Out at the farm

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!

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

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...

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

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!

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!

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!