw herself only as one trying to keep her family together.  That was it though, she did all she could to ease the burden of those she loved and installed within each of them the need to care for family. It was that love of her children that drove her on, facing each day with the determination to do what she could with what strength she had.  I will not go into specifics, but suffice it to say that she overcame obstacles which would have crippled most of us.  And the wonderful thing about it was that she was never bitter.  In spite of the hand she was dealt, it was her greatest desire to make things better for othe...

Belted kingfisher - can you see the fish? One bird I never tire of seeing is the belted kingfisher.  Its distinctive call, a rattling trill it gives off often while in the air, tells me if one is in the area.  Although primarily eaters of fish, they will take other small organisms if available, including crayfish.  They typically have a few favourite perches above the water where they survey the depths below searching for the next meal.  When the next morsel is found, they plummet head first into the surface and emerge moments later with the prize.  Unlike many other birds that hunt fish, they do not have modified feet to assist in the process.  No webbing or scaley claws for them.  The entire method is based upon the speed of entry and deftness of their bill.  Natural buoyancy allows them to surface quickly where they take to their wings to escape the liquid confines. I learned something fascinating about belted kingfishers the other day as...