Donna's Week 4 - At the end of the week, all you need is a little "YIP"

Hello again, another full week at work.  I am actually enjoying the conversations and complex thinking.  Some things have moved along nicely, while some things are like I never left.  I have made it out to scrapbooking two weeks in a row and we started puppy training sessions yesterday.  Nothing like jumping back into life, with both feet.  I have likely spoken and interacted with more people in the last 2 weeks, than I did in all of 2016!  My coach and I are doing our best to keep me focused on what matters, balanced and in control.   Honour your strengths and what you need to do to get the job done.  Now, onto this weeks photo challenges.

Church Window

This is the lovely window of the Irving Memorial Chapel located in the Irving Arboretum in Bouctouche,  New Bruinswick.   Rob and I spent some time here in 2015.  Not the best picture, but the only one of a church window that I had.  As you know my goal for this project is to learn what I can do in Lightroom.  The first picture in this series is the original JPG.   The second picture has been cropped, turned to make it square in the frame, corrected for keystone distortion, dehazed, increased exposure, decreased highlights, increased shadows, and yellow luminance highlighted.  The third photo has been cropped further, shadows lightened more and clarity increased. Now that I look at it,  I could have rotated it a bit more to straighten.   What did I learn.  There are endless possibilities and you can get lost in your computer for hours.  I like the 2 final pictures... do you?

Happy Feet

Blake has always liked and been drawn to animals.  I always wondered if it was because we gave him more animal toys and books than car and truck toys and books!  I believe we gave him both as a baby, but since he liked the animal ones more, he got more of them over time. When animals are your thing, then the African Lion Safari is your place.  I cannot even begin to count how many times we have been there and every time the elephants are a big hit.  This little guy was in his glory surrounded by his sisters and mothers feet.   

Night

These moon pictures were taken during the Sept 27, 2015 lunar eclipse.  In the original photos the moon was just a little dot, even with my 250mm lens.  This is why we take pictures in large raw format.  Each picture is 12-14000Kb, but when you crop into them, you can still maintain the details.  You just need lots and lots of computer storage and RAM!

Oil and Water

I do not know if it was my lack of creativity, or the fact that it was time to take some pictures, but I could not find a single picture on my computer that would fit this category.  So, out came the tripod, my white foam core backdrop and a glass jar with water and oil.  Now, I don't have a nice macro lens, like Sharon, so I had to again, take a high resolution shot and crop in.  The oil and water pics on their own were quite boring, so I added little drops of food colouring to the top of the oil.  It wouldn't happen right away, but eventually the food colouring would break the surface tension of the oil and travel across the oil layer to the water and oil boundary.  With my new super cool remote shutter and my camera on fast continuous photo, I captured this awesome image of a drop just as it is about to reach the water and oil barrier.  The red in the water you see is from a previous food colouring drop and in the background you can see a blue drop that is just about to break the water tension.  

Starts with W

For this topic I went with a warm Waterfall picture.  Sharon lent me her neutral density filter, for a few shots at this waterfall, somewhere in the U.P. in Michigan.   Every time I look at it I have to pee!!

Barn

I chose this shot for a number of reasons.  One, I am tired of the pastoral farm pictures..really these are multi-million dollar family run businesses.  Two, the two bunker silo's in the front are what most farmers actually use to create and store feed in.  Their presence in front of the old tower silo's shows the gap between perception and reality.  And three,  I love the contract between the orderly black tires and white plastic versus, the fall leaves and hazy sky.

Wild Card

This one is for Sharon.  I'll bet that between the two of us, we took over 500 pictures of prairie dogs.  Some in Custer State Park, some in Badlands Park and some at the Devil's Tower National Monument.  The goal with animal pictures is always to get behaviours and these little guys have an amazing "Yip" warning behaviour.  I don't know how they decide who is on guard and who gets to eat, I guess if Sharon or I knew this it may have been easier to get the "YIP PIC".  As it was, getting the "YIP PIC" was just sheer luck!  Sharon, here is my best shot.

