Anyone else needing a nice warm hug? As explained in our We Have Huggers!! post in May last year, we came across a short video on Instagram showing someone who had created a Free Hugs zone in sidewalk chalk outside their house – and the various people who had taken advantage of the situation. Always willing to contribute to more acts of kindness, we created our own first attempt. We were so inspired by the effect that we created 11 different hug zone patterns in 2022 (12, if you include the one we created at our old Free Hugs spot at the Homecoming Memorial at Ship Point). Continue Reading →
Happy Pi Day!!
Hi Folks:
It’s Pi Day once again (3-14) and so today we celebrate all things irrational as represented by that most well-known irrational number (π). And there’s no better way to mark the day than with that classic mix of artistry and chemistry: pie. We made apple…how about you?
In our previous Pi Day posts we’ve added a recipe to each post. We’re not going to do that today, but we do have a story – about pie of course.
It was about twenty years ago, and we heard that the crew with which Mike used to work were going to be at the local airport over the Thanksgiving Day weekend. Working on the holidays is bad enough, but combined with being away from home and family – well, we thought we should do something to help out. So we made pies. Six of them, in fact. There was pumpkin (being Thanksgiving), lemon-meringue, apple and so on.
Pies in hand (or well boxed, anyway) we headed off in great anticipation to the airport to find… no one. Nada. Even the crickets were quiet, but it was October after all. It turned out that because of inclement weather the crew had been delayed at their previous location. Even the office and the airport restaurant were closed.
Heavily bowed down with grief, but resolute to the end, we thought that if we visited the local shelters they’d be glad to receive a little extra treat for the holiday. Nope. Closed for Thanksgiving. We were beginning to feel like Arlo Guthrie at Alice’s Restaurant, only with pie. It was Thanksgiving, after all.
Twenty years later we can remember that the pies had been distributed – somewhere – but neither of us remember exactly where. It’s entirely possible we took to wandering the neighbourhood, knocking on anonymous doors with hopeful looks in our eyes. “Hi! No, we’re not selling anything. Would you like some pie?” Fred Flintstone would understand.
The Gravelberry Pie King
Enjoy the day!!
Hugs,
M&M
P.S.
Happy Birthday, Albert Einstein! (March 14, 1879 – April 18, 1955)
RIP Stephen Hawking (January 8, 1942 – March 14, 2018)
Low Light, High Noise and ISO Invariance
Hi Folks:
It was a dark and stormy night. I’ve always wanted to write that… haven’t you? Okay, in this case it wasn’t night (mid-to-late afternoon) and it was sunny rather than stormy, but it was dark. Marcia and I were on a trip to Tofino, BC and I was wandering along the boardwalk of the Rainforest Trail in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. The elder trees soaring above me blocked out much of the daylight, but they were the reason I was there.
Before we get too far, a few basics to get out of the way. First, I was shooting with a Sony a7Riii camera with the FE 24-105 lens, set to 1/125th second and f/6.3. ISO was set to 5000, but we’ll get to that later. I didn’t bring a tripod that day, but I did have my camera sitting on a Manfrotto monopod. Second, I have no idea what you see when you look at these images. This is partly because I don’t know if your monitor has been calibrated and profiled, and partly because I don’t know if you’re using a web browser that allows colour management and/or if you’ve enabled that. In the end none of that really matters because this is essentially an apples to apples comparison. I should note that this post isn’t targeted toward beginner photographers, but if you read something you don’t understand, please feel free to leave a comment on this post or fill in our Contact Form. The only stupid question is the unasked one.
There are three software packages in this game: Capture One 23 (16.1) is my raw editor. PTGui 12.20 is software for stitching panoramas, and Topaz DeNoise AI 3.7.2 is noise reduction software. AI is a term used ubiquitously these days, but the only intelligence involved here is still with the programmers. AI software uses very large databases of information and certain algorithms to make what one might call educated guesses as to what the user wants. Also, when processing in any of these packages there are what are known as auto adjustments (I’ll refer to them here as AA) and there are also sliders whereby one can tweak the suggested settings. With the exception of the final image, I stuck to AA in order to keep the processing as equivalent as possible.
Shorepine Bog Trail
Hi Folks:
During our trips to Tofino (on Vancouver Island’s wet coast) we always like to invest some time in the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve. There are a few trails we like to visit, and one of them is the Shorepine Bog Trail. Now, if temperate rainforest brings to your mind a dark canopy of trees, a woodland filled with forest giants, this isn’t it. Instead think of spongy ground, poor soil quality and an abundance of acid-loving plants like sphagnum moss and Labrador tea. There are trees here as well, but poor growing conditions mean that they grow very slowly and die very slowly. These combine to create a largely open space with a mixture of both living trees and bleached, dead ones contorted into twisted shapes.
Continue Reading →
Making Waves
Hi Folks:
We consider ourselves lucky to live about 300m from the ocean, and also that once a year we escape the city for Tofino on Vancouver Island’s wet coast. Both locations give us intimate contact with the ocean (sometimes more intimate than others 🌊). There are times when the ocean is very quiet, very smooth, and others where the ocean easily tosses about entire trees. We’ve learned to respect and enjoy both extremes.
