Photo of the Day: Tulips and towers and a turbulent sky

I had a lot of fun with this image in Lightroom and Photoshop. Not every photo needs serious post-processing, but sometimes it’s fun to push the boundaries a bit and see what happens. I’ve also had fun teaching myself both how to see problem areas I might not have recognized before AND the digital ‘chops’ to know how to correct them.

Parliament through red tulips

When I looked at the detail in the tulips, I saw that the green colour channel was clipped, which means that the colour that is opposite to green on the colour wheel – magenta – was “blown out” and the reds were pretty darn close to blowing out too. In other words, the colour was so intense in the tulip heads that all detail was lost. I tweaked the saturation on just the flower heads a bit, but there is still some detail lost. If I were more patient, I could probably fix it in Photoshop, but it was close enough for me.

Another problem is that despite exposure and saturation tweaks, the tulips were out of gamut. This is one of the real challenges of digital photography and photo processing – the range of colours that your eye can perceive is far greater than what digital equipment like your camera sensor and computer monitor can replicate is far greater than what a printer can render. My camera and computer are set to sRGB colour space, which has a much wider range than CMYK, the colour space that most printers use. I played with it a bit and recovered some of it, but I don’t think this would make a great print without a lot more work – those reds and magentas are just too intense and would likely print as flat blobs of colour.

Finally, the sky was kind of cloudy and grey and it too was on the border of being blown out, so I painted some of that blue back into the sky. There was only a hint of blue in the sky to my eye, but I burned it a bit and added a bit of tint to make the clouds pop. I think the drama in the sky balances out the really intense colour in the foreground, and sort of surrounds the Peace Tower. Then I popped the contrast even more, because I love contrasty photos, especially with lots of mid-tone contrast.

So now the image tells a complete story, from the brilliant tulips in the foreground to the actual subject of the photo, the Peace Tower, in the middle ground, and that turbulent sky in the background.

TMI? Do you like the geeky stuff, or should I just go back to posting the pretty pictures? Be careful what you wish for, I could really go on and on and ON about this stuff! ๐Ÿ˜‰ If you’re curious, feel free to ask questions. We can all learn together!

Edited to add: Good question from Lynn – here’s the unedited version for the sake of comparison. Note the tilted horizon – I cannot for the life of me take a straight picture. I think my eyes are crooked!

SOOC Parliament through red tulips

Photo of the Day: Tulip Time!

As you might (or might not?) have noticed, I’ve fallen out of the habit of posting my weekly photo round-ups. That may or may not be related to the fact that I have fallen out of the habit of taking and posting a new photo every day. I’m feeling inspired again now that the Endless Winter of 2013 has passed, though, and I thought I’d shake things up a bit by posting each day’s photo to the blog in its own post instead of doing the weekly round up.

The tulips are back! Today’s photo is my favourite style of tulip photo, shooting something through the tulips with the flowers in the foreground and in this case, the Library of Parliament in the background. I like how there are tulips in both the fore and middle ground. This is an iPhone shot, tweaked with VSCO presets.

Tulip time!

What do you think? Did you prefer a weekly summary or do you think the daily posts work?

Roadtripping: Crowdsourcing a route from Ottawa to PEI and back

I love that it’s finally May so I can say NEXT MONTH we are going to PEI. *insert happy dance here* It will be late next month, true, but it makes it seem so much more immediate now than it was six months ago when we booked the cottage rental for our first ever trip to Canada’s most lovely province.

I’ve been trying to get a big blog post out with all of our plans, but my busy schedule utter inability to focus on more than a paragraph at a time dictates that I parcel this out into smaller bites. And I am so paralyzed by all the possible route choices to and from PEI that I can’t get past them to think about the actual PEI part!

So, let’s talk about driving to and from PEI, shall we? This is my working route so far, but I would love your input.

I know it’s theoretically possible to drive Ottawa to PEI in one day and have a few friends who have done it. If it were just Beloved and me in the car, I’d do that for sure. The boys, although they are pretty good road-trippers, I think need that little bit of a break, so we’ll push as far as Woodstock, NB on day one, which is 9.5 hours, and then do the final 5.5 hours to the cottage on day two, leaving us plenty of time to explore PEI as we arrive. That part is pretty much locked down, but I am open to your suggestions. We stopped at Grand Sault when we drove out to Nova Scotia a few years ago, but I wanted to push just a little farther down the road for our first day of driving.

