Month: August 2012

This week in pictures: Fog and filters and textures

The nice thing about taking three full weeks of vacation, more or less, is that you manage to work through your mental lists of all the things you have to do AND most of the things you want to do and by the time the third week is puttering to an end, you actually find yourself with some idle time on your hands. I think this week’s photos reflect that — a lot of these were just me playing with the camera and having fun.

I wanted to practice using my flash but none of the kids were in the mood to play model, so I made myself a still life instead, then decided it needed a little extra seasoning with some layers of texture. I like the vintage vibe, except for the Ikea flowers (and now that I think of it, that’s an Ikea tin watering can as well!) Let’s call it big box vintage!

Watering can with flowers

I was also using the flash at one point with these cherries, but I didn’t like the effect. I brought them outside onto the porch and liked the natural light version much better. Baby steps, right? Also enhanced with a bit of texture.

cherries with texture 2

My only portraits this week were of Shauna’s gorgeous family. I don’t know why I’m so lucky in that all of my portrait clients are such sweet, fun people, but the streak continues. I liked so many of the photos from this family portrait session that I couldn’t choose just one for the photo of the day, so I made a storyboard instead. Are they not adorable? And so playful and fun!

Porch portraits with the V family

Willie was not having fun. Willie was trying to nap in a warm corner of my room. I had other ideas.

Cat studies

I headed back to work for a few days this week, and was compensated for the early-morning wake-ups by some amazing foggy mornings during my commute. Here’s three shots taken over two mornings. (Heh, can you believe the middle one was taken through the open passenger window as I waited at the Timmy’s drive-through in Manotick? I’m telling you, there is nowhere that I am not looking around for interesting pictures, even at 6 am waiting for my first coffee!)

Foggy sunrise on the farm

Foggy sunrise_

More foggy mornings

I’ll leave you with this sunny shot.

Flowers in the sun

Does anything say “happy summer” like yellow flowers peeking through a white picket fence on a summer day? Speaking of sunny, stay tuned for what I hope is a week full of sunny shots from the Mayan Riviera. Two days and counting!! 🙂

Call me Senorita DaniGirl

It was an ordinary Friday, the last day before my summer holidays began, and I was just on my way back from lunch and getting ready to sail through my last few hours before three glorious weeks of holiday time when I checked my e-mail. And my jaw dropped open. I may have stopped breathing for as long as a minute as I re-read the e-mail again, and again. And one more time for good measure. And then I blinked a few times. I might have squeaked a bit.

After I shook my head a few times, the words started to sink in. My incredible friends at Fisher-Price and Mom Central Canada have arranged for the #FisherPriceMoms team to go to (are you ready for this?) the Mayan Riviera for four days next week! We’ll be staying at the spectacular (and I do mean SPECTACULAR) Azul Beach House, a gourmet-inclusive resort just a little south of Cancun. (You know, where the HURRICANE passed. YESTERDAY. I feel a little like Garp when he bought the house after the plane hit it. I was worried about hurricane season last week, but not so much now.)

Anyway, I am digressing all over the place and barfing capitals because I am SO! EXCITED! Here’s what’s on the agenda for us next week:

Ambassadors will:
• Meet the Riviera Maya’s preeminent authority on the Mayan culture to learn about family life in Mexico and how meaningful exposure to other world cultures can be for a young child’s social and cognitive development.
• Gain cultural knowledge about how children play the world over.
• Experience the wonderful amenities at this gorgeous hotel property.
• You will also receive a deep dive into the “Joy of Learning” and it’s evolution within Fisher-Price.

How cool is that? The trip is in FOUR DAYS!!! Wait, let me show you the link again so you can gaze admiringly at the sand, the sea and the un-farking-believable beauty of the place: Azul Beach Hotel.

So, clever bloggy peeps, now that I can tell you about this (and oh how I’ve been dying to do so!) I have a bunch of questions for those more experienced in international travel than me. (Oh, the scramble to apply for a passport that expired in 2000 after our honeymoon in Paris! A blog post for another day, indeed.) I’m especially curious about currency. Last time I travelled internationally, we used travellers’ cheques. How quaint is that? Should I bring a wad of Mexican pesoes with me? Or just use my ATM card when I’m there?

Also, tipping – how much and to whom? Since it’s all-inclusive (yet another new experience to me – never been to a resort either!) I assume I have to tip generously and to just about everyone? Is there much point in bringing $US?

Also, international roaming data plans – yes or no? Holy guacamole, I cannot believe how much you pay for so little! I seem to use about 75 to 100 MB of data a month. The best roaming plan for my iPhone is $50 for a month, but that’s only for 10MB. Eep, I can blow that with five photos! I’m thinking a combination of buying wifi at the resort and using the roaming plan for airports, etc but yikes. Any insight there?

