Colin on Photography

Solo Photowalking

January 11th, 2012 by Colin Carmichael

I don’t do New Year Resolutions. It’s just a thing I don’t do. However, I do want to do a few things differently in 2012 than I did in 2011. One of those things is NOT sitting at my desk for 8 hours a day (in addition to the 3 hours a day I sit in my car). My bum has had enough.

I decided to go for a fifteen minute walk every day at lunch time. Problem is that I find walks boring. I find myself just trying to get from point A to point B as efficiently as possible – staring at my Blackberry to pass the time while trying not to bump into anything. I could tell that this daily walk thing would go nowhere quickly.

Enter my rekindled interest in photography – thanks to access to a proper camera. I realized that if I took my camera with me, I could keep the boredom at bay while honing my skills. Basically, I’d be going on a photowalk by myself. Neato.

In order to keep myself from just filling SD cards everyday (and doing nothing with the photos) and to ensure I was actually practicing and not just “spraying and praying” I came up with a few rules:

No more than five exposures per walk
Manual exposure and manual focus only
No photo review on the walk
Post at least one photo per week

Because my shooting rules are so strict, I’ve allowed myself free-reign in post-processing. This way I get to practice my Photoshop skillz as well. :)

So, without further ado, here are today’s images:

Tags: D5100, lunchtime, Nikon, Photoshop, photowalking
Posted in General Interest Stuff, Personal Stuff | 2 Comments »

Malawi Trip Update

January 6th, 2012 by Colin Carmichael

A quick update about our upcoming trip to Malawi:

I’m now officially a “co-leader” of the study tour – which means that the dozen or so people we are taking will be my responsibility should anything go awry while we are travelling. All of the pre-arrangements are thankfully someone else’s responsibility! The coolest thing about this is that the other “co-leader” is my very good friend (and mentor of sorts) Rev. Ted Creen, recently retired from St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church in Owen Sound. I’ve known Ted for nearly thirty years and I am so excited to be sharing this experience with him.
As I mentioned in the last blog post, the purpose of the trip is learning. This is not a mission trip in the traditional sense. Malawi may be a little short on fuel these days, but they’re hardly short of available labour. Flying halfway around the world to erect a building that could instead be built by Malawians (thus providing income) doesn’t make much sense. Instead, the purpose of the trip is learn – in an intensive way – about the work that the PCC does in Malawi. We will be hosted by our mission staff there and will visit the many projects that Canadian Presbyterians support directly including orphanages, shelters, etc. The trip will also include a weekend “home visit” with a Malawian family.
There are three Canadian Presbyterian families currently serving in Malawi. You can learn more about them and their work (and about life in Malawi) on their blogs:

Stay tuned for more updates leading up to the trip.

Tags: Malawi, travel
Posted in Churchy Stuff, General Interest Stuff, Personal Stuff | 1 Comment »

The Warm Heart of Africa

October 13th, 2011 by Colin Carmichael

The relatively tiny country of Malawi - often called “The Warm Heart of Africa” – has always been a part of my family’s story.

In 1965, just a year after Malawi gained its independence from Great Britain, my grandfather accepted a school administration position at Blantyre Secondary School in Malawi’s largest city. His appointment was part of a program of Canada’s Department of External Affairs – the first such program to assist the fledgling country. At the same time, my grandmother accepted a teaching position at St. Andrew’s Secondary School – now known as St. Andrew’s International High School.

So, at thirteen years old, my mother and her younger sister and brother found themselves in the heart of the dark continent.

The stories have been told many times over the years – with sometimes varying details: the time an elephant snacked on the thatch roof, the time a gecko fell in the pudding, the time my aunt – peering through her camera’s viewfinder – shouted “just another second!” as a disgruntled rhino charged their Land Rover. Thankfully, the driver ignored her. [these are my memories of these stories - I make no claims of accuracy]

In exactly six months, my wife Arminta and I will set off on our own Malawian adventure!

The Presbyterian Church in Canada (where I happen to work) does a considerable amount of work in Malawi. In addition to funding several projects through PWS&D, we have anywhere from five to ten staff in the country working with our partner, the Blantyre Synod of the Church of Central Africa Presbyterian (CCAP).

We will be travelling with several other Presbyterians from across Canada on a two-week “study tour” of Malawi in and around Blantyre.

We are beyond excited about this trip. While both of have traveled overseas before, neither of us have been to Africa – and we haven’t really traveled at all since our honeymoon a decade ago – and that was just to Maine, so it doesn’t really count.

I’ll likely blog more about this as the time gets nearer, but now that it is all confirmed, I wanted to make the “official” announcement.

I posted an update here: http://colincarmichael.ca/malawi-trip-update/

Tags: Blantyre, Malawi, PCC
Posted in Personal Stuff | 2 Comments »

Healthy Candidates: all parties support smaller schools

September 19th, 2011 by Colin Carmichael

Smaller schools was a big part of my school board trustee campaign last year. There are MANY reasons to support smaller schools but one of the major ones is that smaller schools are closer to home and, therefore, encourage students to walk rather than drive or take a bus.

That was so last year. This year, Ontario voters find themselves in the throes of another election campaign – this time to elect their Members of Provincial Parliament. As I’ve promised before, I’m not going to get into my personal partisan here.

