schwiiz.org

It’s annual tradition that St. Gallen lights up the old town with Christmas lights, and it was five years ago when I took this photo on Multergasse. The photo is posted on a few websites, and it was recently picked by a photo.net editor to be a part of this year’s Editors’ Picks: Winter Photos 2007. It’s flattering to see that some of my photos still gain an audience. The timing is also right since St. Gallen just strung up the lights for the holiday season.

It’s a shame that I don’t take as many photos as I used to. I have a nice DSLR camera with an assortment of lenses and accessories, which don’t get the use it deserves. I think it’s because I spend so much time hiking and cycling, and carrying a heavy camera is the last thing I want to do. Although, I still have my compact camera, which I usually take along.

I’ve been developing a new script for displaying photos online. There are already thousands of scripts to do this, but I never found one that I really liked. Most album software shows you a small thumbnail with an enlarged image, which I find tedious. The thumbnails are often too small to get a sense of the album, and the enlarged view requires you to slowly page between each photo. I wanted something that displays my photos similarly to a real photo album, which has three or four images per page. Check out the following examples. Use the back button of your browser to return to the blog, and click on an image to switch views.

[ Photos 2006 | Photos 2007 | Photos 2008 ]

It was a fun week in the New York City area. The weather has been extremely mild for December, which has allowed me to enjoy the city and cool air on foot. Yesterday I did a walking tour from Penn Station through Greenwich Village, Little Italy, Chinatown, and down to the Brooklyn Bridge. I found Little Italy and Chinatown fascinating. I saw many Italian and American flags sharing a flag post, but nothing similar in Chinatown. I walked along the market on Mott Street and was overwhelmed by the smell of fish. I couldn’t believe how many people there were. At the Seaport Historic District I made a nice panorama photograph of the Brooklyn Bridge and then later crossed it by foot. The view back on Manhattan was gorgeous. I never realized by how much the Empire State Building dwarfed its neighbouring buildings.

Earlier in the week I was shown around Central Park and taken to the Martin Short musical Fame Becomes Me. The story was loosely based on Short’s life and was full of laughs, fun, and original music. We also saw Bodies: The Exhibit, which is literally a museum of the human body. The exhibit was much easier to stomach than I expected but I wouldn’t necessarily go again. A very emotional moment was the visit to the World Trade Center and seeing the wide open space where so many people needlessly lost their lives. In the Christmas spirit I enjoyed the windows at Macy’s and the tree at the Rockefeller Center.

Tomorrow is the end of my visit and I’ll be boarding a flight to Toronto. From there I will catch a ride to Sudbury where I will spend Christmas with my parents. I’m looking forward to the visit since it’s been many years since I was there for Christmas. Unfortunately I still have all my shopping to do!

A photo of the day section has been added to the site. Here I plan to post a new photo each day selected from my archives or from today. This should be a fun way to showcase some of my favourite photos while keeping the content of the site fresh. I hope you enjoy it.

Monday morning I woke with a sore throat and a raspy voice. A number of people I know have been getting sick lately with a cold, so it was just a matter of time before I caught it. Fortunately I’ve been spared from coughing and congestion, but I’ve also been warned that it may still be to come. I hope not.

Tuesday night I joined six friends for the Canada vs. Switzerland friendly hockey game in Zürich. I’m trying to figure out who these players are since the NHL season is currently underway in North America. My best guess is that they’re minor league players for various European teams who were thrown together for this game. It was an enjoyable three periods with a decisive 6-4 win for Switzerland. I was the only Canadian in the group and therefore received a brutal mocking. In fairness I would have done the same had Canada won.

Tuesday was also the US midterm elections. I’m usually not too concerned with US domestic politics, but the outcome of this election was too important. Both the house and senate branches of the government have shifted to the Democrats and this will finally put oversight over the Bush administration. This is a welcomed change and I’m very interested to see what the outcome will be these next two years.

On Wednesday morning my new Nikon D80 camera arrived. With it I also purchased a SB-600 flash, 4 gig SD memory card, and a handy infrared remote control. This is the replacement for the Nikon D100 I recently sold. My first impressions of the D80 are good and I’m very impressed with the simplicity of the wireless flash system. I’ll try to get some photos posted soon.

I’ve put together a new ‘Landscape’ photo album on schwiiz.org. This album will contain my favourite panorama and landscape photos that I’ve made over the years. I hope you like them. Many of these photos are stitched together from a series of photos using PTGui. I highly recommend this software for anyone getting into panorama photography. The same software can also be used for making QuickTime Virtual Reality images, as found on my QTVR page.

I decided to use schwiiz.org to host some of my favourite photographs from my main photo gallery. I recently discovered the SimpleViewer flash application that does a beautiful job of presenting a photo album. I customized it to for basic navigation and integration with DAlbum. Check it out!

For a few months my mother has been teetering on the idea of buying a digital camera. This made sense: A digital camera would allow her to quickly and easily share photos with me in Europe.

My first thought was to buy her a new camera, but I decided to have a little fun by giving her my old Canon A70 and replacing mine with something new. My requirement was easy: The camera must be compact for hiking and biking.

My decision was with the Olympus Stylus Verve (mu-Mini in Europe). The main selling points was the compact size and the weatherproof casing. After getting the camera and using it for a while, I concluded that I should have purchased something else. Here’s why:

1. The first grief is that a proprietary USB cable is required to connect the camera to your computer. You must then carry the cable with you if, say, you wish to transfer the photos at a friend’s house.
2. Not all configuration options are automatically saved when you turn off the camera. This means reconfiguring the settings each time you turn the camera on!
3. The movie mode (video clips) quality doesn’t come close to matching the quality of the Canon A70.
4. The panoramic mode is clumsy and the stitching software sucks.
5. The proprietary battery has a poor life.
6. There is a lot of noise in low-light situations.
7. The zoom is only 2x.

[Update: I sold the Olympus and replaced it with a Canon A520.]