Photography by bomobob

Aurora

2011-12-16T06:06:00.000-08:00

Now available in my Society6 shop!

Snow and More Snow

2011-12-11T15:25:00.000-08:00

The First Snowfall

2011-11-24T09:00:00.000-08:00

Not just a dusting, but good amount. It was great get up early and head for Mount Royal.

The last golden rays of Autumn

2011-11-22T06:35:00.000-08:00

Yup. It starts tonight. Snow. Winter. Cold.

Until then though...

Yes, I know

2011-10-28T12:31:00.001-07:00

I mistakenly deleted photos from Picasa, and now most of the photos on this blog are gone. I've begun the painstaking process of uploading them again.

Harrrumph!

Into the Woods

2011-10-19T10:26:00.001-07:00

Into the Woods, a photo by bomobob on Flickr.

My favourite time of year has rolled around again!

2012 Calendars

2011-10-08T06:17:00.000-07:00

I couldn't resist doing calendars again this year, but this time there's a twist. This year I've done wall calendars...the kind you can write on! Yay! These are just gorgeous, and printed on heavy matte stock, so you can write on them with a pencil, a pen, anything. And there's loads of space for writing in dates, appointments, or just for doodling.
I'm offering two flavours so far, Carnivals and Sea & Sky, both the runaway popular themes from last year, but of course with all new photos for 2012.

They're all for sale in my Etsy shop, and I'm posting them slowly but surely on bomobob.com as well.

Fright Night

2011-09-13T15:35:00.000-07:00

Between Seasons

2011-09-07T06:53:00.000-07:00

I can't help it.
As much as I love this time of year, especially for the abundance of fresh, local produce at the markets, I can't help but have itchy feet for the soon-to-be red forests.

It's Coming

2011-08-29T14:31:00.000-07:00

Fall Fairs

2011-08-29T07:07:00.000-07:00

So many choices. Which fair to go to? Fryeburg? Champlain Valley? Skowhegan?
I don't know which it's going to be, but it's going to happen for sure!

bomobob.com is on the air!

2011-08-24T07:17:00.000-07:00

Well, after endless months of procrastination, I finally launched bomobob.com yesterday. So far I've only added a few items to the shop pages, but it will eventually be fully stocked.

Summer by the Seaside

2011-07-08T11:14:00.000-07:00

It's such a great escape to get outta the big city and meander along the seacoast in a place like Prince Edward Island. Doors are all unlocked, the pace is very slow, the roads are virtually empty, and the scenery is astounding. Even when it's man made!

There's always a fall-guy

2011-06-17T06:43:00.000-07:00

It's hot outside
The kids are home from school

People are getting the kids ready for school

Everyone's planning their vacation

Everyone's on vacation

Everyone's broke from their vacation

Etsy changed the listing page

It's the economy

There's a postal strike in Canada

Everyone's watching American Idol

You've heard (or used) them all. Excuses, that is. Reasons why things might be slow on Etsy. Unfortunately, none of them are valid.

Retail sales are impossible to predict, apart from the fact that pre-Christmas is the busiest time of year. But maybe not for you if everyone's watching TV. The greatest economic minds in the world can't figure it out, so chances are you won't find the answer in the Etsy forums. If you do a search on the forums, you'll find that "Sales are slow" threads are as old as Etsy, and they never change. The initial conclusion is almost always, "Something is wrong with Etsy, I just know it". Nothing is wrong with Etsy (well, some things are, but they're more window dressing than anything else).

Lots of shops are doing very well, and if something were broken, it would be broken for everyone. Which is not to say that the only possible conclusion is that your idea of selling burlap thongs was a bad idea. Far from it. In fact, I think I might....never mind.

There are some really critical questions every shop owner needs to be able to answer definitively:

1 - Am I selling something people want to buy?

Not what you think they might want to buy, not what you think is something people should want to buy. Really, is it a product with a market?

2 - Is Etsy the right place to sell it?

Yeah sure, I've heard it all; "Men shop on Etsy too", and, "My grandmother has shopped on Etsy", but let's face facts; The vast majority of Etsy buyers are 30 year old women named Jennifer. And a few Laurens. It's all about exposing your product to the biggest possible audience, and if you're selling leather assless chaps for bikers, maybe you need to reconsider your choice of venues.

3 - Can people find me?

Only if you wave your arms wildly, and there is just one way to do that. Your listings. Google is everywhere, so your listings should be filled with lots of keywords, and not repeated ones. But most importantly, your listing pictures have to reach out and grab the assless chaps shoppers by the balls.

