While we were in Ottawa a couple weeks ago my D70 camera started having problems.. the main control dial stopped responding! I had to send my camera by overnight courier for service and was suddenly without a good means of taking pictures. It’s like taking a painters brush away, stripping a musician of his instruments, breaking the thumbs of a clay sculptor!! Ok, melodramatic, but you get the picture (no pun intended). I called a service rep at Nikon and told them about my camera, that I had a wedding to do photography for in two weeks and a trip to the Maritimes after that. The service rep wasn’t really sympathetic. He told me that they would look at the camera when it arrives and would call me within five weekdays to tell me how much it would cost to fix. After that it may take 4-6 weeks for the parts to come in, depending on the problem. GAH!!

I had a few frantic days trying to find an alternative camera for the wedding, wondering if it might be better to purchase a new camera than pay to fix a three year old one, etc, etc.. After 10 days I called Nikon to find out what was up, and they told me that they had just got the camera from their receiving department. My hopes fell for getting it back for my vacation.

The next day a box arrived from Nikon. I was shocked.. thinking that they must have sent it back without doing anything for some reason. But I opened the box, pulled out my fully functional camera and an invoice for $0. Dunno why, not gonna ask as the camera was beyond warrenty. Just thankful to have it back, especially in time for the wedding! Let the picture taking resume!

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In other photographic news I recently posted some photos of a strong storm on my flickr page. Normally my photos get a few views from friends and occasionally others who happen by them. Most of my photos have less than 50 views and the highest was around 260. I was therefore very surprised to check a few hours later and discover that the three storm photos were up over 250 views and climbing by about 5 a minute. By the end of the day they had reached 600.

Turns out a weather web site (http://natures-wrath.blogspot.com/) had discovered them and linked to my photos.

(click on an image for a larger view)

Dark Storm

Alberta Storm – This storm front moved in quickly from the mountains. I could see it coming for quite awhile and once it got close I was overwhelmed with it’s size and power. I had never seen such a clearly defined storm front before. It hit hard with thunder, lightning, hail and heavy rain. And then it was over as quick as it began..

Storm Front

Dark Line in the Sky

For the May long weekend we visited our nation’s capital, Ottawa. I had never been there before, so we were wanting to go there before we move from Ontario. We were pleased to have Naomi’s brother Andrew and Missy (a friend who is a student here at WOLBI and also just happens to be dating Andrew) travel with us. This was the first touristy thing Naomi and I have done for a few years. We had lots of fun seeing the capital with Andrew, Missy and Adelaine (Ellie stayed with some friends). We toured the Parliament Buildings, the National War Museum (a must see!), National War Memorial, Canadian Museum of Civilization.

The War Museum was amazing! I need to go to Ottawa again to see everything in there. We were rushed going through and didn’t have the time I wanted to look around.

This is the gun used for the world’s longest range sniper kill (2,430 meters or 7,972 feet) by a Canadian sniper, Corporal Rob Furlong in Afghanistan in 2003.

A bunch of tanks in a large room crammed with vehicles at the end of the museum.

One of Hitler’s parade cars, an armoured Mercedes Benz. Don’t try to touch it.. an alarm goes off – trust me, I know…

A British cork helmet should protect your head.. from elastics maybe.. Good enough for the Homestarmy!

That weekend was also when the Ottawa Senators advanced to the Stanley Cup play-offs. We came out of the war museum shortly after the game ended and could hear horns honking in the distance.. The city had gone crazy! It took about an hour to get to our hotel, normally just several minutes away as several city blocks were shut down because of the crowds gathering to celebrate. Cars driving around with people and Sens flags hanging out the windows with their horns blaring, people screaming at each other. It was nuts.

That night Andrew and I walked to Parliament Hill to get some night shots and the party was still going. I had never seen that many happy drunk people before in my life.. In order to avoid possibly being attacked, I had to pretend to be a Sens fan.

While in Ottawa there was also a conjunction of the Moon and Venus. I got some photos of this event next to the Peace Tower on Parliament Hill.

If you want, you can check out the 40 pictures up on my photography page. Here is a small preview: