Random Musings and Nicknacks

Focal Length 18mm @ f/5.6

What I’ve long taught at workshops is this: the wider the lens you use, the closer you probably should be to the nearest thing in your scene. And there should be a nearest thing in your scene!

–Thom Hogan, Lens Week

I’m still working on my “back to basics” and thinking about the art of photography. The above quote has been sticking in my head lately, along with some other points in the article – namely that “zooming” closer to an image flattens your feeling of depth, whereas zooming out then walking into the image enhances it. If you want depth in an image, go wide angle and get close.

The above image is my first real attempt at doing this – rather than shooting at 70 mm from a comfortable distance like I normally would have, I put the lens at 18mm, then moved into my minimum focus distance. The result really is interesting – rather than a flower in front of a pylon, I ended up with a field of flowers leading to a pylon.

I think I’m going to have to experiment with this more – rather than thinking of wide angle / telephoto as magnification, think of it as flattening or deepening an image.

P.S. I’m still using manual focus for everything, and I swear my images are sharper because of it.

Last week, dad and I were talking about old movies that we have gone back to watch and see how they hold up, or are curious to see again.

One of the ones I mentioned was “Something Wicked This Way Comes”, which I remember absolutely terrified me as a kid, and I’m curious … is it anywhere near as good as I remember.

By an amazing coincidence, that movie appears this week in Roger Ebert’s forgotten DVD’s column, where he highlights movies that he thinks are worth watching but people missed.

Maybe I do need to go looking for it after all!

Saw this in the news yesterday … a few years ago a man in California bought a bunch of pieces of glass (about 60) that had some nice looking landscape pictures on them, he paid $45 at a garage sale.

It’s now been confirmed that they are actually some of Ansel Adams lost glass negatives, and are estimated to be worth $200 million.

Attacking?

One of Ling’s co-workers sent me an email on Saturday, asking if I would mind if he followed us on our Sunday bike rides, and took some pictures. The request is not so odd when you consider that two of my other riding partners also work with Ling [1]. We all agreed, and got a bit of a feel for what it was to be a real racer, with the paparazzi chasing us all over the hill!

The actual story of riding is probably quite boring for those who don’t do it, so I’ll limit myself to one story.
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I am a geek / engineer at heart. When Ling was going through her project management stuff today, I pointed out that last year when looking at what smartphone to get, I actually produced a requirements document / competitive comparison between the iPhone and the Droid (at the time the top of the line Google phone, not even available in Canada then). Based on my usage patterns I went to the iPhone, but I’m still keeping an eye on Android – especially when the iPad competitors start coming out.

I’m currently playing with the new iPhone OS, and marveling at how much faster it feels, and at the new features.  The changes in it remind me of a paradigm in software development that Apple does better than nearly everyone else (and places I have worked are trying to hard to do):

1. Don’t deliver a feature unless you are absolutely satisfied with it
2. Provide constant, incremental improvements

The improvements part is very important – it has to be getting better, not just changing – but for this kind of philosophy to work, you must do both – shipping only when ready gives an impression of a mature, elegant system, but means that you might be missing features that your competition’s marketing materials claim they have.  People are willing to accept that a feature is missing, but only if they have confidence that it will arrive and get better with time.
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Let me tell you about the dog that lives in this house.

He likes to run around in the back yard and dig. Since we have a large patch of dirt (that I am currently working on seeding) in the back corner of the yard, that’s a problem. He runs in it, he digs, and he tracks dirt all through the house.

Last weekend we had an idea – let’s put some garden fencing around that patch to stop him – 18 inches high, wire fencing all around it. A barrier like the baby gates, that he won’t try to cross. That worked great – until tonight.

Tonight, I put him out back as usual. As he was exploring the back yard, he saw something in the trees, barked, and jumped at it.

Jumped, and accidentally cleared the fence.

Now he was trapped on the inside, and knew this was an impassible barrier. So he ran around inside through the dirt, until I had to put shoes on, go out, walk into the dirt, pick him up, and carry all 65 pounds back over the fence.

At which point he happily ran back inside and tracked dirt all through the house again.

Now what?

Translink never ceases to amaze me in it’s ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

The Canada Line has been a rousing success – from the day the line opened it has had far more riders than they expected, and is way ahead of schedule. Translink had planned for it to take 3 years to hit break-even, and instead it was there from month one. In fact it’s so successful that it’s already running at 98% capacity – something that again, wasn’t expected for years.

And therein lies the problem. Translink in it’s infinite wisdom, apparently didn’t plan for what would happen if the Canada Line was a success – in fact given how they fought against building it, I have to wonder if Translink fully expected nobody would use it at all (the counter to the Millennium Line, which they couldn’t build fast enough and nobody actually uses; one has to wonder about the planner’s competence). So they haven’t planned in the flexibility to expand the system if necessary – at least not for a few years.

So, if you want to ride the Canada Line during peak times, be prepared to be crammed in like sardines, and possibly wait a few cars.

The scariest thing is that the experience with the 98 B-Line was exactly the same – with the same excuse (“we can’t afford to add service”), and apparently they couldn’t look at that and realize there was a pent-up demand for transit service between Richmond and downtown Vancouver.

I just hope they get this one fixed before it goes the same way as the 98, where people stop using it because they can’t get on it.

This is my new commute, from Richmond into Burnaby (BCIT area). Since I was on the bike today, and most of the way there, I wanted to try it out to ensure I knew how to do it, and what was in store for me.

The good news is the entire distance is on designated bike routes – I start up “Ontario”, turn right onto “Ridgeway”, then onto “Mid-Town”, before finally turning onto “River to Ocean” which takes me into BCIT. Interestingly the distance is almost the same as the trip to Ritchie – 19 vs 21 KM!

There is a significant difference though – this one is going to involve a lot more hills. A LOT more hills. That will probably be good for me, I’m not as strong a climber as I was at this point last year.

It should take me slightly under an hour – I was slow this time, because I had to get there first, and that involved riding from Boundary and Marine to Metrotown. If you think about what Boundary looks like from Marine to 49th (I actually rode up Patterson, a bike route, but it’s the same) and combine it with what I did two days ago I think I can be excused for being a bit slow!