We celebrated Danielle’s 22nd birthday in style by partaking in the ancient Japanese art of Karaoke.

I got out the camera and put together this Polaroid slide show of the night. As always, being the camera man there were a hundred photos taken, none of them of me. And that’s just the way I like it.

There were also some embarrassingly funny videos that may find their way onto YouTube.

Happy Birthday!

~*~*~ Click to Start the Show in a New Window ~*~*~

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I’ve finally had one of my first photo published in print and by Adobe no less. The director of Club SAW in downtown Ottawa asked me if she could submit a couple of my photos for their portion of the Adobe Community Report 2008. That was the better part of a year ago. I called back and looked in to it once or twice but nothing had happened with yet.  By now I thought the chance had long come and gone. Surprise, surprise I was emailed a copy of the report this morning.

Adobe in the Community 2008

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My favorite part of Halloween is carving the pumpkins and this year’s was as fun as always. Mike’s mom has been growing another gi’normous pumpkin in the back yard all year long and at the last minute we decided it was time to carve it up.

I’ve been wanting to post these pictures for a while now but there’s really only one day a year that a blog post like this is suitable so without further adieu here it is.

These are the 2 biggies that grew in Mike’s garden.

These two guys, you’ll either know who they are or you wont.

There’s the legend him self, Bob Marley and um, his back up singers or something like that.

Smarter then the average pumpkin!

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The evolution of a generation of technologies has come together. Another achievement to be added to mankind’s list of worthy accomplishments.  We can now ordered Pizza online. This is truly what those men of science had in mind when they were first thinking up the World Wide Web.

 
 

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Fan Expo 2009 was fantastic! I certainly could have done it for 2 days, one to see the sites and one just for photography. I went dressed as a pretty convincing Peter Parker. I already look like him most of the time anyways. It was a great costume to ware if your priority is pointing a camera at all the rest of the superheroes.

Everybody how’s anybody in the comic geek world was there, from the lonely Jawas to the Amazing X-Men.  A lot of people from Ottawa were in Toronto for the show. My friend from the comic book shop down town came with a StarWars entourage. She was dressed as a Twi’lek Sith Lord. Everybody’s costumes were original and hand made. One couple told me that they started working on this years costume right after last years Fan Expo. I think Tashia got some attitude from somebody for her costume.

This photo album took a long while to get posted because my laptop died on me right while I was running through these pictures for the first time. I got it up and running again but here’s hoping that by the time I’ve done my next couple of post I’ll be blogging from a new laptop.

Check out the Pix of the motley crew from the

~ ~ ~ Fan Expo 2009 Photo Album ~ ~ ~

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Summer vacation is over and I’m on my way back to what they like to call the real world. At least I get to take a couple of memories with me. I managed to cram a little bit of everything into just over a week. It was also nice to get to play with my nephew Alex some more before he starts getting too big.

On a nice summer’s evening when the sun was still high in the sky, the rain clouds were no where to be seen and I wasn’t wiped out asleep from being out in the boat all day, I took the time to go down to the water and practice some sunset photography. I did have a hard time convincing my mom that if I didn’t go down during dinner time the sun was not going to wait for me to arrive before starting the show. It was just like being back at home again.

How ya, and there were turkeys there too.

Some photos you just can’t take in the city.

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Summer vacation is well on its way. This is the first week off I’ve had since I started at National Defense. I’m taking a brake from my brake on a count of the rain to post a couple of cottage pictures online.

The old man and I put a good weekends worth of elbow-grease into building our camp fire pit. The next week we christened the new fire pit with a shish kabob barbeque and a marshmallow roast.

Everybody needs a weekend getaway even this lazy guy.

So far so good, kayaking yesterday was fun but geocaching was a total bust. I think I’ll be going home with a sun burn by the end of this week. There is a lot more summer to go. With plenty of time for boating, hiking, pool and I hope to do a whole lot of photography.

There I am in total Vacation Mode

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This week we tried something a little different out on the trails. Instead of using high tech Global Positioning Satellites to tell us where we were going, we used a paper map and a compass. This was our first try at orienteering and a successful one at that. I enjoyed leaving the GPS at home for once and hiking with just a compass in hand.

Topographical 3D Rendered Map of the Trails we Took

This was the other team we were racing against. We tide ….

Along with that I took time to plant my third GeoCache “The Photographer’s GeoCache“.  This Cache has been placed here specially for all the photographers out there. I know there are lots of GeoCachers that have a GPS in one hand and a camera in the other every time they head out exploring the wilderness.

The Lion           &         The Unicorn

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Sunday is race day at the Shannonville Speedway. The main event is the Castrol Super Touring Series. I won’t even begin to tell you about the weather that day. I met up with friends Denis and Team Vitesse Pure. The team driver, Gilbert is riding in stile in his yellow Hyundai Tiburon Tuscany just like yours truly. Well his is a little more tuned than mine. A whole lot more than mine.

Fantastic place to take high speed photographs. I think I’ve stopped the action once or twice. Next time I head to the track with Denis it will be to see his sports bike.

It looks just like mine.

The first photo of the day was one of the best ones.

Not everybody crosses the finish line.

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Met up with the Ottawa Flickr group this week for an impromptu night time long-exposure photography tutorial. We went through a lot of technique just hanging out and taking some very nice photos.

It was nice to meet up with some people that are into the same hobbies that I am.

Still a little miffed that the day after I created I’m Flickr Pro account, Rogers canceled the promotion that they’ve been running for a decade now.

The long exposure photos require a lot more commitment per shot than the point and shot approach. Setting up and moving the tripod, manually focusing, taking high ISO test shots I only took 30 shots that whole night but I think the results speak for them selves.

The Dow’s Lake Pavilion at Sunset.

Now it Looks Like it’s Really Getting Late.

Got that Photo in One Shot. Ever Happy with it.

Clearly not Long Exposure but it Goes well with the Water Theme.

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