The Tragically Hip -- National Arts Center Ottawa -- 28 September 2009

OMFG! This is the 4th time I've seen the Hip live and this was utterly mind blowing. It didn't hurt that I had tickets in the 4th row at the NAC ...


Is that cool or what :-) Looking back at the Southam Hall ...


The Hip came on pretty much on time and I started filming ... the images that appear on this blog are from songs that I did not recognize or care for ... but I recorded 2 hours and 9 minutes of music, which I have mastered into a movie and which is being rendered to a PS sized image as I write this. I tried rendering it in full 640x480 with high quality 2-pass video, but Nero Vision reported that it would take 37 hours ... so I chose the PSP format, which is still quite good and takes 50 minutes :-).

There are 40 images total, but I only show some of them here. To see the whole set, go to my gallery in this album.

The set list was pretty great ... Nick says we did well. We got a song that he's been waiting for for 5 shows ... now I forget which one :-)


Anyway .... back to Gord Downey. He is the most compelling stage artist I have ever seen, and I've seen Mick Jagger live. Gord is simply incredible ... watch my movie when it gets posted (YouTube cannot suck in that big a movie, and I refuse to post 25 separate files there, so I have to come up with some other technique. I'll post it here when I figure it out.)


The lighting was typically Hip ... lots of bright spots and excellent overall ambiance on stage.


It is rarely dark on stage, but once in a while you get a black background. The Canon G10 was my only option because the Fuji F70EXR is still missing in action. The Fuji would have handled the images better (by a nose) ... but the Canon handled the video brilliantly. I have decided that I must keep both ...



Gord always carries a hanky ... he sweats like a pig.





Gord's dancing is something to behold. He combines it with movements with the mic stand or with the hanky so that it becomes a form of art on its own. He shows you facial expressions that convey surprise when he fails to catch the mic after kicking it up with his feet for example. It's very entertaining ...

He almost always breaks a mic stand and tosses parts into the audience after twirling it like a baton. I have that stuff in the film. This film is 2:09:46 long and contains some amazing footage of Gord Downey interacting with the audience. It gets a little jumpy after an hour or so, as you can imagine the pain it gave me to hold the camera over my head for that long ... anyway, you can download it here. This is a 600MB file, though, so be aware of how long it will take!

Anyway .... enough said. If you have never seen the Hip live, you owe it to yourself to do so. I mean it ....

Michael Ondaatje -- In the Skin of a Lion -- Book Review

Wow. Tough read. Typical of Ondaatje, who is a modernist I am told (by my too-clever sons, both of whom are in honors English programs.) Anyway, he darts back and forth in time, weaving a complex tale of love and incredible hardship (physical and mental.) You might remember the time shifting from one of his more famous books (or the movie) -- The English Patient.

I read the first part very quickly, and ended up being interrupted as I reached the last chapter. I actually sat on it for a week, not quite sure I wanted to know how it ended. But it was worth the wait.

If you've ever been the victim of unrequited affection or love, then this book is for you. It will rip your heart out at times ... all the more reason to read it of course. The brutality of the surroundings and the immigrants' daily lives will take your breath away. And yet there is joy to be found here too.

I love this book. My youngest has read it a half dozen times. What are you waiting for?

Crombie McNeill Workshop at the Byward Market -- Part 1

Yesterday, Crombie McNeill held a workshop / photoshop in Ottawa's Byward Market area. Like any market area, it consists of many buildings and some open market areas, food courts and the like. And it is crowded and bustling with people on a Saturday. And parking sucks!

Ah well ... such is life. We met at the Courtyard Restaurant, which was thankfully not crowded. So we were able to get everyone together before proceeding to the various locations. We had several members of the RA photo club -- Paul (who assists Crombie as well), Kyle, Alyssa, Richard and Chris. With me and Crombie, that's 7.

We had two models from Barrett Palmer Models, Charlotte -- whom I have shot before and who has elegant features for high fashion, and Erin -- who is new to the workshops, but who has a curvy lifestyle figure (reminiscent of Olivia from the Aylmer Marina shoot.) Both have spectacular eyes I can't wait to process the images ...

The restaurant is located at 21 George Street and is in a secluded Court Yard off the main street. You can get to it from all directions, through dark passages, all lined with cobble stone. It's actually really cool.