Nobody is going to click on a washed out, low contrast, nebulous thumbnail. It's just not going to happen. More on this here:

http://bomobob.blogspot.com/2010/06/etsy-photography-made-as-simple-as.html

Spring has Sprung

2011-05-09T07:06:00.000-07:00

Fall Colours

2010-09-10T11:27:00.000-07:00

My favourite season, and not just because of the gorgeous tones. The bugs are gone, the hiking is deliciously cool, the apples are fresh and crunchy, and the market is overflowing with amazing peppers and tomatoes and leeks and...everything. And all I want to do is cook and pickle. (Yes, the garlic dill pickle supply has finally dwindled down to the last jar) Or hike and take pictures. Or go to the awesome Autumn fairs and take pictures. Or cook on a ferris wheel. Yeah, that's it!

"Fading Days", available in my Etsy shop, of course

Art You Can Wear

2010-08-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

Art You Can Wear

For a long time now, I've admired the handiwork of Etsy's Lori Patton of heartworksbylori. So of course I was thrilled when she suggested we work on some photo lockets together. Initially, we thought it would be something we'd eventually get to, but once the idea took hold, we both turned on the jets and got cracking on it.
Well, our efforts have borne fruit, and the first batch of amazing goodies are now available in the "Photo Jewelry" section of my Etsy shop.

It was difficult to choose which images to do first, but we opted for a good cross-section for the first batch. Oh yes, there will be more!

It's Never Too Early

2010-07-26T05:48:00.000-07:00

Ya, so what if it's only July? People need to be prepared! Busy lives, and all that. And besides, think of all the hassle you'll avoid by getting your Christmas shopping done ahead of time.

All this to say that the calendars that were so massively successful last year in my Etsy shop, are back for 2011, better than ever and differenter than ever too. That's right, differenter.

ISO: How low should you go?

2010-07-14T18:23:00.000-07:00

They say a picture is worth 1000 words, so I figure 4 pictures together must be worth, um, 4000 words.

4 identical shots from my infamous crappy camera, at ISO 100, 200, 400, and 800.

Not much more to say.

50 Cent Lightbox

2010-07-12T16:17:00.000-07:00

Lightbox Shmightbox

Photo lighting made easy.

Not having enough light seems to be the #1 annoyance to most people when they’re trying to take nice photos of their items. And #2 is what to do with that light if you do have it!
We can’t post photos here, so I’ll have to keep linking to flickr, but here goes…

I guess lightboxes are cool. I dunno, I’ve never used one. I’ve sold lots of stuff on ebay and craigslist, and have a few things still listed in my vintage shop, and piece of cardboard and light bulb have always served me just fine.
Here’s what I call my 50 cent lightbox:

Yup, a sheet of Bristol board taped to the floor and wall. And today was a perfect day to demonstrate; cold, cloudy, blustery, and quite dark. What you see there is what you get. Not very good light. Big deal.

Enter the light bulb, or to be precise, the Ott bulb. These are cheap, easily available at hardware stores, and the best lighting invention since sliced bread. Even better in fact, since sliced bread has very little to do with photography.
Take one table lamp, remove shade, screw in Ott bulb, and put on stairs. What a difference!

Notice how the light is positioned roughly 45 degrees above the item, and about 45 degrees off to the side. If my space were bigger, I’d use a 2nd bulb on the left as well, to eliminate the shadows cast by this one. Oh well, I’ll just have to make it work. You can move the light around so that you don’t cast shadows where you don’t want them.

Now, stop here and take a good look. Those walls should be lighter. What’s going on? The camera wants to make everything a neutral tone, so if there’s a lot of light stuff in the photo, like here, it will try to darken it to get it to neutral. If I had taken a shot of only the white wall, it would have been even darker, but the floor is pulling the exposure up a bit.
This camera has “Exposure Compensation” which is used to essentially fool the meter. If I set it to overexpose by 1 f-stop, here’s what I get:

Much better. Some of the upper wall on the right is starting to get blasted now, but I don’t care.

So what’s that thing on the cardboard? It’s an ugly old, busted ceramic brooch. Can we make ugly look half decent?
Here’s a shot at floor level:

Not half bad lighting. Notice how only the front part is in focus. This is because the aperture is set to its widest (lowest number f-stop), so the depth of field (portion of the photo in focus) is very shallow. If I set the f-stop to the maximum (smallest aperture), it pulls much more into focus:

Maybe a bit too much detail for this ugly, dirty, broken thing. Buyer beware!

How about something much prettier? Here’s an AUTO shot of our next beauty contestant:

I’ve moved the light closer to the front because I like the illumination better. Once again, everything is a bit too dark, but we know how to fix that. Here’s a closer shot:

Even darker! Why? Because there’s much more white in the picture, so once again, the camera is trying to pull that white towards neutral grey. So, we crank up the exposure compensation again, just like before, and we zoom in a bit:

The shallow depth of field is much more evident on this larger subject. The little diamond on the front ring of the lens is in sharp focus, but the rest fades into a blur. So once again, we set the aperture for a much higher number:

Now that’s a camera!
And two more examples using a macro:

All this with a sheet of cardboard and one light bulb on a miserable, dark day.
You don’t have to live in sunny California to take well lit photos, you just have to live close enough to a hardware store. And yes, all the item photos were taken on a tripod or with the camera on the floor. There’s absolutely no other way.

