Photos by Candice

Some recent shots of Vancouver- including the Olympics!

2010-03-10T20:19:00.000-08:00

New lens, New pictures!

2009-12-31T23:01:00.001-08:00

My wonderful husband bought me a new lens for Christmas! It's the Pentax FA 50mm f1.4 and I LOVE it! I've wanted this lens for a while now. Here are a few of the pictures I've taken with it- including a few from Vancouver Aquarium. Love the jellyfish!

Christmas!

2009-12-06T20:30:00.000-08:00

I've been absolutely swamped with school, but here are a couple of photos of our very first Christmas tree- real and everything! It makes me sad I won't be spending Christmas at home in Saskatoon this year :(

All I got was this lousy thesis

2009-09-02T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a while. I managed to finish my PhD (FINALLY!!!!!!) in July and I moved to Vancouver a few weeks ago. We're all settled now and I'm starting my new program next week :)

A few new photos

2009-06-27T20:27:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted in such a long time! I've been busy :) I was in a 5 week French program and during it I also did a photography workshop. Here are a few of the pictures from it!

Tulips make me happy

2009-04-28T14:06:00.000-07:00

So I've been incredibly busy and stressed, so I haven't posted in a long time! I had some bad news this week, so my lovely mother in law bought me some beautiful tulips. I couldn't resist taking a million pictures of them, so here they are.

Miscellaneous Belize Photos

2009-02-20T12:48:00.001-08:00

Here are a few more pictures from Belize that don't fit into any categories. It was such a wonderful place and we had an amazing vacation!

Animals in Belize!

2009-02-20T12:42:00.001-08:00

We saw a lot of different animals in Belize- especially birds! Here are a few of my favourite pictures :)

Glover's Reef

2009-02-20T10:49:00.000-08:00

The last 6 days of our trip were spent on Southwest Caye on Glover's Reef Atoll. We travelled with a tour group called Island Expeditions, and they provided everything for us on the island including unlimited snorkeling, kayaking and fishing :) The island itself is so tiny, I could walk across the whole thing in under 10 minutes! Half of the island is dedicated to the Island Expeditions camp, and the other half has a very nice looking diver resort called Isla Marisol (who we dove with while we were there). Isla Marisol was almost empty the whole time we were on the island, so there were only the 9 of us on the trip and 4 staff members with the island to ourselves. We had incredible weather the whole time with bright sunny skies and just enough wind to keep the bugs off. Although, at night the wind would pick up and rattle the tent a lot so that kept us awake a bit (plus the roaring and crashing of the waves on the reef about 200 feet away is a little scary to a prairie girl in the middle of the night!). We went on several kayaking trips and snorkeled the patch reefs in the atoll lagoon. The fish life was amazing and so abundant! We even went fishing and caught some mutton snapper, red hines, and Dustin even caught two barracuda (that they made us for dinner that night!). We even got to snorkel the mangroves on the island to go on a seahorse hunt (which we didn't find) but I thought the mangrove snorkel was one of the best we did because it was so different. It was such a unique part of the trip, and it was perfect for anyone of all ages to participate. Definitely something I would do again with kids!

Actun Tunichil Muknal

2009-02-19T13:35:00.001-08:00

Actun Tunichil Muknal Cave was one of our very favourite things in Belize. It was such an amazing experience and something we could never have done here (due to the danger and the potential damage to the artifacts). It was a guided trip. We started out with a one hour hike through the jungle to the mouth of the cave, traversing one river 3 times to get there (so we were pretty wet even before we started, lol!). Then we entered the cave by swimming through a large pool at the mouth of the cave. From there, we were able to wade through knee-deep to neck deep water in the cave, climbing over rocks, for about 45 minutes. At one point, the guide had us turn off our head lamps and hold the shoulder of the person in front of us and go through a couple hundred feet of the cave in complete darkness! That was totally crazy, but a very memorable part of it. Eventually we reached the dry chamber which we climbed up a few rocks to get to. Shoes aren't allowed in the chamber, so we wore only socks. The guide took us through several parts of the chamber, showing us broken and intact Mayan pottery used for the sacrifices they made in the cave. Everything was in exactly the same place as it had been found, and you needed to be very careful not to step on anything! One part of the chamber held the bones of at least 14 sacrificed individuals of varying ages, including a very well preserved skull. We also climbed (a very scary) ladder into a smaller upper chamber where the entirely intact skeleton of a 14 year old girl was laying. She had been posed like she was dancing and they were fairly certain her bones had not been moved since they had been placed there in around 800 AD. The whole cave itself was such an amazing experience, and a definite must-do if you ever go to Belize.