Whoa, sorry that was a long one.  Have a great week.

Pam's Week 4: Out in the Street, Out in the Street, Out in the Daytime, Out in the Night

We're gonna rock down to Electric Avenue, then we'll take it higher!

That's always been such a fun song to me and it's what pops into my head when I look at my 'night' photo this week.  An aside, I remember one day back in my youth (likely in the mid-90s sometime), my friend, Sarah, and I were at a bar (the River Rock) one evening and this song came on.  Needless to say, we were on the dance floor doing a little boogie.  These 2 guys came up to us and we think they were trying to pick us up but when they said "Do you guys like this song?  We've never heard it before but it's pretty cool", we had to break their young hearts as we'd been singing this song for 10-15 years at this point.

Anyways, let's get back to the point.  The pictures....I struggled this week.  Things that I'd hoped had settled down finally seem to be ramping up again but I am determined not to let it break me this time.  The lack of sunshine and endless grey days likely didn't help the situation.  Every day I searched for some blue that would help make some photos pop but alas, nary a blue sky was to be found this week.  The evening I chose for "night" photos was dreary and foggy but not a nice, cool, photo-worthy fog but merely a dreary, dismal, just cover up anything that could look nice fog.

On the upside - Robert has been able to trade his shifts again, no thanks to the workforce planning system/department, so will be able to attend the swim meet with us on the Family Day weekend.  We're all very happy, including some of the other swim parents who are rather looking forward to having a bartender with us on the trip as well as our friends and fellow swim parents who are trying to convince Robert to hold mojito-making lessons while we are away.

Enough babbling - let's get to the photos....


CHURCH WINDOW

When I mentioned to my parents that this was one of this week's topics, they reminded me that there is a window at their church that they dedicated in memory of my grandparents.  Today, realizing I hadn't yet taken a picture, I called my dad and had him let me into the church to take the photo.

HAPPY FEET

If you recall, I was given a gift certificate for a pedicure from my brother and sister-in-law (or future sister-in-law) for Christmas.  That would make for rather happy feet, however, Sharon and I haven't yet set a date for this event so my feet are not so happy.  In fact, I stubbed my big toe on something in the hot tub (rather lukewarm tub to be more accurate) at the hotel last weekend and broke my nail which makes them really unhappy looking.  Riya, however, has very happy feet when they are holding a rawhide treat.

NIGHT

The other night after dropping Danica off at Brownies, I set out to attempt to replicate a beautiful 'night' shot that I'd seen on facebook.  I went to the location but the dreary fog did not lend itself to the scene I was envisioning.  Almost giving up, I was driving down Queen Street, heading to the grocery store and decided to make an extra trip around the block so that I could take this photo instead.

For those reading who aren't from the Sault, Muio's has been a local favourite, famous for their broasted chicken since 1961.


OIL AND WATER

This would be this week's photo fail for sure.  I googled "oil and water" photos and attempted the set up and well, it just didn't work as planned.  I should get at least a C+ for effort though...

STARTS WITH W

Since my week began with a swim meet, the "w" word just seemed so obvious to me.  Somehow, it took Sharon a long time to figure out what I thought was so apparent.  She must have gone through the dictionary before I finally told her the word I used.  I did like her guess of "wine" though; perhaps she sees me drink that more...

My "w" word was Water.  Of course, "win" would also work as this is Danica swimming her 25 yard backstroke and she won her heat!  Actually, she got 5th place overall and beat the qualifying time for the state championships!  Duncan finally figured out how to dive so if we can get him to dive out instead of down, it should knock a couple of seconds off his times!


BARN

Tonight after the church window photo, I dragged Duncan and Riya out for a drive to find a barn.  Unfortunately, a snow storm was setting in and it was getting darker so there weren't very many options.  The ones I liked that we passed were either set too far back from the road or were located in places where stopping was not advisable.  Finally, as the snow started to get heavier, we happened upon this barn and snapped a photo.

