Yesterday several very brief thunderstorms rolled through the city. The storms were all very small and localized. One passed over my office around 12:00pm, and only lasted about 25 minutes. It looked small, and apparently it was much smaller than the city – it only hit part of the south half of the city, moving West to East.

Another very small storm hit downtown (where I live) shortly after I got home, and a second storm followed about an hour later (while I was out for a walk, conveniently). Afterwards, though, I happened to glance to the east and see a very bright rainbow. I was in the middle of supper, but this was one of those “drop everything and grab the camera” moments. I haven’t had much luck with rainbows in the past, but I seldom get an opportunity as good as this, so I snapped close to 40 pictures in about ten minutes. I tried a wide range of shots using a wide range of focal lengths to see what I liked.

In the end, I only wound up keeping a handful of the photos I shot (partly due to some nasty crud on the camera sensor that I discovered afterwards, which needless to say got cleaned today). I learned the following:

• I prefer a wide-angle shot with rainbows, since it gives you a bigger swath of sky to play with.
• Shots that are zoomed past 50mm need to have significant interest other than the rainbow itself, and are really only interesting to me if the rainbow is interacting with another feature. The juxtaposition of the rainbow with the landscape can also be interesting if you can line things up right.
• Shoot now, or forever hold your piece. Composition is important, of course, but rainbows don’t last long, and since I’m shooting with a digital camera, “shoot first and delete later” is a viable approach.

Now that I’ve experimented a bit, I will probably shoot fewer bad rainbow photos in the future. One of the big benefits of digital photography to an amateur like me is the ability to try a lot of different shots and see what works out. Next time I have the opportunity, I’m sure I’ll get better photos because I won’t bother with things that didn’t work this time around.

Calgary is an interesting city when it comes to the weather. Perhaps my favorite weather-related joke about the city goes as follows:

In Calgary, winter is only 2 weeks long. Too bad it happens 20 times per year

In any case, I was out with the camera over the Victoria Day weekend, enjoying the weather. It’s a good thing, since this last weekend was rather wet and gray. We’re supposed to see the sun again sometime soon.

That would be nice. It’s been raining for about a week now. You’d think this was Vancouver or something. Yeesh.

After a hectic few weeks culminating with my sister’s wedding, I decided some downtime was in order. Along with a friend of mine, I went to Elbow Falls for a relaxing walk last Saturday.

The weather was perfect, and we get there early enough that it wasn’t too busy. I managed to get a few good photos of things, and overall had a nice relaxing day.

Sunday was also very relaxing. Jason came over and we gave Dungeon Twister another go, this time with the Forces of Darkness expansion. I’m still not quite sure what to make of the game. Overall, I thought the expansion was good, though the new characters will take a bit of getting used to. A consolidated reference for the base game and all expansions would be nice. I took a quick glance over the geek, and nothing came up, but I didn’t look that hard. The darkness mechanic was certainly interesting, though it does add a bit more chaos to the game. More plays are definitely in order.

The round trip takes me about 2.5 hours at a relaxed pace. The route is also a really nice ride. The vast majority of it is along bike paths that wind along side the Bow river, through a myriad of inter-connected parks. The final destination, Bowness park, lies mostly west of 85th street West, making it 84 blocks West of my home downtown (and somewhat North of here as well).

It’s also nice to spend some time relaxing in Bowness park watching the waterfowl, as well as the people padding around the lagoon in canoes.

I’ve made the trip 3 times so far, and will likely keep doing it throughout the summer since it’s a nice varied ride and I don’t spend a lot of time fighting with traffic on the streets like I do going to North Glemore Park.

It’s also kind of fun to ride down Bow Crescent and look at all the houses tucked into the trees along the river, built in an era before the city sprawled as much as it does now.

As I mentioned earlier, I acquired a new camera lens last week. Today I finally got around to giving it its first test drive.

The first part of the test drive involved a long walk from my condo, over to Scotsman’s hill, through Ramsay and Inglewood, then along the Bow river past Fort Calgary and over to Eau Claire and Prince’s Island park. All in all, I spent about 3.5 hours enjoying the sunshine and taking the occasional photo.

Since the focus of the trip (besides getting outdoors for a walk) was to test out the lens, I took a number of pictures that were complete garbage as I tried the lens out at different focal lengths and apertures. All in all, maybe 20% of the photos were worth keeping, but that’s not half bad considering what I was up to.