The mouth of the cave:

The Crystal Maiden

Caracol

2009-02-19T13:24:00.001-08:00

Caracol is the biggest Maya city in Belize, and it was bigger than Tikal at it's most powerful (it also defeated Tikal on a couple of occasions and sacrificed Tikal's leader). However, not a lot of the site has been excavated and restored, in part because of finances and also because it was only discovered more recently in the 1950's. It is located not far from Tikal and close to the Guatemala border. As such, there have been problems with people from Guatemala coming to the site and robbing tourists. So we had a military escort that accompanied all of the vehicles going to the site, and armed guards sat on the pyramids to watch over us. It was a bit unnerving, but the site was beautiful.

Interestingly, the Maya in this area built big reservoirs to collect and store water instead of relying on rivers and lakes. The reservoir pictured here still holds water and it is used the provide water for the toilet facilities on site and also for the archaeology students to do laundry and shower.

Tikal

2009-02-19T11:52:00.000-08:00

Here are a few of the pictures I took of Tikal in Guatemala. Tikal is a Maya city that held about 100000 people at it's peak before the fall of the Maya. It's been fairly extensively excavated so there is a lot to see. We had a fantastic Guatemalan guide who was very passionate and informative.

Underwater photos from Belize!

2009-02-18T13:18:00.001-08:00

Here are a few of my favourite underwater shots from our recent trip to Belize. Most are diving shots (probably 30-60 feet deep) and a few are from snorkeling. We saw so much while under the water and there were so many things that I didn't get good shots of! The underwater camera was great though, and I really enjoyed having it (I took over 800 pictures with it!).

Trying out the underwater camera!

2009-01-16T10:13:00.001-08:00

I bought an underwater camera to take on our trip to Belize (in less than 2 weeks!) because we'll be doing a tonne of SCUBA diving and snorkeling. We did a refresher session in the pool here so we're ready to dive in Belize and I took my camera along to play with it. It was so much fun! I really need to get up close and personal with whatever I'm taking a picture of though :) Disclaimer: No one looks attractive in a wetsuit and scuba gear, lol!

Also, the camera is a Canon A540 with the Canon underwater housing. It can go down to 130'. I bought both used on Ebay for just over $200, so I think I got a pretty good deal!

Newfoundland!

2009-01-06T16:44:00.001-08:00

So I went to St. John's Newfoundland waaaaaay back in November and I'm finally posting my pics! I had a great trip (for school) and I really enjoyed it there. I had some good weather too (apparently a bit unusual for that part of the country). But right now things are super crazy as I'm finishing a paper to submit for publication, writing my PhD thesis, writing my applications for a genetic counselling MSc program and finalizing plans for a trip to Belize at the end of this month! Keep posted for those pics in February!

And just a few more from San Antonio

2008-10-24T19:37:00.000-07:00

OK, here are the last ones from San Antonio that I'm going to post! I'm off to St. John's Newfoundland in a week, so I'll have even more pictures to post after that (with any luck from the weather!). I have to say, I'm kind of missing the sunshine and tropical temperatures!