I did not have the F70EXR with me this time for documentation, so I brought the Canon G10 out of retirement. It is not the easiest camera to tame in bright light, but I was pleased with this shot. I shot RAW and dropped the exposure -1 2/3 stops ... that's massive. But in a dark alley with a slash of sunlight on a light umbrella and brick wall, there is exactly nothing else you can do. I certainly would have been at least at -1ev on the F70 ...


I was still down at -2/3ev for the sign in shade, because the open sky was hammering the shiny gold lettering. A lot of places use this to grab the eye, but it also grabs the sky and the camera hates that.

Anyway ... I moved my car from way down the street to the parking garage they were all using and we were off to the Empire Grill on York street. A couple of short blocks away. We actually went into a big office building and met at the Swizzles Cafe, which was closed. It's a cafeteria style restaurant, so we sprawled along a set of tables.

Crombie gave us our goals and instructions from one end of the table and I caught a few more images. The G10 was already out of its element at 800 ISO ... the images are very weak compared to what the Fuji would have returned ... the massive resolution not really helping at all because the enemy is massive chroma noise. The solution for both was black and white ... and there is still heavy mottling on his shirt. Of course, the foreground was lit badly and Crombie was in silhouette, which makes it very tough.

Anyway ... here's Crombie at work ... the bottom line being that he wants us to create two kinds of images ... an editorial / product image with a model in it and a portfolio image that is all about the model.



We walked over to the escalators that can barely be seen way at the other end of the mall and sent Erin up onto an escalator that was under construction. This was really helpful as she could pose for long times without us having to chase her for the shot.

Before we got going though, we had to get organized. I shot the team with the D300, but in the mirrors.


Left to right ... Crombie, Paul, Alyssa, Richard, Kyle (behind) and Chris. Below the escalator mirror, some random dude ...

Erin was not really posing yet, but I shot a few images of her anyway. This one is kind of nice, although not all that useful is my guess ...


Crombie then gave instructions to Erin ...


And finally she got to pose ... I am showing only a couple of examples of the models in full pose, and only from the G10 in this post.


This was the one image I shot of her at 400 ISO ... and I was able to use the high contrast presentation to hide a total loss of detail around the eyes. I shot a couple at 1600 ISO and really had no interest in trying to process those. Perhaps a really artsy tri-x pan sort of output, but this is better.

We attracted a crowd (beautiful model, seven photographers ... duh) and within 20 minutes, the security people started nosing around. Shortly thereafter they gave the order to cease the activity. We met back at Swizzles and Crombie explained the appropriate behavior for us at that point:

Security people have no authority of arrest. They may not touch you, and they may not physically eject you. They must call the police to do that, which they are reluctant to do. Thus, the appropriate behavior is to cooperate and move on.

Were this the only location around, we could have let them call the police and battled it out when they arrived. But the Byward Market has many shooting locations, so we did not waste further time there.

Note, though, that I grabbed a shot of Paul against the Swizzles sign and was framing a shot of Charlotte when a security guy in uniform came over and started with "perhaps you did not understand ..." to which I replied in my usual severely annoyed voice when patronized .... "I get it, and I don't require the sarcasm." I no longer like to dish it, and therefore I no longer take it either. He backed off and I stopped. We were leaving anyway.

We then crossed a street where we shot images of Charlotte for a while and then Erin. We had harsh sunlight and I shot only with the D300, so those images will appear in a post later on.

We bounced around for a while, I shot some of Charlotte in a store entrance with two mannequins. Tried to come up with something clever for that ... we'll see. We found a nice building with a shiny red curved wall. We had Erin against that in a clingy dress. Nice.

We ended up at Pier 21, a local bar that was closed this early. They have a nice patio that we used for several images.



The team are discussing the shoot.



Again ... lots of images -- I recorded over 1050 yesterday, so it'll be a while to get them processed, this is just a teaser. Unfortunately, I am flying to a customer site next weekend and and have a lot of prep to do, so this is the only processing I can seriously do until the week after ... and I am on vacation at the end of that week for a week in the mother province to see the family.

So ... all that said ... we sort of got the boot from Pier 21 when the started preparing to open. They were nice about it, but I certainly began to feel unwelcome :-)

Before we actually left, I shot the surrounding buildings. Nice spot there ... some will remember the Rainbow from the evening I attended the songwriter's night. Great bar for live music.





