Saturday, March 17, 2007

juicy day


Well my time here up at Keno Hills, YT has been a mixed bag thus far. At first, I was pretty overwhelmed by the degree of clusterfucation with respect to the project in general. This led to a variety of emotions, which, aside from the mild sense of amusement (my first reaction), were mostly of the sinking dread/horror type. The combination of this negative energy alongside the stress always associated with (essentially) moving to a new home, met me with the unfortunate side-effect of a mid-sleep panic attack. Fortunately, this was a one night only sort of deal, but it was still not any fun, especially since I've was (and am currently) suffering from a heinous cold.


That low point can be nicely contrasted by today's wickedly good fun. Today broke with its usual chilliness and a wee bit of fresh snow. It continued to snow as I began working. Now I should mention that up until now, my job has consisted of following around the senior rig geologist (which is what my new title is, btw). While this has been informative and valuable, it has also been very boring...especially because senior rig geologist has been swept up with other, non-mike related tasks. The fall-out of that is that this morning I got assigned to moving objects of various sizes, shapes, and densities from room A (inside) to room B (outside). This not only put me in near constant contact with the chilly temps and snow, it also put my body to work. Both of these things ended up being quite refreshing and welcomed.

After lunch, there was a big rush to get food for camp from the nearby town of Mayo and since there was no one else free, I got the pleasure of tending to the task. It's pretty fun to shop for groceries (and i would imagine goods in general) when there's no personal financial penalties associated with it! Really, it makes me choose the opposite of what i'd usually get...i.e. get the most expensive option of the product rather than the absolute cheapest. So I actually had a pretty good time shopping, but the real goods were yet to come. Upon arriving back at camp, i figured i'd lend out substitute chef a hand and help him unload the groceries. Well, turns out that I went ahead and made dinner. Yep, just sort of happened. I got to lookin at all the veggies and thinking about how they were probably just going to waste away in the fridge unless I did something about it. So I made up a juicy spaghetti sauce chalked full of veggies. and then I put some chilli powder in it. It ended up getting quite high marks from the camp residents too.

the final great thing to happen was that I found the new voxtrot album online. and i've been eagerly awaiting it's release. which is why I will sign off and go have a careful listen!

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

HDRification


A little while back my good buddy barb told me of the wonders of HDR. This site describes the method far better than I could ever hope to. Anyway, I thought I'd post up a few examples of relatively successful attempts I've made (at least according to my standards). The real bummer of the method is that in order to get optimal resolution/detail, ESPecially for landscape shots, it's pretty essential to use a tripod. Granted, two of these three examples do not use a tripod, but rest assured that they would have turned out quite a lot better if they had.


The mark of a good HRD imagine, in my opinion, is that it essentially enables you to capture a scene with the same dynamic range that really only seems achievable with the naked eye (most sunsets just never look quite as amazing in the digital world as they did in the real world). Of course, it has the potential to go beyond what is possible with the naked eye, creating effects that are, well...surreal. FlickR HRD has some great examples of the power and potential of HRD as well as some total hacked-out examples.


All mine, so far, are of sunsets, which really provide an excellent opportunity for HRD enhancement. Truth is, however, that almost any photographic opportunity has the potential to be enhanced by amalgamating a few different exposures.

Monday, March 5, 2007

some pictorbs






torbin gives goliath a taste of his patented hand-schralp. (Incidentally, goliath fought back and landed a blow of its own on tone, ending the session prematurely)










kev and murph sport matching expressions