WILDCARD

It was such a struggle to even get the assigned topics done this week that there were no extra "wildcard" photos to be found.  I decided to peruse some old photos, however, and came across this one that I've always liked.  It was taken at the Old Melbourne Gaol in Australia.

Looking ahead at next week's topics has me rather worried.  There are no brilliant ideas popping out at me.  Hopefully it doesn't end up as last-minute and unoriginal as this week....Happy week everyone!

Sharon's Week 4: All Work and No Play...

This is my thinnest photography week in a very long time!  I have just the bare minimum of photos this week and I am not sure how I will fill this week's pages in my photobook.  I was worried that all of the overtime I was planning to work this week would interfere and it did.  I guess I will have to plan better for the next three weeks because my time won't get any freer until after Family Day weekend.

Oh well, it will feel good to have my trip to China and Tibet paid for ahead of time (that's right, I'm doing the overtime for the benefit of me, not for the benefit of the kids!).

I worked a couple of twelve hour days this week and it made me wonder how people work those shifts on a regular basis.  I can handle them right now because I know it is short term but really, I had to pack breakfast, lunch and supper those days.  It took a lot of planning and some neglect at home.  I just finished washing a pile of dishes that have been accumulating for - oh - I am not sure how many days but we ran out of butter knives (and we never run out of knives) so you can hazard a guess that it has been many days.  Levi has been pretty much on his own which has resulted in far too much screen time I am sure.  At least he has the cats to keep him company (or bother him, depending on how you look at it).

a church window

I am sure that I had big plans to actually go out and find a nice stained glass window glowing brightly but instead, I made cookies.  Here are some church window cookies.  Pam and I talked about these last night.  There is peanut butter in her recipe.  Mom, did I miss an ingredient or have you always made them without peanut butter?

happy feet

Does anybody else love Merino wool socks with arch supports?  My brother, Pete does.  He sighs with pleasure whenever he puts on a new pair.

night

I left this one late.  Last night Pam and I went for a walk then I convinced her to keep me company while I went onto Whitefish Island to shoot the waterfront from that angle.  When we got to the park, I decided that the administration building was quite photographic at night so I settled for that and saved Pam a possibly sprained ankle from walking on the trails in the dark.

oil and water

This is a thing I like to do every now and again.  Every time it turns out differently...sometimes the bubbles look more like planets, sometimes the colours reflect differently and sometimes it just doesn't work out.  Thankfully it did work out this time.

starts with W

This is a photo taken from beside the parking lot at Wishart Park.  In real life, the tree trunks looked really interesting but the camera compressed everything and I found it a very boring photo.  So I played with the black and white software.

a barn

I have been driving past this barn for many years (it's on Third Line West) and I have always thought it was really picturesque.  Yesterday in the light snow with grey skies (for the millionth day in a row!), it wasn't quite as picturesque so I turned it into a black and white shot.

wild card

I can't believe that nothing else came up all week.  All I have is this not very flattering photo of Levi and Eclipse on Levi's 16th birthday on Monday.  He only let me take his picture if he could use his iPad before school, and he only let me take one.  I can't believe he is 16!  He got his G1 licence on Monday and he has his first driving lesson with the driving school next week.  I'm going to let him learn on the school's car for a while before he has to learn how to drive our standard car.  Do you remember when you learned standard?  My brother Pete let me have his car for the summer after my first year in university.  I took the Go Train to Kingston, he gave me a short lesson and I drove back to Mississauga in Sunday night cottage country traffic.  Now, that is practice using a clutch!  Stop, go, stop, go, stop, go...ad nauseum.

That's my thin week for you.  Here's hoping for better productivity (fun productivity, not work productivity because that is awesome) next week.

Donna's Week 3 - Back to Work Full Time

Hey there, so this was my first full week of work in 16 months.  Five days and full time!  My slightly extended lunch on Friday with my favourite farmers, counts as work!  It was wet and foggy here, all weekend, so of course, like a good photographer, I went out and took some pictures.  You'll have to make it to the end of this blog to see them.  I included them as my wild card.

