Month: January 2013

This week in pictures: Vignettes and cats and a nomination!

Oops, I’m late posting this! What a week it’s been!! (A post for another day…)

Ahem, anyway…. I haven’t been carrying my Nikon around with me this week. I’ve mostly been using my iPhone for pictures. After the Instagram debacle, I considered deleting my account, but decided instead to keep it and simply delete any photos that are important to me after sharing them. I’ve also been using the Flickr mobile app a lot more – it’s vastly improved over the previous version, although I find the editing and filters still a little clunky compared to most iPhone editing apps I use.

One of my friends on Flickr called this a vignette and I thought that was a perfect description for most of the photos I took this week: vignettes of winter.

Lock bits in the snow

Rays

I was actually taking a different picture when I noticed how the shadow of the barbed wire fence played on the snow. Lucky find!

Sun and shadow on snow

Yanno, I may have taken dozens of photos of Watson’s Mill – but I don’t think I’ve taken one with my iPhone yet. Done!

Winter morning at the Mill in #Manotick

Looking for something a little more urban? I like how you can see the Peace Tower and Parliament Buildings reflected in Ottawa’s giant mirror ball (the downtown Convention Centre):

Ottawa's giant mirror-ball

When you run out of snowy vignettes, there’s always the old low-hanging-fruit for a photo of the day: cat photo!

Willie up close

And finally, the only photo I took with my Nikon this week. Usually it’s Willie tolerating Lucas’s affection, but in this case Lucas was at the end of his patience and begged me to take the cat out of the bathroom so he could have his bath in peace.

Whatcha doin'?

And hey, how cool is this? You know I’ve long been a fan of the Ninjamatics Canadian Weblog Awards because they’re one of the few contests out there that are 100% juried. That means that making it through the first round of screening to be on the short list is based on merit (however subjective that merit might be) instead of popularity or figuring out a way to game the system. That’s why I’m especially proud that this blog has been named a finalist in the Art and Photography category.

2012 Canadian Weblog Awards nominee

Thank you for the nomination, and thank you for letting me talk endlessly here about the things I love so much! There’s some bloggy gold over on the Canadian Weblog Awards list of finalists – you should check them out!

A fun project for an excellent cause

I am so excited about this!

Last week, I read on Harry Nowell’s blog that he is putting together a celebrity photo contest in support of the Ottawa Food Bank. The celebrities won’t be IN the photos, however; they’ll be TAKING the photos, on the theme of “Why I love Ottawa/Gatineau.” The photos will be auctioned off and all proceeds will go to the Ottawa Food Bank. Wonderful idea, eh?

Here’s the list of Ottawa media and celebrity participants:

Sandy Sharkey (co-host, Cub and Company, 839 BOB FM)
Stuntman Stu (Majic 100 Radio Host)
Jim Watson (Ottawa Mayor)
David Chernushenko (Ottawa City Councillor)
Peter Simpson (Arts-editor-at-large for The Ottawa Citizen)
Graham Richardson (CTV News Anchor)
Alan Neal (Host of All In A Day, CBC Radio One)
Ian Black (Climatologist, CBC News Ottawa)
Sarah Brown (Ottawa Magazine Editor)
Jane Corbett (Ottawa Magazine Art Director)
Trevor Greenway (reporter – Low Down to Hull and Back News)
Andrea Tomkins (Blogger)
Peter Tilley (Executive Director – Ottawa Food Bank)

And – me!!!!!

Harry opened the contest to two members of the non-media, non-celebrity public, and I am one of the lucky two! How fun is that? The other is Allison Burnett, who is getting her whole digital marketing class to participate. Doesn’t this just keep getting better and better?

And so if Allison can rally her students, I think it’s totally fair that I rally the bloggy peeps for inspiration. I need your ideas, Ottawa lovers! If you could choose one idea, one subject, one place or one theme that best exemplifies why YOU love Ottawa, what would it be? Would you go for the iconic shot? The Peace Tower, the Canal, the Market? I might have taken a shot or two of the Parliament Buildings in my time!

Pretty Parliament

Okay, so we’re taking photos in the next two weeks, so tulips are out, but how about this for an iconic Ottawa shot?

21:365 Winterlude on the Rideau Canal

That’s the ultimate Ottawa postcard, right? But what about something a little further afield – Little Italy, Elgin Street, the Market, Dow’s Lake?