Flora & Fauna of San Antonio

2008-10-22T19:12:00.001-07:00

So I seem to love taking pictures of plants and animals :) San Antonio was a great place to photograph some pretty flowers and plants though. I have a tonne more, but these are my favourites :)

Finally some more from San Antonio- the Alamo

2008-10-19T19:38:00.001-07:00

I finally got a chance to edit a few of my shots from San Antonio! Here are some of the highlights from the Alamo :)

A couple of teasers from San Antonio!

2008-10-08T15:38:00.001-07:00

I'm away in San Antonio, Texas for the week (for an International Hepatitis C conference!). The weather is beautiful here and the temperature has been above 30 C all week long. Very humid though :) I can't believe how much food I've consumed while here... good thing I'm running my first 10K on Saturday!

The Riverwalk

The Alamo

It's been a while...

2008-09-30T14:02:00.001-07:00

So September has been an insane month for me! So much going on- good and bad. Here are a few quick shots I took yesterday around the yard, which is in full autumn glory :)

Fireworks!

2008-08-31T09:23:00.001-07:00

There was some sort of fireworks show this weekend in the city so I went out and shot some photos. These are all handheld, ISO 560. Thank goodness for image stabilization!

Lac La Ronge Part 3- The Furkids :)

2008-08-28T08:35:00.001-07:00

This was the furkids' first camping trip and they had so much fun. They were dead tired at the end, Helix even needed to be carried back to the campsite after our day at the beach, LOL!

What a long tongue!

Tired little girl

Kira didn't really want to be a foot warmer...

Kira loved the whole trip

Helix only liked the shady areas

Helix loved the bird poop covered dock...

Helix stole my chair for the whole trip!

Lac La Ronge Part 2- The Lake

2008-08-27T10:39:00.001-07:00

Lac La Ronge is a huge and beautiful lake. We had perfect weather to enjoy it too!

Lac La Ronge Part 1- Flora & Fauna

2008-08-26T18:33:00.000-07:00

Here's the first of my posts on our camping trip to Wadin Bay at Lac la Ronge in Northern Saskatchewan! We spent 3 nights camping listening to the wind in the trees and the loons calling on the lake. It was so relaxing and the weather was perfect (except for the day we left when it was raining!). Here are some of the shots I took of the surrounding vegetation :) .

Mmm... Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

2008-08-20T13:48:00.000-07:00

I whipped up a vanilla bean cheesecake with raspberry coulis for a family barbeque last weekend. It was fantastic and got rave reviews. It has a shortbread crust and feeds 16+ people. The raspberry coulis is so easy and very versatile. I had to snap a pic of course!

Vanilla Bean Cheesecake

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/3 cup white sugar
1 egg, beaten
1/2 cup butter, softened

2 1/2 pounds cream cheese, softened
1 3/4 cups white sugar
3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
5 eggs
2 egg yolks
1/4 cup heavy whipping cream
2 vanilla beans, split lengthwise and seeds scraped out

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Lightly coat a 10 inch springform pan with spray oil. Note: You could use a 9x13 inch pan instead.
2. To make the crust: Combine 1 1/2 cups flour, 1/3 cup sugar, 1 egg and 1/2 cup butter or margarine. Spread to the edges of the pan. pierce all over with a fork, then bake 15 minutes at 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Allow to cool.
3. Increase oven temperature to 475 degrees F (245 degrees C). In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, 1 3/4 cups sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, 5 eggs and the yolks and mix thoroughly. Add cream and vanilla bean seeds and mix only enough to blend.
4. Pour filling over crust and bake for 10 minutes at 475 degrees F (245 degrees C). Reduce temperature to 200 degrees F (95 degrees C) and continue to bake for one hour. Turn oven off, but leave cake in for another hour. Don't worry if it looks a little jiggly in the center.
5. Chill overnight. This is imperative! Top with raspberry coulis when served.

Raspberry Coulis

2 pints fresh raspberries
1/3 cup sugar
2 tsp lemon juice

Mix together, blend until smooth. Strain seeds using a fine sieve (you will have to push the juice and fruit through until just the seeds remain). Serve over cheesecake.

