Hi There:
Please click this link first. I’ll wait.
Welcome back. I’ve recently received several more ‘Future Me‘ posts from last year, so I’m going to continue on from my last writings post…
Love,
Mike. Continue Reading →
Being Green – Up On the Roof
Hi Folks:
Well, The Drifters did it first…
So, I wanted to talk about roofs today, but before I get into that I wanted to start with something that at first blush doesn’t seem to have anything to do with building at all. I think it does… Continue Reading →
Gatherer of Clouds
Hi Folks: I’m currently reading the book ‘Gatherer of Clouds‘ bySean Russell, and I wanted to share a few pages that jumped out at me. In a way it connects to the ‘Becoming a Better Photographer‘ post that I wrote a week or two ago.
The book is set in a mythical Oriental land, somewhere around a thousand years ago I’d say, based on the plotline of the book. What I’m including here is Chapter 6, pp. 64-68. I think it’s well worth considering.
Mike. Continue Reading →
Poetry Corner – Description as Mood Food
Hello Dear Ones!
Last week on Poetry Corner I wrote about each of us being the poem in our everyday lives. Expressing our individuality through our uniqueness. Taking pride in all that makes us special, allowing us to stand out in a crowd – even if only a crowd of one – ourselves.
I also touched briefly on my pleasure at reading quality description – stand alone paragraphs, phrases and poems that ignite the reader’s senses to flare into action. A well written piece can actually activate a physical response as though the body itself was experiencing the event first hand. Craftily complied phrases about food should have the mouth juices flowing. Expressions of tactile origin can have you scratching an itch or brushing an invisible spider from your shoulder or rubbing your fingers and thumb together as though that rose petal truly lay between them. Continue Reading →
Marcia’s Meanderings – Enthusiasm
For those looking for the link to Timmy’s Anthem… click here!
Hello Dear Ones!
Today I am short on time and long on enthusiasm. With fabulous dinner guests arriving in a mere few hours, I still wanted to take the time to write a little something for those of you who so faithfully check this post. (Thank you to you all for doing so!)
My enthusiasm, in addition to being focused on my soon-to-be arriving company, is my pride and delight at the music my brother Brad Nelson wrote recently – and sang, with his son Robert, at a sold out concert – Folk Night at the Registry this past Saturday, January 30th, 2010 in Kitchener, Ontario. The song is a spoof, a ‘roast’, an honouring of the coffee shops of Tim Horton’s. Someone wisely video recorded their toe tapping, hand clapping, chorus joining, audience approved performance. Someone – likely that same someone – put the video on You-Tube. I saw it last night for the first time. I watched and laughed and cried with joy.
To take you back a few years – well, many years, if truth be told – my brother at the age of 10 taught himself to play the guitar. I, at the age of 14 then, loved to sing. So did he. We started to entertain audiences around our small community. Not certain if I recall the specifics, but I think our first show was at a local high school – probably mine! We were quite the hit and started getting invitations to clubs and events in town. Brad and I and our band were even blessed with the amazing and dynamic experience of being the warmup group for The Four Seasons when they came to our small town! Songs from the Beatles, Simon & Garfunkle, and Peter, Paul & Mary were part of our repertoire. My favourite, and the song that took me from the backdrop of harmonizing with my brother to standing at the front and belting out a tune, was The House of the Rising Sun. Love it to this day!
And so, to now see my brother on stage, with his son accompanying him so wonderfully … well, you can imagine how full is my heart … to the point of overflowing with love and pride!
Please, check them out: http://www.youtube.com/nelsonfolk Turn your volume up. Be prepared to laugh and to sing along to the Timmy’s Anthem ….
If you enjoy it as much as I, please feel free to share it with your friends and family. This video went from a mere 8 hits when I first saw it last evening to now over 245 hits in only 1 day. Let’s help this go viral!!!!!
In Light and Laughter,
Marcia
He Says, She Says…
Hello, dear reader!
Both of us have traveled extensively throughout our lives, and to that end eating in restaurants has at times become ‘routine’ for us. There was even a time when we co-managed a resort with a 90-guest seating capacity. Still, we both appreciate a really good restaurant. Food in all of its aspects – the preparation, the sharing, the sights, scents and tastes… (even the cleanup) is an important part of both our lives. All of that is a long way of saying that we’ve decided to add a ‘Food’ category to our blog, where we’ll feature some of our favourite restaurants and we might even sneak in a favourite shared recipe or two along the way. Neither of us is a professional food reviewer, but we know enough to know what we like and what we don’t like, so rather than having a ‘scale’ of 1-10 or whatever, we’ll just share our impressions. If we go somewhere we don’t like for whatever reason, we just won’t write about it. We want to share what we DO like instead. We have broad palates and sometimes eclectic tastes, so we’ll offer our thoughts on a wide range of places with three things in common: adequate food, adequate service and adequate value (and each must be excellent to be adequate). Look for future ‘Eating Our Way…’ posts on the last Saturday of each month.
We’re going to begin our ‘Food’ category with a local restaurant that we both appreciate: Floyd’s Diner.
Follow these links to read what He Says/She Says: Marcia’s View / Mike’s View.
P.S. You can read more of our Food posts and restaurant reviews here.
Photo of the Month
Hi Folks:
It’s been a busy month of writing and blogging and other things, but I have managed to sneak out with my camera for a time or two! This month I thought I’d make the focus (pun intended) of my ‘photo of the month’ page an HDR image. The image below is a combination of nine photographs made at different exposures. Now most photographers today are at least somewhat similar with HDR, but in my experience most people associate it with the grungy, grainy look that HDR is most famous for. It has its place, but in my experience it’s overused. Besides, HDR stands simply for ‘High Dynamic Range’ and is quite useful as a technique for expanding the dyanic range (the number of tones, from white to black) in an image where the tonal range of the scene is beyond the camera’s ability to capture it. There’s an excellent article on HDR by Alexandre Buisse here.
That’s certainly the case with this image. It was made in a local park called ‘Christmas Hill‘, and it’s one of my favourite places in this area to make photographs. Capturing the detail in the shadow areas without blowing out the highlights where the sun strikes the moss was beyond the camera’s sensor. I uploaded the images into Lightroom, and then used Timothy Armes’ LR/Enfuse plugin to combine them into one blended image. Post processing included the usual (white balance, black point, white point, etc.) as well as some graduated filters to highlight the sun spot.
Click on image to see a larger version
So, that’s it for now. Go out and make some photographs!
Mike.
P.S. I came across this great tutorial yesterday by R.C. Concepcion on using Shadowbox JS to integrate a Lightroom web gallery into a WordPress blog. Maybe next month…
P.S. II, the Sequel: You can find more of our posts on photography and Lightroom tutorials here, and you can find links to over 200 other sites that have Lightroom tips, tutorials and videos here.
8-DAY ACADEMY to educate villages & communities
via youtube.com
“Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” ~ Margaret Meade
Quote
| Love shows us the way to be.
(bathroom graffiti) |
Mike’s Writings VII
Hi There:
Please click this link first. I’ll wait.
Continuing on from my last Writings post… Continue Reading →