276:365 Dow's Lake

Ontario, Canada

There’s so much more to Ottawa, though. Landsdowne Park, the Experimental Farm, and Mooney’s Bay. Centretown, Hintonburg, the Glebe, Westboro, not to mention the outlying suburbs, everything from Cumberland to Carp (to Manotick!) and all stations in between. And the other side of the river, too – those gorgeous Gatineau mountains full of snowy trails? Or something more subtle? Maybe even something rural, as we actually have more rural than urban land within the city boundaries.

Sunset on the tracks

Or a completely different perspective?

105:365 Home!

What about a portrait of someone? Who would represent Ottawa to you? Or what about a concept, like national pride or healthy living or family? You can see the problem here, right? The picture-taking is the easy part, it’s the choosing the subject that’s going to keep me up nights trying to decide!!

Help me focus (ha, I slay me!), bloggy peeps! If you could take a photo (or suggest a place or a theme) that best captures your love for Ottawa, how would you do it?

On Canadians and space and cheeky geekery

I have always been a bit of a space geek. When I was a kid, I read every single book on astronomy in the public library, and I’ve always been fascinated by space and cosmology. I think I like cosmology (the history of the universe) because it means reading books in warm, bright places instead of standing out looking at the stars on cold, blustery nights!

My endless appetite for space and Canadianisms intersect in the current mission of Commander Chris Hadfield, whom I’m sure you’ve heard is currently aboard the International Space Station. The boys and I watched the Soyus rocket launch on December 19 together, and the boys loved the idea that a Canadian was aboard. He will in fact be the commander of the international mission on the ISS starting (if I remember correctly) in March.

I’ve been following @Cmdr_Hadfield on Twitter for a while, partly because he has some fasinating insight and I kind of want his job, and partly because he’s pretty darn funny. Last week, he was a part of what may be my favourite Twitter exchange ever. William Shatner, known of course the world over as Captain Kirk, sent what seems to be a random tweet to Commander Hadfield:

@Cmdr_Hadfield Are you tweeting from space? MBB

The reply still makes me smile. I can’t help but hope this was a flip reply and not something scripted by PR flacks deep in the bowels of NASA. (I’m actually not sure anyone but an astronaut could be so utterly cool.) Commander Hatfield tweeted back:

@WilliamShatner Yes, Standard Orbit, Captain. And we’re detecting signs of life on the surface.

How awesome is that? The next day there was another exchange, this one with @therealNimoy, where they traded LLAPs (that’s, of course, “live long and prosper.”) Geek overload!

And if you’re not a Star Trek junkie or particularly interested in what it’s like to live in orbit (but seriously, how could you NOT be?!), you should still follow @Cmdr_Hadfield for his amazing space pictures of our beautiful planet, like this gorgeous shot of snowy Ottawa tweeted on December 30:

So let’s review: astronomy plus Canadian plus social media plus photography plus cheeky geekery. Seriously, that’s all my favourite things!!

Did you know you can sign up for text or e-mail alerts from NASA to let you know when the ISS will be flying overhead? I’ve dragged the boys out a few times when a fly-past was in the news, but we’ll be especially keen to go out and watch for one now that we’re so engaged with the current mission. Check out NASA’s Spot the Station site to sign up! When I get any updates for passes visible from Ottawa, I’ll post them on my bloggy facebook page.

Commander Hadfield is actually interacting with people, too, answering questions about what life is like on the ISS. If you could ask a question to a Canadian astronaut in orbit, what would you want to know?

Reinvention 2013, and a new gizmo

I have never been a fan of new year’s resolutions, but I am a sucker for a seasonal re-adjustment and reinvention. Something about January begs for a little bit of belt-tightening and clean living after the excesses and chaos of the holiday season.

You might remember back in 2008, just after Lucas was born, over the course of about six months I managed to lose just over 30 lbs. I felt (and looked!) great, and I more or less managed to keep it off, but there’s been a bit of a weight creep going on for the last year or two. I’d like to lose about 10 lbs to get back to my ideal weight, or 15 lbs to get back to the lowest I achieved in 2009.