It’s the trip home that has me stymied. I hate to backtrack on the best of days, and we love exploring, and the Trans Canada drive is b-o-r-i-n-g, so we thought we’d shake it up by driving back through the United States. This is where you come in. I need your suggestions and advice, especially if you’re familiar with the New Brunswick-Maine-New Hampshire part of the drive.

Currently, if for nothing else than to put a pin in my endless dithering, I’ve got us booked at a place near Berlin, New Hampshire on the last night of the trip, so we drive 10.5 or 11 hours from PEI through NB, across Maine and into New Hampshire on the first day, and then home on the second day. Google Maps suggest I follow the Trans Canada past Fredericton and enter the US at Houlton, Maine but that seems like it’s superhighway all the way. Great for efficiency, lousy for scenic. My instinct is to dip down and go through Saint John. It only seems a difference of a few minutes but looks like a more straight and less super-highway route.

When we drove out to Bar Harbor in 2007, we followed Route 2 the whole way, which is pretty much Main Street of every little town in Maine. We loved it, but it was the opposite of efficient. I was thinking about doing it again, but then feared it might be the equivalent of driving from here to Windsor on Highway 2 so you could avoid the 401 – you could do it in theory, but why on earth would you torture yourself like that? So maybe we’ll pick up the I-95 and follow that around, which is longer but faster because you don’t stop every 10 minutes for a red light or duck crossing. Your thoughts on i-95 versus Route 2 straight across?

I’ve also been agonizing on places to stop in the US on that last night. I seriously considered Bangor, Maine as it is more or less half way. Okay, truth, I actually considered Bangor mostly so we could revisit the stalking of Stephen King. Mea culpla. Bangor’s also nice because we don’t have to haul ass quite so quickly out of PEI and can meander a bit on our way, but it leaves us with hella drive from Bangor to Manotick on the last day. I’ve tentatively settled on staying in New Hampshire largely because the hotel had a nice family suite with a pull-out couch as well as a couple of queen beds, not to mention an outdoor pool and a bouncy caste, and we’ll put the lion’s share of the drive behind us on the first day driving out of PEI, but I’m open to the idea of stopping earlier in Bangor or Augusta or just about anywhere else loosely on the route. Thoughts?

And as if those weren’t enough choices, on the final day I still have to decide whether we follow the Google Maps advice and head home via Montreal, which seems about the equivalent of stabbing a hot poker into your eye, or take the longer way and ramble up through upstate New York and cross at Cornwall. My instinct says avoid Montreal at all costs. Nancy or Angela, you got thoughts on that?

I have a sneaking suspicion that I am making this far harder than it has to be. I love the car and driving but have no particular love for “the slab” as the bikers call it, so I’m amenable to a scenic route – but adding hours on to the trip doesn’t seem fair to the kids.

Any experience here? Would love to hear your favourite routes to PEI and back, or any amazing places you might have stayed anywhere between Lake Champlain and Bar Harbor. Would you stick to the slab or put up with the stop lights on Main Street every couple miles down the highway? And stay tuned for more about planning for PEI, including one 15th anniversary and one 150th anniversary and a whole boatload of Anne of Green Gables!

Catching up – blogging a fun family photo session from last autumn!

I was poking around in the “drafts” folder of my blog and realized I have over a dozen blog posts I’ve started to write over the past six months and never completed. Last autumn was so busy with fun family photo shoots that I plum forgot to share some of them with you.

This particular shoot was one of my favourites from the year, so I’m surprised I forgot to share it. The family were funny, sweet and introduced me to one of my new favourite locations. It was one of the first truly chilly mornings as winter tried to crowd out autumn, but we had a wonderful walk and I loved exploring this location on the Ottawa River.

Fall family photos

Fall family photos

Fall family photos

Pretty in a pink hat

Is she not adorable? They both were. Heck, all four of them were! And so nice! You know how I love taking photos, but I really really love the wonderful people I get to meet along the way.

