An update and a few photos

Many of you know that I had surgery on Monday. They went back in to clean up a cancerous node where my Thyroid used to be. According to the surgeon, they got it and I should be OK. He used a different "C" word: "CURED". There were some issues, especially with my voice, which is barely there but which should come back in a matter of weeks.

I need to take a moment to thank everyone who showed they cared so much. I was inundated with good wishes, visits, lifts, phone calls (I told you, I can't talk!), magazines, books and chocolate! All of the nurses at Mt. Sinai were great, there was one special one, though, named Mielana or "Mills" who actually went down and got me a Tim Horton's coffee when I said I was dying for one. She always had a smile and really cared, even when she was sticking needles in me!

I'm home, bored to death, but can't really get motivated to work much, although I did do some work on my First Aid website and some bookkeeping. I should be back in the swing of things next week. I have a Monday appointment to get the stitches removed and maybe I'll go up North for a couple of days.

So I can't write a Blog entry without some photographic content. I took a self-portrait with the Blackberry a couple of hours after surgery. Just thought I'd share...

A couple of weeks ago, Ron Goodlin and I shot the whitewater kayaking races up in Minden, then we drove around and got a few other shots. Here's one of the kayak images that I kind of like: although it's high key, it typifies the action that day for me.



We drove up to Dorset where I took this shot on the dock. I did a burst in order to create an HDR of the image, in an effort to capture the texture of the wood and the blue of the sky as well. Not dramatic, but I think it worked.



I love shooting pictures of moving water. "Painting with Water". You have to experiment with the exposure times -- for me, somewhere between 1/2 sec and 1/10 sec seems to work best. Here are a few examples.

I took a series of pictures here, each with a different shutter speed.
This one was 1/6 sec. Needless to say, a tripod is not an option.

This was an HDR composite. Then I converted it to black and white and cropped it a bit. I was trying to capture some of the detail in the rocks and the moving water. The early morning mist and soft lighting adds a different dimension to this image.

Again, I took a series of pictures here, each with a different shutter speed. This one was 3/10 sec.
Needless to say, a tripod is not an option.

This one is cropped really tightly. I was actually trying to enhance the noise and the texture in this composition. The original photo was not spectacular, but if you use your eyes, you might come up with something unexpected.

I'm almost ready to start putting the next book together. It's going to be quite an effort, but I'm sure it will be worth it. Catch you later!