The Ben'enator » Alberta

First Family Skate

admin — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 04:40:42 +0000

Today was a good day to be a Canadian dad. I took some time this afternoon to go buy my wife some skates and then we headed down to our “big” pasture so that we could go skating. This was the first time I’d take my boys (5 years & 7 years) to go skating. This was a bunch of fun as the boys were super excited. One person not quite so excited was my wife – you’d also never been skating.

Unfortunately the audio isn’t working on the videos and is totally borked. That being said, you can still see that they are having a whole bunch of fun.

It was a great day and my oldest bay said “That is the most fun we’d had outside ever!” It makes me proud that I can pass on the love of the outdoors and skating to my family.

Spring Has Sprung in AB

admin — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 18:04:43 +0000

With spring here in Alberta comes a lot of outside activity and no more playing video games – especially for the kids. We have a lot of fun in the downtime going to the little stream that flows past our place and having fun throwing rocks in the water. I don’t care what generation you live in, this is a timeless activity that all kids – especially boys enjoy.

With that being said, there is a lot of work to do, but not before I have to get surgery on my elbow. Last August, I broke a bunch of piece off of it and they get stuck in my joint occassionally and this is very painful. Today at 2:00pm MST I am hoping to live stream the surgery on qik so make sure you head on over and check it out.

While you’re at it, please hit me up and follow me on Twitter as I’m trying to break into the top 10 Twitter users in Calgary. I’m at #12 right now and climbing! Thanks to all who’ve followed me!

HDR Updates

admin — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 23:56:08 +0000

I’m certainly no photographer, but I’ve had a bit of fun recently trying to pull off some HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos. For those of you not familiar with this, the process is really quite simple in principle. You take 3+ photos of the same subject at different exposure levels and then combine the images into one. One photo will be underexposed, one overexposed and one right smack dab in the middle. When you combine these with Photoshop CS2 or better, it will allow you to bring out the detail of all of the images and give you a bit of a surreal look. The amount of surreal is up to you.

When playing around with HDR, I prefer to go for a more realistic look like the other old barn below.

If you have and comments, questions or suggestions, please post them in the comments section below. As you can see I’m a total HDR n00b and I want to learn. I’ve read a few guides for sure, but I can bet there are some tweaks, tips and tricks to make photos even better. Please share!