All My Blogs

A birdhouse at Swan Lake Bird Sanctuary - Tree swallows. We put up birdhouses to help and attract birds, but sometimes our good intentions lead to disaster.  Hole size is important.  If it is too big, predatory species can get in and take the eggs or chicks.  A perch also makes predation easier; birds don't need one, as they are fully capable of accessing the nest without it. In the spring, when nesting begins, the air is cool and the sun rarely causes heat issues.  As the season progresses into summer, the risk of heat exhaustion to the vulnerable birds increases.  Putting the house in the shade or having some kind of insulation reduces the likelihood of their death.  Lots of ventilation also helps to encourage air circulation; just make sure the vents are not too large. Birdhouses don't need a perch, but their walls can't be smooth either.  Rough, unsanded wood is all that is needed for the birds' access.  You can build the house out of plywood ...

Left:  A Zentangle name card made by Mrs. Graham for me.  Right:  A GSS yearbook photo of her. Did Mrs. Graham ever make a you a name card like the one shown above?  She made one for me, it was something I saw her often working at.  A Zentangle is a "relaxing art method used to create abstract, structured black-and-white patterns called tangles on small paper squares." (Google)  I think she found them relaxing and enjoyed making them for people.  She would laminate them afterwards and give them to their namesake.   She cared for people, was a respected teacher and colleague, and taught at Garibaldi for a number of years.  I always enjoyed her company.  The cards that she made for people spoke of her care for others.  If you notice, it is signed, "L L.G."  I think it stands for "Love, Linda Graham."  I never saw her as emotional or conflicted, but I am sure she must have had challenges in her life. She was a heavy smok...

  My daughter, Leanne, visiting us on the week of my birthday.  So much to be thankful for. The photo says so much about the things happening in my life.  Living in the Okanagan, a nice house with a great view of the neighbourhood, my dog, and my beautiful daughter enjoying another sunny day.   I turn 66 years old in two days.  My health is pretty good, although my issues with diabetes haunts me a bit.  I have a beautiful wife who plays cards, attends church with me, likes camping, and loves her children and grandchildren.  She even goes kayaking with me occasionally.   I have many friends, some I have known for almost 50 years and others who are more recent but devoted to our relationship.  Although stuff tends to not be too important, I have all that I could ever want. But the thing that I have, more than everything else, is my relationship with those I love. Family, friends, and God.  I don't talk much about my faith in my b...

Six-spotted orb weavers. Left:  2020, Clearwater BC.  Right:  2026, Wabamun AB I must see a thousand-plus spiders over the period of a year.  Many of them are familiar.  The long-legged cellar spider (they give me the creeps), jumping spiders (at least 3 species at my home), wolf spiders, and those funnel weavers (barn-funnel spiders) are commonly witnessed.  I can usually spot most of them any time I go into my garage and look around.  I have even found a few black widows ( click here) , but none in my house, thankfully. But, it's nice to know that they aren't the only ones.  This morning I saw a European-cross spider, and as you can see above, I photographed a six-spotted spider recently on a trip to Alberta.  I also saw and photographed a spider I had never seen before last week while in Didsbury (Alberta Jewel spider - click here ). The interesting thing about the six-spotted spider is that it is the second one I have seen/photographed....

Canon, Nikon, Minolta, Olympus, Pentax - film cameras and lenses for sale. Yes, I have quite the collection.  Some are mine that I used back in the good ol' days of film.  Many I have collected over the years as people hand unused equipment to me.  There is a lot; I have 25 lenses for sale too, ones on the camera bodies and many more that are not.  Nikon, Pentax S, Canon, Minolta.  I even have a Bronica medium format camera for sale. While it is true that film is somewhat passe, the truth is that many out there still use it.  Partly out of nostalgia, partly because film is still a viable medium, with a dynamic range that beats many a digital sensor.  And then there is darkroom work.  Although all my prints are done using pigment and ink-based printers, I fondly remember my days in the darkroom. I will be posting my cameras on Facebook Marketplace soon.  They will be listed at fair prices.  Looking forward to the response. Thanks for read...

Main:  Common grackle (male), Airdrie, Alberta.  Inset:  Great-tailed grackle, Arizona While visiting Alberta this summer, I came across some common grackles.  They look similar to Brewer's blackbirds initially, but closer inspection shows that they are both larger and more colourful than them.  They belong to the same family (Icteridae) as their smaller cousins.  There are three species of grackle that live in North America: the common grackle (main), the great-tailed grackle (inset), and the boat-tailed grackle.  Only the common one can be found in Canada, and they are only found east of the Rockies. The male grackle's breeding plumage is striking, with its bronzed-iridescent body feathers and deep blue/purple head.  The female, as is the case for all female Icteridae, is a mottled brown designed to prevent unwanted attention.  Unlike the male, the female does not have the bright yellow eyes. Grackles are the number 1 pest of corn crops in ...

