Katherine Bickford

Seagulls

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Katherine

Point Holmes,sea gulls,beach,ocean,birds,nature,Comox,black and white

Seagulls at Point Holmes

I love black and white – it’s a powerful medium that is highly technical, incredibly artistic, and capable of shaping how we perceive people, the world, and moments in time that may or may not have happened as portrayed.

Posted in Birds, nature, ocean | Tagged beach, birds, black and white, Comox, nature, ocean, Point Holmes, sea gulls | Leave a comment

Seagulls

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Katherine

Point Holmes,sea gulls,beach,ocean,birds,nature,Vancouvr Island,coastal BC

A seagull at Point Holmes

Point Holmes,sea gulls,beach,ocean,birds,nature,Vancouvr Island,coastal BC

If you stop to watch seagulls you’ll notice that besides being loud and somewhat bossy, they all have a unique appearance and a range of expressions that are quizzical, comical, and sometimes quite serious and angry.

Point Holmes,sea gulls,beach,ocean,birds,nature,Vancouvr Island,coastal BC

Posted in Birds, nature, ocean | Tagged beach, birds, coastal BC, nature, ocean, Point Holmes, sea gulls, Vancouvr Island | Leave a comment

Seagulls

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Katherine

Point Holmes,sea gulls,beach,ocean,birds

A seagull at Point Holmes

Point Holmes,sea gulls,beach,ocean,birds

Posted in Birds, nature, ocean | Tagged beach, birds, ocean, Point Holmes, sea gulls | Leave a comment

C-FXFT and C-FMGM

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Katherine

Courtenay,airport,airplane,Comox Valley,Courtenay Air Park,YCAC-FXFT,C-FMGM,Heliqwest Aviation,Kaman K-1200

C-FXFT and C-FMGM, Heliqwest Aviation 1994 Kaman K-1200 helicopters

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C-FXFT at the Courtenay Air Park

Courtenay,airport,airplane,Comox Valley,Courtenay Air Park,YCAC-FXFT,C-FMGM,Heliqwest Aviation,Kaman K-1200

C-FMGM at the Courtenay Air Park

Posted in airplanes | Tagged airplane, airport, C-FMGM, Comox Valley, Courtenay, courtenay air park, Heliqwest Aviation, Kaman K-1200, YCAC-FXFT | Leave a comment

C-FFXH

Posted on January 13, 2017 by Katherine

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C-FFXH, a 2005 Robinson R44 II at the Courtenay Air Park

Courtenay,airport,airplane,Comox Valley,Courtenay Air Park,YCA,C-FFXH,helcipoter.Robinson R44 II

Posted in airplanes | Tagged airplane, airport, C-FFXH, Comox Valley, Courtenay, courtenay air park, helcipoter.Robinson R44 II, YCA | Leave a comment

360° – A Snowy Day

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Katherine

A snowy day near km 2 on Comox Lake Logging road

Posted in 360°, photography, video | Tagged 360°, Comox Valley, photography, video, Virtual Reality | Leave a comment

360° photography – one image, many views

Posted on January 10, 2017 by Katherine

I shot this image while sitting in my car trying to warm up after shooting some video of the Courtenay Fire Department collecting Christmas trees for chipping and mulching.

20170108_132056_safari360_0

The images above and below are identical, both covering 360°, but the image below is presented as an interactive Virtual Reality (VR) image hosted on Flickr.

You might have to click on the image above to activate it…

The same image can also be displayed in interesting was as a spherical image

And as a modern version of an old school 180° fisheye image

Posted in 360°, photography | Tagged 360°, Courtenay Fire Department, photography | Leave a comment

360° Seagulls

Posted on January 8, 2017 by Katherine

seagulls,VR,360°,Point Holmes,nature.Comox

Above, this image of seagulls looks like a normal panoramic image shot with a camera or a cellphone. Looking closer, the curvature of straight lines and the blur at the bottom are a give away that this was shot with a 360° camera – in this case, a Safari 360.

Below, the image straight out of the camera – two 180° fisheye images that the camera software will assemble into the spherical (Equirectangular) panoramic image above.

seagulls,VR,360°,Point Holmes,nature.Comox

If you look at the images, you can see some parts of the legs of the little tripod that I used to position the camera off of the ground. That’s “some parts” and not all parts, as the construction of the camera creates a rectangular blind spot beneath it. Although it’s just a bit of tripod, it’s annoying as I don’t want to have the tripod included in my 360° images. Worse yet, the finished images are blurry at the bottom (and top) as the camera software can’t fully correct for the distortion caused by the use of spherical lenses – but what the heck – I have Photoshop and can fix some of this.

Before and after a bit of Photoshop-fu

Posted in 360°, Birds, nature, photography | Tagged 360°, nature.Comox, Point Holmes, seagulls, VR | Leave a comment

Seagulls

Posted on January 7, 2017 by Katherine

A bit of fun watching seagulls at Point Holmes

I shot this 360° still image with a 360° camera, and then used the camera software to convert the image into a jpeg file that can be displayed on Facebook or Flickr. It’s quicker to upload the image to Facebook, but a huge pain to embed it on a WordPress or Drupal blog – Flickr takes longer to process the file as an interactive VR image, but makes it really easy to embed it.

It’s pretty much the same story with the 360° video of the same scene with my friends the seagulls – use the camera software to convert it from a native .mov format into a web friendly .mp4 that can be displayed on Facebook or Youtube. As with the still image, it’s much quicker to upload the image to Facebook, but a huge pain to embed it whereas Youtube makes it really easy to embed it.

Posted in 360°, Birds, nature, photography | Tagged 360°, nature.Comox, Point Holnes, seagulls, VR | Leave a comment

Nanoose – the bricks on the beach

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Katherine

I like to know what the history of things that I’m looking at so I did some research into the Clayburn, and Kilgard bricks that are scattered on the shore of Nanoose Bay at the site where the Red Gap sawmill once stood.

Nanoose,bricks,Red Gap,sawmill,Clayburn Bricks,ocean,beach,history,Highway 19,Red Gap mill,Kilgard Bricks

In 1905 John Charles MacClure founded the Vancouver Fireclay Company Ltd. and established a brickworks in the newly created village of Clayburn, forty miles east of Vancouver. In 1909 the firm’s name was changed to Clayburn Company (which had also been adopted as the brand name of one of the firm’s major lines of brick).

Nanoose,bricks,Red Gap,sawmill,Clayburn Bricks,ocean,beach,history,Highway 19,Red Gap mill,Kilgard Bricks

After a period of expansion Clayburn purchased its nearby rival, Kilgard Fireclay Company, in 1918. Dual operations continued at both the Clayburn plant, which specialized in brick, and the Kilgard plant, which specialized in clay tiles and pipe, until 1930 when the plant at Clayburn was abandoned and the Kilgard plant was enlarged to accommodate brick manufacturing.

Nanoose,bricks,Red Gap,sawmill,Clayburn Bricks,ocean,beach,history,Highway 19,Red Gap mill,Kilgard Bricks

And there’s the story of the bricks on the beach in Nanoose where the Red Gap sawmill was

Posted in history, Nanoose, ocean | Tagged beach, bricks, Clayburn Bricks, Highway 19, history, Kilgard Bricks, Nanoose, ocean, Red Gap, Red Gap mill, sawmill | Leave a comment

Seagulls

Seagulls

Seagulls

C-FXFT and C-FMGM

C-FFXH

360° – A Snowy Day

360° photography – one image, many views

360° Seagulls

Seagulls

Nanoose – the bricks on the beach

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