Vexing Laundry: the Soap Opera

February 5th, 2012 Thomasso

There are advantages to starting early and getting the bulk of your work done before the onset of everyone else starting their’s. This morning was laundry time, and as a rule, I start mine every Sunday morning right when the laundromat opens. Some of my close friends kid around with me about my laundry hardcore attitude, but when you have gone through some of my adventures and of laundry Hell that I have gone through, you would then appreciate my attitude.

I start my laundry right when the laundromat opens. Every Sunday, just before 8:00am, the doors open, and I quickly run in and start my task of laundry. My vantage point from my home is such that I can see the owner of the laundromat leave their office doors, and walk towards the laundromat. This is huge for me since many times they are early, and sometimes late, and their starts times very from one week to the next based on if they sleep in or not.

My early Sunday morning starts were never part of my normal routines, as I was never like this back in the old days. I used to do laundry whenever I felt like it, or when there was the stinky need to do it. However that all ended on one occasion when I had my entire load of clothes stolen. Yes, you heard me, a batch of men’s pants, underwear, t-shirts and socks, gone, just after I threw then into the dryer. Later that week I did see my pants again, though on someone else, a young man. Then later on, one of my t-shirts worn by his girl friend. How sick is that?

What do you do when someone has stolen your clothes?

The hardship for me was when I had to wear the same pair of pants for the following Four days until I got my next pay cheuque, then this meant having to forgo my food budget because it was also rent time too. There were also the many times that I wanted to tear a strip off these two people, but how do I justify the violence towards them when the police could not even help return my clothes – I needed to have witnessed the event, and I was not able to stand guard over my laundry during the whole time. I mean, it is not like I sew my name into every garment I own either?

So, since that time, and many other times of lesser laundry mishaps before and since, I do it when most of the population is still sleeping. Sundays are the perfect time to do laundry here in Fort Langley, first thing in the morning.

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Revisiting the Moon – Photography

February 5th, 2012 Thomasso

I am going to revisit the Moon. As we are on our third crystal clear night in the middle of winter, the Moon was calling me, again. This shot was just only one of five that I took of it. Using the same setting as I did from Feb 2nd, 2012, I just cranked up the shutter speed as the Moon is now almost full.

The Waxing Gibbous Moon, almost full:

Compared to the last set of shots I took of the Moon, this one is a lot better. I see that the thin layer of clouds from the February 2nd, 2012 shots were darker becuase of it, and having the clear night really makes a difference.

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Posted my Photos in Video: On YouTube

February 5th, 2012 Thomasso

I spent some time editing a little video of some of the photos, and a short clip, that I took today from my Sony A33. The video a sort of the spur of the moment project, very amateurish, and I put it together in less than an hour.

Basically what you about to see is the short video clip of the bridge going over the Fraser River, then some of the photos I took of that hike along Brae Island outside of Fort Langley, BC. The music is mine – done on the LMMS, and the video production and editing was done suing the OpenShot on my LINUX PC, with Ubuntu 11.10.

Enjoy.

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My Camera Bug Addiction Continues

February 4th, 2012 Thomasso

My camera shooting spree continues as I planned today’s hike with clockwork and strategy, keeping in mind that with this onset of wonderful unexpected sunny weather, I needed to catch the light when it was perfect – near dusk. It was a cool 10C and many people were also out on the trails making is difficult at times not have them in my shots. I am not a people photographer, yet, so finding these choice spots meant walking in circles at one location I like. So, without further ado.

Above, on the bridge (Glover Road) in Fort Langley, looking East towards Marena’s Park. Below, an abandon bike that was probably stolen and then tossed off from the bridge.

Above, grass, with the distant tree blurred out. Below is beneath the bridge on the Brea Island side of the Fraser River.

Above, looking at Bedford Langley, just outside of Fort Langley, taken from Brea Island. Below, a rather neat shot of where the river goes during the flooding season.This was some 18mm wide angle shooting.

The image above, is my attempt at getting the right blur in the background, or good bokeh, but becuase I used the kif lens for all of these shots, the blur is often hard to achieve. All the shots above were done with the Sony kid lens 3.5-5.6/18-55mm SAM lens, on a Sony A33 body.

