The Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., in 2006. I should have posted more of my pictures from DC before. The ceiling in the vestibule of the LoC is one of the most stunning I have ever seen. Here’s a great tip: beat the crowds and go early, early in the morning. You won’t regret it, the tranquility and beauty of the place is fantastic.

The Capitol building in Washington, D.C., in 2006.

Another sunset over Lake Ontario, as seen from Port Dalhousie in St Catharines.

Leaving Riding Mountain National Park, looking back at the weather we left behind.

Wish I had a graduated ND filter there or at least a tripod so I could capture the dynamic range of the scene in two pictures. I wanted to capture the dramatic sky, which necessarily meant I had to underexpose the rest of the picture quite severely.

Scene from Riding Mountain National Park in Manitoba. I travelled there with a colleague at IISD to go hiking over a weekend when I was in Winnipeg last summer. It rained virtually the entire time! We had the worst luck with the weather; I did not actually bring my camera on the hike, it was too wet. In the afternoon the following day it stopped raining and we stopped to see buffalo and take in the scenery.

With this custom bokeh experiment — which turned out pretty well — I wish you Happy 2010, may it be better than 2009!

The lights in the picture are on the Christmas tree, but the picture has not been manipulated — the stars were achieved using a home made filter.

The torch relay for the Vancouver Olympics went through St Catharines a few days before Christmas. Jenna and I walked a few blocks down the street to watch just to say we’d seen it. Now we have. Of course, we wouldn’t have been able to see it if the Norway trip hadn’t been cancelled, but then again, nothing providential happened.

I got a good picture of Morpheus, his black features are hard to capture.

Wishing everyone I know a Merry Christmas! (or just a Happy Holiday if you’re not upholding this neopagan, hedonistic and consumeristic tradition ;)

God Jul alle sammen!

The picture is of a little street in St Catharines famous for it’s Christmas light display (but you find Christmas displays all over the place…).

The Christmas holiday in Norway went down the drain when our flight was cancelled by a snowstorm last weekend. When they couldn’t offer us an alternative until Christmas Eve (and it woulnd’t have gotten us to Norway until Christmas Day morning…), we opted to cancel, spend Christmas is Kalamazoo, and delay our Norway trip until the summer. It was disappointing though, Christmas is a very special time.

Now we’re relaxing in Kalamazoo. The last couple of weeks were stressful, I’ve been working furiously on finising my master research paper. It’s now finished! I turned it in last night, at 9PM on Christmas Eve — writing and editing, that’s how I spent Christmas Eve. It’s a tremendous relief to be done. The last leg of my master’s degree is now over, so now all I can do is wait and see how it went. If it went well, I’ll post it in January.

Anyway, I’m now not going to think anymore about it, just relax.

Have a good holiday!

This is the fifth post in a series. Jenna and I went to Ottawa for a weekend in the middle of October, finally–neither of us had yet been there, even after several years in Canada, and considering that Ottawa isn’t really that far away from Niagara. Jenna wanted to go to a conference on global health so it was a good excuse to go.

Jenna requested that I post this picture, of the central block and the Peace Tower of the Canadian Parliament through the fog.