We walked back toward the Courtyard Restaurant again, and along the way we shot some nice images. I only caught a few more witrh the little dog and I am saving the mass processing for later, so what I have left is to show one of Charlotte's remaining locations. She was exhausted by this point (she came to work with a cold) and we wanted to let her go. But this was an interesting location for a few more images and she was a very good sport, as always. She is very professional about this and you cannot help but be impressed for someone in her mid-teens.

Basically, there is this cute art piece in a different court yard and I shot it ...


Inner city bear hunting ... try it ...

When we were done with this series, we walked through an alleyway and found this lovely piece of art on the wall. Because of cramped quarters, I decided to shoot the Canon only. I am not a wide angle aficiando, so this is the only one I liked of the series ... but I like it quite a lot. I gave it the same treatment as Erin's shot earlier ...



The alley was perhaps 6 or 8 feet wide, and the fellas lined up for their shots. I preferred the angle shot, and maybe that's why I only got one good one :-)



We broke for lunch after Charlotte did a couple more series, and she left for the day to nurse her cold. We continued after lunch with Eric, who had gone off to do an errand and would return around 3pm. At that time we worked some of the art works with her, as we had done with Charlotte.

We then went to the car park where most of our vehicles were parked, and Richard brought out a huge spotlight from Canadian Tire ... 12 bucks or something like that. Battery powered, so we could deploy it as a spotlight on Erin. I am really looking forward to those images, as we had some great shadows ro play with ....

I was shocked when my cam reported card full just as we completed the day ... 1045 images this time. Wow ... for two models, that's really something. 16GB onto the hard drive again ... I'm gonna need a RAID system one of these days ... two of them, since my primary backup is also hard drive.

So ... a great shoot. A smaller group, but still lots of fun. Charlotte and Erin should recive dozens or even hundreds of images to sift through. How cool ....

I've Been Mooned!

Got the bug again this evening ... decided to shoot the moon with the D300, 300mm F4 AFS and the TC17e. I just wanted to see again how much magnification I could lay down ...

I only shot two images and one was slightly sharper than the other so I processed only that image. I used Topaz Adjust 3 and hammered it to pull out details. I quite like the result. This is not quite a 100% crop ... I downsized it a wee bit in order to avoid losing too much sharpness and leaving too much noise. Lots of wonderful craters because it is a half moon with the terminator slicing through lots of cratered territory ...


In order to see just how detailed this is, I will link an image of Serenity Sea (Mare Serenitatis, Serenitatis Basin) -- the topmost flat and dark area in the image -- shot by Simon J. Porter from this website:


That's a much cleaner image and you can see that the shadows on the sea itself and the mountains on its left edge are all there ... I am amazed at how much detail Topaz was able to extract from my little 300mm lens. Now I really want a small telescope :-)

Many other beautiful close ups of the moon can be found here.

F70EXR Generates Massive Traffic

Since buying the F70EXR, my blog has had a rather spectacular rise in traffic. This is, of course, the product of my interest in the camera and its growing popularity ... and the fact that I post links to my articles over at the Fuji Talk Forum at DPReview. Obviously, that is the world's most consistently rabid source of Fuji fans and is exactly the group that should see this stuff.

But the size of the spike and the fact that it is managed to last about 26 days is what surprises me. I was averaging around 100 to 200 hits a day for a long time, and over the last 26 days, I have averaged 1,429 hits a day. That's one hit per minute for 26 days ... cool :-)

Here is the Google Analytics data that tells me this ...


Click to see the full sized screen shot.

What you can see in there is that my equipment posts and my home page seem to generate all the traffic. No one comes to read about my movie reviews or my latest trip to the Symphony ... no surprise there :-)

This is even cooler ... last time I did the traffic check, I believe I managed something like 76 countries. Well, this month has generated traffic from 96 countries ... my thoughts are pan-global ... like a plague you could say :-)

I think the fact that Singapore is #5 on this list is amazing. Small country, rabid Fuji fans obviously. What is cool is that Singapore is the place where cameras tend to come out first ... and a young fella there posted the very first images form the very first camera sold world-wide. Good for him ... and those images helped me decide to take a shot with this camera, a move I have never regretted.


I will obviously continue testing theories that are posted on the FTF ... I wonder how long this spike in traffic can last?

Anyway ... sorry for the ego post ... had to get that out of my system :-)

Inglourious Basterds -- Movie Review

Classic Tarantino ... more like Reservoir Dogs than Kill Bill, but excellent either way. Tons of action, lots of violence and gore, but it fits the plot. Very funny in many areas. Touching at times ... poignant. It has it all.

