Mother-in-Law visit and Instagram

I’ll start with Instagram. I love it. You all know I am a fan of taking pictures of stuff. And Iphones. Well, Instagram takes those 2 items to the extreme. Ok. Here’s what you do. You take a photo with your phone(or load a photo onto your phone), then you apply a format to it. Most of the formats are antique looking.

Yep. We spend thousands on high tech devices with multi-mega pixel resolutions and the change it into this.

Yes. That is the desired result.

And this too!

These were both taken within the last 2 weeks. Yep, like I said, I love it! BUT, it’s more than just picture sharing. It’s actually another form of social media. Did you know you can follow me? Yeah, I’m @nzeller on there. look me up. (oh, but just to warn you: the app is only available on Iphone and there is no corresponding website or software. Just an app. but a cool app.

So download the free app and look me up.

Ok. Now. The Mother-in-Law came for a visit from Pennsylvania. No no. it’s not bad. We get along fine. besides she doesn’t come to see me as it’s all for the Boy. She was here for 5 days and it was non-stop fun with Andrew. I busied myself in work and hobbies, even getting a little 5k run in with Happy Dan.

On Sunday tho, I committed to touring the family around. We decided on Drumheller and the Tyrell Museum (Dinosaurs).

We were up and att’em by the stroke of 10:30 so out the door we went. Tim Horton’s for breakfast and a Coffee first, then onto the open road. It was a absolutely beautiful day with temps over 30c/86f (as hot as it gets here), and little to no clouds or wind. We took a longer route to show Granny one of our favorite places, Rosebud, and then made a quick stop at Horseshoe Canyon for her first glimpse of the Badlands that are the amazing landscape carved by the Red Deer River.

First the prairies.

Then on to the Badlands only 15 minutes further down the road.

Pretty cool. Just a small offering of what’s ahead though.

We headed down into Drumheller. The town that was built by coalmines, but now survives as a Tourist center/ Farming supply and um… well that’s about it.

Just west of town is the Royal Tyrell Museum of Palaeontology.  This is the place from the outside.

And this is the place from the inside.

Does it make you want to go? It’s a pretty incredible place. Even though it was REALLY busy, we just puddled through. It’s kind of like Ikea where you follow a predetermined route, but you do have the opportunity for many small side tours and there are lots of places to just sit and look around.

Below is a pretty cool picture. I take the Canon DSLR and get it propped up nice and secure against something, turn the flash off then just take a picture on Auto. the shutter stays open until it gathers enough light to produce a decent picture (all of the Dino shots are taken this way). Well in this one, Traci is taking a pic with her moms flash camera to the right of me and so is another person to the left of me shooting as well.

So, Andrew and Granny get set. I shoot my picture and the shutter stays open for 3.2 seconds. This 3.2 seconds is enough to get a sort of decent shot of the dinosaur. BUT. in that time, Traci has taken her flash picture resulting in the sharp, but ghosted image of Andrew and Granny. Also, about a second or two later the person to the left of me shoots a flash photo as well, getting a ghostly image of Traci to my right and a nice clear shot of the guy on my left. ALSO, you can see where the other guys flash picked up Andrew as Granny was putting him down. Very cool indeed.

I love photography. My advice to anyone wanting to get awesome shots? Shoot lots, then shoot some more! I took about 200 pics in 4 hours on this trip. Some suck, most are ok and only a few are really cool.

Like this one.

And these ones.

Spent the rest of the day driving around looking at stuff… home by 6 to have my Mom over for her birthday Cake!

A good day indeed.