Philippe: framing- I never know where to draw the line; the three shots below are at near-full, mid-range and close-in. Personally, I prefer the mid one but that's just me. Feel free to chime in on preference and composition. :)

Just lying about the house..

Must be nice :P

Playing with Light

Philippe: So we're out playing with sunsets, as displayed below. Both my daughter and I want to catch the sunset, and the cloud flash that happens immediately afterwards. We get the sunset, and wait... About ten minutes later, we conclude the after-light fizzled, so we pack up and start to head back to the van. Not 2 minutes from the van, the clouds turn a brilliant purple, just magestic lighting... I'm *SO* going back again :P

Road Trip

Philippe: While Anna and the kids were busy getting wet, I looked around ;)

Just a little road trip...

pembina6113
Originally uploaded by amkb

Anna: Today we headed West out of the city, in the general direction of Jasper National Park, just because we could! :-D We ended up stopping in a town called Evansburg and visiting Tipple Park, then went on to the Pembina River Provincial Park before heading back to the city.

These are my daughters. They decided to cross the river to climb the cliff and so my older daughter could take some pictures. They had such a blast! I only walked half way across to take photos. The water was pretty cold and, after a while, it got pretty painful, so I didn't try going all the way.

You can see more of the pictures I took in my flickr set.

NBTS Picnic

Anna: It's been a long time since we've posted! Time to make up for it. ;-)

Today was our annual NBTS (Not Back To School) picnic at Emily Murphy Park. There were a lot of new faces this year, and it was a beautiful day for it, if a touch hot. We even had a cameraman from the CBC filming and doing a couple of interviews, though from what I've heard, very little of the footage made it onto the news.

This year, we were treated to some fantastic demonstrations by performer Brandon Tyson. He's available for performances and classes at brandontyson1@hotmail.com



Between people in the shelter, where we had sustenance provided, and the playground, I'd say this is about half of the people who were actually there at the time. This group is watching the start of Brandon's demonstrations.



He started off with contact juggling - the manipulation of acrylic balls with the body. I love the floating illusion here. Brandon had some volunteers from the group come up and try their hand and manipulating the balls under his instruction.



Watching contact juggling is quite mesmerizing! The acrylic balls can actually get quite hot, acting like a magnifying glass. Brandon demonstrated on one of the picnic tables, which you can see in my flickr set.



He also demonstrated with his practise poi. His performance ones can be lit on fire!



Before he had to leave, Brandon brought his buugeng out for me so I could get some shots. The spinning blades produce fascinating fractals.

It was a great demonstration, and Brandon is a very entertaining performer!