One Toe, Two Toes, Three Toes, Broke

As I posted on Facebook on New Years Eve:  I may have the worlds first Scattergories injury (tho others want to claim it as a hockey injury, but really its a much less unique accident while walking while staring at a cell phone injury).

So at 7:30-8ish PM on New Years Eve I was lying down in the guest room of my in-laws house up in Ontario Canada.  I was relaxing and watching a recorded NHL game: Rangers vs my beloved Maple Leafs.  It was close to the end of the second period when my wife texted me from the first floor living room saying the rest of the family was about to start playing Scattergories (one of those word based party games).

Since I had a few minutes to go in the period I decided to watch the rest as I went down stairs.   I got to the 3rd last step when suddenly my feet kicked out from underneath me, my phone went flying, my butt went thumpy thumpy, and I slid down the rest of the stairs to the bottom step.  At which time I took stock of the situation. Most of me felt surprisngly fine, but my right foot hurt.  I slipped off my sock and saw that my middle toe was no longer facing the same direction as the rest of the toes.

To top it off sometime between my foot slipping and me arriving ungracefully at the bottom the Rangers scored on the Leafs.  Literal insult to injury.

So shortly after I got to my feet, my wife drove me to the emergency room of the local hospital.  X-rays confirmed that I indeed had two broken toes. (My first bone break ever - I am so proud) One had a simple crack, the other misshapen one was broken clean in half.  The doctor straightened the middle one, taped me up, and sent me on my way.  He did suggest that I go see an orthopedic surgeon to look at the middle toe.

So we went back to my in-laws house.  The annoying thing was that the emergency room didn't have any orthopedic boots in stock, nor crutches (very small town), so I had to use my hiking boots as a supporting boot.  The next day was New Years Day so I couldn't buy a boot, but fortunately I was able to borrow crutches from my wife's cousin.   So armed with mobility we headed off to complete our plans for New Years Day, which was visiting a photographer friend who wanted to get some portraits of me for his series of beard portraits,

The next day, Thursday, we drive home the 12.5 hours back from Canada.  Once home I booked an appointment with an orthopedic surgeon for Monday, and ordered an orthopedic boot off Amazon.  I was soon back in a hobbling but mobile state for the weekend.

The emergency room gave me my x-rays on CD-ROM, so a family doctor friend offered to drop by the house on Friday to take a look at my x-rays for a second opinion.  Once I downloaded a viewer for the images I quickly realized that I actually had a third broken toe.  So the 2nd and 4th toe had cracks, and the third was a clean break.

The orthopedic surgeon looked at my foot on Monday and his first comment was "Yep, you broke 4 toes."   Its a well documented myth that vaccines cause autism, but apparently every time I see a new doctor I break another toe!  After closer examination it was determined that the 4th "break" was likely an old injury, or an x-ray smudge.

Never been more relieved to only have 3 broken toes!

So surgery was booked for Wednesday (yesterday). 

For surgery prep I was basically told to keep my foot elevated at all times, to reduce swelling.  This basically means I spent a couple days lying on the couch and lying in bed.  Before this I was able to go downstairs to my studio basement and get some creativity in.  Staying still has been a challenge.

So the surgery was pretty simple, and pretty unremarkable as things go. I left the house at 9:30, and returned at 2:30.  I was under general anesthetic for about an hour. 

The surgery was to have a pin inserted into my middle toe to keep it stable to give the bone a change to heal cleanly.  However it also means I am basically not allowed to put any weight on my right foot,  and keep it elevated as much as humanly possible.

Annoyingly I am actually less mobile that I was before the surgery.  This is actually mentally very hard to deal with. Previously I could get into my studio and be creative, and do things.  Now I am stuck upstairs, and really limited to the bed or the couch. 

I  described it to my wife as it feels like the exact opposite of depression.  When I was having depression episodes I had all the desire to go do things, my flesh was willing, but I couldn't get up the mental energy to actually get off the couch to go do it. 

Now I want to go do things,  and I have all the mental energy and desire to go do them, but my flesh is keeping me on the couch.

The one benefit of having depression is that I am more aware of how things affect my mood, so I can deal with the mental stresses much better than I otherwise would have - yay for emotional intelligence!

So for now I am taking a couple days off work while I am on post-op pain meds.  Then I will be working from home for at least a week.  I have a follow up appointment next Wednesday to see how I am doing, and whether the doctor will allow me to go to work, or at least go downstairs to my studio.

Until then, its bed rest for me!

And thus ends the story of my 3 broken toes.

Portrait Workshop? Yeah, I did that.

Likely not a surprise to anyone who knows me that I do not shoot a lot of portraits of people.   It's not that my introverted self doesn't like shooting people (tho that remains outside of my comfort zone), it is that the traditional head shot style that I associate with portraits doesn't really stoke my creative energy. 