Detail

While on Vancouver Island this past summer, we went to Qualicum Beach while their Sand Sculpture Contest was on.  This entry won first prize.  I thought the detail was crazy amazing.  Who even tries to sculpt wet cardboard in sand.

U

This U picture was taken last fall at Beamer Conservation Area on the Niagara Escarpment in Grimsby.  There is an old quarry on the site.  This part of the narrow quarry wall has fallen over the edge, leaving this perfect "U" shaped look out onto Lake Ontario.

Yummy

I think all children who watched Master Chef Junior, have decided to make their own masterpiece dinner.  This is Blake making his yummy chicken and carrots.  Everything was well seasoned, well presented and you guessed it, quite yummy.

Sleep

Since I am the one who takes the pictures in our family and I am the one who sleeps the most in our family, there are no pictures of anyone sleeping in my house.  So, everyone, I would like you to meet Mr. Oinkers.  This is our favourite stufty for sleeping.  I say "our" because Blake and I fight over who gets to sleep with him.  Mr. Oinkers sometimes gets lost and turns up in the craziest places.

Frosty

I had to go all the way to Sault Ste. Marie, so Sharon and I could go to Michigan to take pictures of ice! 

A Sign

I love this sign.  I am sure other mountain passes have it, but this one was about 3/4's of the way up the BearTooth Pass, driving from Billings, Montana into Yellowstone Park, Wyoming.

Wild Card

So this is winter in Niagara.  During the day out with Rob and the puppy.

and

Out at night with Blake and the puppy!

Have a Great Week!

Sharon's Week 3: The Devil is in the Detail

I was hoping for an awesomely productive day today, filled with the outdoors, a chore or two, the completion of a small project and some food prep for the week.  Instead I was sucked in by coverage of the Women's March on Washington and the sister marches around the world.  Going back and forth between the live blog on my CBC news app and posts on Facebook, I think I can reliably say that my eyes stared at a screen containing a lot of pink hats for at least four hours today.  I was kind of hoping for a glimpse of my sister in Washington but I guess the chances of that were one in a half a million!  I can't wait until she gets back on the bus and starts sending me her story along with some photos.  What an amazing once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be part of something so big.

My week has been a little less exciting than that.  I got over my illness and headed back to work only to get started on a whole lot of overtime which will keep me crazy busy for the next month.  I will have to make a serious effort to ensure my photography doesn't fall by the wayside.  I didn't shoot as much as I would have liked this week, partly because of working late each day but also because this grey weather is seriously getting on my nerves.  The benefit of the yucky weather is that it has forced me indoors where I have had to be a bit more creative than I have been for a while.

As I was wandering around the house yesterday trying to come up with ideas, I realized that I much prefer the 365 model of project over the weekly projects of the past two years.  It has taken my focus off of producing "perfect" photographs (which is kind of stressful) and made it much more fun...the ideas I come up with to meet the tasks may not produce a beautiful photograph but they will mean something to me, perhaps tell a story and will, in the long run, be more meaningful.  Take for example last week's selfie - me with my N95 mask on was certainly not a lovely photo but it told a story and it will likely make me laugh when I look at it in the future.

And now, on to this week's photos...

detail

I was wandering aimlessly yesterday when I remembered Levi's coin collection.  He has been interested in coins from around the world for several years now but until recently he had only a few coins, given to him by friends and family who had traveled to places like Cuba, Scotland, Mexico and India (that was me).  Last Christmas, the coin topic came up and my sister-in-law, Darlene rode in on her white horse.  At the time she was attending the NATO Defense College in Rome and her colleagues were from all around the world.  She sent out an email and the folks responded.  When we saw each other at New Year's, Darlene gave Levi the pile of coins.  Levi has since spent many hours enjoying these coins.  I think we need to find a way to store them that is a little more organized than a Ziploc baggie.  The coin I chose is from Iceland.  I chose it because it has the most detail on such a tiny space.

