The Brown Knowser

As loaded as our canoe was with food and camping supplies during my family's trek from Kingston to Ottawa , my vacation was also about capturing images with my camera. I had spent some time, in planning, on what lenses and equipment I would be bringing. Should I carry only a couple of lenses or only one? My 18-55mm or my 70-300mm? In the end, I figured it was better to be safe than sorry, to make sure I wouldn't regret leaving something at home. So I brought all of my equipment, including my tripod. There are many times when I carry my tripod but never use it, so why would I put in in the canoe, and why would I not even bother putting it in the dry bag with my camera bag? For one thing, I didn't care if it got wet: it's made of metal and plastic, both of which would dry if they got soaked. Also, it was small enough that I could slip it along the side of the canoe, keeping it out of the way. The only real risk was if we were to tip and all of our contents fell out....

Ten days and approximately 200 kilometers. Twelve lakes, and seven rivers and channels. Twenty-two sets of locks. One 17-foot canoe, four people, and approximately 200 pounds of equipment. And only two shower facilities. As the days approached for our family vacation, our canoe trip from Kingston to Ottawa, along the Rideau Canal Waterway, I was quite nervous. My only experience with canoeing was the times I've puttered around on lakes, primarily Lac Bernard. At most, Lori and I navigated the entire lake, keeping close to the shore, carrying nothing but ourselves and life jackets—personal floatation devices (PFDs)—which were not worn but were at our feet. We were rank amateurs. Only one week before our trip, we took a Paddle Canada tandem-lake-skills course, which taught us some great techniques and prepared us for situations when we tip out of the canoe (mind you, with an empty canoe). The course helped boost my confidence, but not enough to alleviate all fears of this jou...

Singapore: February, 1999

I may be home from vacation or I may be missing. If there's no blog post tomorrow, you might want to start looking for me and my family. But I didn't want to leave you hanging from yesterday's blog post, so here's the conclusion to the post I wrote in June of 2011. For Part One, go here . A couple of years ago, after I left the office at the end of a long day at work, I walked down the block to the corner Esso station, where I bought another sheet of STO bus tickets. I was completely out, and without tickets I couldn't get home. And it had been a long day—I wanted to get home as quickly as possible. The lineup at the counter in the station was unusually long. An elderly lady was buying lottery tickets and decided that she'd strike up a conversation with the clerk, despite the people lined up behind her. I grew nervous, fearful that I would miss the bus. Depending on when it came, and how quickly I could purchase my tickets, I could either catch the bus whe...

If this post actually appears on The Brown Knowser, I'm either still on vacation, making my way home, or I'm lost, or I am home but was too tired to write something new. Whatever the case may be, I decided to re-post something I wrote a couple of years ago and received positive feedback. If you haven't read it before, I hope you enjoy it. If you have read it, I hope you enjoy it again. DISCLAIMER: this post, in no way, shape, or form, should be interpreted as any expression of regret with the life I live. I love the way that my life has unfolded: I'm happy with my career path, I love my home, I adore my children and am thankful for them every day, and I worship my wife, without whom I would be hopelessly lost. I wouldn't change my life for the world. This post returns to a time before my life really started. It has nothing to do with the now. Think of it as fiction, even though it's not. *** I fell in love with Laura the moment I saw her. It was some...

Every so often, I look at some of the shots I've taken in the past, wondering if I can improve them. One of my favourite photos that I took on my family's 2009 vacation in Italy was in the vaults of the cathedral in Assisi. I was a little cheeky at the time, because photography was prohibited in various locations, including the spot where I shot this favourite photo of mine. Perhaps I took a little pleasure in sin? I've always been happy with the way it came out naturally, even though it was a little dark. I liked the faint stream of light that fell on the hanging object (sorry, I'm not religious so I have no idea what it's called). Here is the shot, run through the HDR exposure merge (as a single image), and then tweaked a little. I still prefer the original, but this one isn't bad either. What do you think? Happy Friday!