Beautiful Glass

2008-08-18T21:25:00.000-07:00

Some of our family from BC came out to visit this past weekend and it was great to see them again! One of the boys (he's only 16!) does beautiful work with glass- beads, vases and paperweights. He sells quite a bit as jewelry (including a few pieces this weekend). His work is amazing, he really has a lot of talent. Here are a few of the pictures I took of a few pieces.

Pink Party!

2008-08-15T21:25:00.000-07:00

We attended Dustin's cousin's going away party last night and we had a blast! I took a few pictures, but in low lighting it was really tough. Here are a few of the salvageable ones (thanks to a little post-processing).

Sunsets and Wildflowers

2008-07-28T13:04:00.001-07:00

So we were gone this past weekend to do our Open Water Certification dives with PADI at a lake in northern Saskatchewan. We had absolutely perfect weather for diving- hot and sunny one day, cool and drizzly the next but amazingly calm for Saskatchewan. I did take a few pictures, but I really didn't have a lot of energy to take very many- diving is exhausting! Plus the bugs were out in full force and I am COVERED in mosquito bites right now! All in all we had fun and we're now certified PADI Scuba divers :)

Queen Anne's Lace

This one reminds me of Christmas!

Goldenrod

Shooting gophers... and other adventures

2008-07-20T16:15:00.001-07:00

I decided my mission this weekend would be to get a good gopher picture. Gophers are all over Saskatchewan, and they seem to love living on the U of S campus, so we see a lot of the little guys. They are considered a pest, but I think they're cute! One little guy posed quite nicely for me and I shot a tonne of pictures of him :) After that I wandered around a bit and shot a few more photos of insects and such. It was a beautiful day.

Looking up the pine tree
My favourite shot of the day (I have a thing for mushrooms!)

An almost good shot of a beautiful butterfly

Buskers on Broadway tribute

Street Photography

2008-07-13T17:31:00.001-07:00

This week I was able to choose the theme for the photo contest and I decided it would be street photography. I knew my new 70-300mm lens would come in handy for it :) I have to say that I love the pictures I get of people in real situations without all the fake staging. But I felt really awkward taking pictures of people, especially because my camera with the lens at 300mm is just a tad conspicuous. The other problem I had was that I injured my foot while running on Saturday morning and so I had a hard time getting out and actually taking a few pictures, but I did get it done (and hopefully didn't injure my foot any further!). Here are a few of my favourites from the day!

And just a few more sandhill pictures :)

2008-07-07T10:37:00.001-07:00

Here are some more pictures that I took at the Great Sandhills in Southwestern Saskatchewan.

The Great Sandhills!

2008-07-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Dustin and I decided to go on a big roadtrip this weekend to visit the Great Sandhills in south western Saskatchewan (about a 3 hours drive from Saskatoon). It's basically a large expanse of untouched prairie covered in sandy hills and dunes. Most of the area is dunes that have vegetation growing on them (so they just look like hills) but every once in a while there is an entirely sand dune. They were beautiful and so much fin to climb on. The sand was so soft but it was so windy! We left with sand in places that definitely shouldn't have sand, LOL! I took a tonne of pictures with my Sigma 17-70 lens and my new polarizer. We even decided to stay for sunset. The pups had a great time and they are super tired today :)

First pics with the new lens!

2008-07-04T19:28:00.000-07:00

For my birthday I got a Sigma 70-300mm lens for my camera from Dustin! It has a 1:2 macro setting which is great :) Here are the first pictures I've taken with it from just around the yard- they are uncropped. I do love close ups of flowers...

Lightning!

2008-07-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

We were out at my in laws' place yesterday near the river. There was a fabulous storm in the north so I snapped a few (144!) shots. They're just handheld because I didn't have my tripod with me, so they aren't as good as I would have liked. But it's a start!

Out at the farm

2008-06-28T18:06:00.000-07:00

We were out at my parents' farm this weekend to attend my little brother's high school graduation. It was lots of fun and I took a tonne of pictures! Here are a few of the favourites.

