The old port of Montréal was once the biggest grain shipping port in the world. Today it’s more a nice mix of old industrial ruins (which certainly have tons of charme), a science museum (far less impressive than the botanical garden, to be honest), a couple of nice cafés and restaurants in the old part of the city, and enough space to breathe, should you feel too confined by all the concrete and skyscrapers.

In the meantime I’ve been to another workshop in Verneulle (France, near Paris), and it’s interesting to compare the “French’iness” of both countries. Seriously, in Montreal you are legally obliged to have all signs in shops etc. in French. If you want to have (also) an English sign, your’re only allowed to use a font that is at maximum half the size of the one used for the French text. And they actually have people patrolling the city and measuring the relation between the French and the English texts. I wonder what the fines are, if you don’t follow the holy law of font-relations. Even the stop signs in Montréal are labelled “Arret”, instead of simply “Stop” (which is how they are labelled even in France).

Oh well, fortunately, people were very fluent in English, most of the time. And really friendly!

Thomas

In my last post I mentioned that there are some Montréal’ian skylines in the pipeline. But when going through my photos, I couldn’t resist: the shot above is (quite obviously) not really a skyline, but more of a macro. Hey, I’m a biologist after all!

So, I’ll mix in some things alive into the concrete and asphalt…

It’s simply that we went into an absolutely marvelous butterfly exhibition at the botanical garden of Montréal. That was fun – I only wished that I had brought my macro lens. But the new 70-200/f4 IS did a really nice job, given the circumstances. Especially the image stabilization worked like a charm. In fact, as of now, there’s another wish on my list: a day with a tripod, a decent macro lens, flash and especially: not that many other visitors.

The place was quite packed with people. Which is on the one hand a bit annoying, when you just wait for a shot to happen (which doesn’t really work, because there’s always some guy convinced that he needs to get really close to a butterfly, so that the critter takes off). On the other hand, I always like it when people get interested in biological things. Doesn’t happen often enough.

Hope you have some nice plans for an Easter vacation!
Thomas

That was nice! First business (a workshop on the increasing prevalence of antibiotic resistance) – and then 10 days vacation in Montréal, Canada. That city certainly has a lot to give. Friendly people, good (although expensive) food – and lots and lots of things to explore. So, be prepared for some cityscapes during the next days.

As much fun we had (the wife joined after the workshop) during our vacations – the trip back home was an absolute disaster. Air Canada actually needed three planes before they found one that worked: The first one, we were informed, had “maintenance issues”, but there was a replacement plane at another terminal. So just a quick re-loading of our luggage and off we go. Well… after sitting in the new plane for six hours without moving an inch (during which they changed the whole computer system of the machine), we were informed that the flight had to be finally cancelled. So, getting off the plane, going through passport control, through customs, re-booking the flight to the next day, getting a hotel voucher, waiting for the shuttle to the hotel, into bed at 02:00 – and back to the airport early morning for the next try.

Which went as follows: after sitting in the new (third) airplane for an hour, we were informed that this one had a crack in one tire. So they changed it – which meant we were airborne roughly two hours after schedule. Bye, bye to our connecting flights in Frankfurt. So, after getting there: passport control, customs, re-booking the connecting flight, getting a hotel voucher, waiting for the shuttle to the hotel, into bed at 02:00 – and back to the airport at 05:30.

When we then finally arrived at the airport in Gothenburg, the pilot had to cancel the approach for landing twice due to the bad weather, in particular quite some heavy but erratic squalls. He then announced a final try, before diverting to the next available alternative airport. Which I suspect would be Copenhagen, i.e. a 4.5 hour train-ride back to Gothenburg. But fortunately, he then got us onto the ground in one piece in his final approach.

All in all: 36 hours travel, instead of the planned 14. Yeah, all the fun you can have traveling.

Given, the involved ground-crews were really helpful and professional – but it get’s you thinking that a major (?) airline screws up three planes before finding one that get you across the Atlantic…

Thomas

One of the things that I enjoy most while polishing raw shots is the mental re-visit and the dreaming about marvelous places that I was lucky enough to visit. So, here again one of the Scottish landscape shots from last year’s workshop with Ian. Wonderful little stream somewhere near Glencoe. Lots and lots of details to work with – a photographers dream. It was only raining quite a bit while climbing around on the river banks. A wet dream so to say…

Thomas

Oh, and I also updated the corresponding galleries, hope you enjoy.