The second test was after sunset, as I shot three subjects from the balcony of my condo at night:

1. St. Mary’s Cathedral
2. The Saddledome
3. The first tower of the Arriva condo complex, currently under construction.

Of course, the night photographs were long exposures at long focal lengths, just for fun. I used the obligatory tripod and shutter cord to avoid blurring the photos beyond recognition, though I didn’t bother with the mirror lock-up function of the camera since these are just test shots. I took 3-5 pictures each of the three subjects, and kept only the best one.

Overall, I’m quite pleased with the performance of the lens as an all-around zoom lens. In daylight I can still manage to get clean shots even at 200mm focal lengths, though this amount of magnification is overkill for the type of photography I generally do. Based on the EXIF data from my use today, I doubt I’ll go beyond 150mm all that often.

As a lens I plan on taking with me whenever I travel and on hiking trips, I’m sure it will perform very well and I’ll continue to enjoy shooting with it.

So, today I picked up a new lens – a Sigma 18-200mm that gives me a lot more room to play at the telephoto end of things while still allowing me to shoot wide-angle when I need to. As an added bonus, it’s quieter focusing than my other lens, and it’s not a lot larger (although it is heavier). I wanted something that I could travel with and take hiking, giving me lots of versatility without the need to lug around multiple lenses.

There might be another lens in the future for me, since I do like to play with macro photography on occasion, but the budget dictates that this will have to wait.

So far, I haven’t fully put the new lens through its paces – I’ve just fiddled with things here in the condo to get a feel for things and make sure that there’s nothing obviously wrong or defective about the lens (and there isn’t). I’ve posted three of the photos online – the one of the living room and the two of the entry hallway that show a red wall are the new ones.

If the weather holds, I’ll head outside tomorrow and spend some more serious time getting a feel for what I can do with the lens.

I spent this past weekend camping and hiking near Moab, Utah. The weather was great, and the scenery was spectacular.

Of course, I took a number of photographs throughout the course of the weekend.

I met up with Travis Friday night, and after overnighting in Salt Lake City, we hit the road Saturday morning, arriving in Moab in the early afternoon. We found a camp site along the Colorado River easily enough, and after setting up camp, we grabbed some grub in Moab before setting out on a short hike outside of the various national and state parks.

The hike was a nice warmup, and we were done well before sunset.

After supper, we spent the evening in Moab doing the Art Walk thing. It was fun wandering from gallery to gallery, checking out everything from sculpture to photography.

Most of Sunday was spent exploring Arches National Park. We drove though the road-accessible parts of the park, and hiked 4 or 5 of the short trails, which ranged from 30 minutes to 2 hours round trip. Though the hikes were short, the scenery was awe-inspiring, and we were able to see a large amount of the park in a single day.

After leaving Arches and grabbing some food, we headed to Dead Horse Point State Park where we stayed until sunset. This was an interesting experience – one minute you’re on seemingly solid ground, and the next you’re standing at the top of a 2,000 foot cliff with the river winding lazily below you. The view was spectacular, especially in the late afternoon light.

Unfortunately, we had to leave for Salt Lake City Monday morning. I would definitely like to go back some time – there’s a lot more I didn’t have time to see. Still, I wouldn’t have traded the experience for anything – It’s amazing what it’s possible to see without having to travel further than Canada and the USA.

I’ve posted a number of my photos (but far from all of them) online.

The flight left Calgary at a rather ungodly hour of the morning on January 1. Suffice to say I had very little sleep before leaving for the airport at 4:20am (and I do mean very little), and to make things worse, I was so excited about the trip that I found it impossible to sleep on the flight. Finally, after about 9 hours (including a stop in Vancouver), I arrived in Costa Rica, threw my bag on the bus, and travelled the 20 minutes or so to the Fiesta Premier resort, which I would be calling home for two weeks.

The other 16 people who attended the wedding had already arrived on December 30, and I ran into most of them at supper after I had unpacked a bit and showered. I confirmed that we were booked for the canopy tour the next morning, which meant being ready to leave before 8:00am. I slept surprisingly well and wasn’t tired the following morning. My lack of sleep took about 5 days to catch up with me, in fact.