It’s been a long, cold, snowy winter, but I’m delighted that portrait season is starting to heat up again, even if the weather isn’t exactly doing the same. I’m particularly enjoying specializing in these kind of excursion photo sessions, where we go on a little adventure and have fun shooting photos along the way. Get in touch if you’d like to book a picnic, park, walk or other photo adventure – spots for this summer are already starting to fill up! For more information, you can visit Mothership Photography or feel free to drop me a note any time at danicanada (at) gmail (dot) com. ๐Ÿ™‚

In which she utterly fails to lose a pound in six weeks

I will try very hard not to whine during this blog post, I promise, but I am soooo frustrated that I need some moral support, and maybe some advice.

As you might have noticed, I am really working on healthier living. I cook more than 90 per cent of our meals from scratch and I eat with purpose from whole foods. I’m very cognizant of just about everything I put in my mouth. I try not to eat sugar and I watch carbs in particular, although I have not cut out either one entirely and have no plans to do so. I’m also exercising diligently. I’ve ramped up my gym visits from once a week to twice a week, and for the last few weeks I’ve met my goal of walking 10,000 steps at least four days out of seven. For the last six weeks, I have been trying hard to lose the ten pounds I’ve gained over the last year despite my focus on healthier living overall, and for my daily and near constant efforts, I have lost – nothing. Well, I lost two pounds, gained one, gained two, lost one, lost one, gained two, etc.

I. Am. So. Frustrated.

My feet and knees ache with all the damn walking all the time. I don’t have room in my week for a third workout. I haven’t seen the inside of the elevator at work in a month (I work on the fourth floor) and I’ve switched to a further-away Starbucks. I am trying to eat with moderation instead of deprivation because I know deprivation isn’t sustainable. And if I were making any progress at all, even just a pound every two weeks, I’d at least feel motivated enough to keep working at it. I have to wonder, though, why the hell bother if I’m not getting any results? Pass the chips and dip, please.

You might remember I had great success with losing some weight after Lucas was born. It took me five months, but I went from 192 lbs to 165, and OMFG it was hard. I don’t want to work that hard again, but I also don’t want to lose that much – I’m just aiming for 12 lbs, which I thought was reasonable six weeks ago when I started. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be successful — in a year and a half. :\

I know the equation – consume less calories than you burn. Easy peasy, right? Gah. But when I start counting, I start getting obsessive. And also it’s a boatload of time and effort to measure and count everything, and I start getting anxious about what I’m eating and not eating and deserve to eat and should be eating, and I don’t like that road.

Vintage scale

So while I’m not ready to go back to the commitment of Dr Bishop’s clinic and the rigours of his plan (which I still have, somewhere – I remember it was 1200 calories a day) I’m thinking of maybe Weight Watchers Online. No meetings, I have neither the time nor interest in weekly meetings. But I know some of you have had great success with WW. I’d happily fork over the $60 for three months if I knew I’d be free of that damn 12 pounds at the end of the three months.

Any thoughts?

Guess which blog is featured in Capital Parent Newspaper?

Thanks a million to the amazing Lynn Jatania for writing this very sweet feature on Postcards from the Mothership for the Blogs We Love column in the May 2014 in Capital Parent Newspaper!

Featured in Capital Parent Newspaper

I knew Lynn was writing the feature when she asked me for the photo (truth be told, I took that photo because I didn’t have a recent one to give her!) but I had no idea what she might say. I laughed out loud when I realized she was quoting my rant about the time the detailer refused to clean my filthy car in her feature. Yes, my bloggy peeps, THIS is my legacy. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Lynn is a tireless community builder in Ottawa’s ever-growing online community. In addition to writing for Capital Parent and her own blog Turtlehead (which just celebrated it’s TENTH anniversary!), Lynn is also the brains and the heart behind Blog Out Loud Ottawa. Also? She’s one of the most genuinely lovely people I know.

You can see the online version of the article on the Capital Parent website (page 13!) and you can find paper copies at various locations including the Ottawa Public Library, Shenkman Arts Centre, Boomerang Kids, Dovercourt Recreation Centre, Kanata Recreation Complex, Tiny Hoppers, Fun Haven, and many daycares, arenas, and community centres all across the National Capital Region.

Thanks Lynn and Capital Parent for the kind words! I wish I could express how flattered I am to hear that you say that silly old blog and I make you and others feel good. I can’t imagine a more delightful compliment!