Frustrated by Your Crappy Camera?

Thinking you really need a more expensive one?

This is just a very quick demo to illustrate that it's much less about the tools than what you do with them.

For this experiment I used a really cheap Kodak Easyshare camera, the kind that would break if you sneezed on it.

So here's a picture taken with yesterday's 50 cent lightbox-shmightbox setup. It's hand held, everything on fully automatic and macro on the camera. So, turned on, and the dial turned to the little flower icon, nothing else:

Does it look familiar? Running out to buy an SLR isn't going to solve this problem, but here's what will.

First, I put the camera on a tripod so it's nice and steady. You can see the slight blur in that photo, and we really don't want that. (I was sure my hands were steady!)

Next I manually set the ISO from AUTO to 80. See all the grainy looking stuff on the cardboard in the front? That's noise caused by the amplifiers in the camera, and setting the ISO to its lowest number will clear that up.

What about the dark picture? Do I need more light? Nope, I have lots of light. I can't stress this point enough: The camera thinks this is a perfect exposure. The white cardboard is a nice, neutral grey, and that's what the camera wants to end up with. But you don't!
So I adjusted the Exposure Compensation up 1 level (It's typically denoted by a little +/- icon) to let in more light.

And despite the darkness, the colour is a bit off. So I went into the menu and changed the White Balance setting from AUTO to Daylight, because I'm using natural light plus and OTT bulb.

And just to make sure I'm extra steady, I turned on the camera's self timer, so I could press the shutter and just take my paws off the camera.

Here's what I got:

Same junky camera. (If I'd had space, I would have put a second lamp on the left to get rid of those shadows)

Scroll back and forth between the two photos. Which one would you buy?

Etsy Photography Made (as) Simple (as possible)

2010-06-18T05:52:00.000-07:00

There is no doubt that the greatest challenge for anyone selling products on Etsy is photographing those products. There are endless threads bemoaning the frustration of trying to get "Front Page worthy" photos. For us photographers, it's a breeze, but it's also easy to forget just how challenging it can be for someone who doesn't sleep with a camera in their hand...

Over the past little while, I've written several forum thread on Etsy regarding product photography, and I thought it would be a good idea to transcribe them here, as well as linking to them.

(You can find links to the original Etsy threads at the end of this article, so that you can read through all the comments, questions, and discussions)

A Quick and Dirty Science Class

Digital cameras: For those days when you just want throw it at the wall as hard as you can.

Just like film cameras, digital cameras collect light. The shutter opens, and light comes in. Your camera’s sensor looks like a Shreddie (Chex?), with lots of little square wells. The light pours in and starts to fill up those wells.

But the sensor is an electronic device, and as such, it produces “noise” like all electronic devices. It’s not noise you can hear, like the humming of your old stereo when the music stops. It’s image noise, which makes photos look grainy and fuzzy. And you know how if you turn up the volume on that old stereo, the humming gets louder? Well, same thing on your camera when you set it to a higher ISO. There’s actually a little amplifier inside that cranks up the sensitivity of your camera so you can take pictures with less light. Problem is, it cranks up the noise even more.

So: High ISO=BAD

There’s another thing that can happen that has the same effect, even on low ISO. If your camera sees there’s not much light, it just leaves the shutter open longer to collect enough to give you a decently bright picture. So the light’s coming in, making an image, but guess what? That @#%^&% noise is building up too. And it accumulates. And the picture ends up looking as bad as on high ISO.

So: Low Shutter Speed (long exposure)=BAD

This is just about when you start looking at that wall, and wondering how hard you can throw this piece of junk. And your head starts to spin…

I should buy a better camera
I can’t afford a better camera right now
My pictures suck
*bite nails*
What am I gonna do?

The solution is so simple; it’s almost a joke. More light. Yup, you’ve heard it before, but your house is dark, the sky is always cloudy, the kids are screaming…

All you have to do is grab a couple of lamps and put them close to the stuff you’re shooting. If your Lowes sells OTT bulbs, even better. The more light the merrier.

Fact is, you probably don’t need a new camera. In fact I’m willing to bet that just about every camera any of you own can take amazing photos, even if it’s a $30 Walmart special. Even the crappiest digital camera can take really good photos. It’s just a matter of giving it some light. Lots of light.

More Dirty Science

RTFM comes up a lot with reference to cameras, but unfortunately most manuals are written by geeks, for geeks. They’re so bad in fact, that even a pseudo-geek like me has a hard time with them.

For someone with ZERO knowledge of cameras (like 99% of the population), they may as well be in Latin. Or Canadian.

So in this class, I want to dumb down the entire camera manual, any camera manual, into two really simple concepts:

Shutter speed and Aperture.