Soon I will invest in macro lenses. Right now I have my heart on a 30mm prime lens so that I can do close-up shooting and extreme wide angle photos. After that, possibly a prime 50mm lens for street photography. Yes, I feel I can graduate up to this level of photography. I also want a good flash, preferably one with bounce and wireless. Hey, one can dream, right!

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A Sunny Day to Shoot For – Photography

February 4th, 2012 Thomasso

Oh glorious sunny days, even in mid winter, days like this cannot be missed by staying indoors. My enthusiasm dominated my lack of sleep from the work week, teasing my body to get up and get out, taking the camera with me outside as the Sun had no clouds to block its shine. In Vancouver, days like this are rare, or are in short numbers in the grip of the West Coast winter, as clouds and rain seem to last for months. From November to March, days are gloomy and dull for picture taking, and drag the soul down with it too.

The survivor of winter, a raspberry plant taking on the frost, short days, and attacks from a weed-eater machine by the local grounds keeper. Its leaves perked up, as we are now on “day two” of a sunny spell of weather.

The Fort Langley Airport seems busy also, and could be blamed on the perfect flying weather conditions.

I call this shot, “Tie-Die Clouds” becuase the clouds seem to have the same pattern as a sheet coloured with the tie-die method.

More of those “Tie-Die” pattern clouds. I know, my aviation friends are going to comment, and make say what the technical names are for these clouds. So, guys, for now, just enjoy the blog, and do not wreck the experience for everyone else.

Last one. The old pine that is near by. This poor tree as seen a lot of action over the years since I have lived here. From a near by house fire, to a couple of ice storms that broke most of its branches, I am amazed that it still lives. In just over a year, its days will end as gentrification will mean that it will be chopped down to make way for the next wave of development in Fort Langley. Enjoy its peace until then.

Posted in Around Town, Diatribe, General, Humour, Photographs | 1 Comment »

Getting Better Moon Photos With My Sony A33

February 1st, 2012 Thomasso

I have a better understanding of my camera now, and it is all starting to sink in–after further reading the owner’s manual. I had a golden shot of the Moon today, as it was almost overhead, and past the First Quarter position of its month long cycle around the Earth. Within five shots, and about ten minutes of waiting for a small cloud to pass by, I had my money shot of the allusive Moon with my 200mm telephoto lens.

I switched the camera to “M” mode (manual shutter and aperture) and dialed the shutter to about 1/40 to 1/60, and set my shutter to f11, and I was getting really awesome contrast, colour and sharpness in my images. Now, it is too easy to set everything up, but I am still far from being at the point where I can just instinctively adjust the camera to the best settings. The above image is taken at: 1/100, F11, ISO100, 200mm, using a Sony DT55-200mm F4-F5.6 SAM telephoto lens on a Sony A33 camera.

The funny thought I had the last time I was trying to shoot the Moon was I had forgotten how to switch back and forth from Shutter to Aperture settings in “M” mode on my SonyA33. Now, I see the right buttons, and have everything set up and ready for the next time I go Moon shooting. But it was frustrating the last time, trying to figure out why I could not adjust my F-stop. Now seeing the switching button on the outside of the camera, I feel kind of stupid, in a humorous way.

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Going through Last Year’s Photos

January 29th, 2012 Thomasso

Since it is raining out like crazy, to the point that I cannot get any sleep becuase at times it is so loud, I thought I would spend some of that time going through my photos from last year and try and organize them into something more manageable. Then, of course, finding photos that look awesome from my rearranging and sorting is what I would like to post and present to you today.

Remember that these photos were taken before I had properly set up my camera. All of the first 300 or so images I captured with my Sony A33 camera were basically set in “AUTO” mode, letting the camera decide what is best for me.

Now that I have a ten-fold better understanding of shooting techniques, and a twenty-fold better understand my camera, these photos are atrocious now that I see them in my humble opinion.

Now I see a nap time coming on as I fight off insomnia.

