Tag Archives: photographs

Panoramas Continued

artwork, Clouds, Coquitlam, hiking, panorama, photography, Port Moody, trees, water, , , , , , , ,

Since my last post about panoramas, I’ve made several more that I really like.  This post I’ll focus (pun intended) 🙂 on ones from my local neighbourhood.  I’ve also made it so you can click on each of the images and see them up close and personal in a new window.  Without being too conceited, I think you’ll enjoy the extra details you can see in the larger versions!  I always do.

First, one I stitched together from 2 photos taken in July from a walk at DeBoughville Slough with J and my sister, in Coquitlam, BC.

DeBoville Slough and Mts
Looking NE up the Pitt River at the Golden Ears Mt massif in the background. Golden Ears Mt is centre-left and Blanshard Needle is is the pointy one almost dead centre.

 

Next, a pano taken in October, from 2 photos taken with my LG5 phone camera on the the Bluffs above Admiralty Point in Belcarra Park, Port Moody, BC.

Belcarra Bluffs pano-1
Looking West down the Burrard Inlet past Vancouver in the distance.

Another October stitch, from 7 photos taken from a hike to the White Rock viewpoint in Coquitlam.  If you look at the centre land features in this one, you can see the same hill and towers and point of land you saw in the previous picture.  This is up higher and a more expansive view.  Vancouver Island way in the distance.

White Rock Viewpoint pano
Looking South and West. You can see city of Vancouver, Burnaby, and Richmond. Also SFU on Burnaby Mt in left mid-ground.

 

Here’s one I made from a 3 photos one cloudy December morning while walking around the inlet. I’m on the North side shooting South. Another set with the LG5.

Looking South from the Shoreline Trail along the Inlet in Port Moody, BC
Clouds and trees and water

Not perfect but it made Explore on Flickr with almost 6 thousand views and that is saying something!

One from Maple Beach on a January hike to Admiralty point.  A stitch of 5 shots.  It was a “dreary” day so black and white was the way to go here.

Sculpture at Maple Beach
Sculpture at Maple Beach in Belcarra Park, a beach on the way to Admiralty Point.

 

Here’s one at the Rocky Point piers in February, looking North towards the mountains.  2 LG photos stitched to make this.

Rocky Pt Inlet and piers
Looking North at the Fannin range with Seymour Mt foremost.

 

Last but not least, 2 panoramas I made a few days ago during a walk around Buntzen Lake.  It was cloudy, the lake was perfectly still and I was, as they say, in the right place at the right time. The first one is a composite of 4 shots.

Buntzen Lake panorama
Looking at part of Eagle Ridge from West shore of Buntzen Lake.

 

This second one is a stitch of 10 photos!  That’s right, 10.  It took a bit of processing time but was totally worth it.  It also made Explore and as of the writing of this post, was about to break 7,000 views!  As you might imagine, I’m very proud of this one.

Buntzen Lake panos
Reflection of the whole of Eagle ridge in Buntzen Lake.

So there you have it, my latest local panorama compositions.  Can’t really call them photos because they are always put together from at least 2 and often more, captures.  Hope you enjoyed the show.

Keep rambling,

Rich

My Taxonomy project: naming things

flowers, hiking, photography, taxonomy, , , , , , , , , , ,

“I believe in the power and mystery of naming things. Language has the capacity to transform our cells, rearrange our learning patterns of behavior, and redirect our thinking. I believe in naming what’s right in front of us because that is often what is most visible.  Eve Ensler

I love to put names on things.  When I was an undergraduate at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry at Syracuse, (more years ago than I care to remember!) I took many many courses that involved using taxonomic keys to find out the common and scientific names of plants, animals, fungi and lots of other organisms.  It was one of the things I most loved doing and when I graduated from ES&F, I asked my parents for a copy of Britton and Brown’s Illustrated Flora.  This was in 2 volumes at that time and I was in heaven when they actually found it and gave it to me.

Over the years I have accumulated naturalist guidebooks for birds, fungi, ferns, lichens, plants, seashore and you name it.  When I see something, I want to know what to call it.  That’s how it becomes part of me and part of my sense of home and belonging.  If I can name you, you’re a friend.  For example, on one of the hikes I go on with my partner, J, we pass this old growth Douglas Fir and it is our favourite tree on that trail.  The last time we went up I asked her, do you think it’s a grandmother or a grandfather.  J, being the practical woman she is said “It’s just a tree.”  Hmm.  I like to honour these older trees when I pass by them and they often seem to have genders to me and since it was Just A Tree, and to me it was obviously a grandmother, I have named it Grandmother JAT. Now it’s also a friend 🙂

So wy did I tell you all this?  Well, I have been taking pictures of plants and animals for years and lately, I decided to go back through all my photos and use Photoshop to create my own attractive taxonomic pages.  Because that helps me to remember what I’ve seen and named and adds to my circle of “friends”.  I thought I’d share them with you in this blog from time to time.  My ultimate plan is to print them out as full size photographic pages and make a scrapbook from them.  There’s no order to them right now, just images I liked with their names and some other details.  Here’s a few of those images.

