Saturday evening I went to Les Grands Feux du Casino du Lac-Leamy as one of the volunteer photographers for the event. It’s the first time that I’ve been an “official” photographer for something since my days of being a photographer for the yearbook in high school.

Being the first day of the festival, the team of photographers were asked to fan out and take pictures of everything from the signs to the tents to the chairs and also the people. And, of course, raison d’être for the event, the fireworks.

I’ve written about taking photos of fireworks a couple of times in the past and I’ve even taken pictures at Les Grands Feux, though not as an official event photographer.

There are a couple of different approaches I use when taking pictures of fireworks, which depend on the type of camera I have and whether I can use a tripod.

As I was fortunate enough to have an unobstructed front row seat, I set up my camera on a tripod and framed the scene prior to the beginning of the show. I focused on the barge where the fireworks are set off from and then turned off the autofocus on the lens so that it wouldn’t "hunt" for something to focus on when the fireworks started. Shooting in raw mode, I chose an ISO speed of 100. This would allow longer exposures while avoiding saturating the CCD sensor. For a shutter speed, I selected "bulb", which means that the shutter would be open for as long as I held it open with my remote. (Fortunately, I didn’t have to actually hold it open because I was using a wireless remote — I just had to press the button to open the shutter and press it again to close it.)

And then I waited for the start of the show.

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According to a CBC story, the Conservative government is considering privatizing the search and rescue roles currently carried out by the Department of National Defence and the Coast Guard.

WTF??!!11!eleven?! If true, then this idea would have to go on the Top Ten Stupid Things The Conservative Government Has Thought Of list. (I’m not sure what would be bumped off the list… that’s for another day.)

Search and rescue requires highly trained, well-equiped people who can, if necessary, be ordered into harm’s way. The military and Coast Guard have both the highly-trained personnel and equipment necessary to undertake search and rescue missions, which often result in their going into very dangerous situations. No private company is going to be able to staff such a venture without recruiting the people from the military or Coast Guard. And even if they can find the people, what company would be willing to assume the incredible liabilities that come with running search and rescue missions?

And then there’s the cost. Flying airplanes and helicopters, running boats and having highly-trained personnel is a very expensive business. How would a private company pay for such a venture? Presumably they would have a contract from the government, but would it really cost less than the current situation? Doubtful, particularly if you take into consideration the fact that the SAR personnel are likely going to come from the military and Coast Guard meaning those organizations are going to have to replace some of the highly-trained personnel.

Search and rescue must remain a function and responsibility of the government. Privatization is not an option.

A tip o’ the hat to Trashy for blogging about it this morning.

I spent some time trying to take pictures of lightning Sunday evening and I had a few successful results, which I thought I’d share with people.

Sunday evening’s lightning VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

As you may know, Sir John Franklin made several expeditions into the Canadian Arctic, the last of which saw him and his crew die of starvation, hypothermia, tuberculosis, lead poisoning (from their cans of food) and scurvy. The expedition’s ships, the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were trapped in the ice off King William Island in September 1846. According to a note found on the island, Franklin died on June 11th, 1847, though the exact location of his grave remains unknown, something that Ron Carlson desperately wants to change.

So, when the Nunavut Department of Culture, Language, Elders and Youth (CLEY) rejected his application for an archaeological license to search for Franklin’s grave he was understandably frustrated. (more…)

It’s been a fairly busy June and I haven’t been blogging as frequently as I’d like so I thought I’d post a quick summary of things.

Since my last post, I took part in the Tim Horton’s Ottawa Dragon Boat Festival steering for the Algonquin College Singapore Slings. I’m proud to report that we have once again won the Mill Street Brewery Hospitality Challenge Cup. If memory serves me correct, this is at least the fourth time that we’ve won it since I joined the team. We also raised almost $8000 for the local charities sponsored by the Ottawa Dragon Boat Foundation.

Last weekend I joined the Ottawa Valley Mobile Radio Club (OVMRC) at their Field Day station (VE3RAM), which was set up in front of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. With the exception of one voice contact on 6m SSB, I operated several shifts on the digital mode station. There were a few notable contacts, including Igor (RU6CH) in Russia and two French stations that I chatted with around 2am while the bands were dead. The 30m contacts didn’t earn us any points, but it was nice to have an actual conversation and I even got to use my French. 🙂 Last I heard, the digital station made 188 contacts, which is respectable. I think we were the only ones at the OVMRC Field Day to operate the full 24 hours — some people wimped out an actually slept!

Other than that I’ve been to the climbing gym a couple of times and I’m looking forward to getting out on real rock as soon as my climbing buddies and I can find a mutually convenient time.

As far as what I’m doing for Canada Day, that’s still in the air (and yes, I do realize it’s June 30th!). The options include heading downtown with the mobs of people to Parliament Hill, heading to Kemptville to watch fireworks there or escape the city to the lake for the weekend. All have their merits, so I remain undecided.

I’ve been steering dragonboats for ten years, so my view of dragonboat races is probably quite different than that of a paddler (who should be following the paddle in front of them during the race!) or the caller (who doesn’t get to see where we’re going) — I’m really the only one in the boat who gets to see where we’re going! At my team‘s practice on Saturday I wore a tiny POV camera and recorded some of the practice. The owner of the camera has posted the video on YouTube and it’s definitely worth a view.

You can see videos from other practices on our team website.