If you don't mind the stark reality and violent presentation, you will love this clever movie ...

Tarantino's masterpiece.

Beethoven's 3rd Symphony in E-flat Major, Op. 55, "Eroica" at the NAC

I've always been a real fan of bold music ... classical with punch if you will. Beethoven fits; so does Tchaikovsky. Rossini too ... maybe that's getting too close to pop, but so what.

Anyway, as you saw in this post, I attended the closing performance of last season in June -- Brahms' Sublime Requiem. An awesome concert, both halves. I was looking to see what was upcoming and found that the opening performance of the season included Beethoven's 3rd Symphony. Seemed too good to pass up, so I called my friend Jackie to see if she was up for it and then snagged the tickets I'd been eying. First box on the right side, about 20 feet off the stage.

The night arrives and I am debating the dress code ... last time I went business casual and found it pretty OK. But this was opening night and I know that many people really dress for it. The orchestra and choir would be decked out in formal wear (and how!) so it seemed appropriate to break out my rather nice black suit.

Not being a total fool (partial perhaps), I ran this by Jackie and she was planning on a blue or black dress and heels, so we agreed that we had a match. Wow ... I'd forgotten how fricken hot a suit is in warm, humid weather. Oh well ... not too bad with the air conditioner running full blast and Alison Krause playing ...

No images this time by the way ... the F70EXR is still in the shop and I really did not feel like toting the G10 in the suit pocket. Turns out the F11 would have been fine from such a short distance.

Anyway ... got to Jackie's and said hi to the cats, one of whom seemed catatonic. Get it? Jackie gave me a disk of meditative music she had burned to try out. Listening to it now and it's really, really nice ... very native sounding ... some eastern influence too I think. I can imagine that the mind could go away if one were actually meditating ...

Regarding the dress ... the black won ... and clung. Black stockings and heels .... um ... ahhh ....

Anyway ... off to the Green Door restaurant ... a nice little vegetarian buffet with cafeteria styling. Great food ... I was looking forward to one or two spanky pitas (Spanakapita if you ever try to order one :-) but they were out! Dang. But tons of other fare ... the kale was amazing, the lasagna was nice, the lentils were nice ... I loved the kimchi, first three letters guarantee absolute perfection of course.

Afterward, we went to the ridiculously well stocked dessert section and I got a spectacular chocolate swirl cheesecake. Jackie chose the strawberry lemon cake. I added a thumbelina to see what it was ... turned out to be a cinnamon cookie. All in all ... wow ... they all tasted superb.

We checked out a health food store that was next door ... she wanted me to try a couple of goodies they normally stock, but they were out. A bit disappointing, but I did see one of the most amusing product displays ever ... a whole row of shampoo-style bottles labeled "Green Beaver" ... what a great chuckle.

One could imagine a training center for ladies of the night ... and the rest of my ideas shall remain safely in my head before all my readers (I mean both of you) lose all respect for this blog of high knowledge ...

OK ... Jackie swears that they a great products, and I would not doubt her.

Anyway ... off to the show. I got lazy and parked underneath. Minimal construction tonight (Nevermore was a nightmare for parking) and when we arrived at the top, we enjoyed a drink before show time. The lights flashed and we went to find our seats. I quite like the long walk that signifies that you are really close to the stage. But how close we were took my breath away.

Box 2 hangs over the 6th row normally, but the orchestra requires a much bigger stage, so rows BB through FF are covered and we hang just over rows 1 through 3. Wow. Can't say enough about sitting up there ... stunning view of the orchestra and choir and stunning acoustics.

So ... the program. Well, it turns out that this is the 40th Anniversary of this orchestra. Awesome. A very special opening night.


And the lineup of music and performers is ... well ... I'm getting tired of superlatives. Can you just imagine that I use some variation of stunning or superb as I go along?

So the Cantata Singers of Ottawa opened with a 13 minute piece composed by Brahms. Very cool for Brahms to close last season and open this season. The choir is not huge ... call it about 40 to 50 members. I think they made up about 1/3 of the 150 member uber-choir that sang with the requiem to close last year.

This piece turns out to have some wonderful punctuation and counter points ... kind of a battle between groups of singers. Very nice. All in all, it was about the right length.

The Orchestra came out next and played the Jubilee Overture, composed by Michael Forsyth. He is unique this evening in that he is still around and even more so because he was there for the performance. And sitting in the same box we were ... but on the other side :-)

Aside ... I'm on the second track of the CD Jackie made for me. Oh my god ... this woman has a beautiful voice ... an angel ...