Even moreso, I’ve been getting a little too sedentary lately for my own liking. I’m a lazy creature to begin with, and one of my favourite ways to spend hours at a stretch involves me staring slack-jawed and motionless at a monitor while only my fingertips exert themselves. I need some sort of motivation to get up and get moving.

And finally, I’ve been seeing a phystiotherapist for the last few months for what I thought was a flare-up of my years-old knee problem. I love love love my new physiotherapist, though, because she’s shown me that the patello-femoral syndrome that’s been bothering me is actually a symptom of a larger problem with my hips and how I’m walking, and so I’ve been working on readjusting that, too.

My mind was swirling with this perfect storm of the desire for physical reinvention when I read Julie’s post last week about her own new year resolution to take 8,000 to 10,000 steps each day. I loved the idea – I’ve long known walking is an excellent form of exercise, and a perfect one for my lifestyle – and she had (gasp!) a gadget. Okay, it’s actually a pedometer, but it is the most fun and interesting pedometer I’ve ever seen. It’s called a FitBit and it uploads your daily steps, distance and calories burned wirelessly not just to your computer but to your iPhone as well. You can also record your food intake, something I know helped me lose the 30+ lbs in 2008.

Walking + motivation + accountability + gadgetry = perfect solution for me!!

Untitled

I’m in geeky heaven. I love stats and graphs and counting things, I really do. I got it this afternoon, and for the next day or two I’m just going to measure how many steps I take in an average day. I am guessing that will be around 6,000. If I can boost that up to 8,000, I’ll be burning around 300 extra calories a day, which will stop the pounds from creeping on. By boosting another 300 calories up to 10,000 steps a day, I should be able to carve off a pound or so each week, which means I’ll be back to my target weight for spring(ish).

Seems do-able, yes? That, and I want to do a better job getting more fruits and veg into my own diet and that of the boys. And pay down some of our debt. And swear less. And do a better job keeping on top of the household chores. And do a better job fitting in my daily exercises and stretches for physio. And be more mindful of the present, instead of spending so much time stuck to a device. And get back into my bloggy grove a little bit more. And I think I’m doing another 365 project.

Gee, it’s a good thing I don’t make any new year’s resolutions, isn’t it? *eyeball roll*

Anybody want to play along? What are you resolving (or not resolving) to do in 2013?

This week in pictures: Snow, snow and more snow

We’ve received so much snow in the past couple of weeks that it’s hard to believe we had none on the ground in mid-December. We’ve had a lot of fun getting out and playing in it this week!

A few of you have been by to see how well the front yard works as a photo studio in the summer, but did you know during the winter months it moonlights as a toboggan hill? (I love my semi-rural life only a wee bit more than I love my w-i-d-e angle lens that stretches and distorts things, making close seem closer and far seem further.)

Front yard sledding-2

I drive by these snowy trees almost every day and I finally stopped one day to try to capture the interesting contrast of white snow on dark branches that kept catching my eye. Apparently I did not learn my lesson last week, but was at least smart lucky enough to not get stuck this time.

Wintry road

We also had a lot of fun outside building snowmen during our winter break. I picked up a snowman “kit” on sale at the grocery store and I gotta tell you, it’s paid for itself in fun already. I shared one photo in my how to add snow in Photoshop post, but here’s the full series:

Snowman fun

Snowman fun-2

Snowman fun-3

Snowman portrait

Snowman fun-5

(I love how the snowman has a smile that seems to turn into a frown in the one where Lucas is staring him down! And you’ll see the perils of adding snow to your photos in post production – you kind of have to be willing to commit for the full series!)

And, while we were on our snowman kick, we made a mini-one too! He has peppercorns for eyes, mouth and buttons, in case you were wondering. 🙂

Mini-snowman-2

After all that snowman building, this is kind of how I felt: “Ever have one of those days when you’re just riding on fumes?”

You know those days you feel like you're running on fumes? Ya, me neither.

Last but certainly not least, this week of course included new year’s day. I took a shot last year that we decided to carry on as an annual tradition. Here’s the 2012 shot:

Happy 2012!

And here’s the 2013 shot.

Hello 2-0-1-3!

Lots of changes in just one year, eh?

Happy new year to all of you, and may 2013 be a joyful year full of beauty and fun for everyone!

