Forte Knox update

As expected, our beloved Great Dane, ‘Knox’ has been growing both in size and maturity. He’s too big now for me to weigh him at home, so I’ll have to take him around to the vet and plunk him on the scales there. I suspect he’s in the high 50′s to low 60′s kg range. He stands at the same height as Jon which means his head is just above kitchen bench-top level.

This brings me to my next point, that behaviorally he’s being much more adult-like now, and even though he could help himself to anything in the kitchen (and would have six months ago), he’s now much more reserved and limits himself to just having a sniff of the dirty dishes in the sink.

At 15 months now I suspect Knox still has around 6-8 months left of growing.

I’m still here…

Wow,  the year has really gotten away from me. I can’t believe its almost October already and I have hardly contributed anything to this blog during 2011. This is partly due to work keeping me exceptionally busy and partly due to me being a terrible blogger. Since discovering my new found interest in time lapse photography (check out the ‘Photography’ section for videos), I have unfortunately rendered my digital timer ‘intervoltometer’ useless and there will be no more time lapse videos until I can get my hands on a new one.

In other news, I got a new Sigma 30mm wide angle lens. At wide open, this gem gets to f 1.4 and has proved itself fantastic at low light and night photography. The lens can be stepped to as much a f 16 to get a wider depth of field if needed and with a fast enough shutter speed still be useful in full day light.

This shot of Matt was taken just after midnight. There was an ‘almost’ full moon but the lens still got the magnitude 2-3 stars of Ursa Major in the cloudy sky at a relatively low ISO of 800.

I also have been dabbling with High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography using the exposure bracketing function on the D90. It’s a steep learning curve to bring out the details without giving the image an over-processed look.

This is definitely one of my favorite HDR images that I’ve done so far. This is of a warehouse in Port Williams Nova Scotia. The blue paint and the warm colours of the stacked parcels inside provide a nice opposite colour relationship to lead your eye inside. The HDR processing has given the distant timber framing inside the warehouse an almost oil painting appearance.

Be sure to check out the ‘Photography’ section for some for more HDR images; and hopefully some more time lapse movies once I get a new digital timer.

Happy New Year MMXI

In addition to being New Year’s Eve yesterday; Knox turned six months old (if my math is correct). So what does a six month old great dane puppie look like? Well I got Jane to smap a photo this morning. It’s pretty crazy to compare to the photo pf him when he was six weeks old. It’s easy to forget that he’s still a rambucious puppy, because he’s so big. If you’re into stats, he’s about 44kg now (I say “about” because he’s too heavy to weigh on the bathroom scales with me holding him now), he’ll grow until he’s two years old to weight of around 80kg (more than me).

Happy bi-annual birhday Knox.

 

Time Lapse Mania

I’ve always been interesed in time laspe photography; every one has seen mold growing on swiftly rotting fruit, or an unraveling flower blooming, or puffy clouds brewing into a storm. Shortly after Jane got her DSLR, I picked up a ‘intervoltometer’ on eBay, which allows one to shoot these kind of image sequences. Then it took me around six months to find the initiative (and time) to actually go out and start my first time lapse. Now that I’ve done one, and have figured out the most of the mechanics of shooting the sequence and the back-end  processing, you can expect a steady strem of time lapse mini movies coming your way! Because there will likely be many of these, I’ve added a dedicated “Photography” page to this Blog site where I will post links to my time lapse projects. Be sure to check it once in a while for updates.

Jon Turns π!

Wow, it’s been a while since my last post (a lot longer than I thought). Anyways, I thought I’d share that Jon was exactly 3.14159… (π) years old today.

So how do you celebrate turning π? Well with a ‘pi party’ of course! Jon helped bake the pies for dinner and helped make the ‘pi cake’ as well. They say: “Pie are square and cakes are round!” We even had 3.14 candles to mark the occasion. Nerdy? oh yeah, you bet! …but any excuse to have chocolate mud cake is a good one (make that chocolate mud π).

Hopefully I haven’t scarred the poor child for life!

Fridge Personality

I randomly stumbled across this site that profiles your personality from you sorting fridges from most to least favourite. Does this sound like me?

“Type 5: Often described as “good people,” you are everybody’s buddy and of your friends most likely to be asked to move a sofa. Your easygoing and affable personality makes you a welcome addition at casual events and family occasions, but a certain lack of restraint means you can sometimes be a bit cheesy. A lot like a bowl of chili, now that we think of it.”

Winter Beach

Just thought I’d post a happy-snap Jane took of Jace at Fremantle beach from our trip to Perth last week. I really like ‘Free-o’ …very much reminds me of Halifax with it’s old stone buildings, salty air, omni-present (but not overwhelming) industry, and good food and breweries.