The things you see outside a Mens club

I caught this shot as we were driving by Diamond’s in Edmonton. Snapshot was heavily colour corrected as the shot was totally over-exposed.

Lunar eclipse rekindles my interest in social astronomy

Photo Credit: Lance Taylor

The February 20th event where the Earth drifted between the Sun and the Moon was an interesting one for me.

After Tess mentioned the night before that it’d likely be visible here (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), and that we do have a nice little telescope, some binoculars, and a couple of cameras, that maybe we should make an effort to actually watch it.

So, after a quick email exchange with a couple of friends, an impromptu eclipse party was set up on a good friend’s driveway (hi Scratch!). It was also fortunate his driveway faced east, right toward the rising moon.

Now to the social part. This was coordinated over the course of a few hours during the day, mostly by email.

The degree interest, and participation was awe-inspiring. Ranger Bob brought out his atom-smasher 8″ scope with camera mount. He also brought a few other scopes and binoculars. Ranger Bob wins the Gear award 🙂

Another friend had a digital camera mounted on the scope, and recorded over 2000 frames to be compiled into a movie.

Tess and I brought our gear, Scratch had a few items of optics, as well a few other brought support supplies, Coffee and Donuts. The driveway looked like the media pit at a space shuttle launch!

Neighbourhood families wandered by. Kids kept oohing at the view through the scopes and binoculars.

The most interesting part of the evening occurred when we realized we were getting some glare on Ranger Bob’s scope from the overhead streetlight, right above us. Out came a large black umbrella, and turns were taken holding it up to shield the scope.

You can sort-of see the umbrella (the blurry thing) just below the moon.

But for me, the evening wasn’t just about the planetary event, though that was cool, it was about hanging out with friendly, like-minded people and sharing the experience.

I need to do more of that 🙂

For more info on the event and many more photos, check out:

• My Flickr page
• Ranger Bob’s Flickr page
• Scratch’s Flickr page

Technorati Tags: Space, Astronomy, Eclipse, February 20 2008, Lunar Eclipse, Photo, Photography, Moon, Camera, Telescope, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Brad Grier, Article

Online Photo Albums made easy — Video

Once again the video wizards at Common Craft make the complex seem easy. Online Photo Sharing in Plain English is simply that. Well done, and Enjoy! And as you can tell by the little widget in the right hand column, I’m a flicker user 🙂

Technorati Tags: Video, Photography, Online, Backup, Tools, Sharing, Social Media, Tutorial, Common Craft, Brad Grier

Alberta Winter on the Desktop

Happy New Year. I’ve been having more fun with Photoshop and with my new Wacom Bamboo drawing tablet, and decided to share the fruits of my labour.

Here’s a new 1280 x 865 wintery-themed image, taken one frosty morning out on the trail near the Waskahegan trail at the Cooking Lake-Blackfoot Recreation Area, just east of Edmonton.

Technorati Tags: Winter Edmonton Photography Image Brad+Grier Cold

Earthrise on the desktop — an Apollo 8 image

Today I was feeling the need to update my desktop, and decided to look around for a 1280×1024 version of Earthrise. I couldn’t quickly find one…so I did the next best thing, grabbed this 2400×2400 version from NASA and cropped it. Feel free to grab my version here.

** Update Feb 17, 2008 **

Since I’ve got a new 22″ wide format monitor, I needed to rebuild my Earthrise desktop. So here it is, in 1680×1050 rez.

Full credit to the NASA and the Apollo 8 crew (Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot James Lovell and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders)

Technorati Tags: Apollo 8, Image, Earthrise, NASA, Crop, Desktop 1280×1024, Desktop 1680×1050, Brad Grier