I see Soap Girl’s eyes glazing over already in the back row. *Throws chalk at Soap Girl*

In spite of how complex they are, how much they cost, how big the manuals are, or who they’re made by, when a picture is snapped, only two simple things really happen. (OK, way more than two, but the rest we don’t care about now)

1. An opening in the lens (the Aperture) opens up a little bit or a lot to let in light

2. The shutter opens and then closes again, really quickly.

That’s it. That’s been it for 100 years.

The aperture opens up wide to let in lots of light, or it opens up just a tiny bit to let in just a bit of light.

Similarly, the shutter opens and closes slowly to let in a lot of light, or it does so really, really fast to just let in a bit. In film cameras, the shutter is like a little curtain that gets flung open to let light hit the film, and then closed very quickly. Digitals work a bit differently, but that doesn’t matter. The function is 100% identical.

So, the aperture is pretty basic. Lots of light (big) or a little bit of light (small).

The shutter does stuff we can relate to though. It’s exactly like opening your eyes. If you open them for 1 second, you see stuff happening around you. But if you just blink really fast, all you see is an instant frozen in time.

Shutter fast – just a blink of light, and frozen moment

Shutter slooooowwwww – light coming in for a long time, and lots of stuff moving around.

Your camera likes to have a balance of aperture and shutter speed because they both let in light. One determines how much, and one how long. So it balances them for you. If it uses a big aperture to let in tons of light, it will use a fast shutter speed. Conversely, if it uses a tiny aperture, it will keep the shutter open longer to compensate.

So here’s a little experiment you can just pretend to do.

You go to watch little Jimmy at his soccer practice. Luckily for you, little Jimmy really needs the practice because he’s a rubbish soccer player, which means he’s constantly running past you to get the ball. What a great opportunity. You set up your camera on the tripod and you take pictures of Jimmy as he runs past.

Let’s pretend your camera isn’t completely automatic. You set the aperture really small (very little light), and so you set the shutter to a long setting, maybe 1 second.

Here comes Johnny! Or is it Jimmy? Can never remember that kid’s name.

Click. There’s a picture of Jimmy, just looking like a transparent swoosh as he ran by. 1 second’s a long time.

So now you make the shutter faster, maybe ¼ of a second. Well, to get the same exposure as before, you need to open the aperture a bit to let in more light, since your shutter is now so much faster.

Click. Hey, Jimmy’s looking more like a little soccer player now. He’s blurred, but you can tell it’s him.

You’re already getting the hang of this. You set the shutter for 1/60 of a second, pretty fast. Of course you open up the aperture even more, and…

Click. Wow, he’s almost frozen in his tracks, with just some slight blur on his legs.

So now you set the shutter speed to 1/1000 of a second, super fast. That’s so fast in fact, you’ll have to open the aperture all the way.

Click. He’s perfectly frozen, leaping above the ground.

So all the while you had to keep trading off one against the other to get the same exposure every time. But if you wanted to change the exposure to make it brighter or darker, you now know there are a couple of things you could have done each time.

Want it lighter? Open the aperture a bit more than you did. Or, make the shutter a little bit slower to allow more light in. And the opposite if you wanted the pictures darker.

The good news is that for objects that don’t move, the shutter speed isn’t very important, so it’s one less thing to worry about.

Your camera always sets the aperture and shutter speed to get what it thinks is a perfect exposure. It has no idea what you’re taking pictures of or how you want them to look. But many very basic cameras do allow you to make little adjustments to the aperture and shutter speed, and thereby let you take in a bit more light, or a bit less.

Make Your Pictures POP!

Make your pictures "POP"; and doing it right is much easier than you think.

A common problem for many photos is their lack of dynamic range. Dy-what? That's the range of tones, from lightest to darkest in a photo, and extending the dynamic range is the single biggest difference between photos that look kind of flat, and those that jump right off the page. It's probably the biggest difference between a potential sale and no view at all.

This is especially true in thumbnails, and thumbnails are the one and only chance you have to make someone click on your item. It's the first thing they see while browsing your shop or browsing a general section, and this is where you want to grab people's attention.

To use a simple analogy, think of a stereo. If the sound is sort of flat, what do you do? Do you turn up the volume? Nope, you play with the bass and treble to make the lows lower and the highs higher.

It's the same with photos. Playing with the brightness and contrast is what most people to do add punch to their photos, but you know what? It's a little bit like just turning up the volume. The Brightness control just makes the whole picture brighter, including the dark stuff. That sucks. And contrast actually just adds distortion in most cases. That sucks too.

What you really want to do is stretch the dynamic range. In geek terms, this means adjusting the white and black points, but who the hell knows what that means? Well, you don't really have to. All you need to know is HOW to do it. And it's dead simple.

