Day 334: No need to fret

The usual rainy-day-at-home-goes-by-without-taking-a-picture scenario, so I spent a few minutes trying to recreate some test shots I'd tried while messing about with the small camera. Somehow it all felt like I was trying too hard, and I wasn't particularly enthused by anything I took. This was the only shot that I could say I was happy with, being a fun experiment in shooting with a small aperture (f/22) to get a large depth of field. It was instructive to see how much the depth of field changed from f/8 through f/16 to f/22. By comparison, the aperture on the compact camera only goes as low as f/8, but the small sensor means that it still has a very large depth of field, much larger than the SLR at f/8. But the main reason I took this photo is that I really like this view along the neck of the bass, in which the strings appear to be parallel. They are not, of course, but the angle the strings make is just right to give this impression.

Bass perspective

Day 317: Hangin' out

I don't know when this trend started - it required the invention of shoe laces at least - but many streets seem to have one or more pairs of shoes decorating overhead wires. As we walked out for hot chocolate I couldn't help grab a photo of these wireline companions.

Just' hangin' out

Day 306: In silhouette

Another day goes by with no pictures taken. But yesterday's tour of Ikea saw us bring home a nice new standard lamp, the shade of which made the perfect textured backdrop for a silhouette shot of the headstock of my bass guitar.

Headstock in silhouette

Day 305: Spooky!

A large portion of today's daylight hours was spent within the confines of the giant warehouse that is Ikea in Coquitlam. With less than two hours of the day left, I bestirred myself to pick up the camera and find something to photograph. Our little green nightlight caught my eye. I let it recharge for a while before setting it on the floor, which required that I lie full length behind the camera to take the picture. I turned off the hallway lights, pushed the top of the nightlight and illuminated the area with ghostly green light. I quite like the glowing-green-orb effect. We bought this little fella from Ikea a few years ago, just because we thought it was cute :-)

Spooky spöka

Day 286: Goin' postal

I've had my eye on postboxes for a while, as I really like the fake graffiti-covered look. I don't know the story, but I'm sure that covering the box in postal codes is a great way to stop graffiti artists. Alternatively, it could be that any graffiti (at least of the "tagging" variety) that does end up on the boxes doesn't stand out, effectively nullifying the purpose of the graffiti in the first place. Anyhow, there I was, sipping a perfectly pleasant mug of Earl Grey when I spotted these two postboxes side-by-side. Even better, I was sat next to an open window, so all I had to do was point the camera through the gap, zoom in a bit and take the picture. Once back home I realized the two postboxes were not quite as level as I first thought, and I briefly considered a bit of Photoshop trickery to line them up, but in the end I've posted the picture as-is, cropped a little and the contrast and saturation boosted slightly.

A pair of postboxes

Day 261: Weinachtsmarkt

Last year Maria went to the German Christmas market and enjoyed it, so I decided to go with her this year. Once inside, we avoided the nauseating smell of the melted cheese and wandered round the stalls, admiring all manner of intricate traditional German Christmas ornaments and gifts. In the centre was a small bandstand with a choir and band, loudly belting out a variety of seasonal songs. The PA system had some bad resonances and quite a few of the stallholders were less then impressed at being located so close. As the evening drew to a close, the choir and musicians moved on to the carousel, and spent a few minutes playing and singing while the carousel turned. One trumpeter sat high on his trusty steed while two trombone players took a bench seat, for all the world looking like a pair of musical book-ends. Time to get a long-exposure photo :-)

Musical merry-go-round

Day 260: Signs of things ahead

It's Maria's birthday, and I found nothing inspirational on campus other than these bright orange construction signs. I like orange. Later I foolishly left the camera at home when I went to meet her for dinner, only to find I had a little spare time to take some nice evening shots of the SkyTrain and/or downtown Vancouver. I took a couple with my mobile phone, but they're, uh, not that good. On the other hand, the desserts we bought from Fratelli's were superb (best eclair ever, apparently), and the meal at the Carthage Cafe was pretty damn good too.

Signs of things ahead

Day 212: Making the MOST of every day

On top of the department of Physics and Astronomy is a satellite dish that spends its time pointing straight up in the air. This dish is the downlink station for the MOST satellite, a small suitcased-sized space telescope that is designed to monitor the light output of stars to look for signs of variability. Sometimes this variability is intrinsic to the star, caused by vibrations in the star itself, but sometimes the star's brightness varies because a planet crosses in front of it. Though this was not the primary design goal for MOST, it's certainly proved adept at finding a few such exoplanets. The lead scientist for the project calls it the "Humble Space Telescope" (as opposed to the better-known Hubble :-)

Back to photography, then: I've been waiting for a suitable time to get a good photo of the dish and have been wondering about how to get a better angle on it that simply a silhouetted of a dish looking straight up. But the other day I noticed it slewing around and I ran in to get my camera and get a shot, only to find it was back pointing upwards again once I returned. Today I was lucky as someone decided to move the dish around just as I was unlocking my bike. I already had the long lens on the camera, so all I had to do was point and click.

MOST satellite downlink antenna

Day 204: Mushroom, mushroom

Tonight I took a roundabout route to the bus, looking for something to get a picture of. I passed these bright red mushrooms and snapped a couple of shots, especially as one of them was covered in a crocheted (or knitted) mushroom. I'm not really sure what these even are. :-) But anyway, thanks to a relatively recent introduction to the badger song all I could think of when I saw these two was "Mushroom, mushroom!". Actually I suppose they're toadstools, since they look like the highly poisonous Fly Agaric.

Mushroom, mushroom

Day 126: Red

Today's pic is of a bright red fire hydrant, one of many I cycle past on my way to/from work. A couple of weeks ago the sight of these hydrants gleaming in the sun inspired me to attempt a colour theme as a way to add some purpose to the picture taking. Starting with red, I figured I might as well go through the colours of the rainbow: ROYGBIV. I was taught the mnemonic at school that "Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain" as a way to remember the order of the colours. Funnily enough, tonight we're going to see Shakespeare's Richard III at Bard on the Beach, the very same Richard as in the rainbow ditty.

Way back in 1982 I bought a copy of the Rush album Signals, which has a bright red fire hydrant on the cover. That colour and type of hydrant defined North America to me, so I was a little disappointed (!) when we moved to Maryland in 2000 to find that the local hydrants were painted a now-fading yellow. Rarely do I remember finding red hydrants in the US, but Vancouver is full of them and now they've become part of every day life, to the point where I barely notice them any more.

I stopped at this particular hydrant because it was surrounded by freshly-mown grass and the red-green contrast ensured a bright picture on this dull day. I noticed something white on the top, which I initially thought was a white shoelace. On closer inspection I saw that in fact it was pair of iPod headphones. Somehow the way they were draped made it look like that hydrant was wearing them, so I rearranged them a little to put the earbuds in the right place. Coupled with the kinda face-like profile of the hydrant, now it really looked like it was listening to music :-)

Fire hydrant enjoying some fine music