Another slow week as fall begins

Not much happened this week other than my toothbrush broke, the batteries died in the clicker for the garage door, and my belt broke.  Annoying little things, but it took time to deal with them. At least I got the lawn cut, the garbage out, the food cooked, the dishwasher cleaned, the laundry to the basement (I won't go as far as to risk doing the laundry!), the kitchen floor washed, the groceries done, etc.

Maddy has been more playful than normal. Maybe it is the cooler temperatures (one morning it was 2.4C) and the good sleep she gets during the day with nobody home much. On the other hand, it could be the fact that she sleeps spread out on three quarters of a queen bed, with her feet against me trying to regain the last quarter of her space... her nose will probably be out of joint when Wendy returns tonight.

Maddy and her rope ball - she hadn't played with it for many months!

I took Maddy on another photo hike in Dundas at the main trail area this morning. The weather was fantastic - reaching about 25C as we finished. She met the usual assortment of dogs and interested children. The fall colours were not really spectacular, but I took a few shots anyways. Still figuring out the new camera.

The Dundas Trail Centre

These will get better as the colours change in the next few weeks.

Fall has started, but just barely

More for our previous fungus theme...

Tonight is the night that I drive back to the Buffalo Airport to pick up Wendy, Parker, Mel, and Murray after their Disney World/Universal trip. It will be a bit of a shock when they feel the temperature (about 20-25C less than they are used to), bu they probably deserve it for going somewhere warm.  Should be able to post a few images from Wendy's phone camera in the next few days, once they have unpacked. All reports are that it was a fantastic trip.

Fun with a new camera

Wendy and Parker are off at Disney World this week - they are at Epcot today. They are staying off-site at Bonnet Creek Resort (http://www.wyndhambonnetcreek.com/) and it reminds Wendy of Beaches. Wendy already wants to go back for another trip in the near future!

She is taking some photos with her phone, so I'll post some when they return. I have already seen a few using Google Hangouts, and using this on our phones makes it easy (and free!) to communicate during the day to see pictures and keep up on the trip. Disney and the resort are covered by wi-fi, so no need for expensive texting from the US.

I got a new camera last week (a reconditioned Nikon D5200), so Maddy and I went hiking this morning to practice using the camera. It was very cold when we left (+6), but it was much more comfortable once we got going. Maddy was a cooperative subject most of the time. She was intrigued by all of the horses, as there was an Equestrian Triathalon event going on today.

Maddy patiently waiting for me to take pictures.

We went through the Hermitage ruins to see if there were any good shots to be had, and this was my favourite picture. I think I will use it as a Windows wallpaper. I had to drop the resolution of all these images for posting since the jpg images are well over 15 Mb in size! Some of the original RAW files in the camera are closer to 36 Mb!

I learned the controls to set the camera for taking bracketed photos, and took three with different shutter settings to generate a high dynamic range image using Photomatix. I dropped the colour saturation quite a bit to make this image look old. Seemed to work. Maybe I need to wear more saturated colours to make me look less old?

The old train at the Trail Centre in Dundas

All the fall flowers are out in full force, and it seemed almost everything was yellow and green. Here is just one of the images I took. Even caught a couple of insects in the image.

Even weeds are nice when they are brightly coloured.

I'll need to do some more practice to get used to all the settings, so I will post some more pictures if I have time this week.

Quiet weekend for all

It was a nice and quiet long weekend, so Wendy and I did a couple of hikes with Maddy in the Dundas Trail system. I took one of my old cameras because my good camera was missing (more below). The shots below may be a little better than from my iPhone, but not drastically so.

Got to keep taking photos of these, while they last!

Just an interesting pattern

Dandelions look more delicate as they age

Parker survived another grass cutting episode without any visible damage to anything. He did get freaked out somewhat by the 'frickin wasps' (his emphasis...) that were flying through the back yard. They appeared to mostly be bees, but he wasn't believing the biologist on that one. He spent a lot of time bogging down the engine on the lawnmower. In fact, I think Parker had to restart the lawnmower at least a dozen times - it stalled every single time he plowed into the really tall grass.  And there was a lot of it! I did say to him to go slowly, but he decided the pain of mowing the lawn would go much faster if he went much faster. No such luck.

Adam was away at a cadet Field Training Exercise (FTX) from Friday afternoon until Monday after supper. Below is a picture of Adam on top of a shelter that he build this weekend.  Below that is just a photo of him working in the office at cadets. Apparently an FTX is considerably more dirty than office work - he had to change before he could eat dinner on his arrival at home.

I should note that it seems like Adam really likes to use my good Nikon SLR camera... now I know where it was all weekend...

Adam on a structure he built

WO2 Seidlitz

Stanley was away from Friday until Sunday morning, but on Monday he really enjoyed having a day off from school. He stayed in his PJ's the whole day!

Tonight we were asked to go at the last minute to a concert at Parker's school. He claims he didn't know that there was a concert (with him in it) tonight. Luckily, the grade 8 jazz band was the first act and we were able to exit from the back discretely.  The principal even held the door open for us as we left. I took a few photos of Parker on stage (with the old camera again...). Some of these have him focused on playing his trumpet, and some are with, ahem, a little less focus.

Parker playing trumpet (centre, back row)

Parker with focus

Getting ready to play

Waiting to play

Still waiting to play

Tired of waiting

If you are interested in seeing and hearing a 36 second excerpt from the concert, that video is pasted below.