The canopy tour was a lot of fun, though we didn’t really get to see as much stuff as I had hoped. After that, I went snorkelling for the first time of the trip – I would go about 12 more times in the next two weeks, and on every trip I saw something new. I managed to see all of the following on the various snorkelling trips:

• Lots of angel fish
• Spiny puffer fish
• Spotted puffer fish
• Sea stars
• Sea spiders
• Octopus
• Jellyfish
• Reef sharks
• Sea turtles
• Guitar rays
• Moray eels
• Nosefish (several types)
• Sea cucumbers
• Sea urchins

And many other ocean critters that I can’t put names to.
The following day, the whole wedding group had a sunset cruise booked which was quite nice. We also got some snorkelling in.

The morning of the wedding, most of the guys went out on an ATV tour which was a lot of fun. The brakes on my ATV weren’t working all that well, which I discovered at exactly the wrong moment – I almost ended up sliding into a ravine, but fortunately I managed to keep the ATV more or less on the trail. While on the trip, we saw lots of howler monkeys, some lizards, and a few interesting farms.

The wedding itself took place at sunset on the beach at the resort. It was absolutely gorgeous, though I can’t even begin to imagine how warm Tara must have been in her dress (though she looked even more stunning than usual, for sure).

After the wedding was over, most of the group only had a couple of days left, but since I still had more than a week left of my stay, I pretty much just spent the days relaxing and snorkelling.

The following Tuesday was easily the most memorable day of the entire trip. A few days earlier, I had met a couple were from just north of Manchester, England who had come to Costa Rica to do some birdwatching. I was looking for some hiking, but our interests lined up enough that we decided to hire a private guide for a day (along with two other friends of mine, Bob and Deb) and head to Parque Nacional Rincón de la Vieja for a day of hiking and birdwatching. It was nothing short of incredible. While I never really intended on doing any birdwatching in Costa Rica, I’m very glad I did. We spent seven hours hiking through the park, and saw lots of things besides just birds. I arrived back at the resort tired but very satisfied at the end of the day.

The other two day trips I took were a river float down the Rio Corobici and a shopping trip to the nearest major city, Liberia. The river float was very relaxing and there was a lot of wildlife to see. Liberia was a really interesting city, and wasn’t at all what I expected. I’m not quite sure how to describe it, but I enjoyed the chance to see a little bit of the city and do some solo exploring.

Though I’m home now and happy to be back, I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and I would love to return to Costa Rica someday.

Seems like everyone wants to see pictures of the new condo. While I certainly understand, the place is proving to be challenging to photograph. Plus, I’m not done with light fixtures, furniture, and so on just yet. There’s lots more coming.

But still, by popular demand, I’ve posted a few pictures of the new place to give you an idea of what it looks like. If you want to see more, well, you’ll just have to drop by.

I’m not yet happy about how the photo turned out, so I’ll have to revisit it when I have more time to spend on it. It’s tricky to photograph him as it is, and the fact that I want to keep him in context to some extent makes for even more of a challenge. But that’s another discussion.

As for the statue itself, Kotobukiya have done an excellent job as always. Fenrir is simply beautiful to behold, and Cloud looks exactly as you would expect given that this is the Cloud from Advent Children and not from the game.

What’s truly striking though is the attention to detail. Fenrir’s kickstand actually works, and the wheels spin easily and freely. Cloud’s costume is partially removable and adjustable, and Cloud himself is very posable. Kotobukiya even provide a second right hand for Cloud – one is better suited to having him grip the bike handlebars, and one is better for holding his sword. There’s also a stand for Cloud in case you want to pose him beside the bike instead of riding it, or if you wanted to display the two separately.

So many small details and yet they still managed excellent execution. I’m very happy I made the decision to order it, since I don’t know how easy it will be to get a hold of this in a year or so. The only question that remains is where he’s going to be in the new apartment. I haven’t decided yet, but I have an idea or two.

Those of you who where bugging me (you know who you are) will be happy to note that I’ve posted pictures of my trip to San Francisco as well as my trip to Southern California. There’s also numerous hiking photos from various hikes in the Canadian Rockies, and a few photos from around town for good measure.

Originally, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to post some of these photos. I’ve decided to compromise by only posting at most 1/4 of the photos I feel are worthy of keeping, and then to only post at 750×500 or smaller resolutions. I don’t know that posting the originals (which are typically 3504×2336) is really what I want to be doing, so for now, I’m keeping all the high-resolution originals to myself.

Also, I’ve decided that I’m only going to post photos that I myself have taken. Thus, you probably won’t see me in very many of the shots.

I’m putting some (but not all) of my photos online. Since I just moved hosting providers, I’m still in the process of moving all of my old stuff over here, and not all of those photos have made it yet.

In any event, go forth and browse my photos.