Picasa:
Double click on the file to edit it.
Click the tab that says "Tuning"
Look for the lightest spot in the photo, the bit that's closest to white.
Now slide the "Highlights" slider until that area is nice and white. If some other spot starts getting too bright, then just concentrate on that spot instead.
Now look for the darkest part of the photo, and slide the "Shadows" slider until it's as dark as you'd like it to be.
See the difference? That's "POP".

Picnik:
Click the "Exposure" button.
Click the "Advanced" button. (don't be scared!)
See the little box that pops up on the right side with the scary graph?
Drag the "Highlights" slider until the blobs on the right side of the graph get close to the right edge of the graph.
Now drag the "Shadows" slider until the blobs on the left get close to the left side.
That's "POP".

Photoshop:
Click on Image>Adjustments>Levels…
Uh-oh! Scary graph alert! No sweat…
Right below the scary graph, drag the little black triangle to the right until it's just below the part of the graph where the blobby curve starts going up towards the right.
Now drag the white triangle towards the left until it's near the part of the curve that starts rising up towards the left.
Click the "Preview" box off and on to see the difference. Some difference, huh?

Stop Being Invisible

Pictures.

Need I say more?

Well, yes. Much more.

Before anyone gets as far as your pictures, they have to first want to click on the thumbnail, because that's the first thing they see. There was a thread on this yesterday, and I wanted to do a show-and-tell.

The web is visual. Shopping on the web is extremely visual. Every day we read threads about low views or no views. It's not because the items are not good or attractive, but rather because nobody clicks them.
Your item's thumbnail is your one and only opportunity to get people into your shop. There's no grey area here. They click or they don't. Full stop.

That thumbnail has to make them want to click. It has to catch their eye, intrigue them, seduce them, make them open the door and walk into your shop. If you had a real store, it would be the display window. I say tag shmag. People mostly browse. Yes, they search too, but they mostly browse sections they're interested in. A page appears. 21 thumbnails, 75x75 in list view or 155x125 in gallery view.

If you're like me, you flick your Magic Mouse or you spin your scroll wheel, and zip down the page, your eyes darting around looking for something to jump out.

So here's an example. A beaded necklace, and two thumbnails out of many possibilities. Both shot with the same really crappy camera, in the same light at the same time.

One view from above, the whole necklace, the photo straight out of the crappy camera.
One close up, just a small section, levels adjusted after the fact.

List view:

Gallery view:

Which would you click? Even though you can't really tell what the 2nd thumbnail is, it stands out.

Here are the two full size pictures:

Notice how the dark photo, though not great, isn't too too bad in full size. It's dark, but that's the only issue. But in a thumbnail, it's just totally unclickable.

So while it's important to have great photos, spend lots of time looking at the thumbnails because they look totally different than the full size pictures. Use high contrast views. Make the colours POP. Make them visually interesting. You have 5 slots for pictures, so the main one doesn't have to show the whole item. Don't just upload you images to Etsy and then see them. Change your images to 75x75 or 155x125 and view them in real size on your screen.
How do they look? Do they jump off the page, or do they just sit there, waiting to be passed by?

Here are the links to the original threads on Etsy:

A Quick and Dirty Science Class

More Dirty Science

Make Your Pictures POP!

Stop Being Invisible

Freaking Out

2010-06-04T07:54:00.001-07:00

Freaking Out, originally uploaded by βomobob (acute loss of flickr mojo).

Well, if this didn't just knock me right off my chair...

Sitting there, minding my own business, when a Google Alert shows up in my inbox.
"Oh sweet, a blog mention", thinks I. Then I open it. Ap-pa-pa-pa-partment Therapy?????? At which point my mouth gets dry and my spine turns to jelly.

Total shock is the only way I can describe my reaction.

Full Apartment Therapy feature here.

Crawling Around in the Garden

2010-05-24T11:35:00.000-07:00

Summer weather is suddenly upon us with a vengeance, and that means getting down on all fours and digging through the dirt to hook up the irrigation system in the garden. The really big payoff is getting a view of the world form a cat's perspective...low down. Of course the bad part is that I never seem to get the real garden work done, as I'm always wiping off my hands and grabbing the macro lens for the camera.

Hey, waddya know...this one's even for sale on Etsy!

Stuff is growing like crazy this week. Every morning you look out onto the garden, and there's something new that wasn't there the day before.

Finally getting the water hooked up has its rewards, as the sprayers cover everything with a fine mist. Uh-oh, camera time again.

Maximum IMPACT

2010-05-22T07:33:00.000-07:00

This will be an exciting summer as Galerie IMPACT opens its doors. It's a huge, beautiful space in a prime ground floor location, right on the busiest part of St. Paul in Old Montreal.

Every inch of space is festooned with fantastic wares mostly from local Etsy artists as well as others. I've got dozens of my smaller Etsy prints in boxes on tables in the front, as well as larger prints hanging in the other room.

It's a gorgeous, well-lit space, and even though it's still in the final stages of completion, there was an unending stream of people pouring through yesterday. I think it's going to be a very busy summer.

