215: Family

My boyfriend, myself, my dad, and his wife on a hike we went on when they were visiting Montreal in July. I felt bad because I said it was just going to be like a steep walk. It was a small hike, but we all enjoyed ourselves and had a great time. Taken with my tripod and my very cool remote!

214: Stupid Biters

As we all know, summer brings fabulous things. Beers on a terrace, lazy weekends hanging out and reading, sunny days, long evenings, and other little luxuries. They also bring silly things like mosquitos and blackflies! So, one got in our apartment, and bit someone (most likely me since they always seem to go for me and not my boyfriend). It was buzzing around, so I smacked it on the wall. Blech

213: Soccer

I apologize for the gap. I tried to fill in yesterday, and Blogger was being unco-operative, so I gave up. I am lazy this morning, so I've decided to skip the weekend.

My apologies


I shot my boyfriend's soccer game again a week or two ago, and have finally gone through and converted and sorted the pictures. Can I just mention how much I love my 4gig compact flash card?!!? I can now shoot RAW to my heart's content! I love it!!!

Minimal PP on this one. Some quick RAW stuff and then a resize and save for web.

So the jungle gym has been a huge hit, for kids and adults alike!

209: Liam III

My friend's adorable little boy! Everytime I see him he's changed so much. It's amazing how fast kids grow up!

I'll see everybody on Monday!

208: Cheers!

Hmmm. One has to wonder if the jungle gym was made for the kids or the adults...

207: Different view

Another view so you can see the slide and everything. you can see the chairs we hauled up on the second level to toast or success building the thing!

206: Climbing Wall

Climbing wall of the jungle gym we made. There is foam padding on top of the two left slats now, as we realized lots of skin would get scraped there if it was left uncovered

205: Jungle Gym

Hmm, I've managed to mess up my numbers again. Back on track (i hope)

Didn't think it could be done, but after a few days, lots of over engineering, lots of power tools (which I got to use, too!!) and lots of grunting and groaning, this rustic jungle gym was built.

It's very solid, and the test runs by my friend's children give it an A-OK!


In case you can't really see, there is a slide, a climbing wall, a hanging rope, a swing, a space for a baby swing, a ladder, and a platform.

Fun Fun Fun!!

203: Rafting

High on finishing the jungle gym, the boys take a ride down the river!

202: Butterfly

This butterfly had a fantastic feast on the flower. Anyone know the name of the butterfly or the flower?

201: Bug

These bugs are all over the place up in the country. They are very nice with their huge antennae. This guy crawled up on my boyfriends knuckles, and had a nice little photo shoot before he decided to fly away.

200: Butterfly of the Night

Did you know you can give a moth red eye?

Picture is flipped since the moth seemed to enjoy the bottom of the edge of my plate.

Couldn't get a nice shot without flash, so this is done with flash

199: Spider

BIG HONKIN' SPIDER

198: Flowers (and spiderwebs)

Pretty flower! Karen or JP, can you help me identify it?

197: Flowers (again)

More flowers. What can I say

196: Lunch Time

If you have kids, I'm sure you've seen this a million times. Watching kids cracks me up, as long as they aren't hurling the food towards you! My friend's toddler feeding himself some healthy veggies (pureed of course!). Be sure and eat your veggies!

195: Cheeeeeze

My friend's adorable kid!! Say cheese everyone!

I know the focus isn't perfect, but he's one of those kids who usually makes a funny face when you ask him to smile, so I said give me a real smile and he gave me this!

194: Look out Below!

I know this happens all the time, but it's still very impressive watching huge pains of glass be hoisted in the air with a crane, cable, and enormous suction cups. It was a blustery day, too. Silly me didn't get the camera out when the glass was blowing in the wind, but you can still see how high it was lifted!

193: Growth

More plants

Thanks to Karen and JP for identifying that cool flower from yesterday! I really appreciate it, and now I know who to turn to if I need flower ids!

192: Untitled

Not sure what these are, but they looked cool!

191: Flora

Look Ma! Bokeh!

190: Fungus III

The last of the fungi!

189: Fungus II

So this one is a bit more colorful than the previous one. We were all convinced that the brighter the colour, the more poisonous they would be

There is a place here where you can take mushrooms and they will identify them for you. I think I may look them up and see if they accept pictures. I'd be curious to know what kind these are

188: Fungus I

So this weekend, my dad and his wife came up to the country with us. We were fortunate to have spectacular weather, and we took a hike to a nice view point yesterday.

Because we've had such a wet spring, we saw a pretty neat assortment of fungi. This 'shroom was the most mundane of the bunch...

187: Lwamunda Eggs

I've been volunteer- ing in a biology lab this summer at McGill, and it's been a lot of fun. The people working in the lab are great fun, incredibly helpful, and I've been learning lots of stuff!