Okay, I have dozens of other questions, but I will save them for now. I can’t wait to share more with you soon. Very soon – in FOUR DAYS!!!

Kale Caesar!

Here’s an actual conversation that I would have never in a million years expected to hear around our dinner table.

Beloved, gesturing at salad: “Is there kale in this?”
Me: “No, we didn’t get any in the CSA this week.”
Beloved: “Aw, that’s too bad.”
Me: “I know, but it looks like we get some again next week.”
Beloved: “Yay!”

Funny, for all those jokes about people not signing up for CSA farm boxes beause of the fear of getting nothing but kale, it turns out the kale has been our favourite discovery. Go figure! It’s got a lovely green taste and full texture to it (unlike some more wimpy greens) and you know where it is absolutely delicious? In a caesar salad.

Admittedly, the boys are less fond of it. They love caesar salad and are vaguely resentful of me messing with it, I think, so I mix half kale and half romaine and hope they can’t tell which is which, but they usually can. Beloved and I fight over who gets the picked-out kale bits. Who knew?

I haven’t been doing the bi-weekly blog post about our CSA share from Roots and Shoots farm that I’d planned. Darn summer has been too much fun! But also, there hasn’t been much to blog about because it would just be a series of posts along the lines of “oh, these are mostly just the regular vegetables we always buy (zucchini, onions, peppers, beans, carrots, etc) except covered in dirt because they were picked YESTERDAY and about a zillion times more tasty.”

Aside from some weird turnips whose name escapes me, I have not been intimidated by any of the vegetables in our CSA share. I have, however, learned a few new ways to use old favourites. Have you ever just sliced a zuke in half and grilled it on the BBQ for a couple of minutes? Instant side dish and OMG so yummy! I’ve also started adding zucchini to my fajita vegetable mix of onions and peppers. And the discovery of garlic scapes and kale have revolutionized my summer menu planning.

When we signed up for the CSA, we had the option of a half share (bi-weekly pick-up) or a full share (weekly pick-up). We went with the half share, figuring it was a good way to dip our toes in the CSA water without having too much go to waste. We pick up on alternate Wednesdays and this is the in-between week. I found myself yesterday poking about in the vegetable crisper in the fridge wishing we’d signed up for the weekly share.

CSA share in the fridge

Only a few vegetables have gone to waste before we could figure out what to do with them, including a beautiful batch of beets that I just could not bring myself to roast during that stretch of days when it was 40C+ every day. That and some Swiss chard. I may have learned to love kale in a hurry, but I’m still only tepid on the Swiss chard. Hey, it’s a start, right?

Got a favourite simple summer veggie dish to share? Bonus points if it includes Swiss chard or kale! 😉

Where’s Willie?

I knew the years of dealing with a mischevious teenager pushing limits and boundaries were ahead of me, but I didn’t expect them to come on so quickly. The attitude, the cold stares, the disrespect for rules, the blatant escape attempts… yeah, Willie the cat is turning in to a real handful in his second year of life. At this rate, one wonders if he doesn’t want to see his third.

He’s by most accounts a good cat. He is tolerant of the boys, and seems to genuinely like Tristan. He tolerates the rest of us in a kind of heirarchy, with Beloved and Simon near the top with Tristan, and Lucas and I falling in somewhere after the dog. I think he’d like the dog a lot more if she’d let him cuddle her, but she continues to be surprisingly resistant to that idea.

He’s a nice cat, but he’s not an affectionate cat. He purrs when you pet him, some of the time, but he doesn’t approach you for affection. He sleeps on my bed, or on Tristan’s, but I think in the case of my bed at least, that’s because I have big open windows in my room that let in sunshine during the day and aromatic breezes at night.

Cat studies

Up until a month or two ago, I would have said he’s a good cat, but he seems to have entered a rebel-without-a-catbox phase. He’s taken to pulling his claws on the furniture and jumping up to places he really has no business exploring, expecially because he’s clumsy as well as curious and tends to knock things flying off high shelves. Lucas was delighted the other day to find him perched on top of the front door.

The biggest problem by far, aside from the Delft pottery jar he shattered and the fact that the sofa is starting to look a little bedraggled and the fact that my iPhone charger has teeth marks in it (sigh), is the fact that Willie is now convinced he is an outdoor cat. Every time you open a door, he tries to slip outside. No wonder he doesn’t cuddle with me, the number of times I’ve closed the screen door on him as he’s darted out after I let the dog in our out. (You can almost see their telepathic conversation each time this happens. Dog: “What the hell are you doing?” Cat: “Why do they let YOU out there all the time?” Dog: “Because I come back. You’re evil and constantly try to run away. I’m old and I walk in a slow circle to do my business and then wander back in. They don’t trust you.” Cat: “One day I will find a way to defeat the blasted screen door!”)