By the way, this was the first-ever performance of this overture by the NAC Orchestra. And it was a beauty. I enjoyed everything about it. Two sets of tympani ensured an exciting and dramatic piece and I was not disappointed. The brass section got a real workout. Just excellent.

At the end, they got a standing ovation and the composer stood and received one as well. It was a really, really nice moment.

The third piece of the first half was Mendelssohn's Violin Concerto in E Minor, Op. 64 with guest violinist Gil Shaham. After reading his Wikipedia page, I must say that we were in the presence of greatness. He is an amazing artist and plays at the top of his field. He sounded incredible, but I had no idea beforehand.

As he walked onto the stage, he formally addressed the lead violinist (what is that position really called?) of the NAC Orchestra and they shook hands and spoke. Shaham's smile is infectious and it rarely leaves his face, except when his concentration hits its peak, in which case his face is equally compelling. Anyway, the greeting seems to be one of those "I am in your house as a guest" kind of protocols and it adds quite a bit to the feeling of the proceedings.

And when it got going, he played stunningly fast and every note just sounded right. Runs up and down at such speed that it was breathtaking. I've really not heard anything like it ... a beautiful piece of music and a brilliant musician and orchestra make for a pretty compelling combination. I found myself engaged throughout, despite my tendency to connect too deeply and thus get drowsy in the slow parts. It did not work that way with this performance ...

When it was over another standing ovation ensued. No surprise there. No doubt quite a few members of the audience were aware of just how special he is ... and only 38 years old. That's depressing :-)

So ... on to intermission. The intermission seemed unusually short and we had to down the drinks a little quickly ... but her wine was nice and my diet coke was just a diet coke. Of course, the bar there charges theater prices ...

And now it was time for Beethoven. Wow ... a very long piece, in fact the longest symphony in existence at the time it was written in 1804. Really interesting rhythms ... wonderful staccato tunes that reminded us of Bugs Bunny cartoons ... it was a fun and rewarding performance. I won't try to describe the whole thing because I will not be able to do it justice. I simply enjoyed every minute of it.

A lovely evening shared with a terrific friend. What more is there?

San Antonio Day 5 -- Thursday 17 Sep 2009

Thursday was my last full day in San Antonio. I had nothing specific to do, the customer had left town and my coworkers all had their own stuff to do. I had expect either customer meetings or further meetings with my collaborator on the specification we were working on, but he too left this day.

Luckily, a lot of people I work with moved in and out of the common areas, so I was able to meet with them off and on all day. Not at all wasted.

I managed to catch images off and on all day, and to take a nice walk later on, so I will focus on that for this blog post (as usual.) The day dawned brilliantly bright and sunny ... and I finally got the chance to photograph a building across the street that naggingly brought imaged of the Thames and London to my mind. Guess why ...



Ok ... the answer is that the Thames' south bank is a famous tourist walkway that I've spent massive amounts of time on ... my hotel is almost always within minutes and I just like the atmosphere along the Thames. Anyway ... this is not the South Bank ... well, ok, it is ... but not that one :-)

Looking down on that jazz club in the back of the hotel from above, the umbrellas look terrific in formation.


And looking at the roof of the building across the street (South Bank :-) we see a really cool sign that says "Save the Planet" ... I don't know who's responsible for it, but it's neat.


Zooming back out, this Hyatt has floor to ceiling windows everywhere, and the little Fuji loves blue sky.


Rather decent detail on the vine-covered walls ...

Looking inward from lobby level, we see the nice pools on the river level ...


And across the way, the lobby bar hangs peculiarly from the lobby level ...


I shot a couple of closer images of the pool ... one at higher ISO to freeze the water ...


And one at lower ISO to blur the water ...


I'm curious if anyone noticed that there is 3 stops difference between these images .... the first was at 1600 ISO and the last at 200 ISO (to slow shutter and blur the water.) The cam is pretty remarkable at high ISO ...

There's a really nice plant above the falls with very nice smooth leaves ... kind of a wet suit texture ... rich ...




I shot the other image at 1600 ISO and the difference is apparent in the less "liquid" feel ... it simply looks more "digital" because of the extra grain. And yet, had I shown only this image, would anyone have really noticed?

