The Brown Knowser

Well, it was clearish at sunrise, when I stepped out from our hotel cabin and onto the front porch to check on the volcano. It was still there. I could tell, because I could finally see it. There was still some cloud cover on top, like a cap that was too big for it. But DW and I said we'd take what we could get. The weather forecast in La Fortuna, Costa Rica, called for rain off and on throughout the day.  We quickly readied ourselves and hopped into the SUV to make it to our first destination in time for its opening. We've learned that to get to a tourist attraction as early as possible meant that you'll beat the tour buses and most of the crowds. We didn't have far to go: as the crow flies, it was only 7 kms away, but to drive, it was about 11. We were headed to La Fortuna Falls.  We made it with about two minutes before opening, and the parking lot was cordoned off. Only one vehicle was waiting ahead of us.  There's a lookout across from and above the 70-or-so me...

Sometimes, the weather doesn't cooperate. Sometimes, you imagine a place, and the environment that surrounds it, and the photos that you're going to take. And when the day starts off on the right foot, it's hard to imagine anything else. We started our first full day in Costa Rica at a hotel, just north of the San Jose airport, up in the hills. We had a great unit with a large terrace that looked above the jungle that surrounded us. Breakfast was delivered to our door and we sat outside, marvelling at the myriad birds fluttering and singing over our heads. Beautiful. Our rental agency delivered our four-wheel drive SUV to the hotel. Our first order of the day was to get a data card for our phones, some local currency, and then to head to our next destination: La Fortuna and the Arunal Volcano that stands as the town's backdrop and is the area's biggest attractions. The volcano erupted violently in 1968 and spewed lava for more than 40 years. It caused widespread dev...

As a photographer, I often see something in the ordinary and think that there's something worth capturing, worth retaining for future reference or to share. I think I must have said, many times, that it's better to take a bad photograph than no photograph. I mean, if you see something that strikes you as being worthy of capturing as a photograph, take the shot. If you later find that that something was not photo-worthy, there's no harm. You just delete the shot. But if you don't take the photograph, you may always wonder what could have been. And it may very well have been a great shot. Take a couple of weeks ago. I awoke as I do every workday morning: straight into the shower. Just before we started our reno project but after my appendicitis surgery, our shower stall developed a leak, which came through into our dining room. So until I can cut a hole into the ceiling and fix the leak, DW and I are sharing Kid 1's bathroom. On this particular morning, Kid 1 got...

The last piece of wood has been laid. The quarter-rounds are secured in place. The tools have been returned to our friend and all of the extra hardwood has either been returned in its sealed packages or been given away to someone who can make good use of it. Our hardwood reno project is completed. But we're not entirely finished. Our bedroom: the last to be finished and Finn-approved. We had to pack some belongings away. There were books on shelves that needed to go somewhere so that we could move the bookshelves. We had other things on the carpeted floor that were moved down to the main floor, so that we could rip up that old carpet. Before we even started work on the second level of our house, to convert the flooring from wall-to-wall carpet to hardwood, our house was a mess with things piled up, out of the way for our work. Now that our flooring is done, we still need to move things back, to clear the clutter of the main floor. But it's not that simple. We're reluctant t...

It's not by design; it's just turned out that way. On New Year's Eve, DW and attended a dinner party at a friend's house. It was a pot-luck dinner, so we brought a salad, some wine, some bubbly for midnight (though, initially, I suspected we wouldn't stay that late), and some beer. I knew that our hosts would have lots of beer already, so I brought a dozen cans of non-alcoholic IPA for anyone who wanted to take it easy, especially if there were those who were going to drive home. I was planning to drive home and I wanted as little alcohol in my system on that journey. During the dinner, our hosts opened a bottle of port wine. Having a weakness for this Portuguese specialty, I partook with a very small glass. But I stuck to the non-alcoholic beer as my bevvy of choice. At midnight, I had a sip of sparkling wine to welcome in 2024 but after the initial "Happy New Year!" clinking of glasses, I put my glass down and didn't return to it. Any R.I.D.E. road b...