Helmcken Falls in 2016 (left) and 2026 (right).  Notice tree growth near the bottom of the image. When you go to see a waterfall that you have seen before, you usually don't expect to see anything different.  Afterall, the falls don't go anywhere during our short time on the planet, and the basin, bowl, river, and canyon all seem about the same too. Helmcken Falls was first seen by (non-aboriginals) a Canadian government surveyor in 1913.  Twelve years later, in 1925, the first photos of the falls was taken ( click here to see site).  It is an amazing thing that the spectacle has only been recorded for just 100 years.  Since then, there seems to have been little change.  Yet, if you could measure specifics accurately, such as how much erosion has taken place at the lip of the falls, the size of the bowl, and certainly the vegetation around it, you would find significant change. For my two photos, you can see that the trees at the bottom of the bowl have gr...

Long-horned flower beetle on oxeye daisy, Yoho National Park, BC. Identifying a species can be a laborious process.  What makes it a challenge is the number of organisms that are similar (yet different) to it in the same taxonomic group.  Even looking at taxonomy involves a basic understanding of how organisms are grouped.  For beetles, it goes Kingdom (Animalia), Phylum (Arthropods), Class (Insects), Order (Beetles - the Coleoptera).  That may sound basic, but it gets insane after that.  There are over 160 different beetle families, over 30,000 genera, and more than 400,000 documented species of beetle on the planet.   Thankfully, Canada has only about 7500 species of beetle, and we whittle it down in BC to about half of that.  Even so, it can be hard just nailing down a genus, let alone a species.  However, there are a few things that help in the process.  I typically go through a series of inquiries before I define something, and even...

Black-billed magpie, Yoho National Park, BC - backlit and underexposed. A backlit field often renders a subject significantly underexposed, in this case by about three stops (see bottom left inset).  There are few details in the shadows, which renders the bird as a silhouette in this case.  There are about eight stops of latitude in a JPEG (HEIF formats are better at around 10), while raw images carry much more, often surpassing 12 stops.   Although HEIF images are superior to JPEGs in almost every way, few apps allow you to edit an HEIF without converting it to a JPEG first.  So, either way, if you're not shooting in raw file mode, you are making JPEG images (if you plan on editing them at all outside of the camera that took them). This may be the point at which one could argue that you have to convert the raw image into a JPEG for it to be of much use.  While that is true (most web platforms won't work with raw images), they also don't work with HEIF imag...

Ring-billed gull (left) and Foster's tern (right) photographed using my Z6iii camera I am not well-versed in electronics and do not have a good understanding of the word "gain" as it applies to digital photo sensors.  So I have had to do some research on this to understand what exactly gain is and what a dual-gain sensor is.   The voltage produced by electronic sensors that convert light into electricity is very low, and that's at a sensor's native ISO.  As ISO increases, those voltages become even lower.  The problem with high ISOs is that the background electronic noise that exists starts to interfere with the generated values produced, especially in shadows, which results in this thing we call noise.  I have written about this before ( click here to see good examples on noise). Gain is related to noise - the higher the ISO, the greater the need to boost the signal.  Boosting the signal (gain) results in brighter images (underexposed images from nat...

Alberta Jewel Spider photographed with my iPhone 15 Pro I discovered that my 3x lens on my iPhone defaults to using the ultrawide lens (0.5x) for close-ups.  The problem with this is that the ultrawide does not have the resolution of the main camera (1x), and getting really close physically blocks light.  The solution requires a few steps. The first step is to switch the camera to ProRAW & Resolution control (Settings > Camera > Formats) from the lower-resolution mode.  In your iPhone's Camera app, you can choose whether to use RAW or HEIF format.  I use RAW, but the HEIF format is also a good choice, especially if you can't deal with raw images.  Since I use Photoshop, it is not a problem for me. Then you have to turn off the automatic switching between cameras when doing macros.  You can find the Macro Control slider under the Camera app in Settings (Settings > Camera, then scroll way down).  Turn it off (slide the "slider" control to th...

Killdeer photographed in Red Deer, Leva Avenue Natural Area.  July 16, 2026. I have been shooting with my new lens and camera for two months now.  I have taken over 1600 photos with it on a variety of settings, although mostly in manual exposure mode.  The camera has performed well, and the 180-600 lens is reasonably sharp. On the upside, the 24 mp full-frame sensor produces low noise at modest ISO settings (an ISO of 800 produces images with little noise).  Although it lacks the resolution of the Z7, Z8, and Z9 series, I find the reach of the zoom at 600 mm adequate.  In the event that more magnification is needed, I can use a1.4x teleconverter.  Image quality takes a bit of a hit, and my minimum aperture turns to f/9 when using the TC.  Using a higher ISO to compensate for the light loss does not seem to affect the images. The downside of the Z6iii's sensor is that it lacks the dynamic range of other Nikon cameras.  Having said that, it has not ...