Since Willie tries to escape somewhere between three and eight times each day, it’s not surprising that he actually succeeds every now and then. Mostly he gets out the back door onto the brick patio and I collect him with minimal effort. A couple of times, he’s slipped out the front door and I’ve had to crawl under the porch to retrieve him. He doesn’t go out the front door nearly so often since I discovered that a hose is an excellent way to drive him out from under the porch.

But a few times, he’s really gotten away from us. He hasn’t gotten far, but there have been a half a dozen times this summer that someone utters the dreaded phrase — “Have you seen the cat recently?” Some times, he’s hiding in the house, usually under a bed or in a closet somewhere. A few times, we’ve found him exploring the yard. And then there was this past weekend. I was sitting contentedly on the porch early one morning, reading the paper and drinking my coffee (favourite way to start a summer day!) and I don’t know who was more surprised when Willie and I came face to face as he popped out of the garden and on to the porch. He must have slipped out between my legs while I was carrying my coffee out. By the time I got my shoes on (still in my pyjamas, no less) to drag him out from under the porch, he was long gone. It took the best part of an hour to get him back in the house, and no amount of having Tristan walk around the yard shaking a bag of cat treats and calling him would bring him out of hiding.

Willie in B&W

Sigh. I am glad he’s not a biter, and that he’s tolerant of the boys endless affection for him. He doesn’t seem to mind being placed into their pillow forts or being carried like an infant, and he usually comes running when Tristan calls for him. He’s cute and all, and certainly photogenic. Does anybody have any ideas on how I might impress it upon his pistachio-sized brain that he is not an outdoor cat after all? I’d hate to actually look forward to November’s chill to do the job for me.

This week in pictures: In which she embraces the strobe

I like to think I’m pretty comfortable with my camera by now. I know my aperture from my exposure compensation. I know how to take a decent picture of the cat and a flower and a child running full tilt away from the camera. The one thing that continues to intimidate and elude me, however, is how to properly use my flash.

The flash is one of the first accessories we bought to use with my D40, way back in 2009. I think I used it about four times and gave up when it made everything look like a deer caught in headlights. I took a workshop at Henry’s and realized I was supposed to take it off camera, but that my camera wasn’t properly equipped to take advantage of that functionality, so I lost interest again. When I upgraded to the D7000 last year, I figured I’d solved the problem and pulled out the flash again, and even bought myself an umbrella kit. And my flash pictures? Still sucked. I started researching and reading, internalizing concepts like guide numbers and the inverse square law and balancing ambient light.

I ran into a bit of a circular dilemma. Books and magazines and blogposts are good for some theory, but you really just gotta get out there and take the pictures. But when I looked at the pictures, they sucked and I was discouraged. So I started looking around at photographers I admired here in Ottawa, wondering if I could approach someone to do some mentoring, or maybe just sit down with me for a day and walk me through the basics. And that’s when I stumbled across a workshop at Harry Nowell’s studio for on-location portrait lighting. Eureka! This was EXACTLY what I wanted. I was so excited I tried to register on the spot – and found out it had just sold out. I was so disappointed, and equally delighted when a few weeks later Harry said they’d be offering a second workshop in the summer. I’ve been patiently waiting ever since.

The workshop was three days this week, and the instructor was Ottawa photojournalist and wedding photographer Blair Gable. If you ever get the chance to work with Blair, as a client or as a student, do it. He’s a good teacher, probably one of the best I’ve had in various photo classes over the years. But more compelling for me, he specializes in exactly what I love most about photography – people and storytelling. We spent a couple of hours in the class looking at some of his work for Reuters and Macleans, and discussing both how and why he chose to light them they way he did. And then we had to (gasp!) get out of our chairs and actually take some pictures.

This was the first time I worked with a professional model, and it was a lovely change of pace to be photographing someone who was not actively trying to resist me. And I didn’t have to bribe her with Oreos or video games, either. On the other hand, knowing she had probably posed for more than a few photographers who didn’t forget key steps like actually turning on the flash was more than a little intimidating, as was working while being watched by three classmates and the teacher. (Funny, by fluke the class comprised all female students – I’ve never been in a photo class or workshop with just women before!) This is the most successful of a few shots I took during the class. The flash is behind her, providing what was supposed to be gentle rim lighting to separate her from the background but I kind of overcooked it a bit.

Krystal (alternate)

Learning how to balance the ambient light and the flash was one of the major goals I had for the class, so I could make photos like this one I took the next day in during our most excellent Wakefield adventure.

Wakefield

While I got the exposure right (and Simon is awfully cute) I think the overall composition worked better in this one, which is why I ultimately chose it as the photo of the day.