Scuba Diving!

2008-06-24T08:20:00.000-07:00

I've been so super busy over the last couple of weeks, especially with a few stressful things happening. I've had 3 very draining calls on the sexual assault crisis line that I volunteer for (two last Sunday and one last night). Then last Tuesday I witnessed a fatal motorcycle accident while on my morning run- a 38 year old man was killed and a 14 year old girl (apparently she wasn't known to the family ??????) was seriously injured. So that was a bit traumatic :(

This past weekend though we took our Open Water Scuba Diving course through PADI! It was so intense and absolutely exhausting. We had 5 confined water dives in a local pool and 5 classroom sessions. We were gone from 6:00-11:00 on Friday, 9:00-7:00 Saturday, and 11:00-7:00 Sunday. I'm not very comfortable in the water, but Dustin is and he really wanted me to take Scuba with him for our trip to Belize in the winter/spring and I really did want to learn so I was determined to successfully complete the course. It was actually very stressful for me, at least for the first 3 or 4 dives. I don't like breathing from my mouth and we needed to demonstrate a bunch of skills for our instructor to prove we could deal with a variety of situations if they arose. Most of the skills I was fine with- like switching from the regulator to a snorkel, or breathing from my buddies alternate air source. But I had a huge amount of trouble with no mask swimming. I naturally inhale a little bit through my nose even with my mask on- which is fine with a mask because there isn't much water in there and it just makes your mask a little uncomfortable. When I had to fill my mask with water and breathe just through my mouth though, I would accidentally inhale a bit of water, which made me cough and panic. It didn't help that I had to keep my eyes closed so I wouldn't lose a contact. Luckily we were able to practice in shallow water so it wasn't a big deal if I surfaced. But later we had to move to the deep end where you couldn't just rush to the surface or risk damaging your ears or lungs. The instructors were great though and a dive master worked with me until I was comfortable with breathing only through my mouth and swimming a short distance underwater, then putting my mask back on and blowing out the water. With his help I was able to successfully complete the skill :) Now we just need to complete our official open water dive in a lake to get certified. I'll have to repeat the no mask swim in the lake, which will be a little more scary (and cold!) but I think I can do it. It was fun though by the end and I'm really looking forward to doing some diving where I can actually see some cool things!

Flowers by Night

2008-06-12T07:19:00.000-07:00

Our photo contest this week was night photography (picked by me!). I really wanted to get a good bridge shot- Saskatoon has the most amazing skyline on the river at night! But I've been feeling really crappy all week and I was super busy all weekend, so getting out to the river and setting up a shot after 11:00 was unlikely! I decided to look for inspiration close to home (not that the river is far, just more work!). Two weeks ago our neighbours set up really cool solar lights in their front yard which I immediately loved. I decided they would be perfect for a night photography shot, especially placed in the beautiful patch of white flowers. I must have looked like a crazy person though with my camera and tripod set up on their front walk taking quick shots of their yard! I'm sure if they would have seen me they would have laughed at me (or kicked me off of their property). I took the pictures using manual focus; autofocus just wasn't working! The exposure was about 6 seconds. I couldn't get the white balance right though- probably because the solar lights are bluish LEDs and the street lights are very orange/red toned so all of the flowers had a distinct reddish glow. I did 3 different edits of the photo- one pinker, one slightly desaturated to get the flowers to their natural white and one black and white. I chose the pink hued one because I loved the way the flowers glowed!

Raindrops...

2008-06-07T09:04:00.001-07:00

Here are a few shots I took in the backyard (yet again!) this time with raindrops :) Oh, and an obligatory dandelion fluff shot.