When I decided to go back to school, I was sure I wasn't going to enjoy the lab part. I had visions of those sterile labs with terrible lighting that you see on television, with everyone working in utter silence and never talking to each other. I am (happily) completely wrong! I'm sure those labs exist somewhere, but the one I'm volunteering in is great!

I'm helping a grad student with her research right now. She's studying the effects of oxygen gradients on the breeding habits of fish. This is the oversimplyfied version! I'm weighing each egg from each brood, photographing them, and then using a computer program to measure dimensions and calculate volume. This is one of the photographs I've taken.

Cool stuff!!

186: Flower

A friend of mine planted some climbing vines in the country, and when I last went up, he asked how they were doing. One of the had flowered, so I snapped a shot to preserve in case none of the others flowered.

Here you go, Joel!

185: Another New Friend

I don't know how my grass- hopper friend will get along with this friend though...

184: My New Friend

This is my new friend.

183: Bzzzzzzz

So this buzzer was happy as a clam in all the flowers a friend of ours planted earlier this spring (Thanks Lianne!)

However, I have no idea what it is. It's got a huge probiscis though, the kind that curls. Any idea what this is?

It's also big! Seemed to be almost twice the body length of a honey bee!

It was nice to be back out in the country again. What wasn't nice was that the blackflies are still around since it's been such a soggy spring and summer

182: Hibiscus

More practice flower shots. Not much else to say.

Happy Canada Day!

Going out of town tomorrow. Will be back soon enough

181: Plant

Fun with colours and DOF. A plant in the park I went to yersterday.

180: Practice flower

So techinically, this is an outake, but my one possible entry if my other idea doesn't pan out will not be posted until I decide what I'm going to do.

Just some flowers on a tree in a park near my place. Nothing more, nothing less.

Well, there is a leaf in there.

179: Toadstool

Another one a day late and a dollar short. I actually have an excuse. We had a power outage that was supposedly due to a fallen tree. It was out for about 8 or 9 hours. They said that they needed to cut more trees down and that was the problem. I think they were at the local pub knocking back a few and then they took their sweet time to fix it.

Anyways, during the outage, I went for a walk to take some practice flower shots. I found this little mushroom all by its lonesome self. Had a hard time getting the shot as I couldn't lay in the grass since it was wet. Still, I needed a little frog or fairy or something!

Bonus picture:
You may recognize the cat from my terrible excuse of an 'art' photo a while back. Here (s)he is being a nice cat!

178: Future Pesto

I know, I blew out the sky, but I'm lazy. I'm running out of things to take pictures of, and it was raining when I left the house this morning so I didn't take my camera

Every year, we grow basil in some boxes at our place. My boyfriend uses it in sandwichs, we put it in salads, and then I periodically make pesto with it. I prefer homemade because I find the commercial stuff usually has an unecessary amount of olive oil in it.

To make pesto, all you need is basil, pine nuts, romano and/or parmesan chees, olive oil, and garlic. My secret is I use a whole head (!) of garlic, but I roast it. Cut the top of the garlic head off, drizzle a bit of olive oil, sprinkle some pepper and dried oregono on it, wrap it in foil, and bake for about 30 minutes at about 350 F. Let it cool, and then the garlic will be all nice and buttery-like so you can just squeeze the cloves out.

Anyways, that's all you need for pesto! You can also do fun things like throw in sun dried tomatoes (packed in olive oil - drained, or dried, but re-hydrated), other herbs, or if you want to get really fancy, can replace the basil with things like arugula (rocket for you Brits and Aussies) or flat leaf parsley. The possiblities are endless! Happy cooking!

177: Flower

Another flower from Torrey Pines because I'm highly annoyed with some of the calls that were made during World Cup games today and I think the refs need glasses.

Anyways, I'm annoyed so I don't feel like taking pictures

176: Beverages

So, each case has 24 bottles of beer in it. That means copious amounts of beer was consumed the past few days!! No, I did not drink all that by myself, either!

So an interesting addendum to the term peanut gallery. My boyfriend noted that peanut gallery is actually a segragationist term, where it was the area in a theatre that blacks were made to sit during the days of segregation.

It's interesting how the racial connotation of the term is actually relatively difficult to find. A quick search finds some references to blacks calling the segregated area of the theatre the peanut gallery. However, it seems as though the Howdy Doody show broke the racial connotation of the word.

Thanks to my dad for the help in finding info about that

175: The Peanut Gallery

For those who don't know what the Peanut Gallery is, it was what the audience the Howdy Doody Show was called. Since most of the audience were little kids, they were the peanuts, and thus, the Peanut Gallery. Peanut Gallery also is another name for the nosebleeds, which are the seats that are the farthest and highest away from what ever you are watching. The nosebleeds are due to the high altitude :-)

174: Football, Baby!

None of that silly American football! This is real football! Actually, this is just a picture of a soccer ball on a pitch. Nothing special!