Sometime later, I went up to my room for something and, you guessed it, shot those buildings across the street for a couple of minutes :-)


I had not noticed that this was a court house until this day. At 270mm, it resolves the roof details pretty well.


And then that building to the left with those lovely bricks and details ... shot it several times now.


But this time, it occurred to me to try the digital zoom. I don;t quite remember how much zoom it has, but it goes pretty far ...


Tell me you aren't impressed :-) I've shown the street before, and the bottom of that specific building. It's pretty far away ... yet full DZ brings it fairly close, if a bit crudely.


Ok, I decided to really show the difference ... first, here is a fairly ugly wide angle image.


Note two things in that image ... the truck, and the flag top right. Now ... the truck at full optical zoom is pretty impressive (10x) ...


But at full digital zoom, wow.


And the flag ...


Ok ... end of that test segment. Although the digitally magnified images are not spectacularly clean, they are fun. I think I'd get a better image by cropping ... but I'll have to test to be sure. Fuji have been getting pretty good at this aspect. One thing, I prefer to work on the noise before it is magnified.

Later in the evening, I decided to take to the streets to check out the village ... La Vilita. Another historic area, like the Alamo. Since it was on the Alamo's street (which has Alamo in the name), I took the usual passage from the hotel. Shooting the mini river level from above, the scene is rather lush.



And of course Losoya still protects the passage with this really big gun ...


There is a map of the area that might be useful here ...


And of course another crack at the flowers and the falls ... this one is quite dreamy ...


The waterfall I like to shoot is the perfect bath for pigeons ...


There's a nice shot of a simple water feature with nice plants in front. Of course, I can easily isolate a nice scene with the big lens ...


Oh ... more flowers :-)


And looking up this time ...


I chased a bunch of pigeons around and got a lot of blurry shots. But I caught one just the right way.


And then I arrive at the street, facing the Alamo. First thing I see is good ole 102 coming up the street.


Then I shoot across the street to show the area in front of the Alamo and the mission on its left. The big umbrella is a hot dog stand that sits there most of the time.


A little out of this image on the left is a huge monument.

Designed by Pompeo Coppini, an Italian sculptor transplanted to Texas, the Alamo Cenotaph stands a mere 60 feet above the pavement.

There was a plan to build an enormous monument in 1912, but the $2M could not be raised. Read about that here.



Impressive, no doubt.

Across from where I am standing to shoot the monument, I get a good view of the boarded windows of the Alamo mission. A woman stands waiting for the hubby and kid.


Back of the Alamo is the Crockett Hotel. It's actually pretty far from here, and someone told me that I should never stay there. I like the Hyatt enough that I am quite likely to go back there should I ever visit on my own.


At this point, I begin the walk to La Vilita. I noted the "Space Needle" like structure and it turns out to be much taller than the one in Seattle. They call it the "Tower of the Americas" and it stands 750 feet tall, quite a bit taller than Seattle's tower which stands at 605 feet.


Apparently, the fast elevator ride is quite the rush.

I came to a huge traffic circle ... a few of the trolleys making their way through. I like these things, I don't know why ...


I wander along the street and see a store that pretty says it all ....


I then ran into one of those stores that sells novelty t-shirts ... you know the type. I saw a shirt for budding writers ...


And one for budding doctors ...


Inspiring :-/

Still at the round, I note how nice the "art" is ... I actually like it, although it does tend to kind of stick out :-)


Another trolley blows by ...


I cross and pass a historic sign and ... well ... whatever. Not quite sure what this is in front of, but there are many significant buildings on this route ... well worth the stroll, even if my brain won't retain ...


As I walk, I cross a bridge over the river walk. This is the other part of the loop. I pause to shoot the scene ... the Chamber of Commerce has its offices here ... a very nice spot.


One of those boats comes out from under the bridge ...


Colorful or what ...


There is a very fine-leafed bush on the right bank by the bridge, so I shoot that at full zoom ...


So how sharp is that lens again?


What a nerd. Great lens though ...

I crossed a street leading to La Vilita and the sun lit it nicely ... so I shot it.


Reminds me of a joke ... hunter walking through woods, sees half naked girl tied to a tree ... he asks "are you game?" ... she smiles coyly and says "yes" ... he shoots her.

Anyway ... I arrive ...


The entrance area is bracket by a right angle of huge potted plants ... lovely.



And a metal horsey :-)



It's basically a small village with narrow streets and small shops. There is a church of course ....




One of the small buildings ...