However I do believe that one can learn valuable insights that will help ones photography by learning about all aspects of the craft, not just ones preferred genre.  Plus, when the workshop instructor is as amazing and accomplished as Ron Clifford, I couldn't sign up for the workshop fast enough.

This is why, in the middle of my recent vacation, I found myself in a studio in Newmarket Ontario with my wife, 6 other photographers, a make-up artist, a model, and Ron Clifford, attending a workshop on natural and single-strobe portrait photography.

At the end I even changed my mind, a little, about portrait photography feeding my creative spirit.

So, first some behind the scenes shots.

The workshop started with some math to cover the theory of cameras and light.

The math took about an hour, then we got down to actually shooting. First Ron would demonstrate the concepts:

Then we, the participants, were given the chance to practice the concepts, under Rons supervision.

The model used for both days of the workshop is Ron's daughter, Beth.  Over the course of the two days she, with the help of the make-up artist Dio put on several different looks. 

Beth was an amazingly good sport, and a lot of fun. 

Once I got over the social awkwardness of pointing my camera at new people, I got into the swing of things.  Me, being me, made it a meta game by asking Beth to do weird things, more to get her to laugh (and thus remove my social anxiety), but also cause of the theory that the natural smile of someone can be discovered the moment after they laugh.

It started with my asking her, while dressed up in a prom dress, to put on boxing gloves. I really liked the idea of a tough girl in a pretty dress.  Girl power and all that.

Someone else asked Beth to get on the floor for this post, but I jumped in and grabbed this shot anyway.

After a while everything got artsy.

This is my most favourite shot I got from the workshop.  I love her timeless expression, and that lonely chair in the corner.  This girl is alone somewhere in the world, with only her dog and a guitar to keep her company. 

So that was the workshop.  I learned a ton, had a ton of fun, and got some decent shots in the process.  Not a bad way to spend two days of vacation eh?

Shocker! I Try Smoking Grass!

Since it is going to be 100% legal in Canada, on my most recent visit I decided to give "grass" a try.  

Personal conclusion: I really don't see what the fuss is all about.

NHL Playoffs! My New Fascination With Hockey

I have been really getting into hockey this year.

"But Dave," you may wonder to yourself in your inner voice (which I always imagine has a Scottish accent, even if you're not Scottish), "You are Canadian.  Aren't you culturally obligated to watch hockey?"

"No!" I would retort. "Don't be silly." (also that's racist).

While I watched hockey as a kid, and attended a few hockey games over the past few years, I haven't really followed hockey since high school.   This is mainly due to a lack of cable TV, and a general dislike for sports bars.

However this year due to fortuitous events (namely vast improvements in Internet bandwidth allowing for streaming video content, my wifey strongly suggesting my father in-law would appreciate it if I got a  subscription to NHL.tv, and my deciding paying for the year made more financial sense than paying for the month).  So back in November I started watching hockey again.

During the year I split my time watching several teams, The Edmonton Oilers (my team when I was a kid), the Ottawa Senators (my team in high school), and the Toronto Maple Leafs (you have to grow up in Ontario to understand the complex love/hate relationship one develops with the beloved Leafs).

The Oilers and Senators neglected to make the playoffs. So, I've begun following other teams: the Tampa Bay Lightening (cause they are amazing puck handlers) Pittsburgh Penguins (defending champions), and the Toronto Maple Leafs (see previous paragraph).

The second round just started and I have two teams left in contention (The Leafs went to game 7, but then folded in the third period in classic Leaf fashion).

My one issue is that playoff games are under a blackout until the game is over.  This isn't really a problem in practice, except I am constantly trying to avoid spoilers on news sites and social media - the struggle is real.

So that is my current status as a hockey fan.  The Penguins just one game one of the second round, so things are looking up!

Go Sports Puck Team!

Abstract Hockey Night In Canada

This post is all about making the best of mistakes.  For the last post I showed some photography from a hockey game I attended over the holidays in Canada.

I was sitting right along the boards, snapping pics.  Most of the time my camera focused on the action, but sometimes it focused on the safety glass.

When it did, I was left with blurry photos.  However looking at them afterwards I kind of dug the shames they represented. 

So I figured I'd share it with you, my plucky crazy readers.  What do you think of these abstracted images?

Hockey Night In Canada

This is a bit delayed, but life has been throwing me curveballs this past few months.  However back over Christmas break I was back in Canada visiting family. While there I attended a hockey game with my in-laws. 

The game was OHL level between the Mississauga Stealheads and the Hamilton Bulldogs.

We had seats right along the glass, which gave me excellent angles, but at times annoying reflections - such is life, eh?

