Photo Of The Day.

I do not aspire to be a bird photographer, but yesterday’s photo walk made me see why others do it.

Something that exemplifies freedom:

Something that expresses my view of my world:

Both may look so blue but I am not!

Have a nice day!

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Come Out And Play!

Very rare that I get to spend time just walking around.

My mom relishes it too!

Since it’s Autumn, I rarely see any flowers in bloom anymore. The only colors that I can get inspiration from are these grab handles from the playground:

Life is good!

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Photo Of The Day.

Now that I am in between projects and I am not so busy all the time, I am free to enjoy just hanging around the house and once in a while go out our yard and smell the flowers. Oh, wait, we don’t have any flowers in our yard. Nothing for me to admire at ground level so I have to look upwards for inspiration for my latest photo share:

I have never experienced a full vacation before, other than the one we had at the end of last year where we flew back home to attend a wedding in the family. My work schedule has been so full these couple of years that I have gotten so accustomed to my daily routine of waking up early and working away at my workstation for hours, seven days a week. Now I get to wake up slightly later in the morning and enjoy a more leisurely breakfast than before and get to spend the weekends with family and friends.

Short-lived this might be, but I am relishing it!

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Photo Of The Day: A New Morning.

I was highly stressed out yesterday. I was moving my photography files from my iMac to my Mac Pro when I accidentally did something that resulted in the loss of some of my recently taken photos.

I was using Aperture to handle all the raw data from my camera. When I was attempting to move the library that contained the data, I made a boo-boo and accidentally moved some prematurely from their location and unwittingly overwritten it, resulting in their permanent deletion.

I was heartbroken. It took me until the end of the day to get over it and accept the fact that it was my mistake.

I was feeling much better when I woke up this morning, so much so that I took a short walk just to take pictures of the morning sun. Today’s photo share is not the best sunrise in the world, but I’ll take it:

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Photo Of The Day: Deep In Autumn’s Grasp.

I am in between jobs and this was the first weekend that passed that saw me away from my work station.  It was a surreal feeling not doing any work on a weekend but I am relishing every moment spent being able to relax!

It’s getting more chilly as we are deep in the Autumn season.  The sun may be out but the air is so cold that even walking outdoors for a moment can be a bone-chilling experience!

Here is my photo share for the day, something I took from my sister-in-law’s garden:

This was the best that I could come up with during my brief photo walk this past weekend as some of the photos I took were not good enough.  I am trying to resist tweaking my photos using Photoshop and would rather post photos that were perfect straight out of the camera, something that only needs minimal post processing. That strict criteria of mine leads to a lot of my captures being dragged into the trash bin.

So that’s all for today. I still have a week full of free time so I hope to take more pictures and hopefully improve my photography more. Oh, I have not forgotten animation; if I get inspired I might finally do that long overdue show/demo reel of mine.

Until then, have a nice day!

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Photo Of The Day: Drumheller Revisited

I’ve posted some more photos that I took during our recent trip to Drumheller. I’ve taken this shot before but decided to revisit it and take another one as I was not happy with my earlier attempt:

It continually amazes me how technology makes photography more accessible to common folks like me. Years ago, I could not imagine being able to do this with our old Pentax Film camera. Nowadays, and I don’t have to say this because it is pretty obvious but I still will, I can shoot with impunity without having to worry about bringing the film negatives to the camera store to get them developed as I can do my own processing at home on my computer.

So I will share away:

I do not claim to be in a family of photographers, but here is a shot that might prove that I might be in one:

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Silly Facts From My Youth.

I was preparing breakfast this morning when something from my youth that I remembered made me laugh out loud, which led me to come up with a short list of some of the facts about me when I was still young.

I call this list Silly Things About Me When I Was Still Young.  Sue me.

SILLY THING ABOUT ME WHEN I WAS STILL YOUNG:

1. I was a huge fan of the Six-Million Dollar Man as well as Donny Osmond.  When they announced that there would be a show about the Bionic Boy, I was wishing fervently that Donny Osmond be casted for that boy.
2. I used to tape electric wires on my ankles to make them appear like my legs were bionic and that an area of the skin got torn away and exposed the electronics underneath.  I would cover it with my knee high elementary socks and go to school and show it to anyone I could spin my tale.
3. For the longest time after seeing the first Star Wars movie, I was referring to the light saber as the “Jedi Knife.”
4. For the longest time too, I was rooting for Luke to get Leia.  That was before “Return Of The Jedi”.
5. I was fantasizing about being Brooke Shield’s boyfriend all throughout elementary and high school.
6. I had a short-lived imaginary twin called “Mandy”.
7. I drew comics of Voltes V and Daimos and wrote my own stories with horrible grammar and vocabulary.
8. I would squeeze a big pillow between my legs, tie a rope at one end and run around my room pretending I was riding a horse.

I guess I would end the list there, as these are the ones that readily came to mind this morning.  I still can’t believe how naive and clueless I was during my youth but what can one do?  At least, these are a source of laughter for me for the present.

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Photo Of The Day: This Tiny Li’l Bugger.

My infatuation with my new camera and dinosaurs continues with this one, a capture of the miniature T-Rex that we bought from the gift shop of The Royal Tyrrell Museum:

This supposedly is a souvenir for my Mom, but I doubt it if she would be able to take it from me, not now that the cute little critter is occupying a permanent spot in one of the shelves in my office.

One of these days I will go back to that gift shop and get some more to complete my collection.

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Photo Of The Day: Dinosaur Revisited

I recently had a chance to visit the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller once again this weekend and test drive my new camera in extreme low light conditions. Here is an image that I captured of one of the dinosaurs on exhibit:

This might be the Albertasaurus, a dinosaur so named because it was discovered in Alberta. It might be a close relative of that famed dinosaur of all, the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Forgive my lack of info on this; I was too pre-occupied by my photography that I was not able to stop and read the signs. Maybe next time when I go there without a camera, just so I can take all the information in instead of just gawking.

I love Drumheller and I am glad that I had a chance to bring my Mom, who is with me on vacation here in Calgary, to that fascinating place. Being able to look at actual dinosaur fossils up close has fulfilled a childhood dream of mine and I never get tired of visiting the dinosaur exhibits.

Just a regular adult Calvin, me.

Oh, what the hey, here are several more images:

The big guy with a little friend:

A T-Rex skull:

Another T-Rex skull:

Another thing, the trip to Drumheller gave me a chance to take a photo for a photo assignment requiring something huge. This definitely fits the bill:

Have a nice day!

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Photo Assignments.

One thing I am starting to learn in my quest to become a better photographer is to participate in a number of photo assignments. It forces me to be creative and at the same time helps me learn more about my camera and photography itself.

Here is one photo I took for an assignment that specified to have Coca Cola in it, sort of in a product placement situation:

Now I must admit, this is not the most creative picture in the world, but one thing I liked about it was that it forced me to think. Rather than just taking a photo of the Coke Can on a table, I tried a creative approach, albeit not that amazing.

Taking part in photo assignments also makes me go out and take a picture rather than browse my files for a photo that would fit the requirement of the assignment and it is such a rewarding feeling no matter how good or crappy the outcome of the photo is.

It used to be that I am afraid to post my stuff out there and get comments and criticism, and in fact I ranted about it a number of posts ago, but after getting several comments that were extremely helpful, I became braver and eager to do so. I hope some of you budding photographers do too.

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