For Christmas this year, my mom made some lovely blankets for my sister, and Diane and I. All of them featured some amazingly soft material on the back, and the top was squares cut from some high quality Chinese silk. They are absolutely gorgeous! This is Diane's blanket which was blue and gold with a light blue backing. My sister's blanket is black and gold with a gold coloured backing. My blanket is several shades of blue with a dark blue backing. Thanks for the awesome gift mom!
Happy New Year everyone!
These are a set of candles that my mom had setup during Christmas time.
This is the tree at Diane's parent's place. I hope everyone had a good Christmas and that they have a safe and fun new years!
This is the scene in my parent's back yard, where a mound of snow has covered the Water Feature that is normally visible there. I really like the shadow in front of the tall grass there.
I've had a pretty busy holiday and haven't really had a chance to work through my photos from the last couple of weeks, so I've got a recent backlog of photos to post over the next few days. This one was from the craft sale that is held in the University of Alberta Butterdome each year. This was the first year I've been to the show, and I was pretty pleasantly surprised. For the $5 entry fee, you get to tour the large number of booths and collect more than $5 worth of food samples. Very cool. I felt a bit awkward taking my camera out in the crowd, but afterwards took a couple of shots when we were ready to leave. I rather like how this shot turned out.
Another shot from the canyon. It's really quite amazing just how different the canyon is when you visit in the summer when compared to the winter. The change is extraordinary. You do get quite a different perspective when you walk down in the canyon!
I continue my backwards trek through my photo collection. This particular one was from back in 2005 on the computer science department ski trip. Each year the department goes to Jasper and spends Saturday skiing (or doing whatever) and Sunday trekking down Maligne canyon. It's a sight to see in the winter time!
This was taken with my little Canon powershot A10 since I didn't have my DSLR at the time.
On the tree tour that Diane and I went on around the UofA campus awhile ago, we came across this *very* lazy looking rabbit. One of the things about the campus rabbits is they seem to be relatively at home with the large number of people on campus. This one didn't look like it was going to move even if you walked right up to it!
This is Diane's family dog, which came with us to the family reunion we went to not too long ago. Her name is Juniper and she looks like she's behaving in this photo, but the very next photo I got of her she's got a pretty good snarl going. She's a well-loved dog though :)
My mom has quite a cozy little garden, and once in awhile I run around with my camera there. This is just one of a rather nice bunch of lilies in the back corner of the garden. The pink colour against a lot of the green surroundings was pretty cool to see.
Last week I returned to Bento in Millbourne mall to help them with the cash register and to take a few more food photos. The person is my Uncle Kong who owns the establishment. If you ever go check it out, say hi to him for me. You might notice the images across the top above the menu. Those were photos I took the last time I was there.
Here's another shot from my most recent trip to the Devonian gardens. I think it's a peony. At any rate, I rather like the crisp white colour on top of some pretty nice background bokeh.
Still working on the backlog. This is a photo I took at my family reunion. We had a chance to go for a walk around the camp, and I found these canoes that were resting for the winter. I like the colours.
Welcome to my backlog. I've continued working through my old photos in Aperture -- rating them all and getting them tagged. This is one of the first photos I took with my XT after I got a tripod. I was pretty interested in experimenting with night photography, so I took a number of shots like this. This one turned out pretty well, although if you look carefully you can see how the camera moved a little when I hit the shutter button. I'm happy I have a shutter release switch now! Still, I really like how the clouds look in this photo, so I thought it was worth uploading. This is the building across the street from my building.
I took this picture late in November. I realize that it could've benefitted from some HDR, but I didn't have my tripod so I had to make do. The sky was rather cool, that's for sure.
My sister is a rather talented harpist. A while ago she played a set of recitals, and I was there to take some photos. This is one that I like quite a bit of the the music through her harp's strings.
Now that it is December, it was now permissible for me to put up the Christmas tree. So Diane and I did so on Sunday. It was kind of fun - I have a little 4 foot Christmas tree that is the perfect size I think for my condo. I sat down to watch the hockey game on Monday and during the intermission I took a few pictures of the tree with the lights on. It's pretty tricky to take good photos of the tree though, so the best I could come up with was this close-up shot of one of my ornaments.
Last week, I woke up and the sky was gorgeous. I took a number of different photos, but this one was the best despite being taken through my very dirty window.
Okay, so it's not a major magazine or anything. But one of my photos is featured in the Science faculty's contour magazine! My Fiance brought over her copy of the magazine yesterday, and lo and behold they used one of my better photos from the event!
This shot was taken just after the shot they decided to use. I like the one I posted to flickr better, but I guess this one worked a little better for the placement of text.
The issue isn't there yet, but I expect it to hit the online archive of past issues here sometime in the near future.
The UofA campus has been putting in these lovely water features around campus. This is my favourite of the features - located behind Education - and we used this area to take this shot after my convocation ceremony.