Postcards from the Mothership » The Thousand Picture Project

2010 in pictures

DaniGirl — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 10:29:24 +0000

Yesterday, I showed you a bloggy review of 2010 in words — and today, it’s 2010 in pictures!

I think it was through Angela that I first heard of Pummelvision, but suddenly it’s everywhere. You simply link up your Flickr or Facebook account, select which pictures you want to use, and it mashes them together into a video that it automatically loads on YouTube.

Here’s 2010 in pictures, all in ninety-some seconds:

If you’d like to see any of that in more detail, here’s the set on Flickr.

I’ve been toying with the idea of starting another 365 photo-a-day project. From Halloween through Christmas this year, I only added about a dozen pictures to my Thousand Picture project, and just in the past week I’ve started carrying my camera with me everywhere again. I remember how much I loved it. (When I wasn’t hating it, that is.)

When I mentioned that I’d been noodling the idea of another 365 to Beloved, he guffawed, but not for the reason I expected. “I don’t think the Nikon will survive another 365!” he said. Um, yeah. He may be right. I checked the exif of a recent photo, and I’m well over 31,000 shutter clicks on the old girl. But I’ve recently downloaded Instagram, and I am really enjoying using my iPhone as a camera for the first time now.

Hmmmmm.

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The Great Christmas Tree Quest 2010

DaniGirl — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 12:59:42 +0000

The alternate title of this post is “In which she becomes convinced that natural trees are the best possible option for Christmas.”

It was about -10C with the faintest hint of snow in the air when we headed out to Ian’s Evergreen Plantation to find our very first not-plastic-and-metal Christmas tree. Did I mention it was cold? Free hot chocolate and a bonfire helped to take off the chill.

So did running around like goofballs on the play sets.

We took a hayride just for the sake of taking a hay ride, but one of the staff told us the best pickins’ were to be found out front of the plantation.

It didn’t take long to find the perfect tree. I’d worried that this part would be messy, but Beloved handled it in a manly way. “Hey Dad, don’t poke yer eye out!”

The boys were fascinated with the whole process, including the free “Christmas wrapping”.

“We are ridiculously proud of ourselves for going into the forest and hunting down and conquering this tree!”

It’s a little soft because I maxed out my ISO at 1600, but there’s just not a lot of natural light to be had in December. And besides, Lucas and noise just seem to go hand in hand.

He’s almost tall enough to reach the top of the tree. How did that happen?

This? Is worth everything.

So here’s my final thoughts about the natural versus artificial debate — now that I’m all professional about the formerly-live trees and all.

It was not nearly as much work as I thought it would be to go out and cut down our own tree. Tying it to the roof, also something I’d dreaded, was a non-issue.
I was also pleasantly surprised by how easy it was to find a perfect tree. I’d expected to have to settle, but there were many, many great trees to choose from. Ours is perfect and full and lovely.
It’s easy to underestimate the size of a tree in the forest. Using Beloved’s 5’11″ height as a yardstick, I was aiming for 6 1/2′ to 7′ tall. I thought we’d settled for one on the small side, but it very nearly reaches the ceiling. Did I mention it’s perfect?
I’m really glad we went the extra mile to actually head out into the wilds to cut our own tree, instead of just getting one from the corner lot. It was definitely worth the effort, and made the whole experience a memorable adventure.
I Swiffered up needles not once, not twice, not three times but FOUR times in the first four hours. I expected some needles, but yeesh! Beloved, who had expressed early reservations about the mess and amount of care required of a natural tree based on experience with them during his childhood, could not resist throwing in a few “I told you so!”s, even though he does admit to liking the final product very much.
The boys, who to my surprise were strongly advocating the purchase of a new artificial tree, also agree unanimously that this is the best! tree! ever! (I hope we have not set the bar too high for future years!)
The glorious and festive tree smell that everyone goes on about? Meh. Smells kind of like my grandfather’s car from the mid-1970s. Not bad, but not quite what I was expecting.

All in all, we definitely made the right choice and found the perfect tree. Another successful example of living my life according to the will of the bloggy peeps!

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At the Richmond Fair

DaniGirl — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:24:39 +0000

Hey, did you know that once upon a time I used to take a lot of pictures? I know, you’d never know it from the blog lately. In fact, there was a while there where I didn’t even touch the camera for two whole weeks. I’ve missed it horribly!

After another showing fiasco on Saturday (we cleaned for two hours for a showing, just to be prudent even though we already had the conditional offer, only to find out that our agent had canceled all the weekend showings. And forgot to tell us. Gah!) we decided that we all needed a family day. On Sunday, we took all three boys and the Nikon to the Richmond Fair for a day of rides, games, ponies and cotton candy.

It was, by all accounts, a perfect day.