We all make choices, each of which determines the outcome of who we are today. Sometimes, we reflect on the choices we've made and we think, am I on the right path? Did I make the right decision? Every so often, I think about the options I've had over my lifetime and I imagine where I would be now if I hadn't made the choices I've made, if I had made other choices, selected the other option. Would I have been happy taking that other path? In my first year in journalism school, I learned a lot about reporting, I had honed my writing skills, and to one of my teachers, I had showed a lot of promise as an up-and-coming journalist. My core-course teacher told me that I approached stories from fresh angles and would write the news in a way that was not only informative, it was enjoyable to read. I came up with some twisted titles to my stories, but that's another blog post. When he approached me, towards the end of my first year, and told me about a job opportunity as...

Kids: don't try this at home. I've been driving for a long time. When I was eight years old, my father would take me to an empty parking lot (remember when stores were closed on Sundays?), sit me on his lap and let me handle the steering wheel while he controlled the accelerator and brake pedals. As soon as I was old enough to reach the pedals and see over the dash board, I was allowed to drive the car with my father next to me, in the passenger seat. My father was and remains a driving enthusiast, and in my youth I think he was subtly training me to be a race-car driver. As I became proficient with the car, he would have me drive faster, would teach me to anticipate changes in road conditions and traffic. He taught me how to take the apex of a curve, to brake, release, and accelerate so that little or no momentum was lost, that you could almost slingshot yourself around a corner. As I got older, he taught me how to drive a manual transmission and perform all of those fast-pace...

It's not often that I explore ales that come from outside my own province, with the exception of Québec. Every so often, I come across a beer from Nova Scotia (but not that Alexander Keith stuff), and of course I try lots of beer from the U.S., but I seldom check out beer from other parts of Canada. Recently, one of my Twitter buddies suggested a couple of breweries from the western coast, in British Columbia. Of the three breweries he mentioned, two of them were available at the LCBO ; thankfully, they were both at my nearest store. Of the two breweries, I absolutely loved one of them, and I'll provide a review of the three beers that I tried from them in the near future. But the other brewery proved to be a good one too, and that's where I'm focusing this review. And because I haven't written a review in a while, I'm giving you three beers. Parallel 49 is a brewery in Vancouver that was the dream child of three friends (why do brewers hang out in thr...

Every photographer knows that when you're shooting a subject, you take as many shots as you can, hoping that there is one good photo in the lot. The rest are discarded, never used. I call those shots the throwaways. A couple of weeks ago, as I was driving home, along Fallowfield Road, the sun was close to setting and the high cirrus clouds where whisping above, lazily taking in the beautiful summer evening. I noticed that the clouds that were closest to the waning sun were dark, full of shadow. They reminded me of smoke, and I imagined a smouldering sky, the sun burning itself out as it fell from the sky. I pulled over when it was safe to do so, grabbed my camera, and started snapping away. At home, I played with the photos, enhancing the vibrancy, bringing out more contrast, and reducing the brightness. I liked the resulting photo so much that I submitted the shot to CBC News Ottawa , where the weather folk post shots each night. Teri Loretto showed that photo that ve...

When I was a kid, I loved to camp. I loved sleeping outdoors, the sound of the wind whispering through the leaves of the overhead trees, sometimes fooling me into thinking it was raining but making me question why there was no pattering on the tent itself. I loved wrapping myself in my sleeping bag, cocooned like a warm hug and feeling secure. I loved eating with a gentle, fresh breeze and the songs of birds around me, and feeling like I was truly one with nature. In the summer, when we weren't camping, I would often ask my parents to set up the tent in our back yard, where I would sleep outside, near the comfort of modern plumbing. When Lori and I started dating, she shared that love of the great outdoors. We would often take vacations that involved setting up a tent, cooking our meals by Coleman stove, and hiking in the wilderness. Together, we amassed all the modern gadgets of camping, both for travelling with a car (we had a pump that plugged into a cigarette lighter and ...