Tulips

2010-05-21T07:39:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it is about them. Maybe it's because they grow in such density, or their straight, clean appearance. Anyway, kudos to the town of CSL for going crazy with them every year. It's like our own little tulip festival, but without all the tourists. The funny thing is that the biggest and bestest beds are on the slopes of the Cavendish/Fleet underpass, where cars go speeding by without even noticing. Whatevah! Gotta go back today and shoot the other side.

I couldn't decide which crop I liked better. Sigh...life is rough.

Available as a metallic print here, of course

Calendar Crazy

2009-11-01T06:50:00.000-08:00

This year I decided to have a bit of fun, and create a whole series of calendars for Christmas presents and for Etsy, of course. I wanted to keep them simple and versatile, so I went for the loose sheet style, mostly in 5x7 size. I've always liked this format, as it allows you to just tape one to the wall, or pin it to your cube, or just use it as a placeholder. So far, the bird theme is the runaway winner in popularity, which is hardly a surprise.

Very Cherry

2009-07-13T14:45:00.000-07:00

OK, so here's how it all started. A very generic, white melamine (I call it Mac-Tac, after the ubiquitous peel-and-stick plastic coatings of the 70s) kitchen, replete with a hideous I-Krap-A (is my cabinetmaker's bias showing?) module plopped in the middle of the floor. Ah yes, the floor. A floating floor on top of another layer of flooring, on top of another layer of flooring. Nothing 3 guys with 3 circular saws and 3 crowbars couldn't rectify. But I digress...

I wanted a cherry island. A peninsula, to be precise. With a granite top. Cherry to match the cabinets I designed for the rest of the kitchen, and granite, well, just because I can't think of a better way to tp off cherry than with dark granite.

The first step to build the carcasses for the base cabinets. The plan was to have two cabinets, each with two pot drawers and one standard cutlery drawer on top. I built the frames from cherry plywood, and pine and maple members.

The next step was the drawers, constructed from solid cherry with cherry ply inserts in a pseudo-Shaker style.

Needless to say, in a 50 year old house, the floors are anything but true, so lots of shimming was needed. I think the end result was worth the effort.

The Joys of Orange

2009-06-22T07:01:00.001-07:00

It seems there's little that can bring some "boink" to a 1950s house better than a little orange. Maybe it's partly reminiscent of the Jetsons, with all those bright colours on mid-century modern lines, or maybe it's just the warmth, but it sure does work.
Here's one wall of the way-too-small vestibule. One thing they didn't give any thought to when they built this place in 1951 was boots. Hello! It's Montreal, and it snows. A lot! My first notion was to smash down the wall and extend the little hallway to incorporate an open closet, but that would have ruined the symmetry of the livingroom on the other side of the wall, so I opted for something much more diabolically clever.

I took full advantage of some unused space between the floor and the ceiling of the stairs going down to the basement, and cut an opening at knee-level for kicking off slushy boots and getting them out of the way. An added benefit that I hadn't even considered was that by leaving the back of the boot closet open, there's a convenient opening over the basement stairs which allows light to pass in both directions, as well as cartons of tuna from Costco:)

The floor was a dog's breakfast of different strata, a bit like an archaeological dig. In the end, what could better suit a house of this era than good old linoleum? Back to the future! Orange, of course.

The wall in the kitchen that divides the fireplace from the cooking area had an ugly sheet of drywall on it, replete with some hideous mdf moulding. That was quickly rectified with a new build capped off with some homemade oak trim and some lovely textured wallpaper...painted...orange?

The centerpiece of the kitchen is this old 1947 Kitchenaid-Hobart that I picked up for a song at a barn in Vermont. It needed a bit of repair to get it working again, but mostly the problem was that it was ugly. Decades of neglect along with dreadful paint jobs turned it into the ugly duckling of kitchen appliances.
I disassembled it, stripped it down, and gave it a whole new lease on life with a slick, shimmering coat of enamel. It should be good for another 60 years, easily.

Here's what it looked like before!

Next instalment: My handmade cherrywood kitchen!

Round Two

2009-05-09T12:35:00.000-07:00

As you can imagine, my heart skipped more than a few beats when the lovely and talented "insomnia" sent me a link to this photo. Gallery Espai[b] in Barcelona, hosting the 2nd edition of 100x100 PHOTO, and yes indeed, that's one of mine in the window! I was excited enough to be in this exhibit again, but that just made me squeal.

What is it about chickens?

2009-05-08T06:10:00.000-07:00

Or is it just the giggles larger-than-life animals elicit? I listed this photo on Etsy yesterday, and have already sold 3 copies.

OK, it's true, I liked the sign so much that I took a zillion shots of it myself.
It's always nice to see businesses that hang onto their old signs, the ones that have been landmarks for so long. This was taken in Lake George, NY, which for a sign hound like me, certainly ranks right up there. It's been a summer resort for decades, and there are still so many wonderful old places that have hardly changed over time.
Another of my favourites is this one near Wells, Maine.