I almost made this last one my picture of the day, but I think when I look back on this project in 20 years, it will be the pictures of the boys enjoying themselves that will mean the most to me. But damn, this one tickles my fancy. They’ve even got matching eyeglasses. Aren’t they adorable?

Happy Tuesday!

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The Thousand Picture Project: A little bit of everything

DaniGirl — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 12:31:54 +0000

I couldn’t believe I had four pages of unposted pictures to sort through since my last Thousand Pictures update just over a week ago, but then I realized I had all the Calypso pictures in there PLUS all the pictures from the photo shoot with Finola. Still, in the snap-happy groove I’ve been in lately, it’s amazing how many shots I’m going through.

Truth be told, I’m considering just calling it a year and starting a new 365 project. I mean, I’m taking just about a picture every day anyway, and some weeks I’m taking a couple dozen. We’ll see! Anyway, here’s what I’ve been doing since the last Thousand Pictures post.

One morning I woke up to this really dense, dreamy fog and I had to stop and take some pictures on my way in to work. I really love both of these images, for totally different reasons. This first one is the yellow line down the middle of the road, up close and personal! Cuz really, if you’re going to stand in the road with your camera during the morning rush, a day with practically zero visibility is the most logical day to choose, right?

I changed the colour cast in this one to give it that bluish tint, and I think it really works with this image.

This was a lovely moment that I stumbled upon and raced out of to get my camera. That soft light behind them seems to add to the serenity of an already peaceful scene.

From no colour to too much colour — this is a longer exposure of the pinwheel in my garden, set spinning by my helper Simon. I set the aperture at f16 to slow down the light a bit, so I could set the aperture to 1/25 to catch the motion blur.

And, back to desaturated again! Just waking up from naptime… just one of those moments I wanted to keep, because in just a few minutes he’ll be sleeping in a big-boy bed, no more soothers or cribs…

We were at the boys’ annual school BBQ, and Lucas was fascinated by the visiting fire trucks and this police motorcycle. I figure it’s just a matter of years before he has a motorcycle of his own. He rolls like that. And I loved the composition of this one.

I’ve been trying to keep up with the jump shots, but holy hell it’s hard to get the timing right! I won’t even tell you how many shots I took this night trying to get air under my feet and Lucas’s feet at the same time. I had to give up for fear my dear old garden bench would collapse!

I can always rely on the boys for great jumping shots, though!

This is more Flickr-inspired fun, my first contribution to the group Story People. The quote that goes with this image says “this is the moon dark as a bird wing & softer, he said & at that moment I knew only the joy of my child”.

We went out to the flea market at the Rideau Carleton Raceway one Sunday and it was, well, meh. But, driving the back roads back to Barrhaven we came across this bucolic scene and my menfolk were patient enough to stop the car so I could capture a few images.

Lucas had the sense to watch from a safe and dry distance as his brothers goofed in the ~~bloody cold~~ refreshing spray of the “waterpillar” toy from Granny.

I haven’t forgotten my TtV gear this week — I managed to get this collage the other morning on my way out to work. I couldn’t decide if I liked the cross processing effect (the slightly more yellow/green toned ones) or not, so I made a collage of some of each.

I’m not the only one who loves the daisies that grow in my garden. Isn’t he perfectly lovely?

I love this shot, one of those rare and perfectly serendipitous captures when everything comes together. I was out with my photography class on Friday night, supposedly shooting landscapes at Hogsback Falls. I was, to be honest, a little bored with the whole landscape thing when I looked up on the rocks above me and saw this woman sitting against a tree, reading and enjoying the last minutes of golden light before the sun set.

I had my tripod set up, and so the image is far sharper than my usual hand-held shots. I absolutely love how the fence and the tree intersect right where she is sitting, and the bit of diagonal to the fence line, and that delicious golden light. And, most of all, that HAT — perfection!

After I’d taken a few shots and knew I had my keeper, I scrambled up the rocks a bit to say hi and let her know I’d taken her picture, and gave her one of my little moo cards with my blog and contact info on it, and told her that if the picture turned out as nice as I thought it might, she could have a copy if she wanted one. She was very sweet, and thanked me. So that’s also #5 in my very lack-a-daisical hundred strangers project, too!

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The Thousand Picture Project: Jumping into June

DaniGirl — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:39:09 +0000

Last year, I discovered the June is for Jumping group on Flickr late in the month, but so enjoyed looking at everyone’s shots (really, click through, they’re quite impressive!) that I looked forward all year to this year’s edition. I was full to the brim with enthusiasm as I headed into the backyard on the evening of June 1st to start contributing what I thought would be the first in a month’s worth of clever, well-composed and perfectly executed shots.

This was, I kid you not, the best of the 20 shots I took.