173: Balcony Planting

So I weeded and dug up some slower boxes that we haven't used in a few years. I managed to unearth some little insects that weren't happy I had just dug up their homes. We have no idea what they are, but they just kind of buzzed around while I was planting. They didn't bite, thank goodness, but we wanted to try and get rid of some of them. So, my brilliant boyfriend brought out the shopvac and we vacuumed them up. It took a little bit of practice to not vacuum the plants and vacuum the bugs, but we did get rid of most of them.

I know, we're terrible people for vacuuming bugs! If it's any conselation, when we humans are all gone, the bugs will still be here laughing their little heads of at how they survived and we didn't.

172: Torrey Pines

Torrey Pines State Park in San Diego. I know I should clone out the wire barrier, but I'm to lazy. I discovered the soft light blending mode and I had lots of fun with that!

Torrey Pines are reknowned for there ability to survive under harsh conditions, and this Park and one island off the coast of California are the only places left where these pines grow.

I apologize for not posting this yesterday like I am suppose to.

I will soon resume taking pictures everyday since I'll have the time this summer.

Go Ghana!!!

171: World Cup Fever!!!

Since these are the last games in each group of the World Cup, they play the games simultane- ously. We're lucky enough to have two televisions, and a way to watch both games at the same time. We put the sound on for the one we're most interested in (in this case Sweden/England) but we can watch the other one at the same time.

That is called World Cup Fever, my friend!

I'm sorry Ecuador lost, and Trinidad and Tobago are down 1-0 at the half, but anything can happen. Go Trinidad and Tobago!!

170: Bokeh

This was taken at Torrey Pines State (National?) Park. The out of focus background is (I think) known as the bokeh, and in this particular picture, I think the out of focus flowers mimicing the curl of the main plat add a nice touch. To bad this was taken before the Bokeh challenge at DPC was announced.

That being said, the hard core people who are researching it would probably give this a Does Not Meet Challenge because I don't have little circles in the out of focus background. Well, I sort of do. Oh well

Back to Torrey Pines. Even though I'd grown up in San Diego, I can't remember ever going to the Park. It has some nice walks. They call them hikes, but the one we went on was more of a walk :-) Since it was beginning of summer, lots of flowers were blooming, so I ahd fun shooting them. Thanks to Emily for being so patient while I kept wandering off the path and stopping to get some of the shots. I didn't really wander off the path (I know that's bad), but I did step over the barrier to get that 'perfect' shot.

169: Children

Whoops! I'm so caught up in World Cup fever I forgot to post something yesterday. In return, you get two pictures. These were children on the streets in Baja California. Their mothers were asking for change, and also getting their kids to beg as well. My dad's wife always has some change and a few singles for the children, so I would snap a few shots of the children.

RANT ON

I got berated by some random guy while in Baja. I was taking some candids of the children, and was reviewing the pictures, and a guy came up to me. He said something along the lines of - you're gonna give those kids your taking pictures of some money, RIGHT? I was doing candids, and the kids, once you gave them money, would tend to pose for you which for that particular shot wasn't what I wanted. What bugged me the most about it was his tone. It was incredibly condescending. I understand that a lot of people new to the area/photographing unerpriveleged kids might not know about the unspoken etiquette of giving someone a bit of money in return for taking the picture, but geez, DO IT IN A NICE WAY. I really wanted to slap the guy, but I figured it wasn't in my best interest to do so. And anyways, if he'd bother to open his eyes, he would have seen that someone in my group WAS giving the kids money as he was berating me.
And FWIW I do know that giving a little bit of money to kids/homeless people/street muscians, etc. in exchange for taking their picture is common practice. Sheesh, I felt bad for taking a picture of some buskers once when all I had on me has a big bill. I still look for them so I can drop them so change next time I see them. I just found his tone so presumptuous and superior, it really irked me. Maybe next time I'll take his picture and give him some change.

RANT OFF

It's amazing how much those of us in first world countries take everything we have for granted.

167: Turtles!!

Taken at the mercado in Rosarito in Baja California. Very sad that Cote d'Ivoire lost in World Cup today. What a game though! Very exciting, and it looked like the Dutch were on a roll, but les Elephants came back with a vengeance. Oh well, this is the excitement of World Cup!

166: HUGE Crab!

While on the southwest side of the island, we went diving. On the second dive, our divemaster showed us an undercave where there were lots of HUGE crabs camping out under there. My boyfriend took this shot, but the crabs sure looked like they would have made a yummy dinner!

165: Dive Bomb!

Some pelicans just outside of San Juan. There was a nice beach, but I made my boyfriend stop when I saw the pelicans. Bonus was that they were feeding as well so I got some great dive bomb shots!

164: Sunset

Sunset from one of the forts in old San Juan

163: Cabo San Rojo

Cabo San Rojo lighthouse. I experimen- ted a bit in photoshop with this picture to give it a slightly darker feel and really try and bring out the textures in the ground and the clouds. Hope you like it!