Rest and Relaxation...

The summer vacation... what will it be today? Steaks? Pizza? I know beer is on the menu.

Hot days and cool nights. Looking forward to the Canada Day celebration tomorrow.

Cheers.

Fort Whyte walk and some birds

Had a great walk at one of our favorite destinations today. The weather was perfect and I got a few pics of some birds before the battery in my point'n shoot camera went dead. Wish I knew what kind of birds these were. I think the top one is a Downy Woodpecker and the bottom two are American Goldfinch?

The number of people with SLR cameras wandering around was astounding. It looked like everyone was itching to try out their cameras on the wild life. I saw a guy snapping away at a water muskrat another told me he was looking for warblers another was sneaking up on some geese with a little gosling following them around. Fun.

The Adventure of the Red Tailed Hawk Release

This past week I was witness to probably the funniest event ever.

Now, before I go any further I want everyone reading this to know that I love animals (except if you are an off-leash dog running at me... then all bets are off). I love photographing animals. I love the fact that there are groups who help injured animals. Injured wild animals.

The Wildlife Haven is one of those groups. Really nice people and they also know what they're doing. And it was a brilliant PR idea to invite our humour columnist to go out there and release a rehabilitated bird back into the wild. Everything our humour guy touches...well it kinda becomes bigger than anyone ever would think it could.

This event was a prime example.

You have to watch the video, but let me just say that you can't script this kind of stuff.



There is no way the people at Wildlife Haven could have known that when you invite our humour columnist to do something, well you are going to get humour. Even if it is scary dark humour. The kind of funny that makes you realize you are going to go to hell for laughing so hard.

The video could have included the bit where you see the bird fly into the barn and hit a beam and falls to the ground. It could have included more astonished and emotional outbursts from the humour columnist that were snort-your-coffee-out-your-nose-funny...

But it doesn't and that's probably a good thing.

We don't want people to think that we would laugh at the possibility that an innocent animal released by our humour columnist almost immediately broke its neck. It was fine.

It could have happened to anyone, just because it was our humour columnist doesn't mean anything. Really.

Winnipeg Goldeyes Open House

Winnipeg Goldeyes Open House, originally uploaded by mdcellphoto.

David Rubenfeld the balloon guy handed out around 200 balloons at the Open House tryouts for the Winnipeg Goldeyes at CanWest Park.

Sent from my BlackBerry® smartphone on the MTS High Speed Mobility Network

A Walk Down Main Street in Vulcan, Alberta

My motel sits directly across from the Information Trek Station in Vulcan, Alberta where my dad grew up. We're in town for the funeral of my grandmother who passed away at the age of 92.

Putting the sad stuff aside, I took the opportunity shortly after my arrival to take a walk down Main Street.











First, I had to check out the "space ship." It was closed which is too bad... but the outside of the white painted building was nicely lit by the late afternoon sun.



It looks like much of the town has picked up on the Star Trek tourism thing, for example the computer store called DND Computer is alternatively named Starfleet Engineering.



As well as this HUGE mural on the side of a drug store.





I remember as a youngster during my visits to Vulcan that the local newspaper, The Advocate, switched the logo on its masthead to a pointy ear (I think) and then to the Starship Enterprise. I might be getting the ear thing mixed up because you could actually purchase rubber Vulcan ears that fit over your own... had a lot of fun with those back in the day.

On Main Street The Advocate's office was empty and a sign in the window said they had moved mid-November to a new location in town. I really liked the building they were in for its cool sign. Its seen better days though. I would hate to come face to face with the bird/squirrel that took the chunk out of the 'e'.



Across the street is the Canadian Piano Museum. It was closed too... maybe it will be open before I leave. Who would have thought that such a museum would be located here.



Signs around town showing directions to important locations are very amusing. Love the way those green aliens are dancing.