Best by quite a margin, I might add. You might think me brave to post such a ridiculous shot of myself; you only say that without having seen the other 19 exponentially more ludicrous shots for comparison. Out of focus shots, shots of me standing flat-footed with a look of consternation on my face thrusting the remote toward the camera in a distinct “is this thing on?” sort of gesture, shots that prove that perhaps June Jumping is a game best left to women who are less than 40 or have borne less than three children. Really, you should THANK me for not posting them. Trust me.

I remain undeterred, though. And besides, the bar is low for considerable improvement to my jump shots through the next month!

As you can see, I’m taking a lot of inspiration from groups and themes on Flickr lately. I blame Angela! This is my second “Bench Monday” shot, and I’m quite pleased with it. I like how the bench and the fence in the back intersect at my sparkly shoes. Okay, fair enough, I just love my sparkly shoes.

And speaking of things I love, things at the park, and TtV pictures, how adorable is this? We were playing pop-up peekaboo, and both of us were laughing. I called it “Golden Boy” because of that delicious evening light, and because he is truly worth his toddling menace weight in gold.

These next pix are a little less frivolous. (But perhaps a little less, um, interesting??) At my Friday photography class, we were discussing the elements of composition, and then had to go out onto Dalhousie Street and shoot several examples of each element.

The elements in question are: line, shape or form, texture, colour, value and space. Line is one-dimensional; shape and form are three-dimensional. Texture and colour speak for themselves. Value is the amount of light or darkness. Space can be positive (the amount of space taken up by things) or negative.

Here’s four of the shots I particularly liked and the elements I thought they represented.

1. Space, colour and form:

2. Colour, shape, texture and line:

3. Line, value, colour, shape and space:

4. Colour, texture, shape and space:

I’m not sure how on-track I was for the assignment in the interpretation of the various elements. I’ll tell you after tonight’s class!

This one really belongs above, from a thematic perspective, but I wanted to end with a strong picture and this is another one of my faves for this week. It’s another theme-inspired picture, this one for Positively Ottawa’s Lyrical Thursdays: photos inspired by music or lyrics.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. And in the 1970s, when IBM Selectric Typewriters were the latest technological toy, it was this kind of machine that I envisioned pecking out my Great Canadian Novel.

Inspired by The Beatles: Paperback Writer.

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book?
It took me years to write, will you take a look?
It’s based on a novel by a man named Lear
And I need a job, so I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

It’s the dirty story of a dirty man
And his clinging wife doesn’t understand.
The son (The Sun) is working for the Daily Mail,
It’s a steady job but he wants to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Paperback writer (paperback writer)

It’s a thousand pages, give or take a few,
I’ll be writing more in a week or two.
I can make it longer if you like the style,
I can change it round and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

If you really like it you can have the rights,
It could make a million for you overnight.
If you must return it, you can send it here
But I need a break and I want to be a paperback writer,
Paperback writer.

Actually, I just love it when word and pictures so perfectly intersect. THAT’s my happy place!

Edited to add: Apparently my brother felt the Jumping shot lacked a caption so he sent me this. All these years later, he’s still a pain in the ass.

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Thousand Picture Project: Spectacular sunsets and snapshots

DaniGirl — Fri, 28 May 2010 13:07:45 +0000

You know how creativity ebbs and flows? Lately, I seem to be all gummed up. I’m really enjoying taking pictures, and I always enjoy writing. Well, almost always! But my head seems far more full of ideas and images than I am capable of turning into prose or pictures. I have creativity constipation! Anybody got any Muselax?

Anyway, despite that, when I look back on the pictures I’ve taken this week, I’m pretty happy with them. On Friday night for my photography class, we were supposed to do an in-class theory session but the light was just so spectacular that we went on another walkabout around Nepean Point. I’m starting to get comfortable shooting in manual now, and even prefer some of the straight-out-of-the-camera shots better than the ones I play with in Photoshop.

The timing was perfect to capture this silhouette of Jacques Cartier, his astrolab, and a few of his friends.

We were rewarded with this view from the Point, just at the foot of the statue above:

Then I turned around, and the flaming sunset had set the windows of the Centre Block of the Parliament Buildings ablaze. (How lucky are we to have this stuff in our city?)

We walked back down the Point and onto the road where the Alexandra Bridge meets St Patrick. Did you know there’s a little lookout down there? In all the time I’ve spend wandering around that part of Ottawa, I had no idea it was there. And look how the Alexandra Bridge points right into the setting sun! (This one messes with my sense of geography. In summer, the sun sets due west, but Gatineau is north of Ottawa. Hmmmm….)

And this is what I mean about straight out of the camera versus post-processing. I tweaked this one because my exposure was a bit off (damn manual exposure is a lot of work!) and although I really like the composition, I think I overtweaked the contrast a bit.

