Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Regina [UPDATED]

My new job gifted me with two things: 1) a BlackBerry equipped with a (rather poor) camera and the capacity to email the resulting photos to my blog, and 2) the opportunity to travel a lot more. The result has been a fun game of taking a photo (sometimes good, sometimes not) of whatever place I happen to find myself in and have it pop up on my blog.

Today it's Regina, Saskatchewan, The Queen City. I'm pleased 'cause I've been to Manitoba and Alberta but somehow managed to miss Saskatchewan until now. And although Brent assures me in the comments below that it is "nowhere near as nice as Saskatoon" - Saskatoon, then, must be a treat, because Regina has been both pretty, accommodating and full of pleasant prairie people, who are exactly like pleasant maritime people, only different.

There's some discussion of the finer and odder points of the photograph itself in the comments section below, and I suggest you check it out, as Sherwood has become a fearsome creature of great skill with the photo editing and restoration and such-and-such, and I am afraid that any day the 9/11 Conspiracy Folks will abduct him and press him into their service.

UPDATE: I just remembered after updating the blog post - the big "dust speck" to the right of the tall building on the horizon was a hot-air balloon! It was part of the reason I took the photo at 6am this morning - perfectly clear to the naked eye - but with the activities of the day I completely forgot about it until I gave the large version one more look.

ronnie

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8 Comments:

Blogger Brent McKee said...

Ronnie, is that MY Regina? As in the capital city of the province of Saskatchewan (and nowhere near as nice as Saskatoon)? What's the story about this one?

5:01 p.m.  
Blogger Nostalgic for the Pleistocene said...

Hope everybody clicks it for a full size version! Lots more to see in there than you get in the small size.

5:16 p.m.  
Blogger Sherwood Harrington said...

... and there's even more to see:

here,

here,

and
here.

I'm puzzled by two things: the dust specks (in the upper-left and the big one about a building-width to the right of the structure at the horizon) and the almost linen-like pattern that appears in the D-lighting enhancements. The latter may be an artifact of image enhancement, but the dust specks shouldn't be there if the original is a jpeg file directly from a digital camera. Maybe a scan of a print or slide?

11:10 p.m.  
Blogger ronnie said...

Hi folks -

Yes, Brent, it's THAT Regina, although if I'd known you lived here I would've tried to work in a coffee or something!

(I'm going to be traveling a lot for work... maybe I should make some kind of Map O'Racsers I can actually meet in person!)

NFTP, thanks for the pointer. I take these photos when I'm travelling and post them directly to my blog from my Blackberry with the location as the post title; half the fun is not knowing what will come out. This morning the "prairie sunrise" from my hotel balcony appealed to me.

Sherwood, you're getting scary with the photo stuff. I'm at a loss to explain the dust specks myself; it was taken from my balcony with no glass in-between, and the BBerry lens seems too tiny to even have three big dust specks on it. Maybe it's time for a gentle polish. Maybe they are three of the big flying red-and-black bugs I keep seeing here. (Brent, what ARE those?)

Ditto the stripes; I can only assume they're an artifact of the Blackberry's inferior photo capabilities; it's an ironic thing - it's a poor camera but because of my work it is the one I have with me when I travel, and the one via which I can instantly post my photos to my blog.

I'll add more to the post itself about the details. Thanks for continuing to follow the blog, and my Blackberry!

1:00 a.m.  
Blogger ronnie said...

OMG! I just remembered after updating the blog post - the "big one ["dust speck"] about a building-width to the right of the structure at the horizon" was a hot-air balloon! It was part of the reason I took the photo 6 this morning - but with the activities of the day I completely forgot about it until I gave the large version one more look.

The other two, I think, still? The big red-and-black bugs.

1:29 a.m.  
Blogger Sherwood Harrington said...

Whoa! Cool -- a balloon! And I'm chagrined to see that I didn't say how appealing the original photo is. Special handling may bring out hidden detail, but it detracts from the attractiveness of the image. I think your Blackberry takes pictures that are just fine, ma'm.

2:07 a.m.  
Blogger Mike said...

With all the cities on the continent that refer to themselves as "The Queen City," it's nice to see one with an undisputable claim to the title. Think of that when you get back to "Fred City."

5:54 a.m.  
Blogger Brent McKee said...

Ronnie are we talking about a mainly black bug with red on the edges of its wings? If so that's the Maple Bug, sometimes known as the Box Elder Bug - Boissea Trivittata.
http://www.cirrusimage.com/bugs_box_elder.htm

Just to be clear, I live in Saskatoon not Regina and in fact it has been years since I've been in Regina. Anyone from Saskatoon will tell you that Saskatoon is the nicer - not to mention the larger - of the two major cities in Saskatchewan. In other words, getting together for coffee or something would take considerable logistical thought (it'd probably have to be for dinner, and even then I don't know the preferred restaurants in Regina so...). Still, nice to get the full story.

5:05 p.m.  

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