Top:  Yellow-headed blackbird, Clay-coloured sparrow, Yellow warbler, Hairy woodpecker. Middle:  Bonaparte's gull, American goldfinch, Song sparrow, Double-crested courmarant. Bottom:  Red-winged blackbird, Foster's tern, Franklin's gull, Spotted sandpiper. There are about 270 species of bird regularly present in Alberta at some point during the year, and another 150 or so that are accidental, and another 30 or so that are migratory but not present for breeding or are residents.  There are a few more species not included in the above shot that I have photographed or just seen (including corvids, hawks, grebes, and gulls).  If I go back into my files from previous years, I am sure I could come up with about 100 species or so. The great thing about birding in Alberta is that there is such diverse habitat.  Mountains, large lakes, small lakes, ponds, potholes, prairie, woodlands, and more.  There are also very large parks dedicated as habitat for wildlife...

1. My friend, Charles, in an enclosed mobility aid.  2. Walker with 2 wheels.  3.  4-wheeled walker with seat/wheelchair.  4.  Electric mobility aid.  5.  All-terrain mobility aid. Mobility aids.  They can be anything from a simple stick to a complicated, enclosed electric scooter complete with signal, head, and tail lights.  All of them have one purpose - to help those with mobility challenges get around.  So, why are some of them banned? It depends on the jurisdiction.  The main item drawing attention is the enclosed mobility aid, such as a weather-proofed personal cart that gives extra protection to the user, seen in the above photo (1).  They may be deemed too powerful, too large, or too fast.   A scooter/mobility aid does not require insurance to operate.  They are not legal on roadways, in the same way that pedestrians are not.  Yet, as they get larger, enclosed, or more powerful, their place on the si...

Left:  Praying mantis photos from Oregon (top) and Florida (bottom).  Right:  Kelowna (my yard). My favourite insect is the praying mantis.  As a boy, I caught dozens of them in Ontario.  I never saw any while living in the Lower Mainland, but did manage to get photos of them in Oregon and Florida (insets).  Since we have been living in Kelowna, I have caught three or four, one just a few days ago (right image, taken with iPhone 15 Pro).  I haven't seen them for a while, not since our cold snap a few years back that killed the stone fruit for the year.  I had wondered if the insects had survived. The one I found recently was a juvenile (nymph); it was two, maybe two and a half, inches long.  It had another two moults to undergo before becoming an adult.  Oddly enough, it was sitting beside my front door when I saw it.  I took it to my backyard where it was placed on a raspberry plant.   The colour of an European praying ma...

The Lordco Ladies photographed at Kelowna's Canada Day Celebration, 2026. Backlighting is a constant issue for photographers, regardless of whether your subject is human, animal, vegetable, or mineral.  Averaging light renders the foreground dark.  Exposing for the foreground leaves the background overexposed and incurs bloom.  Exposing for the background and filling with flash is often the best way to go, if you have a powerful enough flash.  But what if none of those options work for you?  What solution do you employ? Exposing for the background, especially when it is significantly out of focus as above, makes no sense, so having it slightly overexposed is fine.  This will leave the foreground modestly underexposed, but there is enough latitude in raw dark values to lighten them using a pixel editor like Photoshop.  Lightroom will do the same thing, as will iPhone editing software (although I find that iPhone raw images do not have the save dynamic r...

Kathryn nestled up inside the "O" of the Kelowna sign by the waterfront. We moved to Kelowna five years ago.  We have discovered the city has a lot to offer, and not just during the summer.  Certainly, Kelowna is known for its vibrant summer life.  Beaches, celebrations, eateries, trails, and easy access to the Okanagan and Shuswap.  But it is the winters that I particularly like. With a climate in between Vancouver's oceanic conditions and Alberta's frozen, 8-month-long winter, the Okanagan has mild, dry winters that facilitate outdoor activities and good driving conditions.  Traffic is better too; the large number of summer visitors often results in long drive times between local destinations.  In winter, the reduced population renders most in-city trips to less than 15 minutes. I have written quite a lot on things to do in Kelowna.  Some of my links are below. Canada Day Okanagan Rail Trail Okanagan sunflowers Walking trails in the winter Knox Mount...

It is always a good idea to pay attention to the backgrounds of your photos.  It's easy to get caught up in the moment, especially when shooting at public gatherings where time and opportunity are fleeting.  Such was the case during the Canada Day celebration in Kelowna when I was photographing people.   Photographers love control.  We love to control light, subjects, camera settings, and activity around our shoot.  The one thing we have the most control over is our own position.  Street photography is all about capturing the moment, the person being in their element, and their story.  Positioning yourself to capture them relative to a desirable background is important. The second thing you have direct control over is the equipment you use and the settings.  For the image above, I used my 135 f/1.8 Nikon Z lens and chose an aperture of f/1.8 to make the background blurry.  There is enough detail in it to give some context as to where the...