In order to practice getting better at sports photography, I spent a lot of time tracking the flow of the game and trying to capture peak action.  I was just getting into my groove when, during the 2nd period intermission, I was told by a staff member that I wasn't allowed to "have that size of lens in the arena without a press pass." So I stopped taking photos.

Despite that interruption I think I did a decent job.  What do you think?

Backyard Bounty Brought Me The Great One

This is a story of Netflix, nostalgia, and hockey. Hold on to your butts, it's gonna be a ride.

Not a wild one... not even an interesting one... but a ride.  Keep your arms inside the bus at all times.

So 6 months or so ago my wife stumbled across a show on Netflix called Backyard Bounty.  Which is an American Pickers style show where a couple dudes wander the countryside in search of found treasures in old barns, garages, and various hobo infested places of the world.  The boys from Backyard Bounty do their hunting in Ontario (which, being Canadian expats, is the first wave of nostalgia).

One of the guys from the show has a store in Ingersol Ontario.  When I was recently back up in the Great White North I found myself with a few hours to kill, so I went on a road trip (90 minutes from where I was based) to check out the store:  Modern Hipster Antiques.

I'm not much of an antique guy, so I didn't expect to find a lot.  The store does have quite a bit in it, and its worth the stop by if you're in the area, but it wasn't really fueling my lust for objects. Then I looked in the last display case in the store.

I stopped suddenly. A twinkle in my eye... nay, a gleam.  Heck, a beam of freakin' light shone forth, for what presented itself upon my vision  was no less than The Great One?

Jesus? Mohammed?  Martin Luther King Jr.? Patrick Stewart? William Shatner?

No.  The actual Great One:  Wayne Gretzky.  Well, his hockey card at least.

The 1984-85 season no less - the team that was recently voted the best team in the history of the NHL.

Wayne frickin' Gretzky.

So backing the bus up a bit... when I was but a wee lad - grade one/two-ish,  I watched a lot of hockey, and my team of choice was the Edmonton Oilers.   Many evenings my dad and I would walk, - nay, this was Canada in winter... we trudged - thru the snow to the local convenience store to pick up a pack of hockey cards.  Over the season I collected every single Oiler there was... except Wayne Gretzky.

Time after time I lovingly looked thru my ever expanding deck of collected cards, reading every stat of every Oiler, except the stats of the Great One.

Until...the very last pack of the season. With the Oilers in the finals I eagerly cracked open that last pack of cards to fine... 3 Wayne Gretzkys!

Joyous bliss!

Now.  I was in grade one/two-ish, so naturally I lost all those cards... but now, in the case in front of me, I could obtain the holy grail from  my youth. The card of the best hockey player in the history of the world, and my childhood hero: Wayne frickin' Gretzky.

But now I had the chance to grab hold of some serious childhood memories and hold it as my very own... this is the heavy nostalgia stuff.

It may not surprise you to learn that I immediately bought the card. Here it is:

And thus ends the story.

Let It Snow!

Ever since I started shooting LEGO minifigs I've used snow as a background.  Snow is great for many reasons, the most obvious being the background for most of the action in Empire Strikes Back, but it has other uses as well.  Snow scenes can being a sense of fun (snow ball fights, winter sports etc.) a sense of nostalgia (Christmas scenes), or a sense of cold and foreboding (a frozen winter storm). 

Since I live in North Carolina, which sees little snow that is useable for photography.  As a result I've come to use fake snow quite heavily in my work.  However fortunes favour has recently found Yours Truly in a land of snow, so I was able to get several shots using actual real life snow.

Here are some examples using fake snow (baking powder), and real snow (frozen crystalized water).  First the fake:

And then the real:

As much as I love snow,  I actually don't think the real snow works nearly as well as the fake stuff.  Normally a photographer loves to get some fresh falling snow into a scene.  It is hard to beat the real stuff for normal sized photos.  However it all starts to fall apart in the close-up details.
Real snow clumps together, and melts in ugly ways on minifigs.  Up close, which is required for LEGO shots, the snow becomes transparent, and the flakes comically oversized compared to the subject, and ends up looking fake, even tho it is actually the real thing.

The fake stuff doesn't melt, and doesn't clump together nearly as much. The grains of powder are closer in scale to a minifig as a snow flake is to a human, so it "feels" right.  Not to mention, as the photographer, I don't need winter weather clothing in order to work with it. 

Scale is always an issue when shooting LEGO, and that goes double for snow scenes.

So while I still love snow, and I am sure I'll make many more real snow images in the weeks to come, I suspect my important shots are still going to be re-created with fake snow in my studio.

I'll just save my winter wonderland activities for full scale projects.

CRAM: Last Of The Unplucked Gems

This is it.  The end.

Today is the day CRAM dies. Pour one out for my homies.

Seriously, most folks went home today.  So my wife was left with just me... so pray for her (good for me, tho, eh? wink, wink, nudge, nudge)

Our plans for the day were to slowly migrate down the mountain to Calgary, and wait for our flight tomorrow morning.