Alpine Chickweed-1Pink Monkey flower-1Chocolate Lily-1 These are some of the flowers I’ve photographed on hikes in the alpine.  And the feature image at the top is one of the slime moulds I captured, Trichia decipiens, on a hike on Grouse Mt. a few years back.

Hope you enjoyed meeting and making some new friends.

Rich

On Guard – Teeth!

Health, photography, teeth, video, , , , , , , , , ,

It’s becoming a year of body renovations for me.  I’ll share some others in upcoming posts but the latest “improvement” has been to get a mouth guard to prevent me grinding my teeth while I sleep at night.  I had complained to my dentist about my jaw occasionally locking up and not being able to open it enough to eat food or properly chew.  So we decided to see if it was due to my grinding my teeth at night.

Let me interject here, that I REALLY like my dentist.  I’ve gone to him for many years now and he never recommends anything just to make a few more bucks.  So I trust his judgement in our decision to try this nightly guard.

Ok, here’s the really cool stuff.  He and his assistant used their new scanner which takes 6000 images per second to make a 3D image of my teeth and gums.  It took about 20-30 minutes and was painless.  In former times, they used to use some kind of moulding material but he said, when they removed it after it set, especially in cases like mine, where there was a fair amount of gum recession etc, that those parts would break off or not get properly captured.

After I left the office, I thought, “Darn, I never took a picture or video of what the scan showed us.”   I hoped that when I went back to have him fit the guard, he would still have all the pictures etc.  Well, he did!  Lucky you.

Here’s photo of one part of what the scanner captures.  A frontal assault, you could say.

teeth-1
my teeth

Here’s another view of the inside of my upper teeth and palate, which is what the guard protects at night.

teeth-2
tooth topography- an insider’s view

And lastly, here’s a link to a video of him explaining what we’re looking at with all those colours. And what’s really cool is how he can rotate the image in 3D and separate out the top and bottom sections.  I hadn’t ever seen anything like this before and I found it fascinating.

Enjoy ’til next time,

Rich

 

Down from the Mountain art show

artwork, photography, , , , , , , , , ,

Metro Vancouver and the Lower Mainland used to have 2 schools with art programs; Emily Carr university of Art and Design and Capilano Universtiy.  Unfortuately, Capilano has ended one of its long standing art programs, stranding both teachers and students in a bit of a limbo land.  The teachers and students have had 2 “final” art shows to  display works that came out of these programs.  I attended both shows, the last one being called “Down from the Mountain“.

Both were held in local spaces, with DFTM being in a warehouse near my condo.  My partner’s daughter is one of the students who is being “ejected” before finishing her degree in this program.  She is quite a talented young artist and like many other art students, preferred the atmosphere of Capilano U to that of Emily Carr.  Be that as it may, here’s some of the work that I saw at the shows.

These first few pieces are those of my partner’s daughter, RR.  Almost all pieces shown are for sale if not already purchased but please!  This is not an attempt to sell her works for her or the other artists.  Just enjoy the work of these talented people.

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A self portrait of RR.  This is a big piece.  Really had to work to get it in the car when taking it home from the show!!

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The 2 pieces on the left sold at the show 🙂

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The following pieces are by other artists.  Sorry but I don’t have their names.  I could get them for you if you really want to know.

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Below – Abstract of a much larger piece.  There was a lot of textile type art pieces.  And lots that I didn’t take pictures of!

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Below – complete piece.  This was a fairly small one.

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Below – Abstract of larger piece.

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Below – most of the piece.  Just missing out some borders.

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Below- Most of the piece. Missing out some borders

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The head of a body-sized sculpture.  The rest was cloth draped around a scaffolding to resemble a figure.

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Below – Abstract of a much larger piece.

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Below – Another abstract of a larger piece.  Smaller sections worked nicely as photographic images.

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Below – 2 abstracts of the larger charcoal etching that follows.  Because of the large size of the piece, I didn’t even realize it was a house until I took the picture and saw it on my camera display and then house came through loud and clear!  This piece I actually recorded the name and the artist: “How You Enter a Life” by Kazu Matsukura.

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The full image.  It was quite large, also.

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Hope you enjoyed the show.

Rich