Soon to be History: A Collaboration

Posted on February 11, 2015 by Mike Nelson Pedde — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

In the James Bay neighbourhood of Victoria, just behind the Legislative buildings, is a roughly six-acre site that is partly parking lot and partly occupied by a combination of heritage houses and unused/underutilized mid-century modern steel office buildings. On the southwest corner is the Michigan Street Community Garden, an icon in the community since 1999.

The landscape of this area, bordered by Menzies, Superior, Government and Michigan Streets will soon be changing dramatically with the beginning of the Capital Park Victoria project. Two of the heritage houses will remain on their existing sites, three others will be moved to new locations on site and the building containing the Queen’s Printer will remain. The rest will be replaced by a mix of business and residential units, courtyards and pedestrian walkways. The developers are seeking LEED Gold or better in all new construction, and hopefully the builders will do their best to reuse/recycle as much of the existing material as possible. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – December

Posted on January 11, 2015 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

The subtitle for this post should be ‘The Evolution of G.L.I.T.T.E.R.’ She’s our Christmas tree and has been for the past six years. You can read more about GLITTER, FREIDRICH, FREDERICA, FREDDY and FRED here if you like: Being Green – Celebrating the Holidays.

GLITTER was a little sprout of a thing when we first brought her home, but she’s certainly spread her branches since then, as you can see here (NB: we were away for Christmas in 2013 and so GLITTER didn’t get decorated). That’s the same salt crystal lamp, so you can use it to gauge her growth. With her pot on the floor she comes up to about waist height on Mike, a little higher on Marcia. No need to cut a hole in the ceiling (yet), but she is heading in FRED’s direction. Continue Reading →

2015 Photo Calendars

Posted on December 10, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 4 Comments ↓

Update: If you’re looking for our 2016 calendar templates, please click here!

Hi Folks:

This is the fifth year now that we’ve made our MS Word photo calendar templates available, and as with the past couple of years, we’ve also created a series of templates and calendar images you can use with Lightroom or other graphics software. I created a template in MS Word that allows people who don’t have Photoshop, Lightroom or the equivalent to make their own photo calendars, so we’ll cover that first; the Lightroom stuff is at the bottom of this post. I used MS Word 2007 to make the template, but saved it as both a Word 2007 file and a Word 97-2003 compatible file. Basically it’s a series of tables, one for each month, that look something like this:
Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – November

Posted on December 9, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 4 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

We’ve been working on our 2015 photo calendar templates here at Chez M&M and they’re almost ready, but we wanted to take a short break to include our favourite image(s) for November. It came down to two and we couldn’t decide, so we uploaded them both. As with October’s Photo of the Month post, we’re using the NextGen gallery plugin to display them. Both images were captured with our (Samsung Galaxy S4) cell phones. The one is an image Marcia captured in Beacon Hill Park on her morning ‘commute’. It was a perfect morning, and very little Lightroom work has been done with this image. The second image is of ‘someone’ we pass often. It’s an example of pareidolia (with thanks to Wikipedia – do remember to support them!) but the wisdom in that ancient eye is unmistakable.

[Show thumbnails]

Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Creative Commons Licenses

Posted on December 7, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 6 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

I shared this on the message board for our local photography group and thought I’d post it here as well. I received this link (Yahoo Starts Selling Flickr Usersâ€™ Photos) from a family member the other day, and since it’s likely to kick up a lot of controversy I thought I’d add a few notes here. Sometimes companies try really hard to shoot themselves in the foot, and sometimes they seem to prefer to go for the head shot… Be that as they may.

First of all, Yahoo is not doing anything (technically) illegal, nor have they changed their Terms of Service or anything to get people to give up their copyright. Rather they’re using permissions some people have already given them (and everyone else), perhaps without realizing it. We come back to Copyright vs. Usage Rights. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – October in Florida

Posted on November 4, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 4 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

We have more than one image for our photo of the month for October, for two reasons. First and foremost, Marcia was able to join her dad and her siblings in Florida, an event that has been a long time in coming. Second, we’re experimenting with using the NextGEN gallery plugin as a way of showcasing images on our blog. This is our first attempt, so be gentle!

Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – September

Posted on October 10, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

It took a while to pick a photo of the month for September as both Marcia and I did some interesting work last month. I finally decided on the following image, which I call ‘Ascension’. It’s actually a bunch of sea oats I came across, but I used the mirror function on one of my cell phone apps to create the base image, then pushed it around a little bit in Lightroom. I trust you enjoy it too!

Now go out and make some pictures!

Hugs,
M&M

Ascension

Photo of the Month – August

Posted on September 3, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — Leave a reply

Hi Folks:

Summer in this City of Gardens means flowers – with their myriad of colours, shapes, sizes and scents – so it’s fitting that our photo of the month for August should be a flower. This one was captured by Marcia with her cell phone, then pushed around a bit in Lightroom. The backlighting through the petals provides the perfect highlight to the blooms. The flowers will mostly be gone in another couple of months and we won’t see cherry blossoms, hellebores and winter rhododendrons until January or February, so it’s best to appreciate them while we can!

Okay, that’s it. Now go out and make some photographs!

Hugs,
M&M

Dahlia

Through the Looking Glass at AGGV

Posted on August 17, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

Earlier this month we went to the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria to view the Kimono Exhibit, and while we were there we stumbled upon another exhibit titled ‘Through the Looking Glass‘. This exhibit is both a wonderful romp through the world of Alice and Lewis Carroll and an exhibit of some of the gallery’s contemporary art, tied into the theme. While the exhibit may be viewed (and toured) from any number of perspectives, it’s clear that someone had a lot of fun with this. Continue Reading →

Photo of the Month – Ancient Forest

Posted on August 6, 2014 by Mike Nelson Pedde — 2 Comments ↓

Hi Folks:

At the end of July we did a two-day trip around the south end of the island, visiting places as various as the Sooke Potholes Regional Park, Fairy Lake, Cowichan Bay, Rathtrevor Beach Provincial Park and the Coombs Country Market. Our favourite place on this visit was Lower Avatar Grove, near Port Renfrew. We arrived just before dusk and didn’t have a lot of time or good light for photographs, but we did have the area to ourselves so we could drink in the quiet. Well, not quite to ourselves… there were the ancients and a passing red squirrel sharing the space with us. Few of the images from that trip have yet been processed, but this one will give you an idea of the place. Continue Reading →