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Going for True Colour: Master of the White Balance

January 28th, 2012 Thomasso

I took some time today working on my camera skills, doing some indoor shots of my plant, trying to master the whole colour issue I have. The weather was very unpleasant today, so staying inside was how I was going to spend it–shooting under compact florescent lights, or CFLs.  I really needed to master how I was using the White Balance with this camera becuase working indoors, I am shooting in artificial light, coming from many different types and sources.

With my brand of camera, a Sony A33, it has its own set of peculiar settings, and ways, than shooting with my old Nikon and Cannon SLRs did. I had a Nikon DLSR for while that a friend of mine let me use for a weekend, and it was a totally different animal than this Sony A33. I should point out that the Nikon DSLR was a few years old, and my Sony is very new, but the two are worlds apart in how they handle and function. White Balance is one of them.

I started tweaking the White Balance on my camera today by actually setting the camera into “M” mode, or manual mode, and using the “plus” and “minus” values in the White Balance menu option, as I did a series of shots under some CFLs. To my amazement, I started getting, what I see as true colours, from certain objects in my photos for the very first time. My window blinds, in this photo, seem to be very close to what I see with my naked eyes in terms of colour, tint and brightness.

I also found out that once I set the White Balance, then switch my camera to “Auto,” the values stay the same until I hit the “default” settings in the camera’s menu option. This is cool if I do a lot of shooting in the same room, and I shut the camera off all the time between sessions.

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A Shot at the Moon

January 27th, 2012 Thomasso

Finally, a shot at the Moon. My luck played in, as the Moon was in the right position, there was a fairly clear evening sky, and I was home with some time to spare; in all, a perfect recipe for a short photo shoot with the Moon. I must have looked like a crazy fool running outside onto the front lawn with all of my camera gear, a tripod, camera bag, and of course my camera in hand. Then fighting to set everything up as fast as I could to start shooting up into the Southern sky. They must have thought I was going nuts.

I am still green with knowing how to access all of the camera settings by memory. I should say, I know what I want, but taking the time to go through all of the camera’s menu functions, left me with a strong feeling of frustration, which was compounded while working in the cold and dark. As soon as I put the camera into “Auto” mode, the moon lit up like an ark of light in the viewfinder, as the sky behind it looked a lovely tint of blue; the exact opposite of what I wanted!

Setting the aperture and shutter speed took the longest. I followed the instructions to the letter from information that I found on the Internet, but somehow my camera was not responding to those setting, giving me the shot that I wanted. So some serious tweaking was involved. I made sure my ISO was set to 100 becuase this would give me the cleanest, clearest background without the noise in the photo. From there I played with the f-stop and shutter speed until I started getting something close to what I wanted. Using my DT55-200mm f4-5.6 SAM zoom lens, I was able to get some really good close-ups of the lunar surface.

I can see that one of my next purchases will be a remote switch for my camera. I have a good tripod, but the ground that I was on was grass, which is bouncy. Even with some weight on the tripod, just touching the camera with shutter speeds of 1/30, the vibrations wrecked some good shots of the Moon for me.

The Photo: The moon is in Waxing Crescent; the Illumination of the moon disk is at 21.7 %; the Moon is five days old. Shot taken at January 27th, 2012 at 5:48pm.

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Melt

January 26th, 2012 Thomasso

Today was a good day for melting snow. The snow is almost gone now, with just a few piles of it left over from the deep-freeze weather period we had from last week. It melted fast considering that the last few nights have been dropping below freezing. We had two days of huge rain storms, so that in itself got rid of most of the solid water left over from the snow dump. I hope that this is the last of the severe weather that winter will deal us for this season.

I have been hiding out inside the house for most this week, and spending more time at work than normal, staying well inside from the elements, becuase of the gloomy non-stop rain. Dull, grey, rainy weather is not good weather for getting outside and taking photos with the camera. This is all that I have on my mind lately during my private time, and I want to get out and take pictures in good light. I struggle with early winter nights that give very low light when I finally get home, making outside photography suck, unless I want to do more long exposure scenes, or inside photos?

Today was like a spring day as the Sun stayed out for most of it, and the temperature hovered around 10C. It felt nice, like spring, but sadly, I spent it working, trapped behind glass and solid walls. And as usual, when I got home, it was to dark to take good photos.

Posted in Bitching about weather, Diatribe, General, Photographs | No Comments »