San Antonio Riverwalk at Xmas

 

Just an interesting shot I took at a wedding. Backlight by lighted pillars made of translucent fibreglass. 

Custom Poster for Team Cat Alley

Cat Alley is the nickname for the beach house of Team Cat Alley located just outside Galveston, TX. It also happens to be the finish line to a 300 mile, 4 day race along the Gulf Coast of Texas. To that end, Team Cat Alley likes to keep momentos in the beach house of past races. They commissioned me to create this poster using photos and graphics from the 2005 race to be hung in the beachhouse.

A note of interest is that Cat Alley is located in the projected path of Hurricane Rita, and dodged a bullet when Rita veered eastward by a few miles. 

Taking Shape

Here is a vase taking shape. It is then shoved into a vertical tube and spun until it takes the shape of that tube. 

Start of a Vase

This pull fresh from the furnace ends up being a cylindrical vase. 

GlassBlowers Furnace

Along the waterfront in Halifax you can look in on the Glassblowers of Waterford Crystal. It's a great photo op for tourists and pro's alike. 

Award Photo

Here's a crappy scan from a crappy photocopy of a pretty good photo of me recieving the Cheif of Defence Staff Commendation from the Admiral. The guy on the Right is Brendan ....he was my Departmental Officer at the time, and we went to the same high school. 

Before and After

This is a little exercise in manipulating a photo in Photoshop. Note, this is all done with one photo....no additional photos were copied or pasted. 

A BFC

A Big Freakin' Crane. A photo I took pre-2000, this Crane was the focal point of the harbour for about a month. To put things in perspective, it's sitting in the middle of the harbour, and those are 18-20 story buildings in the background. 

Twins

TJ didn't realize he had a twin brother!

Comprised of two diff photos taken at the same place. Someone had spent alot of time arranging these beach rocks into some wonderful seats with a view of the ocean. The things you find when you go off the beaten path! 

TJ Whalewatching

This is a blend of two photos taken while we were whalewatching in the Bay of Fundy. We camped overnight on an island and left the next day for about a 3 hour tour (ominus, eh?). We didn't spot many whales but TJ, around age 8 then, was fascinated just being on a boat. He spent most of the time at the rail just staring at the water rushing past and was one of the first to spot the white-sided dolphins and humpback whales. 

Heroes captured on film

This is NOT my photo,

but I thought it deserved to be preserved and the news spread for others to see. It's a photo by a local Real Estate Agent, Betty Ann Dewitt. She snapped the photo shortly before realizing she could help in other ways. Read the story here: http://www.herald.ns.ca/Front/491679.html The caption for the photo originally published in the Herald is: Floyd Morris, 77, works to rescue John Webster and his young son from their burning vehicle after it caught fire Sunday in Advocate Harbour. Seconds later, Mr. Morris emerged carrying the young boy. It took the help of two others to pull Mr. Webster from the car. (Betty Ann DeWitt) 

Another try

This didn't post the first time so I'll try it again. Another techinque I learned last night. 

More Messin' around in PS

Ok, here's another thing I was messing around with in PS. Blending two photos together. I didn't have much to work from since I moved all my photos off my laptop to an external harddrive. But I thought these two went together well since my buddy Mark is very proud of his hometown of Bakersfield. And yes, that's the 'Crystal Palace' sign in the background 

Filming from the Pub

This is a shot made from the window of the pub at the end of my street. This is where the crew setup the car and such. Also they were filming in the house just to the right of this shot and across the street.

Rumour has it they paid $4000 for the day at the hosue, and $250 for the rental of the pub parking lot....but that seems low to me.

Apparently they were supposed to film some scenes IN the pub but they are going over budget so those have been nixed. 

Different Angle - Snow Angel - Kate Winslet

I don't know about you, but I remember Kate Winslet best for her naked couch scene in Titanic...also filmed in here in Dartmouth.

This is a diff angle of the prop car whizzing past. Notice the camera man in the back seat, and extra crew in the far back.

At the top of the hill, white house with green trim is where I got married...the building formerly known as 'Shane's house'. 