What I do want to share with you, however, is a campaign within the campaign being run by the Heart & Stroke Foundation. The campaign, called ‘Healthy Candidates’ encourages all provincial election candidates to endorse a set of policy recommendations. Among the policy recommendations is the following:

Healthy Communities: greater support and funding for community planning that encourages mixed land use, greater density to enhance active transportation that is safe, secure and financially viable. A specific concern that was expressed was the construction of mega-schools even at the elementary level that require busing.

via Healthy Candidates.

Now, I will admit that this does not say “build smaller schools” but the idea is clearly there that larger schools with larger boundaries are necessarily pre-disposed to relying on busing to get kids to school. You may recall that we are dealing with this ourselves here in south-east Galt.

I applaud the Heart & Stroke Foundation for making the connection between walking vs. busing and its impact on childhood obesity. I also hope that the candidates from all parties who have endorsed the campaign will also support efforts to create smaller schools across Ontario.

Tags: campaign, childhood obesity, elections, heart & stroke, smaller schools
Posted in General Interest Stuff, Local Stuff, Political Stuff | No Comments »

Introducing Subscribe: Facebook changes the game again…

September 14th, 2011 by Colin Carmichael

It’s a big week for Facebook. With their annual developer conference coming up, they’ve rolled out a few new features including “Smart Friend Lists” which I hadn’t even had a chance to write about here before today’s HUGE news: you can now subscribe to a personal profile’s public updates without having to friend them.

Here’s how it works. As you browse around the site, you’ll notice that some users have a button at the top of their profile that says ‘Subscribe’. Click it, and you’ll start seeing that user’s status updates in your News Feed, just as if you were their Facebook friend. But there’s a big difference: unlike normal Facebook friends, the people you subscribe to don’t have to approve your subscription request, and there’s no limit on how many people can subscribe to any given user.
…
Of course, Facebook has offered a similar feature called Pages for years now, which was meant for nearly the same thing (you’ll find that many journalists and politicians have already created Facebook Pages… because that’s what Facebook told them to do). The difference here, Facebook says, is that users no longer have to maintain two separate entities; they can just use the site’s sharing settings to decide which content they want to share very broadly, and what will only be shared with friends.

via Facebook Launches Twitter-Like ‘Subscriptions’, Lets You Share With Unlimited Users | TechCrunch.

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: changes, church, Facebook, ministers, schools, social media, social networks, teachers
Posted in Churchy Stuff, Personal Stuff, Social Media Stuff | 1 Comment »

Easy as Riding a Bike? Yeah, right…

September 12th, 2011 by Colin Carmichael

I tried twice this summer to teach my almost 6-year-old to ride her new bike without training wheels. Both outings were epic failures leaving both of tired and frustrated.

Imagine my envy when I came across this little story from one my favourite parenting bloggers…

..at the tender age of three years and 10 months, he just learned how to ride his bike without training wheels.

I’m super proud of him, but actually, I can’t really take any credit for teaching him.

The only person who taught Nico is Nico. Seriously. Other than that last twenty minutes or so this morning, when my oldest son Marco and I repeatedly yelled, “Pedal!!!” and “Keep moving!!!”, no one taught Nico any bike riding skills.

via How I Didn’t Teach My Three-Year-Old Son to Ride His Bike Without Training Wheels | Playborhood.

Tags: bikes, Family, parenting, playborhood, training wheels
Posted in General Interest Stuff, Personal Stuff | 1 Comment »

Groupon Refunds: a customer service success story

September 12th, 2011 by Colin Carmichael

I got a pretty awesome email from Groupon the other day. Several months ago, I had purchased a Groupon deal for a snazzy restaurant in Waterloo with the intention of taking my lovely wife out for dinner sometime near our tenth anniversary. Well, July 28th came and went and we never got around to going out for dinner.

The Groupon deal expires October so I was mostly resigned to losing the $30 unless we could somehow squeeze a night out into an already busy September.
Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: customer service, dining, Email, Groupon, proactive, refund
Posted in General Interest Stuff, Local Stuff, Social Media Stuff | 4 Comments »

Remembering Jack Layton at Nathan Phillips Square

August 25th, 2011 by Colin Carmichael

I have been pretty quiet about the passing of Jack Layton. I hesitated to acknowledge his death publicly because I disagreed with him, and his NDP colleagues, on so many things it seemed disingenuous to suddenly gush about him simply because he had died. Then I saw this photo.

Remembering Jack Layton at Nathan Phillips Square | Flickr – Photo Sharing!.

Taken by Jackman Chiu yesterday, the image captures a fleeting moment in Canadian political history that I doubt will ever be repeated. Indeed, the chalk remembrances created in Nathan Phillips Square were washed clean just hours later by a powerful storm.

Jack Layton was the most remarkable politician this country has seen in decades. Remarkable not for his ideas or policies or electoral successes but for his ability to say “Follow me” and elicit a response like this. I can think of only one other politician who so deftly seduced Canadians with equal amounts of charm and tenacity. It will be interesting to see now if their sons can follow their fathers into the hearts of Canadians.

Tags: canadian politics, Flickr, Jack Layton, Nathan Phillips Square, NDP, photo, Politics, RIP, Toronto
Posted in Political Stuff | 4 Comments »

Colin on Photography

Solo Photowalking

Malawi Trip Update

The Warm Heart of Africa

Healthy Candidates: all parties support smaller schools

Easy as Riding a Bike? Yeah, right…

Remembering Jack Layton at Nathan Phillips Square

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