Bonuel Photography » green

Photo Friday: Drops of Water

Miguel — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 00:15:41 +0000

So, it’s been a while since I posted a Photo Friday set, but here it is. I’ve been thinking of shooting drop of water for a while, but never got to it. So here they are – I hope you enjoy them. Which one is your favourite?

Bon, ca fait longtemps que je n’ai pas posté un Photo Friday, mais mieux vaut tard que jamais! Ça fait déjà un bon bout que je veux prendre une photo d’une goutte d’eau qui tombe dans l’eau, mais j’avais jamais le temps. Enfin, les voici – j’espère que vous les aimerez! Quelle est votre préférée?

Photo Monday: Neutral Density

Miguel — Mon, 10 May 2010 13:00:35 +0000

I finally got to test out the neutral density filters (2 ND4′s) that I got for my birthday. The idea of a neutral density filter is to reduce the amount of light that comes into your lens so that you can leave the shutter open for longer. Why would you want to do that you are asking? Lots of reasons, but mine had to do with running water. Check it out! By the way, the shots were taken on the Baden Powell Trail in Deep Cove, British Columbia.

J’ai finalement eu la chance d’essayer mes filter “neutral density” (2 ND4′s) que j’ai eu pour ma fête. L’idée derrière ces filtres est de pouvoir reduire la quantité de lumière qui entre dans ta camera pour pouvoir laisser le “shutter” ouvert plus longtemps. Pour faire quoi vous vous demandez? Il y a bien sûr plusieurs raisons, mais les miennes étaient surtout liées à l’eau en forest. Voyez pour vous-même!!! En passant, les photos ont été prises sur le sentier ‘Baden Powell’ à Deep Cove en Colombie Britanique.

Calm Stream — View On Black.

Lush Stream — View On Black.

Quiet Pool — View On Black.

Green Stones — View On Black.

Earth Day 2010

Miguel — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 13:00:53 +0000

Today, April 22nd, marks the 40th official Earth Day. By the way, according to the “about” section of Earth Day’s website, more than 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities, which makes it the largest secular civic event in the world!! Get out there and be green!

Aujourd’hui, c’est le jour de la terre! D’après le site officiel du “jour de la terre”, plus d’un milliard de personne participe au jour de la terre, ce qui fait de cet événement le plus grand événement séculaire au monde!! Allez! Allez! Sortez et soyez vert!!!

Australian Fern, 2006.

Toronto’s Earth Hour

Miguel — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 05:36:11 +0000

According to Toronto newspaper The Star, Toronto observed an 8.7% dip on it’s energy curve. Here is a nice comparison of the Skyline before and during Earth Hour from their website.

Another fun source of images of Earth Hour across downtown Toronto is at blogTo.com, where you can see this interesting graph of energy consumption during the day of Earth Hour. Mind you, that graph is across Ontario and so the dip may not look as pronounced as Toronto’s experts have suggested. However, I think we do see a little bit of a change in consumption right later at night. I saw a very different graph earlier today, of Toronto’s energy, but I can’t seem to find it online. Too bad.

For the curious, here is the energy consumption of yesterday, according to ieso’s website. Keep in mind that yesterday was much warmer than on March 28th, and so the comparison isn’t ideal.

You can sort of see the effects of Earth Hour on the curve, but, to be fair, the real difference is in people’s head, which has always been the idea behind the Earth Hour’s movement. So, in that sense, I think that Torontonians really participated well and even if it didn’t have quite the effect on the energy consumed of March 28th 2008, I personally think it was a wonderful event and am glad we participated as much as we did. I sure hope we do better next year though! The challenge is on!

Grampians National Park 2006

Miguel — Thu, 23 Mar 2006 04:00:30 +0000

Because of some technical problems, i.e. sleeping and packing the car, we left Melbourne, Altona to be exact, a little bit later than we had hoped for. Not to worry, we only had one stop and it was going to buy me a little gift for my birthday. An iPod radio transmitter for the car so that we have good music to listen to for the roadtrip. This little gadget will turn out to be a wonderul (we still use it!!) gift for this trip.

The drive from Melbourne to the Grampians, for the novice and prudent, is about 5 hours long. So we took our time, stopped for some fruits and a little bit of food on the way, a pit-stop here and there, and we finally arrived in the area of Hall’s Gap, our final destination, at around 8h30pm, pitch dark. There were so many Wallabies hopping by the side of the road by that point that we had to drive really slowly. So we started to look for an open camping place, a free one if possible. We went to a couple of camping grounds, but they were all closed because of the huge fire that burnt the three quarters of the forest over christmas 2005 (only three months prior our trip). So we decided to camp at the Hall’s Gap camp ground, right in the middle of the city with all the holiday caravans. Very nice location, and great place to pitch a tent.

As I just mentioned, a naturally occurring fire burnt about three quarters of the Grampians National Park over the Christmas holiday season in 2005. It was pretty much heartbreaking to see the forest in that state, but we have had the chance to see the wonders of nature at its best. According to the rangers, the fire started in the southern region of the park, where a lightning struck a tree and ignited the enormous fire, and very quickly made its way through the whole park. As the photo shows, the gum trees are very quick and efficient at recovering from bush fires, it is definitively nice to see that nature has already started to recover in some places.

One of the side effects of the huge fire was to bring out most of the animals closer to the city to have something to eat, and so we’ve encountered some of the most beautiful wildlife in the park and around the city. Among others, we’ve seen Kangaroos, Echindnae, Corellas, Rosellas, Goannas, etc. Browse through my new set of pictures on flickr.com and see for yourself. We of course have an enormous amount of pictures that we will share with most of you when we come back.

We also visited a drier region of Victoria, set along the Murray river. This region, Mildura Outback, is very beautiful and has some very interesting National Parks. Among the places we visited, you will see the sand dune at Perry Sand Hills, which were amazing to visit.