Back in the Homeland for Easter

It's Easter!  Which means I have four weeks off from school.  Last Easter on my break I went lambing.  This Easter I decided to come home and do 3 weeks of clinical EMS placements.

I flew home last Saturday after an exam on Friday.  I brought my camera home because I wanted to try and see if my new learned techniques from my photo tour would help me get some nice pictures at home.  So as always, my dogs were my models.

Finally a picture of Mars with his eyes open!

They stopped mid play to look at me - notice the wild hair from rolling in the grass!

Sunday I drove to the Ottawa area with my mom.  We stopped in at my Grandma's for dinner.  I then carried on and left my mom there so she could spend the week visiting.  I headed over to a cousin's place where I am staying for three weeks while I complete my placements.

For the first week of placements I worked in the small animal hospital.  The week started off quite exciting getting to see a caesarian section on a cat.  As the week continued on I got to see a lot of really interesting cases including a foreign body removal, a couple hit by car cases and lots of different x-rays (one of which I successfully positioned and imaged myself).  They let me do quite a lot of hands on stuff as well including TPRs (Temperature, Pulse [heart rate] and respiration rate) on anesthetized animals, put in a couple catheters, take blood samples, 1.5 cat neuters and most excitingly scrub in and be an extra set of hands for the foreign body exploratory surgery.  

Since it is now officially spring I didn't think about the fact it might snow and didn't really bring any winter gear except for a pair of mittens with me.  Well that was pretty silly because Wednesday morning we woke up to quite a nice layer of snow!  Although it has pretty much all melted now.

My Wednesday morning greeting

For Good Friday and Easter Sunday I spent the time with my Grandma, my mom and my dad who drove up for the weekend.  It was nice to catch up with everyone.  I also went around and took some pictures of the barns and house at my Grandma's today because the weather was beautiful.

Monday morning I start my large animal placement for two weeks.  I get to start bright and early with a big dairy herd health visit.  So I am off to review my cow reproduction notes from last year so that I hopefully have some clue what's going on!

Pretending to be a photographer

As I mentioned before, I was super fortunate to get a new DSLR camera for Christmas.  Well for my birthday, my parents bought me a photography tour.  I decided on James Christie's photography tour because it had incredible reviews. The tour goes around Edinburgh and throughout the tour he taught you how to use the manual settings on your camera, how to compose a picture as well as gives you some history about the city.

The tour started on Calton Hill.  There, James set up your camera with his "go to" settings.  They are the manual settings he suggests to use as your starting point, and then depending on the lighting and what you are trying to photograph, you can adjust those settings.  He took us to different photo locations and each location had a goal for you to achieve.

The first picture we took was of the National Monument of Scotland.  The goal of the picture was to make sure everything was appropriately centred left to right.

Probably the bluest sky I have ever seen in one of my
own pictures - already I was impressed

The next two pictures were about applying the rule of thirds.  Essentially your image should be divided into thirds both horizontally and vertically and you should position what you are photographing accordingly.

The City Skyline

Nelson Monument

The next couple pictures were about avoiding distractors in your pictures and how to draw attention into the main object of your photo.  A lot of it was about not being lazy and walking a few extra yards to get a better angle for your shots so you didn't have things in the way.

The Burns Monument

Queen Mary's Bath House - It's unknown whether it
ever actually contained a bath!

Then we were onto a part of the tour that was not really my strong suit, abstract photography.  I have a pretty organized and less abstract mind and I think that's part of the reason I found this part really challenging.  I ended up with three photos I really liked.  Two were his suggestions for possible pictures and one was my own creation.

My attempt at abstract photography

A classic rocks shot

This is a bike rack at the Scottish Parliament.  On their own they
 are just oddly shaped places to lock up your bike, but together
 they form the shape of a bicycle.

As we continued on the tour, we built on the composition techniques he had taught us and continued to focus on finding the right location for removing distractors and capturing the buildings to their fullest extent.

The offices of the Scottish Members of
Parliament - no two windows are the same

Tolbooth Tavern

St. Giles Cathedral

Edinburgh Castle

Edinburgh Castle

James would critique every single picture you took to make sure you getting the best possible picture.  It was intimidating at first, but he was so friendly that by the end I was excited to see what he had to say.  Also, as you can see, in true Scottish fashion, the weather deteriorated as the day went on.  On the next sunny day we have (which could be weeks from now!) I want to back out and shoot some of the same spots to see what I can get.  The tour was such a fun way to learn how to better use my camera to its full potential while getting to walk around and learn some more about the city I am calling home for these four years.