Since we woke up in Canmore, and hadn't really explored the town, we decided to give it a bit of a go.

Canmore is a really nice mountain town, surrounded by large mountain peaks.  One of the most striking is a series of 3 peaks called the Three Sisters... each peak has a name; Faith, Charity, and... um.. something else. (I'll leave that as an exercise for the reader).

Canmore also has a large head.  I am not kidding.

Told you I wasn't kidding.

I mean, when do I ever kid? I am very serious at all times.

Kidding!

So, while we were walking around Canmore, I had a idea. A wonderful idea. An awesome idea. A wonderfully awesome idea.

That idea was to screw Calgary (cause really, Calgary is a bit pompous, what with its stampede, Flames, and... well... reasons), and spend the time heading to Red Deer to visit a Scavenger, the amazeballs Paul Howard.

Turns out he was busy (work, he claims... likely story), so we took our time driving thru the rural country roads of Alberta, which took us by wonderful scenes like this.

And this.

Canola fields are incredible.  Absolutely incredible.  If you think your farm area is more picturesque and super-scenic, and you don't have canola fields, your wrong.  Just wrong.  Just stand there and be wrong - Canola fields win.  Hands down.

So anyway...

Late afternoon we arrived in Red Deer, and hung out with Mr. Howard.  We checked out his shop, and his photo studio.  Looked over some of his prints, then went to dinner.

So, since my wife is a photographer, Paul is a photographer, and I play one on the Internet, we'd have some awesome photos of this meeting. And you'd be...

Wrong.

Turns out, I suck at capturing social events.  I suck, I admit it.  On the other hand I have the memories and you don't, so I am still winning.... like an insane cocaine-filled egomaniacal version of Charlie Sheen level of winning (no, not like Donald Trump - he's just an orange man-child with delusions of grandeur and small hands - I'm talking real winning here).

Anyhoo... we still had to get to Calgary to prep for our flight tomorrow, so reluctantly we moved on.

Along the way we found some places to take some photos.

Sunsets over the prairies are stunning.  Absolutely stunning.

 They are even better with a grain elevator in the foreground.

And over the top when a storm is coming in.

So, we finally ended up in Calgary, and checked into the hotel.  The next day we flew out of Calgary and went back to Ontario.

Thus endeth the adventure.  It was a heck of a trip.  I am glad we went.

So thats it.  Time to go home.  We're done.  However don't worry, I am not done road tripping and adventuring.  Actually, as of this writing, I have plans in the works for 7 more blog worthy trips  - 7!

So we are not even close to being done.

Until then, keep calm and CRAM it. Dave out.

CRAM: The Village Of Banff-ish... Sort Of.

So the last full day of CRAM the weather actually started to cooperate.  There was sun!  SUN! I'm not sure I've seen the daystar for over a week... and it is here!

So, it is time to go exploring.

My wife and I headed off with an awesome couple known as the Blands, for a good wander and exploration.  We left early to avoid the tourists, cause... well... you know why by now.

So we were staying in Canmore, and headed to the village of Banff.  On the way out of town we checked out some of the scenery that was previously hiding in the clouds.

I didn't know much about the Village of Banff before I arrived. I knew it existed, and it had nice views, but thats about it.  So we started driving thru town... turns out that didn't take long.

We soon ended up at this quaint hole-in-the-wall amazeballs European looking luxury resort called Fairmont Springs.  Looked a bit like this from the road:

We took a wander thru the majestic stone halls, anded ended up on an expansive terrace overlooking mountains. The skylight looking peaked roof things look resplendet, do they not?

An example of some of the interior spaces.  I mean, who doesn't like a good stone staircase?

After a bit (by a bit I mean when the free parking ran out), we headed down to the village itself.  The ladies among us started to go shopping, so while they went right, the boys went left.  We went in search of a view of the Fairmont from the other side of the river.  Luckily we found it.

The ladies never suspected a thing.

After a bit (read: lunch - we all ate bison), we went for a drive to check out Vermillion Lakes during the day (this was the location where we went night shooting before.)

Looks remarkably different, and less fire-spinny, during the day.

After the lakes, we decided to head in the geneal direction of Canmore, but we took a detour to Lake Minnewanka. 

It was actually quite scenic, and I could have stayed a while, but at this time my wife (remember my wife's habits on road trips? - this will sound familiar...) was taking a nap in the car. Plus the tourists were about.  So one more photo...

... and its back to Canmore for one last supper.

So we're approaching the end.  Tomorrow CRAM ends, and our plans are to go to Calgary to catch a plane.  However that is too simple, isn't it?

Yes, yes it is.  Stay tuned for one more kick at the CRAM can, and see what my wife and I get up to on the final day of our adventure.