Wakefield

I’ve been thinking about this shot ever since I attended the Joe McNally workshop (also on the use of flashes) a month ago. My dad has such character in his face, with the fur and the lines, and I wanted to use a flash to bring that out in an interesting way. Turns out that’s a lot harder than it looks. My sweet dad sat through probably 50, maybe closer to 100 shots as I moved the flash around, tried shooting through and reflecting out of an umbrella, rolled paper into snoots and even tried diffusing with a piece of tissue. I could not for the life of me get the shot I wanted, and he was so patient with me the whole time. There’s something to be said for still being Daddy’s Girl well into your forties. 🙂

Dad

In addition to being a week of fascinating lessons and flash photography, it was the last of three weeks of vacation for me (well, for now. More on that later.) So we did some fun stuff like visiting the splash pad in Barrhaven to chill out.

Fun at the splash pad

And we made another little day trip (how grateful am I that my boys are good in the car) down to Morrisburg to check out what turned out to be a very boring antique show and a very interesting St Lawrence River shoreline.

"I dare ya!"

A sunflower, because I simply can’t resist them.

Sunny flower

And last but certainly not least, a fun shot from a funny family porch portrait session this week. On one of the hottest days in 2011 I chased this little guy around a park for portraits, and this year it was blessedly cooler when he and his family came out to the porch for photos. He really wasn’t much more interested in standing still for the camera now than he was a year ago, though!

Zombie bubble chaser

(He’s chasing the bubbles that you can just make out over his head. There is something about this posture that I absolutely adore. Three year olds are my muse and my nemesis in equal photographic measure!)

Now I just have to commit to learning to use my flash with the same ease and comfort with which I use natural light. If you see Willie squinting and twitching a lot in the next little while, you’ll know it has less to do with Lucas chasing him all over the house and more to do with being glareblinded by me. 🙂

Dani’s excellent birthday adventure in Wakefield

Yesterday was my (gasp!) 43rd birthday. I was going to write a post about wondering about how I got to be so old, but I don’t really feel that way. The number still freaks me out a bit — it’s a really far stretch from my 30s, where I seem to live in my heart — but I had a really terrific day with my menfolk and so I thought I’d ramble on a bit about that instead.

We had no real plan for the day except to do something when Beloved mentioned a road trip to Wakefield Quebec, somewhere we’ve idly chatted about going several times. There’s a bakery there that had been recommended to him (it’s one of Beloved’s ongoing laments that there’s no decent bakery in Manotick) and I’d wanted to visit the covered bridge for ages. Less than 20 minutes later, we were in the car.

Wakefield, if you don’t know it, is a tiny little community about 20 minutes north of Ottawa on the Quebec side of the Ottawa river. In fact, I called our day trip the three rivers tour, because we followed the Rideau north, crossed the Ottawa, and ended up on the shores of the Gatineau. If you’ve heard of Wakefield, it’s probably either for the Black Sheep Inn, a great spot for live music, or because of this gorgeous covered bridge.

Wakefield

Wakefield

Wakefield

The original bridge burned down in 1984, and the community came together to rebuild it. It was re-opened in 1997. There’s a set of steps down to the river from one side that leads to a set of flat (and as Lucas wetly discovered, very slippery) rocks where you can wade to cut the heat of a muggy summer day.

Wakefield

I’m taking an on-location portrait lighting workshop right now, and I had a homework assignment to complete. (On my birthday! Shameful!) One of my goals in taking this workshop was to master this type of shot, where you use your flash in a fairly bright daylight situation. I had a few very patient models, especially when they were able to take turns being my “voice activated lighting stands.”

Wakefield

Wakefield

This may be my favourite shot of a very photogenic day:

Wakefield

The covered bridge isn’t quite within comfortable walking distance of the heart of the village, especially when you’re wrangling a hungry herd and the skies are growing more threatening by the minute, so we hopped in the car and looped back into town for lunch. Maybe it was because I was hungry myself, but everything looked delicious and on a summer Wednesday at lunch time, we had our choice of places to eat. We settled on Kaffe 1870 because they seemed reasonably kid-friendly, and had a delicious and inexpensive lunch. The light in the front room was also delicious:

Wakefield

And then we just wandered for a bit, in and out of some interesting shops including the bakery and a candy store and the eclectic fun of Jamboree. It’s an incredibly picturesque little village.

Wakefield

Wakefield

Wakefield

The one thing I didn’t get a picture of (hard to do it while you’re driving through looping mountain roads at 90 km/h) is the fact that the trees are already starting to change colour in many places. Can you believe that? It must be the drought this year. I’ve been surprised to see shoots of red in the forest on Labour Day weekend, but I can’t think of a year when I’ve seen fall colour creeping in as early as my birthday. What a crazy year.

I can’t think of a better way to spend my birthday than exploring a beautiful new place with my favourite people, and I can’t believe we’ve never gotten around to visiting Wakefield before. It certainly won’t be long before we go back.