Wildflower Photography

9:00am - It's that time of year again. On Sunday I'm signed up for wildflower photography event during which I'd like to get some real wow-factor shots. Below are some wildflower photos I took in July and August of last year. While I'm very happy with those overall, I'd like to improve on them this year. A certain COC member always has a great wildflower trick up their sleeve, I kept wondering for years how they get that certain effect, so I'll copy the cheat. Stay tuned! After this event I'm thinking Sherbrooke Lake & Niles Meadows photography for July 3.

How to create dynamic wildflower photos

How to photograph flowers

Click at Sunrift Gorge, Montana

Garden Wall, Montana

Brown-Eyed Susan

Virgin's Bower

(???) Thistle

Tall Purple Fleabane

(???) Berries

Orange Butterfly (???)

2:15pm - As an architect, perhaps the most rewarding times in one's career are when a building you've designed finally opens.  Because I work on large projects spanning over several years, I don't get many of these.  I remember the first time it happened though: I had worked on a small community Boys & Girls Club with a funky angled roof.  They assigned the kids the task of drawing a picture of the building, and I received a card that had one such drawing. The child must have struggled with the roof, but that was the first moment that I remember as being distinctly rewarding since having gone into this profession. 

Yesterday was a second such moment, when the R. ER had its grand opening.  I wasn't involved with the interior planning at the time of its design, so I was part of the exteriors team.  There was a span of a couple of weeks a few years ago when we needed to come up with an entrance canopy very quickly, because of all the crazy angles on the project nothing seemed to work particularly well, so frustrated in trying to explain things in two dimensions, I took off one evening, built a mini model at home so that we'd have something to show the engineers, and lo and behold, three years later it's actually built.  I'm still not sure if I'm particularly fond of this canopy at the front of the ER entrance (it's very pointy), but I'm much happier with the back side of the building along the Reservoir.  Below are some photos I took a few weeks ago.  Here is a link to a video from Global TV showing the front and inside.

8:15pm - Today ended up being a good, relaxing day.  Some positives for the day:

• Treated myself to dinner out (Korean)
  
• Went to Bow Cycle
  
• Went to MEC
  
• Went to Edelweiss
• Went to library for a bird book 
  
• Went to try on lacy lingerie and bought a new bra.

I also heard from J. again.  Haven't heard from her in at least a year or so.  Her brief message made me chuckle: "I'm pregnant - 5 months. What about you?"

And boo to Canada on this one.