Monthly Archives: December 2006

What We Learned In 2006

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From the BBC, a list of 100 things we didn’t know this time last year.  A few highlights:

  • Urban birds have developed a short, fast “rap style” of singing, different from their rural counterparts.
  • Standard-sized condoms are too big for most Indian men.
  • The lion costume in the film Wizard of Oz was made from real lions.
  • More than one in eight people in the United States show signs of addiction to the internet, says a study.
  • Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 litre bottles.
  • Barbie’s full name is Barbie Millicent Roberts.
  • The medical name for the part of the brain associated with teenage sulking is “superior temporal sulcus”.
  • In the 1960s, the CIA used to watch Mission Impossible to get ideas about spying.

What have I learned?  Age 55 feels a lot like 54.

Out With The Old?

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I guess with the New Year approaching, Iraq has decided to clean up a bit.  Saddam Hussein is expected to be hanged before the ball drops in Times Square.

I might clean up my home office a bit but I’m sure not planning anything this drastic.

(story)

Christmas Eve 2006

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Terra Cotta Conservation Area

It’s far too warm for Christmas Eve but the weatherman says that’s all going to change in the next few days. So, I grabbed the camera and set off for the Terra Cotta Conservation Area. A nice area about 1/2 hour from Brampton that contains the Credit River and the tributaries that run into it.  I ran into this stream just inside the park and decided to play with the DSLR.

 

 

 

Terra Cotta Conservation Area

I was trying for running water so these few pictures are really meant to show this. Using aperature control, I exposed the shot so that exposure time would be longer to give the water a silky flow. The tricky part is getting the exposure just right so the timing is longer but the colors don’t get blown out by the amount of light received.  I shot in RAW mode and made sure that the camera thought it was shooting in bright sunshine.  This is done by metering off a bright area and then locking the exposure before focusing on the darker subject.  This second shot really captures the look I was going for.  The water rushes so quickly that it is blurred by the exposure and appears to be a continuous object.  The color of the ferns was modified just a bit.

 

 

 

Terra Cotta Conservation Area

All in all, I’m happy with the way they turned out. Clicking on any of these will take you to the image on Flickr where they can be downloaded if you want.

 

 

 

 

 

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