Our first house was originally going to be a five-year home: 10 years, max, if we had good neighbours. Twenty-four years later, we're still in the same place. We almost moved about a year and a half ago. A friend was selling his house and DW was in love with the place, but in the end we decided to stay put. We had recently become mortgage-free and I have my eye on retirement, in the next few years, so the prospect of taking out a sizable mortgage for this house didn't make a lot of sense. One afternoon, last summer, as DW and I were relaxing on our front porch, chatting with our neighbours, who were relaxing on their front porch, I let slip that we had almost bought my friend's house, and their jaws dropped. "No way!" said one. "You are not allowed to move unless there's a house, next to it, that we can move into," said the other. Yeah, they're great neighbours. More than anything else, our neighbours are the reason that we've remained in our...

I don't know why I didn't try this experiment sooner. Oh, now I remember why: I don't like typing on my smartphone, and Blogger—the tool that I use to create my blog posts—isn't as user-friendly on a small screen. But last Thursday, as I went to bed without any ideas for a Friday blog post, my mind turned to my upcoming trip to Costa Rica . I had already made the decision to leave my laptop at home, which made me think that for the two weeks that I would be in Central America, there would be no Brown Knowser blog posts. Two weeks is a long time for me to go without blogging. Now, I had never tried to write a blog post on my phone before. In the past, I've composed posts on tablets, which gave me more real estate in which to work, and I've also posted through Blogsy, which made using Blogger a bit easier on the tablet. But for 99 percent of my blog posts, I've written on a laptop, which gives me full ease of access to the space I need to type (with a ke...

When I was starting out in my hobby of photography, I was always asking myself what if . What if I shot from this angle? What if I slowed down my shutter speed and zoomed in with my lens at the same time? What if I... ? I still like to experiment, and thanks to the digital age, I can do so at far less expense than in the time of 35mm film. And in the digital age, I can take some of my experimental 35mm images and bring them to what I had originally envisioned.  One spring day, in 1986, I set out to photograph the tulips near Dow's Lake, but I didn't just want to capture the flowers: I wanted to experiment with exposure. What if I exposed for the earth under the flowers, rather than the flowers themselves? I imagined that the tulips would be somewhat blown out; that is, overexposed.  But I also focused on the ground, itself, with the aperture wide open, which gave a very narrow depth of field. Before pressing the shutter release, I imagined an almost Impressionist style of imag...

It entered my head as I was laying down to sleep, the other night. My mind dug through my memories and took me back to where I lived when my parents first moved from Montreal to Ottawa. I could see our garden-home neighbourhood, off Bowhill Avenue, and the many pathways and backyard common spaces. I saw the multi-tenant parking garages and the multi-vehicle, outdoor parking spaces. And before I drifted to sleep, I wondered what the neighbourhood looked like now. So I went back during my lunch break, yesterday. I have many memories from childhood. I remember our neighbours and the kids my sisters and I used to play with. I remembered one friend and his tragic end, and shared that story several years ago. I straightened the facts in a subsequent post . I looked through old photo albums, looking for any photos that showed our Bowhill house and hood. I came across a few, going back to 1968, when we first moved in. I have a photo of my sister, Holly, and me standing at the front door. ...

I have about two-and-a-half weeks to go before DW and I fly to Costa Rica and I am in probably the worst shape that I've been in in years. I'm hopeful that I can somewhat turn that around. For the past month, I have been unable to lift any substantial weight because of my abdominal surgery . Just last Friday, I passed the four-week mark for taking it easy, and unfortunately, those four weeks happened during one of the worst times of year, diet-wise. I don't have a great sweet tooth, in that I don't actively seek sugary foods. But when Christmas comes around, I have a tendency to load up on chocolates and other sweet treats, such as shortbread biscuits, marzipan, and egg nog. We've also been doing home renovations, which involved DW and Kid 1 moving furniture to clear out areas where we were laying hardwood flooring. In the process, they buried my spin bike—something I thought I'd be able to use while I convalesced—behind desks and dressers. So, this past weeken...

"Nope." "No." "Not that one." "Absolutely not." Or is it absolutely knot? DW likes perfect pieces of wood, and for her, that means unblemished, creamy-honey-coloured slats. I, on the other hand, love the little waves of different shading and the imperfections in the cut of a piece of hardwood flooring. I like a board that has character. At the very start of our home-reno project, DW stated that she was hoping for perfect pieces of wood. "I don't like the imperfections," she said. "But I'm full of imperfections and you love me," was my comeback. "Precisely why I don't need any more imperfections in my life." I pointed out that if we only chose what she thought were perfect pieces of wood, we'd blow through our pile of wood pretty quickly and would be left with more pieces of marked wood than we could hide in closets. She saw my point but still claims veto power over pieces that she finds too knotty. Or...