86:365 Waterfowl

Anna: Today wasn't a very prolific photo day for me at that park - I've already taken an awful lot of pictures of the same things already. I did get a few I liked.


I believe this is a male wood duck. Although I got better pictures of him, I like this one the best because of the motion.

correction: I now know this isn't a wood duck. I think it's a wigeon.









This is the first time I've seen a Common Goldeneye out of the water. This female decided to head in my direction, and had the most delightful, comical waddle.













This is the mate of the above mentioned female. I'd seen them stretch their necks out in an odd manner before, and couldn't quite figure out what they were doing. These ones were close enough to the shore that I was able to actually hear them. They make a quiet noise that I have difficulty describing - a sort of cross between a quack and a purr. *L* A rather pleasant sound, really.

85:365 Downtown

Anna: The kids and I headed downtown to take in an event that turned out to not be running on Sunday. We still got a chance to get pictures, though. Our older daughter is really enjoying the new camera - her typical photo day would be just over 40 photos with the old camera, but for the last couple of days, she's been taking double that. :-D


Watch Your Step!

We all thought this piece of graffiti was very cool. I do wonder how they get onto the roofs of these places, though.











Eyes: Some graffiti can only be described as works of art. I love the detail on this guy! The eyes are really impressive.














Art: I walked right past this thing without noticing it. It was the girls that pointed it out to me. It's a piece called Hollow Point.

Uhm... ok.


















Hockey Season: For the truly dedicated, hockey season never ends.

There's a square in the downtown core that is frequently booked for summertime events. Today, the square, 3 blocks of street around it, plus another block alongside the City Hall, which you can see in the background, were fenced off into hockey rinks. Two of the street sections had 3 rinks on them each.

84:365 - Architecture

Morning walk; the light was a nice diffused grey, so eldest and I went photo hunting :)


Philippe: This little bit of architecture is just plain interesting to see. It's an innovative approach to ensuring a bit of light :D.




















Philippe: This building is now closed down, but I've always appreciated the way they actually tiled the signs right into the wall :)













Philippe: Just a nice flower.














Philippe: The focus is a little interesting on this one as the wind was catching it so I ended up with a sharp focus on the side of the flower, and the rest diffusing out a bit.

83:365 Ingredients list

Anna: The girls and I were able to stop for lunch after our library trip. This is the ingredient's list on a bottle of carbonated mineral water.

You have to wonder when understanding an ingredients list requires knowing the periodic table.

82:365 Testing

Anna: We discovered that our daughter's new Nikon D80 takes a different memory card than the D70. Instead, it takes the same type of card my Canon S3 uses. We had a card for her, but it was only 1G, so today we went looking for a larger memory card. We ended up getting a 4G card for her, and an 8G card for my S3, since I also use it to record videos.

This photo of a piece of watermelon was my test shot using the new memory card. Not a very good photo to start with, but after using the auto fix function on PSP X2, then using the one step digital noise removal, I liked it a lot better.

We also discovered that our computer's built in card reader doesn't "see" the high memory cards. We have to use the USB to upload the pictures from the camera, rather than directly off the card. That's going to eat up my batteries a bit faster. Ah, well.

81:365 Not what I intended

Anna: I was quite pleased with the yarn I'd used for the bag I'd made. I decided to take advantage of how it was so good at holding a shape and make another bag. What I had in mind was a round wrist bag with a drawstring top. As I was building up the sides, however, it occurred to me that a pop can would probably fit quite nicely inside it. Sure enough, it was the exact size for a pop can. So I ended up making an insulating can holder, instead.

I might actually make more of these. *L*

80:365 New camera

Anna: Today, after a bit of hoop jumping, we picked up our elder daughter's new camera. One of the benefits of living in Alberta is that it's the only province that funds home schoolers (rather than giving the funding to the schools they don't go to...). Through our school board, we were able to get a Nikon D80 with kit lens. Technically, the school board owns it - but then, technically, the school board owns the computer I'm posting this with, too.

It's a sweet deal, and I look forward to the work our daughter will do with it. Unfortunately, she wouldn't take it out of the bag for me to get a picture. She wants to take a picture of it herself. :-D