Rants and Revelations

Here are the best of the pictures from Wednesday night’s kayaking.

kayaking/DSCN1853I went kayaking for the first time this year. Actually, except for the day of the sale, this is my first time kayaking in my own Skerray RMX. And it’s a great boat. In the narrow twisting sections and while trying to photograph the numerous kayaking/DSCN1856geese and kayaking/DSCN1874swans, I could put the skeg up and make it maneuverable, and when I went out on the lake to visit kayaking/DSCN1879Mike’s plane, I could put the skeg down part way and get a lot more stability.

kayaking/DSCN1861I probably went a little too far. My elbows are complaining a bit. I’m going to take some more ibuprohen and ice them down a bit. But man, it felt good. I went up to the weir, which was running pretty strong and I got splashed quite a bit when I side-ferryed into the tounge of the water coming through from the eddy beside, and suddenly I had to paddle like crazy just to stand still.

kayaking/DSCN1871There was almost nobody on the creek today. I saw two people setting off just as I was arriving, and they returned just ahead of me too. There were two people milling around looking for somebody who worked there, and I saw them later on the water so they did manage to find somebody to rent them kayaks. But otherwise it was just me, a few turtles, geese, swans, redwinged blackbirds, and one great blue heron. It was glorious.

This post has everything - beautiful scenery, rare birds, flying, beautiful air hostesses, …
Someone Else’s Life: SEVEN DAYS in the SOUTH ATLANTIC

Ok, I won’t know for sure until the afternoon forecasts come out (usually around 1pm), but it looks like I might have badly misjudged the weather. Not only are the ceilings lower than I thought they’d be, they’re also colder, meaning I might not have the above freezing escape route I thought I did. I’m not sure about that, though. It also appears that the low pressure system is moving much slower than I thought, and I might not have that plan B backstop of VFR weather until Monday evening or Tuesday. Oh well, if I have to wait, I have to wait. Right now it’s just a game of wait for the afternoon forecast and see if things look better. Right now they’re predicting a ceiling just above minimums for Rochester (OVC004 - overcast at 400 feet), and relatively better at Syracuse (OVC020 - overcast at 2,000 feet). Also, Syracuse is predicting rain but Rochester is predicting mixed rain and snow. Also I’ll have to see if I can get a tops report - it would be better if I could fly above or between clouds.

On the plus side, Alyssa and I went out to take some pictures yesterday. The results can be found at my Gallery site. I think we got a few good ones.

I’m working on a decoration for my kayak. Preliminary sketches here and here.

It’s supposed to be a loon, but it looks more like a merganser to me. Actually, that design is too similar to the one I copied - I’m going to be changing the interior of the body some as soon as I figure out how to make smoothly curving lines in Photoshop.

At today’s picnic for Entertainment Imaging employees, I got at honourable mention in the photography contest for one of my crow pictures.

I used the 25 dollar gift certificate to pay for some film I’d just had developed. I got some new and better pictures for my
Standing Stones gallery (starting on page 2) and for my Crows gallery (again, starting on page 2).

I also got some pictures back from the Alaska cruise, mostly from the whale watching part. Most of the pictures don’t grab me that much, but a couple might be good if I crop them down and blow them up. Oh, but those are on the Picture CD I left in the car, so hopefully I’ll get those uploaded later.

Last night on the drive home from Ottawa, I was thinking about some pictures I’d like to try taking when I get kayaking again. One of the things I like to do with photography is get unusual camera angles, and I came up with some good ones that I could use the unusual folding nature of the Coolpix to good advantage.
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My favourite computer accessory store, FrozenCPU.com, now sells PolyGFX Case Skins to customize your case. Even better, they’ll let you submit your own imagery and they’ll print you up a custom case skin.

I’ve never been all that tempted by some of the “Pimp My Box” stuff like cold cathode tubes or water cooling systems, but I’m sorely tempted by this. My gigantic Linux full tower sits up on my desk to keep it from getting clogged with dust, but it’s sort of overwhelming there.

I’ve been playing around a bit with Photoshop Elements to make a couple of candidate images. Here are a couple of small copies of the huge images I’ve made: Early morning departure and Clouds

The originals are 49 inches by 17 inches at 300 pixels per inch, so they’re pretty damn huge. I’m not going to stress my cable modem by putting links to them here.

I grabbed the highest resolution satellite images I could get off of Terraserver, and stitched together a mosaic, and colourized the water, so now I have an Irondequoit Creek Map. It might be useful to carry this around on the river.

Ok, I stole the whole idea (as well as the faux Art Deco logo) from Andy, but I really like how this came out

paulart/DSCN1232 The only problem is that the Apple logo didn’t turn out very well. The one Andy sent me didn’t print all that well so I had to resize it, and that gave it some jaggies. I’d do my own, but I don’t feel like paying $25 for the Anna font for one job. Fortunately or unfortunately, I didn’t get it stuck down too well, so if I need to change it later it probably won’t be hard to do.

On the drive home from Ottawa, there is a field that you suddenly come across that has these gigantic crow sculptures in them. The first time you see them there is sort of a “oh crows…OH MY GOD HUGE FUCKING CROWS…oh they’re fake” moment. Yesterday, in spite of the pouring rain and fading light, I got out to take some pictures of them.

I need to sort though these pictures a bit more and maybe do some cleanup in Photoshop, but I was hoping the overcast and rain would make a more eeeerie effect, and it did. I need to come back with a manual focus camera, though, because a couple of times I wanted one crow framed by another, and the camera I was using tended to focus on the near one (or the grass growing under it) instead.

I’ve been having some fun making composite pictures. I saw a composite picture at a friend’s house, and I was struck by how good it looked, not because it was seamless, but because it wasn’t seamless. The seams gave the picture character and interest. I decided I wanted to try to do the same thing. I may be no Claude Samton, but I can at least steal his ideas.
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I’ve got a trial download of Photoshop Elements 2.0. And I’ve been out taking pictures of the flying club’s new paint job. So of course, the inevitable:
becomes

.

I was disappointed in the Standing Stones river sculpture when I got back to it today. The river has risen, and it look like many of the stones have been swept away. I took some pictures of what was left, but it’s a pale imitation of what there was last month. I guess I’ve got to stop forgetting my camera.

One thing I am looking forward to this weekend: Last time, Alyssa and I had an hour to fill in between the checkout time of the hotel and the start of the movie we went to see, and so I stopped for a walk along the Ottawa River. I’ve always loved the Ottawa River - when I lived in Ottawa I’d frequently go out of my way to drive or bike the River Parkway on the way somewhere.

On this short walk, we discovered some amazing sculptures done in the river. I remember this artist from 10 or so years ago - he wanted a place to set up his easel to do some painting, and arranged the flat stones that he found in the river into an Inuktuk. He liked it so much that instead of doing his painting, he made dozens of Inuktuks, mostly in the shallow parts of the river. Well, evidently he’s still doing it, but he’s progressed beyond Inuktuks - some of the things he’s doing now are amazing. I hope they haven’t been swept away, as I’d like to document them.