Once again, big animals. And speaking of Wells, it and neighbouring Old Orchard Beach are both wonderful repositories of old motel and restaurant signs, though every year there are fewer and fewer of the originals. In OOB, this one always makes me smile.

It's just so evocative of another era with its fabulous lines and colours.

Cards

2009-04-23T07:33:00.001-07:00

How come people just don't write anymore? Yeah, yeah, I know why, and I'm typing on one right now. But some of us still do. I love sending and receiving cards, cards with actual handwriting inside. Imagine that!
So I decided to make a bunch of cards for my Etsy shop, and with any luck I'll start a trend. I mean, emails are so ethereal. They're there, but not really. I like a card or postcard you can look at any times. Stick it on the fridge, prop it up on your desk. I love sending postcards when I travel, and not just because it's the "retro" thing to do.
Email's great, but real mail?...can't beat it.

Cupid

2009-03-29T10:40:00.000-07:00

A while back, I was approached by ABC-TV to supply a bunch of my photos for the set of the new series, "Cupid". Well, the wait is over, as it premieres Tuesday night. I can tell you I'll be Tivo-ing it, and playing it back frame by frame, looking for my photos.

'Cupid' premieres Tue., March 31, 10PM on ABC.

2009-03-26T11:43:00.000-07:00

Back to Barcelona?

2009-03-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

Back in December, Barcelona's Gallery Espai[b] hosted an exhibit called 100X100 PHOTO, featuring 100 photos from all over the world. Included in the exhibit were 3 of mine! I attended the opening, and it was a wonderful, smash hit. They sold lots of my photos, and want to continue to do so, even though the exhibit is finished.
But the fantastic news is that instead of waiting until next year, they want to mount a second edition of the show in the next couple of months, and they invited 3 more of my photos! Is yet another trip to Spain in the offing? Who knows. I'm just so pleased and frankly, honoured to be invited back again.
These are the 3 photos they want to exhibit this time.

Mucking About

2009-03-04T06:39:00.000-08:00

Back in the 80s, I was a very different photographer from the type I am now. It was all about landscapes and architecture, and heaven forbid if a person should wander into the frame. Not, my photos had to unadulterated, humanless.
They also had to be perfectly exposed and true-to-life. Of course digital manipulation didn't exist, at least not at a mass level, and the concept of what we now call "digital art" was still more of an idea than an accessible art form. But of course photo manipulation, though time-consuming, has been around as long as photography itself.
It wasn't until I started travelling a lot, that I started to shift my focus, so to speak. It very quickly became obvious to me that it's the people and not the scenery that make a place what it is, and it wasn't long before my style changed markedly.
But what also changed was my sense of aesthetics. Photography is an art, and unless you're shooting photos for an encyclopedia, it's basically open season. Photos should move people on an emotional level. This isn't to say that a photo has to be layered and textured and fiddled with to do so. Far from it. But I believe that anything goes, as long as it evokes a reaction from the viewer.

I like a little bit of everything!

I can't wait...

2009-03-02T08:28:00.000-08:00

It's no mystery that I love fairs and carnivals. It's not the rides (though that can be fun sometimes), and it's certainly not the junk food (well, not usually...). It's the whole package. The colours, the cacophony sounds, the smells of sausages and deep-fryers. I love to take pictures at fairs and try to evoke those old childhood memories. When I was a kid, we had to drive right by an old amusement park to get home, and there is nothing imprinted deeper on my brain than the sounds of screams and the thunder of the big wooden roller coaster right next to the road.

To me, that's the sound of summer, more than anything else. Soon we set the clocks forward, and that just bring us that little bit closer to that magical time of year.

Stuff...old stuff

2009-02-28T14:29:00.000-08:00

Remember George Carlin's shtick about "stuff"?

There was a great estate sale in town today, in a small "vet home" brimming with goodies. (Vet homes, as they're known, were little red brick houses built after WWII by the Canadian government for the returning servicemen and their families; a sort of leg-up after the war)
This one was bursting at the seams with an incredible assortment of goodies, and it was obvious the same people had lived in it since it was built. Even picked up a set of Lawn Darts, happily never banned in Canada.
But what really struck me was the range of interests of the former owners. There was a sewing machine, tons of patterns and doo-dads, knitting stuff, a darkroom, electronics workbench, old radios, tons of camera gear (yes, I went to town!), tools of all types, movie cameras, reel-to-reel tape recorders, gardening stuff...it was amazing. And it got me thinking about how the word "hobby" has really become a sort of quaint notion in recent years, which I think is a shame. People watch more TV now, and they certainly spend (waste? :) ) a lot of time online as well. But these folks, well, you could tell how well-rounded they were by what they did with their spare time.

I fully intend for my house to be just like that some day, a big, happy mess of stuff. Oh wait, it already is...