Filming Snow Angel on our Stree

This is a photo I made coming back from the pub. You see the production truck towing the prop car with actor inside. Apparently the actor should be Kate Winslet, but it might be her stand-in today. Rumour has it that Kate won't be in town until tomorrow. I'll try to make a photo then.
In the background is a blue house...that's my parents house. 

Clearer Photo of a Pond Boat

Just a clearer photo made at a different angle. 

Belated Christmas

This is a photo my sister, Stacy, made last year...errr the year before, at in my parents dining room. The lighted boat is known as a 'pond boat'....google it. My dad restored a few of these, and this is not the most detailed one. He has one with wood plank decking and lapstraking which he found in an antique shop in Maine, I believe, for about $50 which he completely brought back to life. I suspect it could sell for upwards of $1000 at auction. 

Pregnant Waterbed

This is what happens when you really get into that tie football game while filling your waterbed! It was actually my landlady's....I was just renting. Imagine if this had burst!

Actually, one day it was a freezing/slushy rain, and I came home early from work because I had the flu and needed to sleep. When I walked thru the door I noticed my kitchen floor under about 1/2" of water. I figured the slush had backed up the drainage somewhere and it was running in under the door. Nope....it was the water heater had sprung a leak. Luckily they cleaned everything up while I passed out on a bed upstairs for four hours. I didn't have an ounce of energy. In fact, I wasn't even going to go into work but they had scheduled some IT work on the cement plant....which got postponed so I drove home in that slushy, slippery weather, while under the weather. 

Searay 44'

This is a Searay 44' that I skippered for awhile. This is the first morning I arrived in Brockville, Ont where it was tied up. Sunrise about 5:30am. This boat had two diff stereos, builtin TV/VCR, builtin vacuum system, etc etc. And they paid me $100 a day too! hehehe! 

Russians at Sea

This is another photo of me taken about 10 yrs or more ago, while I was an International Fisheries Observer. Next to me is who I think is the 2nd refrigeration engineer. Heck, he might have been the 1st. Never really could figure much who was who....but never saw him do much so he must have been an engineer. This is about 3 weeks out to sea....no sight of land. I can tell because I usually only shaved once a month at sea. Can't remember the ship's name...might have been Luga again. Looking down over the rail to my left shoulder would be the trawl deck where they hauled back the fish. Silver hake is what they were fishing for....it's an oily fish, sometimes known as white fish. 

Icy Sunset

Taken from the wheelhouse of a 45' ice-reinforced trawler, this photo a sunset about 10 years ago in the North Atlantic off the coast of Cape Breton. The ice you see is called slog ice, or pancake ice. It's semi-hard slushy/mushy ice in 10-20' diameters. Since you sleep in the V berth of these boats, it an interesting noise as it slams up against the hull a couple of inches from your head. You're always wondering which one is going to be the one to open up a hole into your bunk. An interesting side note here is between the 4-5 day trips I stayed at a hotel, where reading the paper one morning I just happened upon the obit of a friend I had gone to high school with, along with being in the same basic training class for the navy a 7 years earlier. He had joined the regular navy as a diver, and while conducting hull searches in a foriegn port, he was sucked into a cooling intake of an American ship. Cause of death? Ineptitude, possibly drug use.....who knows on US ships. They aren't a well motivated military.....just blindly loyal. 

Russian Trawler and Frieghter Transhipping

This is a photo I took while I was an international fisheries observer working/living aboard Russian Factory freezers. Although this was a year after the fall of communism they stacks still showed the red, yellow, black of the Soviet Union, although they flew the new flag of the Russian Confederation. I'm standing on one of the after houses, looking forward on the factory freezer. I think the boat was named 'Luga', from Lativia. The freighter beside it is where they offload all the frozen product they've caught over the last few months. It also brings mail and much needed (although meager) supplies. The whole process takes about two days and it's a good break for most of the crew....and myself. 

Grounded Trawler

The tides in the Bay of Funday are about 20', and happen twice a day. It's not unusual to see these boats grounded between high tides. In fact, it's not unusual to see people out there painting the bottoms of their boats while they get a chance.

This photo, I believe I took somewhere near Digby, Nova Scotia. Home of the world best Scallops!