Several photographers were excited about this Green Heron, at Piper Spit at Burnaby Lake, in Burnaby, BC, today.
Wood ducks are gorgeous — males so flamboyant, females pretty, both sexes shy. Here’s one from Piper Spit at Burnaby Lake today. I had an errand to run in north Burnaby, so I brought the camera along for a stop at the lake on the way home.
Take Lots of Photos
Shoot shoot shoot. You learn by doing, so do.
Take photos from different angles, try different exposures, move closer up, move farther away. Experiment with faster and slower shutter speeds, and larger and smaller apertures. Try some at wide angle, try some at telephoto. Try some with flash, some without. Try fill-in flash.
If you don’t want to lug a DSLR around all the time, carry a pocket camera and take photos here, there, and everywhere. Practice gets you closer to perfect.
In the old days of film, every shot cost. Cost for film, cost for developing, cost for printing. The first two costs are now minimal, though you can still spend a lot on printing.
With digital, you can take thousands of photos for less than a penny to at most two or three cents per shot – and those pennies are reusable.
Examples of card prices taken from the NCIX website today:
32GB MicroSDHC Class 10 C$15.99
64GB MicroSDHC Class 10 C$28.99
On a 24-megapixel camera set to RAW + JPEG, 32GB gets you over 700 shots. So fire away, and then delete and edit later.
This is not to say that you should mindlessly bang away on your shutter button. You should still compose and expose each photo as best you can, just don’t be reticent about taking lots of different views with different settings.
I’m a bit leery about buying off-brand batteries. Sometimes they work well, sometimes they’re junk. But with a replacement Canon NB-9L battery running 74.99, yikes! That’s nearly half the price of buying a new mid-range Canon Elph camera!
So I think I’ll take my chances with a no-name equivalent battery for, get this, $7.83. For that price, it’s certainly worth trying.
I attended a one-day streamkeeper training course in North Vancouver hosted by the Pacific Streamkeepers Federation. We covered modules 2, 3, and 4 from the Streamkeepers Handbook.
I figured it was about time I had a refresher, since it must be around ten years ago that I originally took the training.
It was a lovely, sunny day, and a great group of people.
You can check out some photos I took in this Flickr album.
A couple of years back I installed a dual-flush toilet in our basement bathroom, and it’s worked well. So recently we began keeping an eye out for dual-flushers on sale, and spotted a model that we liked at Lowes on sale from $269 to $169. We bought two, for the upstairs bathrooms.
Today I installed one, and by the time I was done, I was soaked with sweat. It’s not that hot, but it must be humid, because by the third trip up/down the stairs from the garage to the top floor, I was dripping. Disconnected, disassembled and hauled down an old toilet, and carried up, assembled and connected a new one.
Thought one was enough for today, as I have to be careful with my fused back. Do the other one later in the week.
Caught two sockeye on the Fraser River today – the recreational daily limit. Large one just over 7-1/2 pounds, smaller one about a pound less. Cut the bigger one into two “roasts” and a couple of fillets, and the smaller one into cross-cut, bone-on-center, inch-thick steakettes for salting and freezing for Japanese-style broiled breakfast pieces. Thank you sockeye for your sustenance.
And thanks to my cousin who invited me out in his boat, rigged me up properly, and taught me how to bottom bounce for sockeye!
Our Shaw home phone VOIP system died in mid-conversation this evening. Just cut out in mid-call, and all of the phones connected to it had no dial tone. My Shaw business phone on a separate box was fine, as was our Internet connection. So I figured it had to be something with the home phone modem.
I did the unplug-the-power-pull-the-battery routine twice, to no effect. I did a system reset twice, to no effect.
I plugged a phone directly into the box, and got a dial tone. Hmm.
I unplugged all our phones and plugged them all back in again. And just as weirdly as the problem arose, it disappeared.
I’m happy that I “fixed” the problem, but I’m unhappy because I don’t know what it was that fixed the problem.
Yep, since I stopped posting to my old blog, and started this new blog on July 5, 2014, every single “comment” has been spam.
That’s why I never had comments open on my old blog on an aging software architecture.
So what the heck is the purpose of comments, if they are ALL spam?
UPDATE: August 25, 2014. I have turned off comments on all previous posts on this blog.
Good deed of the day accomplished. While we were checking out lighting stores in Richmond BC, Yumi spotted a seagull that appeared to have a broken wing. We observed it for a few minutes, and it was definitely dragging its right wing, and when approached, stayed on the ground.
I called the Wildlife Rescue Association in Burnaby, and described the situation. They said it would be great if we could get it into a box and bring it in.
I grabbed a pair of work gloves and an old towel from the trunk of the car, and kept an eye on it, making sure it didn’t stray onto busy Bridgeport Rd. while Yumi went in search of a box. Yumi was back in a few minutes and after a short chase and trapping pincer movement, it scooted into the box and we had it secured.
We drove directly to the WRA, getting there in about half an hour, and deposited the patient. We kept the box covered with the towel to keep it dark and relatively quiet, and the gull made the trip with little noise.
Hope it makes it.
We were so focused on the rescue that I forgot to take any photos!
UPDATE: Aug. 20. I’m sad to report that I contacted the WRA today to check on the gull, and it had to be euthanized. Apparently the humerus was beyond repair. Sad to hear, but at least it didn’t have a potentially long, suffering death.
Lauren and Boggie. That’s what most of us remember. But recollections of them together are framed by where we saw them on the big screen. And that brings back memories. . .
I think the first place I saw this movie aside from small-screen TV may have been an old theater In Takadanobaba, Tokyo.
Back in the 1980s Takadanobaba was a haven for students, local and foreign. Cheap dorms, cheap cafes, cheap bars and a dingy, cheap movie theater that ran amazing series of foreign films. The theater is likely long gone by now.
Oh, gosh, my mind is tickling at the answer, but it’s not quite there.
“Waseda Shochiku”? Something like that. Anyway…
I’d walk by the theater every few weeks and sign up for series of Bunuel and other Euro masters. Saw a lot of stuff in many languages that I didn’t understand, but the lighting, the photography, the acting remains in my mind to this day.
it was a perfect place to watch Sam play it again.
Hot damn, a Google search says it’s still alive? Hard to comprehend, but wonderful.