2023 Hug Zones

a sidewalk chalk drawing in four colours - circles within circles - with text that reads, "Prime Hugs Zone"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?

An image of a deep dish apple pie, made with whole-grain spelt flour. On slice removed to show the contents.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.

an image from an episode of the Flintstones, where Fred decided to become a pie entrepreneur. In the image are Fred, Barney, a wholesaler and stacks of pies

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.

Continue Reading →