You know what else is fantastic about late-spring-into-early-summer in Ottawa? The return of flea market season!!! Yay! On Sunday we trekked out to the Antrim flea market to poke around. There was a guy selling a table full of absolutely gorgeous old Yashica twin-lens cameras, which must have been somebody’s collection. He was selling them for $25 each, and at first I thought I could use them for through-the-viewfinder work, but the viewfinders were pretty foggy. I hemmed and hawed for a bit, wanting one just for the sake of having one, Beloved ribbing me the whole time that we truly do not need to add to our vintage camera collection. I stepped away to chase the boys for a bit, and when I went back someone had snapped up the whole collection, probably a dozen or more cameras.

The stinger? I looked online when we got home, and they sell for $75 to $200. Oy! Foregone beauty AND foregone profit. Damn!!

But, at least I got this… it’s the brilliant midday sun shining through a set of sherry / wine glasses onto a white table cloth. I love the refractions!

And the colours of this paintbox were irresistible, too.

The boys were playing with bubbles at my folks’ place on the weekend, and I didn’t realize until after I’d posted this shot to Flickr that you can see a little me reflected in the bubbles. Fun!

This last shot is not very strong from a compositional or technical standpoint. And yet, it’s my favourite picture of the week. Why? Because it makes me smile every time I look at it. I came down the stairs on my way to work and found all three boys scratching Katie’s belly. You can see by the expression on her face how she felt about that! And miraculously, they kept being cute long enough for me to grab my camera and take this snapshot. Not a perfect picture by any stretch of the imagination, but a perfect moment for sure.

And! Happy birthday to my sweet Katie dog, who turned 11 years old this week.

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The Thousand Picture Project: Loving that summer light!

DaniGirl — Fri, 21 May 2010 15:33:31 +0000

I don’t know what I love more about the month of May — the soft scent of flowers perfuming the air, or the return of the gorgeous, soft light of late afternoon and early evenings.

Like this:

It’s a sweet subject, but the way the light falls on them really makes this picture, in my humble opinion. It’s one of my new favourites. I’m learning that the quality of light becomes much more obvious in a B&W photo than in a colour one. Less distractions maybe?

This one uses light in a different way. (Is it me, or is there a crazy amount of dandelions this year?) After trying all summer last year, this is the first time I’ve actually managed to successfully take a dandelion portrait — they’re not as easy as they look!

I took this one the day I was making up some new banners for the blog. I’d wanted a banner that worked in the old and new cameras and couldn’t quite make it work, but I thought this was a fun shot nonetheless. I call it “The old guard versus the young whippersnapper.”

Tristan’s homework required him to go on a nature walk and record the animals he encountered, so I took the boys down to Black’s Rapids after dinner. It’s hard to look for animals when you’re concentrating on making sure the toddler doesn’t go for a swim! The geese enjoyed the stale bread we brought, including a cute little yellow gosling you can just barely see in the grouping to the back right.

(Also challenging? Deciding whether to go for the photo opportunity or save the kids from the hissing, hungry goose!)

Have I mentioned how much I love lilacs?

Love them!

A lot!

Know what else I love? Through-the-viewfinder shots of fun fairs!

Like this!

This one is my fave of the series, I think.

And here’s a few shots I took during and for my new photography class at the School of Photographic Arts, Ottawa. The first night, we did a little walkabout in the Market, and had to shoot in manual mode (eek!) and then not do any post-processing. (Double-eek!!) He told us to take a non-touristy shot of Maman, the 10m bronze spider sculpture outside the National Gallery. I like the dark, gothic look and the bird silhouette on this one, but if I could have I would have brightened it up just a smidgen.

And this was our weekly assignment: shoot tulips in a new way. I gave it that sense of motion by setting my aperture to the smallest possible opening (f22) to make for a longer exposure, and then zoomed my lens out gently during the exposure.

In the end, it was okay, but I like this “traditional” take on tulips more. Not bad for straight-out-of-the-camera (sooc), eh?

Speaking of lessons, one day I will learn that when shooting with my lens wide open (in this case, f1.8) one of the eyes will be out of focus (not to mention the tip of his nose!) unless they’re both on the same plane. Oh well. He’s still pretty cute!

The more I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know yet!!

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The Thousand Picture Project – it’s been a while!

DaniGirl — Tue, 04 May 2010 12:08:03 +0000

Holy cats, it’s been more than six weeks since I posted an update about my thousand picture project! Don’t worry, I haven’t stopped taking pictures — far from it! While I haven’t quite kept up the 365 project pace of one photo every single day, I’ve still been carrying my camera with me and truly loving the act of taking pictures.