The old pink house

2008-06-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

I thought I would explain my contest entry for this week :)

About two miles from my parents' farm in the middle-of-nowhere Saskatchewan sits "the old pink house." It hasn't been inhabited in recent memory and it has been deserted for quite some time. Someone owns the land of course, but the house has never been removed. It's actually a pretty memorable part of my childhood- it's familiar and reminds me of home. It was always our landmark to direct people to the farm- just turn right at the pink house :). I would often walk or bike to it, just contemplating "stuff". I've always wondered about its history and what memories it holds. I'm glad I took the time to photograph it this past winter so now I have a record of it even if it is one day torn down for good. And, yes, it is painted pink!

Please help me choose!

2008-05-30T08:41:00.001-07:00

So after the pet photo contest fell through (turns out you have to pay $15 for every photo you enter!) I started looking for other photo contests. This is also a calendar photo contest- for Saskatchewan. I need to pick 2 photos to enter by Sunday and they need to have been taken in Saskatchewan (not hard, most of my photos are). Here are a few that I was thinking of- it's tough because some of my favourites just don't have that happy calendar feel to them! Let me know if you have any favourites in this batch or in other posts. I may find a few more to add tonight.

This one I've posted before. I love the composition on it and it gives a unique perspective of one of the bridges. It needs to be black and white because there are bright coloured vehicles on the bridge that distract from the rest of the photo.

This is one of my first and favourite shots. I'm not sure I *can* enter it though- it was previously published in our local newspaper and I can't remember which "rights" I signed over to them. It's completely untouched by the way- just a little cropping to remove part of the bridge railing I managed to catch in the bottom of the shot.

I really love this bridge photo- it's just not that unique. Again, it's completely natural lighting (no contrast and saturation increase here!).

This bridge photo is a little more unique- foggy!

This is a photo from my parents' farm. I like it in sepia but I'm not sure if it suits a calendar photo. I need to get the colour one off of the external hard drive to see how it looks and if it would work better. I like the idea of submitting a city photo and a rural photo :) It's my dad's favourite shot too.

Another foggy bridge- this is my favourite bridge.

I'm just not sure I'm happy with any of them! Maybe I'll get some time to take some great photos on Saturday ...

I love spring!

2008-05-28T21:57:00.000-07:00

Here are a few shots from my backyard I took tonight :) As you can tell, I LOVE flowers- and the bonus is that they stay still for photographs!

Our grapevine getting ready to bloom!

A couple more from the weekend

2008-05-27T10:07:00.000-07:00

This shot was taken from our car as we drove down the highway. I was trying to capture the rays of sunshine emanating from the sun. It ended up being kind of neat because the foreground is blurred due to the movement of the car. I thought of using it in the photo contest- probably for the song "Wide Open Spaces" by The Dixie Chicks.

This is a shot I took of Kira hanging out in the backyard- she was so happy to have somehere to run!

This picture is of a couple of purple martens hanging out on a electrical wire in the back alley of my sister's house. The sky looked really cool with the cold processing effect! I'm using it as my contest entry for "A picture is worth a 1000 lyrics". It suits the Leonard Cohen song "Bird on the wire" well I think.

My niece's first birthday!

2008-05-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

It was my niece's first birthday this weekend and my sister planned a princess themed birthday party for her. I bought her a pink tutu from Etsy that was too cute (although a little too big!). We had a blast :) Here are a few of my favourite photos from her birthday.

Another edit of the first one; I think I like it better!

And this is the castle cake my sister and I made for her princess party! It turned out better than we thought it would :)

Oh how I love macro....

2008-05-18T21:44:00.001-07:00

I love macro photography! The flowers on the trees in the backyard are amazing and smell so good. I decided I would take advantage and slap on my extension tubes and cheap 50mm f2.0 lens. All of these photos are uncropped and some are unprocessed as well- although the extension tubes do underexpose the photos a bit. Tomorrow I want to try to get some insect photos and try to get even closer by using all of the extension tubes instead of just two of them. They're the same flowers in the post below.

I also took a few with my lensbaby- once again, the effect is done entirely by the lens :) The dandelion shot is definitely one of my favourites from the weekend!