Despite the title I haven’t made ocean waves but I have made many images of them. All of those used in this post have three things in common: the images are all of waves; they were all made last October; and they were all shot at 1/4000 second. Water is constantly moving, even when we can’t see it, and choice of shutter speed is something that responds to the situation at hand. Using a very slow shutter speed, say 1/4 or 1/8 second tends to add a smoothness, a silky texture to the movement of water. Going even slower can add a ghost-like, fog-like effect. That can work well for streams and even waterfalls, and when combined with a slow pan can create an interesting effect for waves.
For the most part, however, wave watching is an incredibly dynamic experience and when a wave meets the shore it happens very quickly. BOOM!! By shooting at a really high shutter speed we capture a very thin slice of that action in a way that the naked eye can’t quite visualize.
Most of the dozen images here are single frames; there are a few that are image stacks. These are sequences of photographs capturing the same scene, but with the photos superimposed over each other. Here we are privileged to see a period of time compressed into one moment. The stacks here are of 3-5 images; this too is scene dependent. Too many photographs used together blurs the impact. Finally, the last photo in the sequence is a triptych of three images – again showing a punctuation in time (less than two seconds) sequenced to bring you in and give you an opportunity to experience it for yourself. Continue Reading →
New Year, New Day, New Beginnings…
Hi Folks:
Well, 2023 is upon us, and we trust it will bring you the best of what you can imagine. 🙂
Back in the late 1990s we were privileged to be given a candle along with the following story: Continue Reading →
Celebrating the Holidays!!
Hi Folks:
We’re running a little late with our Holiday Greeting this year… The winter solstice has come and gone, winter has descended up on us (here in Victoria, anyway!) and today marks the sixth day of Hanukkah.
As we move toward the vernal equinox we’re also entering the period where the days begin to lengthen once again (here in the northern hemisphere, at least). More light, more trust, new beginnings. It’s a choice each of us gets to make in every moment, so if you’re ever unsure how to react in any situation, be kind. It’s good for you, good for the other person, is non-fattening, doesn’t cause cavities and helps to make the world a better place, even just for a moment. And, sharing kindness is often contagious! Pay it forward. 🙂
Pegacorn – by Selena Olivera for the 2022 Victoria Gingerbread Showcase for Habitat for Humanity.
“Carry out a random act of kindness, with no expectation of reward, safe in the knowledge that one day someone might do the same for you.” —Princess Diana.
Whether you celebrate Christmas or Festivus, Solstice or Saturnalia, the arrival of Sinterklaas or Grandfather Frost, Hanukkah, Yalda, Pancha Ganapati, Bodhi Day, Kwanzaa or something entirely personal, from our house to yours, we wish you a Safe and Happy Holiday season! May 2023 find you safe, healthy and surrounded by Love. 💗
Hugs,
M&M
🎅🤶
P.S. Above image made by Marcia.
2023 Photo Calendars (part two)
Hi Folks:
This is just a quick update to our previous calendar post as we’ve gone through the (5000+) images we’ve made this year and picked out 12 for our calendar. As usual, some of the images were made with our cell phones and some were made with the Sony a7rIII camera. Half of the images were made by Marcia and half by Mike, but none of that really matters. All of this year’s images were made in and around Victoria, BC except for October’s, which was made in Tofino, BC.
Combined, our calendar looks like the image below. If you’d like to download a copy for yourself, click the image to link to a .pdf version.
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This is the thirteenth year that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but (as we did last year) we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2023 was made in May 2022). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars. Continue Reading →
It’s Our Birthday!!
Hi Folks:
Generations – Cathedral Grove, Port Alberni, BC
Well, it’s now been 13 (!!) years since our blog took its first breath. The world is quite different today from what it was 13 years ago… the world is quite different from what it was 3 years ago, but we’re slowly finding our way back to each other. As Ram Dass said, “We’re all just walking each other home.”
It’s been a somewhat quiet year, but we currently have 678 blog posts and 153 pages on our site. The posts cover poetry, photography, our hugging adventures (88 countries and counting!) and various other musings; our pages include some of our stories and free Adventures of Rainbow Mouse colouring pages to download and enjoy. We’ve shared some wonderful adventures with you through these and are looking forward to sharing more in the future! This blog is our gift to you, our readers, and we very much appreciate having you here with us. Feel free to drop by any time, check out Marcia’s books, download our colouring pages, read our stories, leave a comment or reach out, relax and enjoy yourself. We don’t have any birthday cake that we can share (this is the best we can do: 🎂), but we send you love.
Remember to hug someone you love today, even if it’s just screen to screen. You’ll both feel better for it! 🙅♀️🙅♂️
M&M
P.S. Extra special thanks to our son Nick, who does all of the techie stuff that keeps us afloat!! 🙂
2023 Photo Calendars (part one)
Hi Folks:
This is the thirteenth year that we’ve made our photo calendar templates available, both for MS Word users (for those who don’t use graphics programs) and as .png files for those who do. As before we will be making our own calendar available in .pdf format for those who are interested, but (as we did last year) we’re doing the post in two parts. For our calendar we use images made in that month (i.e. the image for May 2023 was made in May 2022). Since we haven’t yet gotten to December our calendar isn’t yet complete, but we wanted to make the templates available so others can work on their own calendars. Continue Reading →