See, here’s what six weeks’ worth of Thousand Picture Project looks like:

1. 447:1000 Wake up lilacs! (TtV), 2. 446:1000 Bleeding hearts TtV, 3. 445:1000 Tulip sunshine TtV, 4. 444:1000 NRC shiny ball TtV, 5. 443:1000 April is Fickle, 6. 442:1000 Tulip macro abstract, 7. 441:1000 Tulips to the sky, 8. 440:1000 At the firestation TtV, 9. 439:1000 Hello spring TtV, 10. 438:1000 Book club, 11. 437:1000 Calypso tour – Pirate’s Aquaplay TtV, 12. 436:1000 Puzzle bokeh, 13. 435:1000 A little daff action, 14. Boots on the beach, 15. 434:1000 Hello rock!, 16. 432:1000 Splash TtV, 17. 431:1000 Toddlers on the beach, 18. 430:1000 (Almost) Happy Bench Monday TtV, 19. 429:1000 Spring at the park TtV, 20. 428:1000 Tristan at the Farm, 21. 427:1000 TtV Daff, 22. 426:1000 Baby Everitt (1 of 10), 23. 425:1000 Happy Easter!, 24. 424:1000 After the sidewalk paint, 25. 423:1000 Newborn toes!, 26. 422:1000 Katie TtV, 27. 421:1000 Just ducky, 28. 420:1000 Mancala TtV, 29. 419:1000 Daddy kiss, 30. 418:1000 Lucas on the loose

You’ve already seen a lot of these already, my Calypso Park pictures and my amazing day at the lake with Angela and my first family portrait shoot with the adorable baby Everitt. Here’s a few more of my favourites from the last month or so.

He’s two now, and soon I won’t be able to take these kinds of pictures of his adorable toddler parts. It makes me nostalgic for something that I haven’t even lost yet…

I love the light in this one, and how they’re staring right into each other’s eyes. (At least he’s finally learned to kiss with his mouth shut.)(I’ll let you figure out which “he” I mean.)

I love this one a little bit because of the picture itself, but mostly because it makes me laugh when I remember that night. I’d found the puzzle in a closet and figured he was about the right age for it. I had no idea he’d become instantly obsessed with it. For more than an hour (and may I remind you, an hour in toddler time = three years in grown-up time!) we worked our way through the alphabet over and over again. “Where does the A go?” he would ask in the most adorable little singsong voice. And then he’d answer himself, without pausing for breath, “I don’t know! Oh, right there!” Then he’d show me the next letter and I’d tell him it was a K and he’d repeat, “Where does the K go? I don’t know! Oh, right there!” For AN HOUR. Way too cute for words or pictures!

And then the flowers started blooming and I was delighted. I love love love how these tulips came out. I made the sky that vaguely turquoise colour with a Photoshop action called Urban Acid that I use sometimes in my TtV stuff. The colours really work well together, don’t they?

This is the same day, but with a close-up filter on my lens. (One of the things I love about the Thousand Picture Project, as opposed to the 365 Project, is that I can take five good pictures on one day and then dole them out as the picture of the day for most of a week. Yes, I’m aware that they are capricious and arcane rules that nobody cares about except me. But I’m okay with that.)

And, I have been having a LOT of fun with TtV lately. All the gorgeous flowers I “discovered” last year during my 365 project are now equally engaging through the viewfinder of my trusty old Duaflex. See?

Okay, so that bottom right one is not really a flower. It’s the giant sphere sculpture on the National Research Council campus on Montreal Road. Doesn’t it look like an alien spacepod or something?

Speaking of through-the-viewfinder, last week I scored an old Starflex camera and I can’t wait to start taking pictures with it. I have to wait, though, because it had an exposed roll of film in it (!!) when I bought it, and I’ve handed it over to a friend with a film lab in his basement to see if it can be processed. How cool is that? I’ll let you know if anything — develops. (har har har, I slay me — I’m here all week, try the veal!)

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The thousand picture project: Expanding my horizons

DaniGirl — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 18:28:38 +0000

You might have noticed I haven’t been putting up a weekly post with my pictures lately. That’s because I’ve gotten a little lazy with the picture-every-day concept. (As you might also have noticed, I’ve gotten a little lazy with the blog-post-every-day concept, too. I wish I could tell you it’s because my house is now sparkling clean, or that I’ve been diverted by something else equally engaging, but no. I’ve just been a slacker.)

But I am feeling all fired up and excited about photography again, in the lull that has followed the end of the 365 project. Guess what I’ll be doing for 11 weeks this spring-into-summer? I’ve registered for a course called “Beyond the Basics” with SPAO (the School of the Photographic Arts: Ottawa.) How awesome is that? I am beyond excited, and get a little giddy each time I think about it!

Here’s a bit of the precis:

Areas of study will include: mastering camera controls, using light evocatively, understanding composition, controlling colour, file management, digital darkroom manipulation, and inkjet printing procedures.

Gallery visits, discussions and lectures will inform you of the history of photography and create an awareness of the many genres of contemporary photography. Students will be encouraged to pursue a personal mode of expression such as portraiture, landscape, architecture, still life, etc. and build a portfolio of images. Assignment work will be evaluated on a one-to-one basis providing feedback on technical skills and aesthetic vision.

