Is This Still Under Warranty?

 I have a confession; I have a bit of a destructive streak. This is my old iPod. I bought it a few years ago and about 4 days after the warranty ended it shut itself off entirely. No amount of fiddling or convincing could make it work again. So it's been sitting in it's case in my room for about a year. At my cottage in Grand Bend, we have a little air pistol that shoots small metal BB's. It is honestly one of the coolest little devices I've ever played with. My Grandfather was a great gunman, and my mom was actually Ontario's best Woman's pistol shot for a few years. So naturally I'm a damn good shot. We've been shooting cans and plastic bottles for a few months but my little sister and I had this idea; push my shutter speed to it's limits and see how cool shots we can get. So here was the plan: Set up outside with the iPod on the edge of our deck. Camera (tripod mounted of course) reasonably close shooting ISO 800-1600, aperture wide open and pushing the speed as fast as we could with the available light(topping out at about 1/1500). With 9 frames per second bursts we usually ended up counting down then opening the shutter and firing off about 4-5 exposures for every shot of the air pistol. 9 fps sounds fast but we usually ended up with about 1 shot before it hit, about 3 after and hopefully 1 good "contact" shot. The first contact shot hit really low and flipped it upside down (we actually got the BB in the shot if you look close), the second hit the screen and the glass exploded with a good 1.5 metre blast radius. It was by far the coolest one to experience. A couple of the later ones flipped and spun it pretty well. The final damage? A couple significant dents, three layers of screen shattered/broken, and one BB permanently embedded in the casing. About 60 photos and about six seconds of video (which slowed down to frame-by-frame show the action significantly blurrier than the photos). Overall? A pretty successful, enjoyable, and teaching photo shoot.
Archipelago Photography- islands of thought and image, connected with a name

Lodgings

Come September I'll be blogging as a University Student. I am enrolled for photography at Ryerson University in the Image Arts department. that is, provided I can find a place to live.
Because of a computer glitch I ended up without a place in Residence. And every lead I've tried to pull for an apartment or a room, or any sort of lodging has failed so far. So this is my plea to the internet; if anyone knows of someone looking for a roommate or a renter in downtown Toronto, please contact me.
Archipelago Photography

Summer Adventures

Librarian, and Tele.
Archipelago

Legacy

I've recently found a new interest. I've always had a pretty good knowledge of my family stories and ancestry, but it wasn't until a recent trip to the family cemetery (where we've got spots for my generation and the one after to be buried) to clean up my grandfathers grave marker, that I realized how very different it is to hear about one's history as to see it. These grave markers are those of a few of my ancestors, the first of Capt. Baker who was the lighthouse keeper of Clapperton Island who mysteriously drowned while on duty. The second is John Alexander McLachlan, my namesake. It's interesting to think that without these two men, I wouldn't be here, the second especially as without him I wouldn't have my very name. I find it is very interesting to see the visual memory of these people and to think ahead of what my physical memory will be.Will it read "Father" like my namesake, or something dramatic like "Drowned..."? Only time will tell.
Archipelago Photography, islands of thought and image, connected with a name

Sha-Boom

Canada Day Fireworks in Grand Bend.
-Long exposures
-A tripod, of course
-A telephoto lens
-A little colour tweaking in photoshop
Archipelago Photography

Summer Heat

I know, I know, Archipelago has been slacking a bit in it's blogging department, but it's summer and I'm busy. I'm either up to my neck in kids babysitting, or spending time at the cottage (devoid of Internet). But with these three, I hope you can understand why. The photographs are New Eyes, Sunpoint, and Lanterns. The first and second are pretty self explanatory (although why there are two suns in my sister Maggie's glasses I do not know) but the third might take a bit of looking. SO here's the scene; it's Canada Day, we're on the beach watching the fireworks from afar, waiting patiently for them to end so we can send of one of those super-cool paper-lanterns, when lo and behold, two of our neighbours jump the gun. So the center is the fireworks, and the orange lines on either side are the lanterns lifting off and heading heaven-bound. The reason why the fireworks are so bright and piled on top of each other, just as the reason why we can see the path of the lanterns for quite some time is due to my 30 second exposure-a greatly helpful tool for firework photography. For firework pictures to come, soon hopefully.
Archipelago Photography, islands of thought and image, connected with a name

The Windy City