Another photo from the North-Norwegian coastline. I’ve never had such a strong blue’ish cast on my photos, I guess it’s the high level of UV radiation that far up North. During the second day we even had a couple of hours of sunshine – and I’ve never had to fiddle around that much with the white balance and the selective color slider.

Anyway: calm, sea, a nice shoreline, a couple of mountains, some clouds. Right in the middle of my photographic comfort zone!

On a different note: new toy indispensable photographic tool around! A neat, little 70-200 f/4.0 L IS USM … Just the right travel zoom for my next trip. Just did a couple of boring lens-tests, and it seems as if the lens is performing as expected. So I’ll take it out to a real-life test tomorrow.

Now the question is whether I should sell my 300mm f/4.0 L IS USM prime. It’s certainly a nice lens, but it’s simply collecting dust most of the time, as I don’t need that focal length very often. Hm.

Thomas

Sometimes traveling is real fun, even when it’s “only” for work. Last week I’ve been up to Tromsø, a semi-sized (for Norwegian circumstances) town on the coast of the North sea. The city is actually located inside the artic circle. And in one word: Gorgeous place!

Perhaps one shouldn’t go there during the dark time, when the sun simply doesn’t appear at all (Nov-Jan). But now we had a couple of hours daylight (of which I had to spend too many indoors, but anyway). It’s a place that suddenly made it quite high on my list of places to explore with a decent amount of time and camera gear.

In particular because I really would like to take a glimpse at the Northern Lights (Aurora Borealis). Tromsø is well known for it, but unfortunately we didn’t catch any. So for now just a couple of landscape shots from me, but see for yourself (suggest to turn off the background music, and go for fullscreen):

No such thing as a free breakfast. Guess that holds true especially for Norway, where a semi-sized beer sets you back 9 Euro. But in fact, Tromsø has a really nice locally brewed beer. And, by the way, very friendly locals! Although one of them originated from the UK…

Thomas

Here’s an interesting thing: Magic Lantern, a firmeware update for Canon cameras (including my 50D). Actually, not really a firmware update, more a piece of software that piggybacks the ordinary software. Magic Lantern seems to have been developed mainly for film-makers, but there seem to be are quite a few really nice extensions to the functionality of the normal Canon firmware. Including focus stacking, zebra stripes for highlighting over/underexposed areas, spotmeter and focus peaking (highlighting the in-focus areas in a frame).

Sounds really tempting (one actually starts to wonder, why some of the features aren’t around in the original firmware). Question is, whether I dare to give it a try? If the weather stays that boring, I certainly will.

Oh, and the above depicts a selection of entrance doors to the forbidden palace in Beijing. But you might have guessed that…

Thomas

There are some evergreens. And one of them is me mulling over the question on whether I should get a printer or not. I blame Ove for that.

Con: my print volume won’t be big, maybe 1-2 prints per week. So it doesn’t pay off, and I might even run into problems with clogging nozzles. And it will eat up more time. And it’s expensive. And big.

Pro: I want to have one!

Hm. The “Pro” arguments seem to clearly outweigh the “Con” arguments.

One of the more embarrassing things that happened to me last week: I was taking a couple of group photos during a workshop, using the FX100. And then one of my colleagues took over, so that we also had some photos with me in it. And then she came over, quietly pointing out that all my shots were completely useless. Completely out of focus, because I accidentally configured the camera to manual focus. And with such a quiet rangefinder I actually didn’t realize what was happening.

Oh yes, beginners mistake. Guess I need to use the Fuji more.

Thomas

…but I’m a huge fan!

Hope you enjoyed the party, at least as much as those guys who schlepped around bucket-loads of firecrackers, “just for the kids”

And have a great start into 2012! Let’s see what the year brings…

Thomas

This time between the times – between Christmas and New Years is always time for a bit of contemplation. What did happen, what did not? What do I need to change, what do I need to hold on to?

And of course the really serious stuff: what new photo-courses to take, what gear to buy…

Hope you all have a great time!
Thomas