It’s been a looong time since I’ve taken a photography course. Maybe a decade or so ago, I took an Intro to SLR or something type course through Algonquin. Here’s how long ago it was: I didn’t even own a digital camera yet, and we had to submit all our assignments on slides. Seems positively chisel-and-tablet from today’s perspective!!

Over the course of the last year or so, I think I’ve read at least 20 books on photography, not to mention the various online resources I’ve perused. What I’ve really yearned for, though, was that one-on-one critical evaluation and feedback. And the best part is that the course is Friday nights through May, June and July — is there any better time to be hanging out down in the Market with my camera? Seriously, I am giddy!!

Okay, and back to the present, here’s what I’ve been seeing lately.

You already saw the Star Wars post, but seriously, how often do you get to take your kids’ portrait with Darth Maul? I thought it bared repeating.

(Shhh, don’t tell, but it’s a fake TtV. It was actually a crummy shot — drives me crazy that after all this time with a camera, I can still freeze up at key moments! — and I’d thought that a little TtV treatment would enhance the inherent geek factor. It works, I think!)

You’ve also seen this one from the NAC’s Mysterioso show, but I am so pleased with the movement captured in Maestro Everly’s hands that I’ll risk repeating myself with this one, too!

This is my nephew, Noah, up for a visit for Tristan’s birthday. Isn’t he adorable?

And speaking of adorable, here’s Lucas playing coy during our sugar bush adventure during the March Break:

And speaking of sugar bushes, a mosaic from our trip to the Log Farm. Maple syrup – from tree to taffy!

I really love how this picture of Snowball, my friends’ cat, turned out. I called “You vex me, human with camera. Or, you would vex me if I could muster enough energy to care.” I think that about sums it up!

This is one of those random finds where I was delighted to have my camera with me to capture. This guy must really love Volvos. And yes, as a matter of fact I did take this picture entirely so I could give it a punny title. Because, as I said, ‘He’s primarily a Volvo driver.’ Primarily, get it? Red, yellow, blue? Primary colours? I slay me.

I took this picture of the butt ends of the crayons because everyone is always showcasing the pointy ends of the crayons, while the butt ends are just as colourful and they’re nice and round, too. Help stop the repression, give equal admiration to the crayon butts!

I didn’t take this picture this week. In fact, I took it back in August, and I didn’t even like it enough to post it to Flickr. But I found it this week, and I really liked the light and the green-ness of it. Maybe it’s because I’m pining for summer? Regardless, I gave it a poke or two in Photoshop and decided it needed its own day in the sun, so to speak.

And finally, a little through-the-viewfinder love to finish off the post. I wonder if I’ll be able to work TtV into any of my assignments at SPAO this summer? I love how the colours pop, and I got down low and close to his feet to give it the vaguely distorted perspective. It turned out great, but I can now see that it’s time to clean the Duaflex, all I can see is the dirt! (There was some debate on Flickr as to whether I should in fact remove the dust or not. Many said nay, but I find it a little too distracting.)

Regardless of the dust, how much cuter could he possibly be with his red cap and blue jeans and sheepskin jacket? Damn, my toddler is cooler by half than I’ll ever be!

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The thousand picture project: beauty hides in the oddest places

DaniGirl — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:21:21 +0000

So I have to admit, I haven’t exactly been taking pictures every day. Some days I take a dozen pictures, and some sad days, I don’t even touch my camera at all. (Well, that’s not quite true. I still lug the poor thing around with me everywhere I go, I just don’t always remember to stick it to my face as obsessively as I did all through last year.)

Aside from birthday parties, here’s some of the other ways beauty crept into my life in the last couple of weeks.

Discovering the toddler’s secret lair under the kitchen table was a treat, for instance.

And speaking of treats, we had a family dinner at a friend’s place recently, where she endeared the kids to her forever with a make-yer-own-cupcake dessert. I’m surprised the boys didn’t pack their bags to go live with her on the spot!

Beauty hides in the oddest places. I found the light falling on these dirty towels irresistible!

After that I entered what will now be known for all time as Dani’s Late Winter Tulip Period. (Yanno, like Picasso’s Blue Period?) I got a bouquet of tulips to welcome my folks home from a trip and filched a few, then got a surprising amount of photographic mileage out of them in the subsequent week. Who knew tulips were so versatile?

You’ve got yer tulips with a texture overlay here:

You’ve got yer through-the-viewfinder tulips here…

… and here:

And then you’ve got yer straight-up-with-a-side-of-overexposure here:

If you were paying attention, you might have noticed an earlier version of this shot a few weeks back in TtV format. I particularly like this one because I finally managed to get the white background exposed well enough that it more or less disappears into the background.

Sometimes, the simple shots become your favourites. I like this one because it tells a whole story, and invites you to ask a little bit more too.