To quote Eric Clapton ... I fought the CA and the CA won ... I don't mind displaying the image as a memory ... but the above could never make a decent print without painstaking work on the weird blue leaves ...

Here is one of the more clever shop names ... a lot of artists and galleries set up here ...



There's a wicked little jeep behind one of the larger buildings ... kind of reminds me of a great big lawn tractor ...


A shop called Scentchips caters to the new age crowd I suppose ... really smells of pouporri and incense in there ...


I sniffed from outside and so never claimed my free sniffs.

Here's one where I fought the CA and *I* won :-)


Pretty little court yard at the street ... and across from there is a law office run apparently by my eldest ...


Another gallery with a great big plant ...


Facing the street again, a trolley stops behind the trellis ...


Looking down a side street, they decorate in festival style.


One of the buildings in the court yard looks like a church on the outside, but more like a bar on the inside ...


A fountain stands in the court yard, but is only a monument to conservation right now ...


Going around a corner, I see a nicely lit passage going to the River Theatre.


And there it is ...


Through the arch, I see I have arrived at the river walk again, and this theatre must be awesome during plays or concerts. The seats are pretty old school ...


A couple of young ones enjoy the scenery ...


Zooming in on the bridge at the left ...


Looking back up the steps ...


Pretty place to sit ...



Boats traveling under the bridge and away ...


A shot of what I think is the Little Rhein restaurant. It is raised above the walkway. And I lost the CA battle on this one too ... didn't try very hard though.


Walking along, I notice that the duck population has exploded on this part of the river. One fellow taking a rest from swimming.


A pretty female comes pretty close.


A couple of males ...



And one comes right in after a dip ...


I like this pose from what looks like the same duck ...


A female being nosy :-)


A nice view of the men at work a little further down the river ... well, not actually at work. At play somewhere else I suppose.


A water taxi zips by ... I catch the very excited passengers ...


A close up on that way cool Bobcat backhoe thingy ...


Near another bridge I have clearly arrived at the traffic circle again as the art work comes into view ...



Below the bridge is some sort of official boat ... almost looks like something you'd find in the Everglades ...


More ducks a little further along ... these are heavy crops, as the ducks were on the other side. They seemed in a feisty mood, so I tried capturing this flapping behavior.


Now, remember that these are also shot at 1600 ISO ... so anything I get here is really impressive from a distance across the river ...


Fairly grainy, but not hopeless ... the next one is very grainy because it was a dark scene and he was really far away. So I pulled a Topaz Adjust and went for an artsy treatment ...


I came across yet another water feature next ...


This feature is under a bridge, and on the other side they built a restaurant. Every bit of space is valuable on the River Walk.


This couple sat there for a long time looking at the phone. Maybe they were shooting images of themselves. It was dark enough that the images would have sucked, although this is ok at 200 ISO.




Across the way, a little mexican band was being stereotypically musical and cheerful.


Ran across another tough guy ...


And now I was hungry, so I made a characteristically bad choice ... the Rainforest Restaurant :-)


This one has the distinction of being the only 3 story one in ... well, I can't remember. Maybe the only one period. The atmosphere is great for kids ... this Gorilla scared the sh*t out of a young one right behind me. I counted at least 6 kids within 10 feet of me. But they were behaved pretty well and it brought back some fond memories.


Here is is when he is quiet.


By the way ... these Gorillas are almost invisible ... it is *dark* in there ... these were shot at 3200 ISO ... not bad for a really small compact ...

After the meal, I popped over to the aquarium on this floor (each floor had a massive aquarium ... I used to have a 70 gallon tank and I'd guess these for at least 6 times that size .,.. perhaps much more.)


Not sure what that was, but the next two are a Clown Trigger Fish. One of my favorites, along with the Picasso Trigger.



Detail and color acceptable for 3200 ISO? It is to me ...

Here's a Niger Trigger ...


And my last shot at the restaurant ... a nice wide view of a Yellow Tang reflected in the back glass ...


At this point it was late and I wandered back to the hotel. And low and behold, a window :-)


Sun was just peeking over the horizon and lighting the tops of the buildings ... I liked the unique and warm light, so I thought I might try to capture an image of that scene for posterity ... along, of course, with the other dozen or two of images ... amazingly, that black truck is still there ...



And that ended Thursday's adventure. A very long walk ... a sore Achilles tendon (frak!) ... and it got a lot worse before it started getting better ... *sigh* ...