On the way back to the motel I came across the Vulcan County building which had some important offices in it:

• County Administration Offices
• Literacy Programs & Adult Learning Center
• Vulcan County Waste Authority
• PLANET OF VULCAN AUTHORITY

OK, so I was mildly amused with the sights, but was noticing a lack of activity on Main Street. Most of the stores were closed and only one cafe and the liquor store seemed to be open. There was also a thing going on in one of the churches (turns out it was a birthday party for someone my uncle knew). I stopped in at the liquor store and bought a four pack of Boddingtons Ale. I only mention this because when I went into the store the change in the quality of light threw me completely and I kind of felt like I was entering a cave... then a voice that I thought was coming from my left said, "good afternoon!" I looked left and there was just a bunch of liquor bottles on a shelf, so I was kinda startled and started to look back forth wondering what the hell. The thing is I kept walking the whole time (only a couple of steps) and was startled to realize the voice was coming from directly in front of me from the proprietor. I think I jumped a couple of inches and I'm pretty sure he thought I was crazy. I got my beer and got out.



By this point I'm feeling like I'm in the twilight zone, THEN I see a fellow photographer from Winnipeg taking photos with a Hassy... what!? I did a double take and a few steps toward the fellow before I realized it wasn't who I thought it was. But it WAS a guy with a Hassy taking photos. I didn't introduce myself and just scurried back to my room.

What a weird day.

Gone Fishing

I haven't been able to put the new point'n shoot camera down and today managed to get some photos from the pet store while we were shopping for Aa's big Christmas gift (no we did not get it at the pet store!!!). She talked quite a bit about Santa though when we finally got her in Santa's village she choked. He did give her a candycane which was the only reason she let us drag her in there anyway.

Early Christmas for me...

I've never been one for waiting when it comes to gadgets or cameras... I buy it when I want to especially if I can get a deal on the thing I've been obsessing about.

So, yesterday when I opened up the morning paper and the large pull-out ad told me I could get the Canon G10 for less than even I thought I could talk the sales people down to, I decided it was a sign from above. It no longer was a question of if I was going to get this camera, but whether I was going to be able to get it that day.

I went to work and got my assignments and then headed straight over to the store.

The Canon rep was giving the sales people a rundown on the new 5d mkII when I walked in and again feeling it was a sign from above I asked if I could have a look. My boss recently put in a request for a couple of them in his budget proposal for next year. It is definitely a nice camera and one I look forward to using. Hopefully.

From the store I had to go to the Manitoba Legislature to shoot the Throne Speech. I felt this could be a good test of it's capabilities straight out of the box.

First off, I really like the exposure compensation dial... in a pinch instead of trying to figure out how to change the shutter speed and aperture I used it in P mode and dialed down the exposure for the scrums that happen after the big speech.

Shot with an ISO of 400 at 1/50 sec at f/2.8 the camera's auto white balance did a great job, better than my 1d mkIIn which gave me a slight yellow cast from the lights on the half dozen TV cameras.

The image is very large (twice the size of my 1d mkIIn) but the chip is small and viewing the image at 100% shows the resulting artifacts. So, though my mkIIn is only 8MP compared to the G10's 14MP the image produced from the mkIIn is much smoother and less pixly.

G10

1D MkIIn

So, conclusion is it's a keeper. Thanks Santa for the early gift. ;)

If you were wondering who that is in the photos, it's Jon Gerrard the leader of the Liberal Party of Manitoba, and yes he obviously forgot to take the stickers off his new glasses. Ouch. I didn't get a chance to watch the television coverage of the speech. My paper didn't use the scrum photo, but rather the photo of him listening to the speech from the throne without his glasses on.

Stephane Dion in Winnipeg

On Strike!, originally uploaded by mdcellphoto.

In a last ditch effort to win the election the Dion plane flew into town on its way across the country the day before the polls open. Read the story on freepressonstrike.com for how it went here in Winnipeg.

A slideshow of some of the photos I took while covering it for freepressonstrike.com