Clinic #1 - Oshawa Camera Club 2009/2010 Season - Brags!!

Clinic number one is done for the season and Darryl and I are off to an excellent start for the season with 3 honorable mentions each and one best in category for our division for me!

These are my images - Darryl will have to get off his behind and blog his own. :)

This image is an HDR of a sunset this past summer taken just north of Oshawa and was the best pictorial image in my division!!

Darryl and I are both getting acquainted with new cameras right now, so I have high hopes for our images this season!

- Paula

Second chances

A few years ago while in Lindsay, I was fortunate enough to come across a red tail hawk hunting by the roadside and even more fortunate that I had my camera with me at the time. I got what I thought at the time were once in a lifetime (for me) shots of it hunting, catching and eating a vole no more than 15' from me.

Today was proof that lightening strikes the same place twice.



Although not in Lindsay this time, I stumbled across another hungry hunting red tail hawk along the side of the road and was lucky enough to have my camera with me again.



- Paula

Learning Curves

Like the scariest of roller coasters, learning curves can be daunting... but the sense of accomplishment at the moment of enlightenment is not unlike the exhilaration upon conquering a terrifying roller coaster.

Today, I am at an SEO 1 day Bootcamp seminar. I've spent a great deal of time over the last year or so getting educated about websites and search engine optimization, but it continues to amaze me just how much there is to learn about this topic

Just when I think I'm at the crest of a hill on the learning curve, the track levels out and there's another impossibly high hill ahead...

To check out some of the sites I maintain, in addition to this photography website, please visit:

http://www.cornerstonedrafting.ca

and

http://www.dmandzuk.ca/

All three are very much works in progress and I'm always looking for ideas, suggestions and feedback from viewers on any of the sites. Something you'd like to see? Broken link? Please let me know - feedback is always appreciated!

- Paula

Adventures in Time Travel

Ask any of my friends or family what my hobby is and you'll get some puzzled looks and varied responses...I'm not one to stick with something for long, but when I get something in my head, I dive into it with both feet and a hearty "Hell yes!"

I've long claimed to have the attention span of a gnat so it's no wonder I've enjoyed many hobbies over the years, some I still occasionally dabble in...from collecting various items (the most extensive and expensive of which was a 2+ yr craze with beanie babies), clay sculpture, soft sculpture, painting, car enthusiast, and now, photography.

To be fair, photography has been part of my job now for nearly 10 years and a growing passion for much of that, which is really quite amazing - considering photography was the single component of my graphic design eduction in college that I abhorred most...could be because as a broke college student, some weeks the choice was gas to commute to school or pay to get photos printed for an assignment. More often than not, I was present in class, but had no photos to submit for an assignment. It was natural that I would grow to resent that.

Fast forward 15 years later and with the widespread availability of relatively inexpensive digital media, I can click the shutter to my hearts content at a negligible cost. Of course there's a cost, but I won't go into that now - that's not where I'm heading with this posted.

Photography and time travel - whatever could I mean?

Well, time lapse photography, which I am on the edge of diving into with both feet, having dipped my big toe in by doing my first 3 time lapse movies this weekend. They are clumsy efforts, at best, with much room for improvement...which will come with practice, research and the addition of a few additional bits and pieces of equipment.



The biggest negative, I guess, about time lapse photography, is the gross amount of time it takes to create anything of any substantial length. At 20 frames per second (fps), which is actually on the slow side, if you can believe it, this 45 second video took 1.5 hrs to shoot. And I don't have a cable release, a timer or shoot tethered to a laptop...approximately 1500 images...all created by me pushing the shutter release every 3 seconds. Is it any small wonder my index finger is a little tender today? This video is one of three shot yesterday - there was a sunrise, one of afternoon clouds and this sunset. Over 4000 images yesterday alone. My 9 month old Canon 50D rolled over 10,000 shots and climbing yesterday. Whew!

Not sure how long this fascination will last. Given my history, it will be brief, so enjoy while it while you can!

- Paula

2009/2010 Camera Club Season is Here!

Welcome September and the beginning of the 2009/2010 Camera Club Season is upon us.

Next week, I have 2 club meetings, our Port Perry club has it's September meeting Tuesday and our first Oshawa club meeting of the season is Wednesday night.