U

Smaug helpfully posed like this as I walked past her enclosure so I grabbed the camera.

yummy

Oh, such a hardship...I had to buy these so I could photograph them.  Now I have to eat them.

sleep

My cats were not very cooperative with this.  They seem to be a little too connected with me.  Every time I moved in the direction of a sleeping cat with the camera, she opened her eyes or even got up.  I finally stood beside Eclipse long enough for her to get bored and close her eyes.  They did not stay closed long though, so I was lucky to catch this.

frosty

Huh.  Who would have thought that I wouldn't be able to get a frosty shot in the middle of January?!?  But alas, we are in the midst of a January thaw.  The temperature has been hovering just above freezing and nothing looks frosty.  Even the icicles have become opaque and they aren't dripping.  My creative brainwave for this was a frosty glass of beer.  It might have been a creative brainwave but it was a faulty one.  The frostiness disappeared immediately upon pouring the beer and it does not show on the photo at all.  You will have to take my word for it that this is a frosty glass.

a sign

I was hoping to find a funny sign while out and about but that didn't happen so I had to reinterpret the word.  Given the weather we are having, I thought that the trees might be confused and think that spring is on the way.  I was right.  I found this bud on a tree at Whitefish Island this morning.  A confused sign of spring.

wild card

The shape of this melting ice caught my eye this morning.

And that's it for me this week.

Pam's Week 3: I Get Knocked Down.....

I'm hoping to get up again!

Okay, so I changed to lyrics a bit but in spite of hating that song, it's the one that popped into my head this evening.  Have you ever had one of those weeks that started with such promise and then the little things kept getting more and more annoying until bammo?

As you may recall, my week started with a lovely afternoon at Hiawatha with some good friends and some of our kids.  I'm posting this early (sorry, Sharon) because the week is going to end with the kids and I out of town with my parents for another swim meet.  Both of those things sound delightful and will be, I'm sure.  The problem is that these events have left me with fewer days in the middle in which to get things done.  I have a to-do list longer than my arm and have scratched virtually nothing off of it this week.  I've been running around too much, not taking enough time for myself, and certainly not tending to the things I NEED to get done around my house.  I was trying to say "Ah, it doesn't matter.  My house will still need cleaning tomorrow.  My laundry will still need to be put away tomorrow.  My muffins will still need baking tomorrow."  and so it goes.  Then the biggie was dropped upon me tonight while I was watching my little angel in synchronized swimming - the big team champs swim meet in Lansing, Michigan in a couple of weeks, the one Robert jumped through many hoops in order to trade his weekends off so that he could join us for his first meet all season, has changed the dates!  The real kicker - the date it is now was originally Robert's weekend off in February!  I am so disappointed and I just want to cry.  Trading shifts was so difficult for him in the first place and now with the fabulous new workforce planning system that our place of employment has implemented, it is now nearly impossible.  I haven't mentioned it to the kids yet or they'll be devastated too.

Anyways, to focus on the positives - the weather has been uber mild and some of that crazy snowfall we've had has been melting.  The only problem with that is that some of the bad roads and sidewalks are even worse now with all the slush and ruts and frozen areas.  And I completed yet another week of blog photos!

DETAIL

While at Hiawatha last Sunday, I noticed this tree and I liked the detail of the knot as well as the snowflakes atop it.

U
I would like to explain this photo before I let you see it.  During our snowshoe last weekend, I moved off the trail to let some people pass by the other direction.  Somehow, my snowshoes got intertwined as I attempted to move back onto the trail and I fell.  I had taken off my mitts so tried to fall so that I wouldn't get my hands in the snow and was quite successful!  While laying on the ground giggling, I decided I liked the view so took out my camera and snapped some photos.  This is one of them.  I was initially planning on using it for "frosty" but then Danica pointed out the "u" in the clouds.

YUMMY

I've decided that this doesn't look nearly as good as it tastes.  It's lemon chicken with spaghetti squash and it is yummy!  It is so full of fresh flavours.  I will be making this again!

