Pompei

When we were in Malta, we booked a flight to Naples, Italy, and booked a hotel for a couple of nights. We went to the marvelous archelogical museum. That building itself, is a worth taking the time to see. We then booked a bus tour with a guided tour of Pompei. We had an excellent guide. The excavated city takes you back to 79 (AD or BC? Not sure) when the volcano Vesuvius blew its top and covered the city in lava and ash. Rick Steeves did a travel show segement on Naples and Pompei and it aired this evening on TV. How very timely.

St. Johns Co-cathedral, Valletta, Malta

I have a few more photos for the Malta trip ready to load to my page. One is a sunrise from our balcony of our hotel room. The other is a tomb of one of the Knights of St. John who are buried under the floor of the Cathedral. This church is a must see if ever you are in Malta. Adding an informative link. Hope it works.

Malta

I have tweaked a few more photos for my web page - Travel, 2003 Malta. I liked the play of light creating different forms on the architecture of this Church.

Assignment for the day

Date taken: Oct. 28/06, 1/800 sec., F/4.0, ISO: 200

Pat called Mike today about the BMW, since Mike had expressed an interest in the car if we ever sold it. We will see Mike in a couple of days as he will be over to Victoria on business. The guys decided I should do some photos of the car and send to Pam. So, here is one of my photos from the assignment.

I think I added too much contrast to this rendition of the photo as the car seems to have gone a bit sepia colored. It is totally white and clean, in actual fact. I like how the background turned out to be darker and slightly blurred so that the car shows up nicely. It was cloudy and yet I still get a bright spot on the window from the sun. I don't mind that too much. I actually like those flares. This one is almost as though I had a CS filter on the lens. I am shooting in 'P' mode and doing my own settings. ISO was 100 for this, I think, and the white balance cloudy, with the exposure compensation at 0.

Back to my other assignment--the ironing. I am almost finished and caught up with housework since our trip.

Pat picked apples and we made a pie a couple of days ago. My cold still hangs on, so I am not going outside until its gone. The weather has been fine, though.

I dropped off my Velvia at the lab on Wednesday, should have it back by next Wednesday. Hope my star trails worked. I hate waiting to find out.

I did my lab tests for Dr. C and Dr. S earlier this week also and see Dr. C on the 31st. Yvette said she wanted to see me in full dress for the day. Wish I had a pumpkin costume. :) Maybe I should get one.

Janion Building

Canon Powershot A50 on August 31, 2006. 1/500 sec., f/6.3, exposure compensation: -0.67, Focal Length: 4.3mm.

Two days ago this building was in the news as a member of a demonstration group, had broken into the building, and barricaded himself in. The Police had to go in and get him out. The group were demonstrating to bring the plight of the homeless people to the attention of the conference of the municipalities of B.C. being held in the City.

This is a derelict building and has not been used for about 30 years. It still is an elegant old building. It was a hotel when first opened in 1891 and so has some history and is a heritage building. It is owned by Clara Beatrice Kramer. She also owns the Northern Junk building, another nice old building that has not been used for years. The scuttlebutt from the street is that before he died, her husband told her not to sell the buildings. So, no one seems to be able to buy them and she does not seem to have the incentive to keep them up. She says she 'has her man' check them to keep them safe. The demonstrator must have had a well thought out plan to break in. The Homeless groups seem to think that these empty buildings could be put to better use by the homeless, than to have them sitting empty.

Panama Canal Cruise

Date: 10/10/2006, 1/1250 sec., F/4.0, Focal Length: 72.0 mm

We got back yesterday from our 14 day cruise on the Infinity of the Celebrity lines. It was a good cruise with some interesting shore excursions. After the Amsterdam to Bucharest River cruise, this was rather slow paced, though. Probably not good to compare as they are totally different types of cruises. Food was good, and too abundant. I gained only 2 pounds this time. There were approximately 2000 people on the 11 decks. We were on #2 with a porthole type of window that was unable to be cleaned and so I have no good photos from out the window. More money would have given us a balcony - no window. The weather varied from very very hot to rain and clouds with cooler temperatures.

My pictures are not great. I was having trouble with the light - extremely bright at times, cloudy and dark yet with light reflection from the water. Lens misting over when going from air conditioning to out on the deck. Too many people on the excursions to get any good shots, plus no time to really set any shot up.

Today I learned that the new beta blogger will not accept photos over 3.0 mb, so I had to reduce this by 80% to 2.29 in hopes of being able to load it. Hope it is sharp enough, as I did not do the USM after downsizing. My S3 IS does shoot A3 size jpegs. It says they are good to print at 11 x 16. I have not tried one yet, as I don't really have anything worth printing, yet.

bokeh

This is an attempt at bokeh with my new Canon S3 IS in AV mode, ISO 200, 1/80 sec., F/4.5, focal length 62.3mm

YeaaaY The beta blogger is uploading again. I spent half the day down loading and trying the Picasa to upload as they suggested and it did not work, anyway. So, this is loaded with the Blogger upload.