Tuesday, we are having a workshop on composition, which is really the one and only thing I retained from photography in college - most likely because I also paint and composition is as important in one as it is in the other so I've continued to use it through the years. If there's one thing I struggle with in composition, it's creatively breaking the rules...

I'm excited about the Oshawa club this year. I'm a Team leader for one of the six groups for photo essays this season. We have the opportunity to complete five photo essays over the course of the season and have 2 well under way. We have a meeting coming up on the 13th to review where we are at on our assignments.

Our topics this year are street photography, architecture, Windreach Farm, weather & portraiture and this is in addition to our four clinics this season which are close encounters, weather, panoramas & crazy captions.

I'm looking forward to a very productive & informative season!!

- Paula

“Mom, that was the best day EVER!”

- Little boy to his mom about 10pm tonight at Lakeview Park, Oshawa


Wow – he wasn’t kidding! I don’t know about ALL day, but the last few hours were pretty darn impressive.

At about 8pm, we were just finishing dinner and we were seeing flashes of lightening outside, but it wasn’t raining and there was no thunder…which we thought was quite odd, but we weren’t one to pass up such an incredible photographic opportunity, so, without sparing a moment to digest dinner, we dashed downstairs, literally threw our dishes in the sink, grabbed our camera gear and were on the road in a flash (pardon the pun).

Based on the black, BLACK clouds to the north, we thought our best bet for shots would be to get up on a hill where we had a north west view so off we went to Harmony Road just north of Taunton. On the way there, the rain finally started. Just a few fat drops splatting on the windshield at first, then, only moments later, coming in literal sheets – the windshield wipers on their fastest setting had no effect on the sheer volume of water hitting the glass. It was like trying to drive underwater.

For about five blocks, the rain fell like that – until we got out of the city and away from the light pollution when it finally let up and we were able to find a spot to pull off the road and get the cameras out.

After 10 minutes or so, the storm had moved well away from where we were, but there still seemed to be a lot of lightening activity to the south of us, so we had the brilliant idea to go to the beach!

Where else should a person be during an electrical storm than on a beach? A large, long, flat beach?? Sounded like a great idea to me!

Darryl continued to monitor the progress of the storm while I navigated the wet roads and downed tree branches to get to the lake shore.

I expected to see maybe another die-hard photographer there – perhaps two… but the parking lot was FULL with a line up to get in out onto the road. It appears that watching mother nature put on a light show over the lake draws quite a crowd and it didn’t take us long to see why.

Each time sheet lightening snaked across the sky overhead, you heard “Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh”, and “Ahhhhhh!” from the appreciative crowd gathered. After a particularly impressive flash, I heard a small voice from behind me excitedly exclaim “Mom, that was the best day EVER!”

It was an amazing and humbling experience and, incredibly, it lasted well over 2 hours. In fact, we could have stayed longer, but the show was moving on to the south side of the lake and it was getting very late for a Sunday night, so around 11:30pm we finally headed home.

The first thing I did when I got home? No, it wasn’t look at my pictures, that was a very close second. I checked the hourly forecast on the Weather Network to see when the next thunderstorm is due to blow through...

- Paula

p.s. next storm due tonight 11pm!

Do You To Suffer From "Cognitive Itch"?

For much of the trip, I have been suffering from various earworms. Well, perhaps "suffer" isn't the right term...Subjected to? Cognisant of? That's perhaps closer.

No, it's nothing I need to see a Doctor about...nothing that I was infected with on vacation.

An earworm is not to be confused with an earwig, neither of which actually ever go in your ear.

An earworm is a song, or a snippet of a song or music, that gets stuck in your head that you "hear" over and over ad naseum.

We did not have the car radio on at all the entire trip. Literally never touched the power button. It was not typical for us. Both Darryl and I enjoy all kinds of music and usually have something on in the car when we're driving, but we spent most of the trip talking, which was very, very nice. In between conversation though, in the silence while we soaked in the atmosphere of the west, I found myself with the most unusual songs playing in my mind.

Obviously, the sights and sounds of the area were inspiring my mental juke box. The selections included old favourites like "Home on the Range", "She'll Be Coming Around the Mountain" to the downright silly "Name Game Song" - and yes, it was the verse using "Chuck". Google it, it's a hoot. That one was on Sunday which was a slow day with not much happening and a lot of driving...