Wish they all could be ...Southern Alberta Girls...

I went to Hawaii almost a year ago for the first time. I'm considering going again in February, but the ticket prices shoot up during reading week up here in Canada. Hmm...  Last time I went my cousin and I shared the cost of renting a 600mm Canon lens.  We got some great shots, mostly of surfers, but a few random ones as well.  Here is one of my favorite random ones.

Year in Review: 52 Books

Last year I set a goal to read 50 books. I read 52!!  While a few of these are pretty thin and can't really be considered books (The Importance of Being Earnest), there are few thick ones in there too, so I consider this goal accomplished.

Not all of these books were amazing, but among my favorites were the following (not in any particular order):

• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Life of Pi by Yann Martel (I thought the book was much more hopefull and happy than how the movie ended)
• The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley - Everyone should read this book!!
• A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens - The ending is worth wading through the begining!
• The Continous Atonement - Brad Wilcox - Everyone should read this book twice!
• Gathering Blue - Lois Lowry - I love these thoughtful books
• The Giver - Lois Lowry
• The Count of Monte Cristo - Dumas - My favorite classic so far by a long shot!
• The Night Circus - Erin Morgenstern - maybe not amazing, but the narration by Jim Dale on the audiobook made the world come alive in so many magical ways. Maybe more of an experience book, whatever that means.
• All of the Septimus Heap Books - Angie Sage - Fun light fantasy reads

Biggest let-downs:

• Gullivers Traves. I hate historical satire I guess. Just plain boring and I hate charactors that know everything and Authors who just pontificate on things that annoy them about contemporary politics and culture (except Douglas Adams of course...). Guess I shouldn't read Swiss Family Robinson eh?

If you want to read my reviews, check me out on Goodreads.  I don't write long reviews, but hey.  Also, everyone should be on Goodreads.  It's the best place to check out books before you read them, and if you connect with a few friends with similar tastes, their reviews pop up first, and that can be helpful.  Also, its a good way to track reading lists, books you want to read, etc.

Sunrise on the Prairies

Southern Alberta is an amazing place for beautiful skies. I won't lie, I have seen many many more sunsets than sunrises, but sunrises can be absolutely spectacular. Often I complain to myself the pictures with amazing clouds and colour but with only flat fields in the foreground make poor art, but other times it just doesn't matter. Besides… Everyone likes to see some random farm-yard equipment, don't they?

O Little Town of Bethlehem

Tis the Season

Yesterday we finally got out the majority of our Christmas decorations and it is starting to feel a lot like Christmas!

And Winter Came...

Winter is here! It's freezing and often drab, but it is also a very beautiful time of the year! Merry Christmas!

 (Also… Enya has a sweet album called "And Winter Came" -check out "My! My! Time Flies" on it. Very different than typical Enya, but very good!)

Back in the Saddle

I haven't been very active on my blog at all for the last 7 months or so, and honestly I haven't really been taking very many photos either. I recently built a new Hackintosh and migrated 50,000 photos from 3 or 4 hard drives onto my new gigantor 3 TB hard drive. I realized that I will never look through all 50,000 of those photos, so I have started culling them down to the decent ones. I've deleted 5,000 so far simply by deleting the ones that didn't warrant any stars in my rating system when I imported them. 

ANYWAYS, the long short of it is that I discovered a few gems in there and decided to process them and start posting again, even if I don't go out and shoot a ton (tho I am going to get back into that too soon!) Anyways, this is kinda a test post--I'm trying out a new way to blog right from Lightroom. Cheers!

Here's a photo from a few years back:

 

I went to Waterton last weekend for the first time in a few years and it was a perfect day to spend in the mountains!  It was fairly warm and there was virtually no wind.  As we were leaving the park we were greeted with a lovely view of the mountains reflected in the lake.  Just minutes after I stuck my head out of the sunroof and grabbed a set of three brackets to stitch into a pano the wind picked up and the reflection was wiped away.  Click through for super high res! mmmm.

Surfs Up | Pipeline Beach

I went on a week long trip to Hawaii and while I was there I rented a Canon 600mm f/4L from LensRentals.com.  I've always wanted to rent some serious glass, and since I was travelling with my cousin and fellow photographer, and we had some sweet things to shoot (surf season!!!), it was an ideal time.  I took tons of pictures and will be working through them gradually, so prepare for some awesomeness!

This shot was taken just as the sun was setting, looking almost directly to the west.  Despite the difficult conditions I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.  Definitely one of my favorites from the trip.

Wall-E

Testing a new 3D payload kit at ASI