Photo tricks – Adding snow with Photoshop

Here’s something new I’ve been thinking about sharing on the blog – more sophisticated tips and tutorials for photography. This is a fun little trick I learned this year and I thought I’d share it with you. Want to make a fun winter photo even more wintry-looking? Add a little snow with Photoshop!

First, you need Photoshop Elements or just about any version of Photoshop. I love Lightroom for most editing purposes, but when it comes to cloning out unwanted bits or playing with layers, nothing beats Photoshop! Second, you also need to download these fun (and free!) snow textures from Florabella.

Open your photo and one of the snow texture files and drag the snow on top of your original photo. This is the important part: make sure you set the blending mode to SCREEN and not overlay. I think it’s the inclusion of the word ‘overlay’ in the title that keeps messing me up here, and it took me forever to figure out why I couldn’t get these to work. SCREEN blending mode!

Adjust the opacity to taste. I also like to add a layer mask at a low opacity and randomly lighten spots, especially over key detail areas. For this image, first I duplicated the background layer and set the blending mode to multiply to punch up the contrast, and then I added the snow layer.

Here’s the original:

Nosnow

Here’s the version I took in the blizzard:

Snowman fun-2

What do you think? Would you have guessed the snow was added in post production?

Our favourite kid books of 2012

Before I became a parent myself, I’d have been surprised to know that I’d still be reading aloud to the kids as they enter the double-digit years. The big boys will turn 9 and 11 this winter, and they still insist on nightly reading time. Beloved and I take turns reading to two big or one little boy, and Tristan will often turn on his bedside lamp and read to himself for another half hour or more after that. (Simon, much like his mother, is usually snoring by then.)

I wasn’t quite as diligent in tracking the books we read together on Goodreads.com as I was in tracking my own reading material, but I thought I’d share a quick list of the best books we read in 2012. It’s been fun indoctrinating them with some of my favourites and taking the chance to read some books I managed to miss in my own youth, voracious reader that I was.

The year was definitely dominated by fantasy. Here’s what I read out loud to Tristan and Simon in 2012, in more-or-less chronological order:

The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien (*must* get to the movie!)
A Wrinkle in Time – Madeleine L’Engle
A Wind in the Door – Madeleine L’Engle (I liked Wrinkle better, but it was great to finally read these!)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire – JK Rowling (we’ve been working our way through the HP series for a couple of years now. Not sure if I’m ready to move on to Order of the Phoenix just yet. The books at the end of the series are so long it takes us months to read!)
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang – Mordechai Richler (the boys knew the cartoon but I thought they should get the original straight from the source. Also, I heart Mordechai Richler.)
When Santa Fell to Earth – Cornelia Funke (Beloved recommended this one and we really enjoyed it! Add it to your Goodreads wanted list for next Christmas.)
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Dinosaur – Mordechai Richler (still reading this – very different from Hooded Fang, with a lot more satire that goes over the boys’ heads, but I’ve been trying to point it out to them and discuss why he uses satire and how.)

When I look at the list it seems kind of short but I suppose it’s only half a year of reading since Beloved and I take turns. One of these days I’ll ask Beloved if he remembers what he read to them, because it was a completely separate list. I know they went through a lot of Rick Riordan.

I love that the boys clamour to go to the library for fresh books on a regular basis. On their own, they read a pretty good spectrum of material. Simon loves those Guiness Book of Records books (don’t all eight year old boys?) and chapter books like the Wimpy Kid and Bad Kitty series. Tristan still reads Pokemon and is much more in to graphic novels and comic books now, but surprised me by asking to read the Hunger Games trilogy. He’s on the second book of that series, but only picks it up now and then. I love that he’s also working his way through Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes collections!

124:365 Reading

Here’s my number-one kid book recommendation for you from 2012, but it’s for a much younger audience. It was Beloved who stumbled across a Mr Putter and Tabby book at the library, and we have been reading them to Lucas through the year. It is, without doubt, the sweetest kid book series we have come across, and I could (and did!) read each of them out loud night after night without having them lose their charm. Here’s a full list of all the titles in Cynthia Rylant’s Mr Putter and Tabby books from Amazon.

What were the best kid books consumed at your house last year? We need to populate our 2013 wish list!

I was delighted to see that Julie and Kamerine played along by blogging their bookly habits of 2012, so let me know if you blog your kid book faves and I’ll post a link here, too!