The weather around here has been uncannily beautiful lately, and we’ve been taking every opportunity to play outside where we can enjoy it. This is what springtime looks like in suburban Ottawa:

It’s been a lovely couple of weeks!

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Thousand Picture Project: Olympic Fever

DaniGirl — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 18:33:43 +0000

The big boys are at an age where they can really enjoy the Olympic Fever that’s sweeping the nation. They had a whole week-long build up at school last week, and we’ve been watching events throughout the week. In fact, one of my prouder moments as a parent was last Tuesday morning. I was just on my way out the door to work at 7:00 am when I realized they were watching the rebroadcast of Alexandre Bilodeau’s gold medal podium ceremony. I explained that they had to stand for the national anthem (Beloved teases me that I insist on this!) and choked up when they began to sing it out loud. It was a great little moment.

All that to say, this is what Olympic fever looks like at our house:

(I swear, I did *not* dress him in that outfit. That was entirely his own doing. No, really!)

Beyond the Olympics, we’ve had remarkably pleasant winter conditions around here. Sunlight and shadow on snow is a surprisingly hard combination to manage, though.

This one was a near-miss. I’m having issues with the colour levels on my laptop (it’s on my to-do list) and I thought that’s what made this one look a little less than crisp in focus. Turns out it was just out of focus! Oh well. (The point, btw, was mardi gras beads for Mardi Gras. And no, I’m not telling you how I ‘earned’ these!)

And finally this week, did you know raspberries come in yellow, too? This colour filled me with longing for spring and summer far more than an ordinary pint of red raspberries might have!

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The Thousand Picture Project: Colours and cakes

DaniGirl — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:47:46 +0000

The theme for this week’s pictures was definitely colour. Maybe I’m pining for spring, but everywhere I looked this week I saw colours begging to be photographed. Like these kiddie bowls from Ikea. In 365 days of being desperate for something, anything to photograph, during which I used these bowls every single day, it never once occurred to me to photograph them. Guess that’s as good as a justification for the Thousand Picture Project as any, right?

(Amy, I posted this one just for you, so you could continue to covet my “vintage” circa 2002 and no-longer-available round Ikea bowls! *wink*)

These are Lucas’s favourite toy right now. I love how you can see which colours he prefers by how worn the tips are!

I was on a bit of a crayon and colouring kick, as you can see in this triptych.

Speaking of Lucas, you’ve seen this one already but he’s so adorable it merits reposting, no?

And further speaking of Lucas, here’s the a montage of his birthday shots from this week.

I really like this last shot. I’d bought the old-fashioned beaters at a flea market this summer, thinking they’d make an excellent prop for the dry days in the 365 project. I pulled them out a handful of times, but none of the shots seemed to work.

Last Sunday morning, I was baking a cake for Lucas’s birthday and the light from my north-facing kitchen was really delicious. I’d been using electric beaters, but suddenly this shot appeared in my head so I set it up. It turned out almost exactly as I planned, with the warm tones of the wood and the soft light, the fuzziness of the beaters contrasting the sharpness in the glass measuring cup.

The picture turned out much better than the cake, in fact. My first try at from-scratch cream cheese icing (first time I’d ever made icing not from a can, in fact!) turned out rather meh. Turns out I’m a better photographer than a baker.

I think I can live with that.

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373 – 379 of 1000 pictures

DaniGirl — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 12:01:15 +0000

Now that I’m officially done the 365 project, I don’t carry my camera quite so obsessively as I did before. And yet, I still feel the need to take a picture most days, so the subject matter this week is largely skewed to the close at home.

That’s why you get pictures like this one of Tristan, using the brand new tablet and animation program he got for Christmas. He took to it like a fish to water, and when I commented my amazement on the Flickr picture, a friend said, “Well, of course he’s not afraid of computers and technology. It’s everywhere in his world. You’re not afraid of the refrigerator, are you?” Fave analogy of the year!

Did I mention Lucas loves Sesame Street?

Of course, since it was his birthday, this week’s pictures focus on Simon in particular:

This is my favourite picture of the week, maybe of the month. I saw the light and how it was falling on them and had to move quickly, as I knew they wouldn’t be still for long. I just missed backing up far enough to catch the book at the bottom of the frame, but that’s okay, this one is still close enough to perfect for me.

This is why taking pictures makes me happy! (Coming up with titles for these posts? Not so much!)

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The Thousand Picture Project

DaniGirl — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 13:45:46 +0000

Welcome to the first official post of the Thousand Picture Project! Since the vast majority of you said you like these posts, and since I like doing them, and since I don’t have anything else for today (and just maybe because I’m thumbing my nose at the few of you who said you didn’t like them!), why not?

And, let’s be honest: one of the reasons I wanted to do this post today is so I could brag about this picture. Remember on Tuesday how it was crazy warm, about 15C above the normal temps for January? That was the day I had my interview on All in a Day, and on the way home the heavy clouds that had been crowding the sky all day parted and we had this beautiful sunset. A perfect end to a lovely day.

