This week’s movie supplanted one I had ready to go. Last Friday’s visit to Kingston to watch the first-year cadets’ obstacle course was as inspiring as ever, and so I wanted to get this video done quickly.
This week I worked with title effects, more picture-in-picture effects using both video and still photos, and changing the video’s speed. I also learned how to clip still photos from video. As my repertoire of techniques increases so, too, will my ability to tell stories. I hope!
As I paddle doggedly across a “flat cam” sea – er, lake – on the hottest day of the summer (which is, ironically, the first day of autumn), the sweat crawls out from under my hat and drips into my eyes. A great blue heron sweeps effortlessly along about two feet off the water and only twenty feet ahead of my kayak. Continue reading
On 27 Sep, the Prime Minister and Heritage Minister Jolie helped to unveil Canada’s National Holocaust Monument, across the street from the War Museum.
If I hadn’t seen CBC’s Power and Politics show that day, I might not have known about the young woman behind it: Laura Grossman, granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. Continue reading
I hang up my fresh towels on their accustomed rack. With just the one set in use, week in, week out, this is a household task that doesn’t show. I know they’re clean, but I get no visual cue that it is so, such as I would have if I changed colours at the same time.
I turn to replace the Big Guy’s towels and pause. Should I hang them up? Something tickles at the back of my brain. Continue reading
The original: I wrote about Leonard Cohen as National Treasure #18 and Barbara Carlson as #150.
The follow-up: Barbara Carlson is now working on a series of greeting cards that feature birds. Many use the “bird on the wire” tagline from Cohen’s song. Here are a few of them. Continue reading
White grounds out, Brown doubles, and Blanco comes to bat. The opposing team brings in Green, their closer.
My knowledge of the game being limited, watching baseball gives me ample opportunity to think Other Thoughts. On this particular day in March, I start to notice the colour words that are surnames, in English or Spanish, and those that aren’t.
“Never mind fuchsia and primrose,” I think, “where are the Reds, Yellows, and Oranges? Where are the Pinks and the Blues?” Continue reading
Hummers on feeders, and hoppers on flowers
Bright copper kettles and warm woollen mittens
Brown paper packages tied up with strings
These are a few of my favorite things.
– Little known early draft of “My Favourite Things“
Or maybe I’m thinking of that other great classic: If you can’t take pictures of the thing you love, love the thing you can take pictures of.
So it was that I caught this grasshopper, swaying on a wildflower cum weed.
This week’s movie uses pan-and-zoom techniques on still photos, and particles (nifty little effects that overlay a photo or title “slide”).
Fun!
I admit that I was a bit bored at MosaiCanada, one of the Signature Events for Canada’s 150th, at least as celebrated in Ottawa. I mean, after you’ve seen three or four shapes sculpted from dripping-wet moss and teeny tiny plants, you’ve kinda seen them all. The grand piano just wasn’t that different from the hockey players, you know what I mean? Continue reading
Posted: 2025 Jun 13
Thanks to John Whitman for this slightly dismayed face from downtown Ottawa.
This space is available for other submissions.