SLEEP

I once again feel the need to preface the picture.  As a child, I thought the sun went to sleep every night and the moon woke up.  Last Sunday, after my Winter Fun Day at Hiawatha, I took our puppy to Whitefish Island for a walk and happened upon the sun getting ready to go to sleep.

FROSTY

 I decided that it was a rather frosty sunset reflection in the ice on the river.

A SIGN

I settled on a very literal interpretation of this topic.  I thought it appropriate that there was snow sitting atop the "Snow Shoe Trail" sign.

WILDCARD

This was one of the other photos in the running for "frosty" but changed my mind.  It was also taken during our snow shoe adventure last weekend.

And that's it for this week.  Let's see what I can come up with for next week - some of the topics look a little challenging....

Pam's Week 2: We Come from the Land of the Ice and Snow

Given that we have been blessed (and I use that term very loosely in an attempt to remain positive in Week 2 of 2017) with yet another umpteen feet of snow this week, you may notice a trend in my interpretation of this week's assignments....

TOOLS

I realize this isn't well-composed and I didn't use any fancy features but these tools have been getting loads and loads of use this winter.  I took this the other night after shoveling the driveway when I was rather sad that I didn't have a chance to use the camera at all until it was dark as it was a gorgeous sunny, blue-skied day.

TOO MUCH!  SNOW!!!

I know it's predictable given the winter we've had but seriously, even the snow bunnies must be satisfied by now.  Keep in mind that I am nearly 6 feet tall and although it's hard to see in the dark - that is the snowbank at the end of our driveway behind me.  I really should have had the camera with me the other day when Sharon and I took Riya, our puppy, for a walk.  The snowbanks on one of the streets were seriously 9 or 10 feet tall!!!

Even our poor little snowman thinks we've had too much snow.  His poor face disappeared over night, buried in yet another 6 inches or so of white stuff....

AT WORK

I attempted to take a photo of my kids at work building our little snowman but it was dark out and it didn't turn out well.  Instead, I opted for a not very attractive but very appropriate picture of me "at work" shoveling the driveway.

FLOWER PETALS

As Sharon mentioned in her blog post, we visited the greenhouse to find some flower petals.  I'd tried taking photos of the poinsettia and orchid in my house but the light is bad and I admittedly have a heckuva time trying to make an orchid not look like it should be black-barred...

I think I may have kept this pretty little moth orchid from looking obscene though....

PRICKLY

I should have taken this topic less literally and used a picture of a hat or my kids for this one.  Both of my kids despise wearing hats which is an ongoing battle since it's winter and all.  It's been particularly bad the past couple of days when I insist they protect their little ears from frostbite as we partake in winter activities such as snowtubing and snowshoeing.

Instead, I went the same route as Sharon, choosing a Red African Milk Tree I photographed during our visit to the greenhouse.

I really liked how it's prickly thorns grew into something beautiful.

CAT

We don't have a cat.  I know Danica has a cat headband but do you think we could find it?  She also has a kitty blanket that she sleeps with every night but then today during our Games Night winter fun fest snowshoe today, Danica noticed that this ski binding looked like a cat.  (I was checking it out to possibly use it as a "U" for this upcoming week!)

There were quite a few things Danica was seeing in a much more creative light than I was.  Maybe I should find her camera and let her participate in the blog again this year!  Or I'll just continue to "borrow" her ideas....

WILDCARD

So, I know this is more than one "wildcard" but today was such a gorgeous, sunny, winter day that I just had to include photos of it.

 These are my 2 kids snowshoeing.  Don't be fooled - they weren't this pleasant all afternoon and spent most of the day flopping themselves into the snow for "fun".

 Here are our colourful snowshoes.

After snowshoeing, I decided Riya deserved a winter fun day too so I took her for a walk on Whitefish Island.  Here she is lying in the snow, waiting for me to finish snapping photos for next week's blog post.

And that's it for week two....