2009-02-26T12:01:00.000-08:00

Inspired by Dania, I posted this photo of my, ahem, workspace (more like mess space) on Flickr, and others soon followed. This what I think of as the white collar workspace, where I work on photos and repairing old cameras. The real he-man woodworking stuff is in the basement.

It's a constant battle keeping it tidy and organized, but I'm usually working on about 3 things at once, and since space is not unlimited, they do tend to overlap.

Yesterday was one of those perfect late winter days where you can feel the onset of Spring in the air. It was unseasonably warm, brilliantly sunny, and icicles were falling off roofs left and right. Wandering around Plateau Mont-Royal, textures and shadows were exploding everywhere.

Coming Soon

2009-02-20T05:56:00.000-08:00

...to a virtual store near you. In my collaboration with the charming Lisa of ItsAllAboutThePrint, we have created these funky and fun Scrabble tile and glass pendants, which will be going on sale next week in her Etsy store.

Yet Another Roll

2009-02-19T09:07:00.001-08:00

When will it end?

Buried Treasure

2009-02-19T05:42:00.000-08:00

Everyone does it. You go through boxes and binders, trying in vain to get some semblance of organization into your life, and you stumble upon something you didn't even realize you had. Happens to me with photos all the time. I reckon there must be 20,000 slides on "the shelf", which is actually a very large bookcase I made for holding the binders. Let's see..20 binders, 80 pages per binder, 20 slides per page...32,000. No, it can't be!

Anyway, among all the boxes and binders are a thousand or so prints, but hidden in pockets and sleeves all over the place are the negatives. And every so often up pops a sheet of negatives that have never been printed, and thus, forgotten. That's where the above image comes from. A whole roll shot in Sukhothai, Thailand in 1996, languishing in obscurity for years. Until last night.
It happened a while ago with these negatives from Nepal.

Memories of Barcelona

2009-02-18T15:29:00.000-08:00

The 100X100 PHOTO exhibit at Barcelona's Gallery Espai[b] has come to an end. However, that means that the "publication ban" (doesn't that sound just oh so cloak-and-dagger?) is lifted, so I'm now allowed to do whatever I like with my photos. So here they are...

"You're The One"

"1212"

and "Star"

2009-02-18T13:12:00.000-08:00

2009-02-17T05:37:00.000-08:00

From etail to retail

2009-02-13T06:46:00.000-08:00

As of today, my photos will be for sale at the 3 funky Boutique Onze stores in Montreal. They're going to start off displaying a selection of 10 photos in each of the stores, and we'll see where it goes from there.

boutique onze

Wow wow wow!

2009-02-11T19:13:00.000-08:00

It's my lucky day.

http://etsyitemoftheday.com/best-etsy-photos/

Holxproscanspain-5

2009-02-04T06:09:00.001-08:00

Iconic sculpture on the beach in Barcelona

Another Ruiter Valley Sunday

2009-02-02T09:46:00.001-08:00

Despite being stuck for an hour in a non-moving traffic jam on the Eastern Townships autoroute...we finally made it to the idyll of the Ruiter Valley, truly the best-kept secret in Quebec. The snow was waist deep in the fields, much deeper on the forest slopes. Worth every minute of delay.

The Return of Polaroid

2009-01-30T14:29:00.001-08:00

The Return of Polaroid, originally uploaded by bomobob.

A team of former Polaroid employees have announced an ambitious plan to restart production of instant film. And you thought all the news was bad.

the-impossible-project.com/

Hmmmmmm...

2009-01-30T04:59:00.001-08:00

I really ought to write something if this is to be a proper blog. Maybe later.

Nepali Jedi

2009-01-26T05:41:00.000-08:00

After weeks of ice and parkas and sturdy boots on the Annapurna Himal, bare feet and warm temperatures were a welcome sight.

Uig

2009-01-26T05:38:00.001-08:00

Some places take on almost mythical proportions over time, while others have an immediate and profound impact. Such was the case with Uig, on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. It was a very long time ago, and it was only a youth hostel, but the 5-star view will remain in my head forever.

Uig, originally uploaded by bomobob.

Prayer flags in the Himalayas

2009-01-23T08:17:00.001-08:00

Sympathy For The Devil, Part I

2009-01-22T17:17:00.001-08:00

Sympathy For The Devil, Part I

Bromo Sunrise

2009-01-22T17:16:00.001-08:00

Bromo Sunrise, originally uploaded by bomobob.

Knights

2009-01-22T17:13:00.001-08:00

Knights, originally uploaded by bomobob.

2009-01-17T08:41:00.000-08:00

If you're anywhere even remotely near Boulder in March, then run, don't walk to see "Tornado Season" by Emily Harrison.www.squareproducttheatre.org/Home.html

I'm so pleased to have contributed the photo for this lovely poster. Break a leg, Emily!

2009-01-15T09:32:00.000-08:00