Then a couple of days later, I got an e-mail from — wait for it! — Ian Black of the CBC, saying “sorry I missed you at the studio the other day, next time say hi.” *blush* And then he went on to say he’d noticed this picture and could he have my permission to use it on the evening weathercast on the CBC news!!!! He used it on last night’s broadcast, and when Simon heard him introduce the photo and give me credit, he yelled at the TV “Hey, that’s my MOM’s name!!!” Talk about positive reinforcement!

It’s funny, but even though I’m still taking a picture every day, I’m feeling a whole lot more relaxed about the whole thing. For instance, I’ve taken three days’ worth of pictures to follow this hyacinth as it blooms. I don’t think I would have dedicated three days in the same week to a single subject before.

And man, does my house ever smell terrific right now!

On the other end of nature’s spectrum, this was the view from my office window yesterday afternoon during one of those snow squalls. I used the bricks to frame the picture, but also to give a little perspective as to exactly how blustery it was.

And finally, a picture that is more or less responsible for me deciding to continue on with a daily picture project. I’d had the idea of taking a picture of jacks in my head way back in the beginning of the project, but the boys didn’t actually have any. We got some in a loot bag from a birthday party early in January, but they disappeared before I could include them in my 365. The box reappeared in the days between the end of the 365 and the decision to continue with the daily pictures, and I was happy to finally get the picture I’d (more or less) had in my head all along.

I really enjoyed taking these pictures. I’m glad I decided to continue!

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Beyond 365, erm, 366

DaniGirl — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 19:09:08 +0000

So are you getting tired of the 365 posts yet? I’m pretty sure this will be the last one. Well, kind of.

First, I wanted to share with you the very exciting (for me!) news that I’ll be on All in a Day on CBC Radio One tomorrow afternoon, talking to Alan Neal about the end of the 365 project. You might remember I was on the show back in July with former host Adrian Harewood, when I hit the half way point. On Wednesday, the last day of the project, I was driving around town listening to CBC (as always!) and thinking, “Hmmm, I wonder if it would seem needy of me if I pinged my friends at CBC and said, “So, just by the way, I’m done that 365 project…” but promptly forgot all about it. Until, that is, I opened my e-mail the next morning and there they were, wondering if I wanted to come back and chat about the big finale. So of course I said yes!

I’ll be on tomorrow afternoon, right after the 3:30 news. That also happens to be, I know from my CBC Radio addiction, just after Alan checks in with Ian Black on the weather. Dare I hope to meet both Alan, to whom I’ve been listening since back in the Ottawa Noon days, AND Ian Black? Squeeee!

Ahem, anyway, beyond my schoolgirl crushes on a good number of CBC Radio and TV personalities, I have more news. Well, sort of news.

It took about three days for me to really start missing the daily picture routine. It wasn’t so bad the first day, although Beloved did raise his eyebrows at me when I grabbed the camera on the way out the door on Thursday morning. I shrugged my shoulders and said, “It’s habit, I’d feel naked if I didn’t have it with me.” But in the evenings, between the end of dinner and the beginning of the bedtime routine, I’ve truly felt lost. That was my picture time, where I sorted and processed and posted the picture of the day most days, and that’s when I most keenly missed the project. Go figure.

Not only that, but everything I look at lately seems to be begging to be photographed. The light is coming back, and it’s making the most mundane things seem enticing. I can’t help myself.

So I’m not exactly embarking upon another 365. I figure I’ll call it (because a project needs a name, if for no other reason than I need a place to keep it on the blog!) The Thousand Picture Project. There’s 365 days in a year, so there’s 1095 days in three years. It should take me about three years of daily pix to get to the thousand mark, give or take — and I’m already a third of the way there! If I don’t take a picture every day, that’s okay, and if I take 17 pictures in one day, that gives me more than two weeks of fodder. I think it will work out. I need the project part for inspiration and a reason to haul around my camera, but I’m free of the need to stress over finding a picture — a good picture — on days when there simply is not one to be found.

Best of both worlds, I think. Now, what about you? The 365 blog posts get very few comments, but so many of you have said you’re interested in the process behind the pictures and my commentary on them. Shall I continue with the weekly picture blog posts?

Thanks, always, for your input! (I remember back when I started blogging, the prevalent idealistic advice was to blog as if nobody was listening, and that blogging in a manner which was cognizant of what the readers wanted was seen to be pandering. I think those days are long gone! The Thousand Picture Project, like it’s big brother the 365 Project, are entirely for my own satisfaction — but it’s a pleasure and a delight to be able to share them with you!)

Don’t forget to tune in to CBC Radio tomorrow after the 3:30 news — cuz hey, nothing strokes your ego more than knowing your photography is ideal for radio!!

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