Flowers & Insects

2008-05-17T13:38:00.001-07:00

It's been a gorgeous weekend so far! The plum and pear trees are blooming in our backyard and they are swarming with insects- perfect photo taking! I also discovered the wonders of www.picnik.com so I was experimenting a little bit and I have to say that I love the effects you can add to the photos. So much fun!

My first photo shoot...with Helix ;)

2008-05-09T22:19:00.001-07:00

Helix is such a poser! He is super photogenic and was having a blast playing on the bed (which is badly in need of a good wash- but we're in the middle of shedding season, so there's really no point...). Here are a few shots I took of him this evening :)

A few assorted pics

2008-04-28T20:55:00.001-07:00

Here are a few more random pics from the week. Yet another robin picture taken from my front window; an attempt at "reflections" for the contest; a great picture of my little girl Kira; and another reflection attempt- but the river wasn't cooperating!

We've been infiltrated!

2008-04-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

There are way too many robins around these days! They fly around in huge flocks foraging for food. Usually there aren't as many but this year they stopped here because it's so cold and they don't want to go any farther north. Hopefully they'll be moving along soon!

Not my favourite photo contest...

2008-04-20T20:49:00.001-07:00

So our mission this week is to take a self portrait. That's truly easier said than done and after a couple of hours of trying to do something fun and unique, I've got nothing. I post processed these to death and I'm not sure any of them will be entered in the contest. Blah!

A few random pics

2008-04-19T22:56:00.001-07:00

Well, it was nice outside last week. Now there's snow all over again and more forecast for the next couple of days. Boo! Here are a few pics I took last week though that I haven't had time to put up :)

In search of circles...

2008-04-13T20:32:00.000-07:00

I went to the biology building in search of circles for the photo contest today. I must say, I got a bit side tracked and I took pictures of everything but circles! I was using my Lensbaby today- which I love immensely because of the funky pictures you can take right out of the camera (Dustin hates it though...). Here are a few of my favourites today, including a couple that I *could* have used for the circles contest :)

Birds!

2008-04-10T18:10:00.000-07:00

I decided to take my camera out on a walk with Dustin and the pups tonight. It was dreary and chilly, but there were still a few birds out. These were taken with a 200mm lens.

Note to self: Don't shoot in ISO 800 in bright sunlight...

2008-04-08T08:43:00.000-07:00

So this weekend I was trying to get some good shots of the pets for the photo contest and a local pet calender that I can enter photos for. I was experimenting with Sv (sensitivity mode) on my camera in the evening and I forgot to change it back to my normal P mode (it's like a combo Av and Sv mode; very useful). In the morning, there were these wonderful birds hanging out in our mountain ash tree in the front yard. They were beautiful, so I grabbed the camera and started snapping. I got some good shots too! But then, after the birds had gone, I checked them out. Oh the noise! It's horrible- ISO 800 is usually pretty good in low light pictures, but the noise in photos taken in bright sunlight is, well, not so good. I'm so sad :( I also took a few of the kitties that are pretty good and I may just need to run them through a better noise removal program to make them work well. Anyway, let me know what you think of the kitty and dog pictures, I want to start amassing a collection so I can chose a good one of each pet to enter into the photo calender contest.

Crazy puppies are at it again!

2008-04-07T10:01:00.001-07:00

So we have yet another dog illness to deal with! Last week Kira had diarrhea- the explosive-can't-hold-it-for-more-than-two-hours kind. Dustin had to go home at lunch to take her out (and he had to clean her crate and her twice because the poor little girl just had to go) and I had to go home on the bus early to rescue her. We fasted her for a day, then I made a bunch of rice and boiled some chicken, so she's been eating that all weekend. She finally could hold it, but it's still liquidy. However, she hasn't gone poop in more than 24 hours now and she's thrown up twice since last night. Needless to say, we're off to the vet tomorrow. She doing really well considering and hopefully it's as simple as deworming her again (she was an outside dog then a shelter dog, so I'm sure she was full of worms....). She has had a chronic vomitting problem though so I'm hoping that has nothing to do with anything. Helix also vomitted this morning at about 5am- a big chunk of fleece. Serves him right for eating fleece! Silly puppy :P Life with dogs- it's always exciting... Here are a few random pics of the furkids.

Look what I did to my new MacBook!

2008-04-02T15:23:00.000-07:00

So I think this turned out pretty cool :) It's a vinyl skin printed and cut for MacBook (but you can get a variety of sizes and patterns) that protects the top from scratches and the area around the touchpad from getting dirty. It cost me $40 (with shipping) from www.garskin.com.

Best. Run. Ever.

2008-03-30T15:18:00.000-07:00

So obviously I've been a bit lazy with this whole blog thing. With Easter and then the joys of Norwalk (thanks family!) it's been a little crazy and I haven't really done anything productive at all.

My latest thing has been learning to run. Let me preface by saying I am NOT a runner. I have big hips, big thighs and even bigger breasts. I was designed for pumping out babies, not long distance running, LOL! But I want to learn to run- for my health, to lose weight, to exercise my dogs, and just to say I can :) I'm doing the Couch to 5K program which basically involves 9 week walk-run interval training (using convenient podcasts that tell you when to walk and when to run- all set to *awesome* techno music...). You run 3 times a week, gradually increasing the length of time you run until you're running for 30 whole minutes at the very end. Crazy, huh? I don't think I've ever been able to run more than 5 minutes even when I've been in super good shape. I've completed the first two weeks and I started the 3rd week today. I've battled nasty shin splints, calve cramps and side aches and I think I've figured it all out! Today's run was fantastic and it's inspired me to believe that I can and will run for 30 whole minutes in just a few weeks time- so much so that I'm going to register for a 5K marathon on June 8. To further inspire me, last week a bought terribly expensive running shoes to help me along. They're the most expensive shoes I've ever owned- so now I have to run!

I probably broke Helix's paw!

2008-03-15T17:06:00.000-07:00

So Thursday night we were out for our run/walk and Helix crossed over in front of me and I stepped on his paw. He didn't yelp or anything so I didn't think anything of it. Later that night he started to favour that leg and then he wouldn't walk on it at all! We were worried he had torn a ligament playing with Kira (which would be very serious and would likely require surgery). Eventually we figured out that it was probably his paw; we took him to the vet and the vet thought that was likely it as well. He has some painkillers now and today he's been walking on it. In fact, it doesn't look like it hurts him at all! But we still need to keep him relatively inactive so that it heals correctly. Poor little guy, I feel so bad!

She says she's sorry....

2008-03-13T09:33:00.001-07:00

So this morning Kira ran over the keyboard of "my" laptop. As a result I am now missing a total of 6 keys- 3 were non-essential so I didn't worry about them. But now I am missing my 7 and J keys and they probably won't be easy to fix. Now, I don't really own this laptop. The place I am doing my grad studies at actually bought them for us and they are now crappy 4 year old IBM Thinkpads with only 30GB hard drives and 512 RAM. We've been planning for a while for me to buy a better laptop when I start writing my thesis (in about 4 or 5 months). As a result, I placed my order for my new MacBook today! I'm going with the "middle" grade white one but I'm getting a good deal as a package with a printer, MS Office, a mouse, a backpack, and antivirus software for $1389. I'm also getting Aperture 2 so that I can edit my photos :) Exciting stuff!

Photos from Montreal

2008-03-11T19:31:00.000-07:00

I went to Montreal for a conference a couple of weeks ago. The weather was absolutely crappy, but I did get out to take a few pictures. I really enjoyed the Biodome- despite the $16 entrance fee.

So my husband thinks it's sad that I have a blog...

2008-03-11T19:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I've decided to start a blog. Mainly it's because I want to participate in the weekly photo challenge from the WB girls though :) Part of it is also to help me procrastinate (my PhD will finish itself, right?).