AVC Blue Coat Ceremony

I've officially been inducted into the Atlantic Veterinary College class of 2011!! The blue coat supper and ceremony was really well done. The food was so good :) I got a good faculty mentor who was very nice, and should be helpful since she teaches Gross Anatomy (one of the "harder" courses) to first year.

Our class had fun earlier in the day playing various team building games in the gym. The final activity was to make something to protect an egg being dropped and come up with a skit for an advertisement. And our egg did not break! We were only able to use one paper plae, 10 straws, a balloon, and a strip of tape. Remarkably only one out of 5 eggs broke!

Here are some pictures of the blue coat ceremony:

PEI

I've been on the island for a few days now. And I still haven't gotten my apartment sorted out! I've been running around doing errands for school. But I took yesterday afternoon and went to Brackley Beach!

It was a lovely day about 20 degrees and sunny, without much of a breeze. The water temperature was 18 degrees!! I brought along my camera and manual to practise a few things. Here are a few that I captured:

Almost time to move!

I finished my last day at work today, which went rather smoothly. I am happy to be moving on to school, but a bit sad to be leaving some of my coworkers behind. But who knows, I may see them again :)

I made a quick stop at Canadian Tire to pick up a floor lamp, since my living room and bedroom don't have ceiling lighting... and I only had one lamp. Then it was off to St. Andrews for the weekend. I got to see my relatives from Ontario before they headed back home, and most exciting was to see my new baby... Rebel XTi.

It certainly has some growing to do, but it is a nice start to a hobby I know I'll enjoy for many years to come. I was pleased with everything it came with and the condition. It will take me a while of fiddling before I am comfortable with all of the features. The kit lens is, as I suspected, not so great indoors. Which is fine, since I am mostly interested in outdoor shots. I was able to get some better lighting from a window, and captured a couple half decent ones of Cody.




I have researched a bit for telephoto lenses and have decided I would need a zoom of 300mm for the type of horse and riding shots I like to take. This would be half decent for "wildlife/nature" shots, but certainly not super. Anything more than 300mm would probably cost more than my Macbook. LOL The Canon 70-300mm IS USM would be ideal, the optics are great and the reviews are positive. The lessor quality lenses from 75-300mm have poor reviews, unfortunately, since the price is more "reasonable". The Sigma brand of lenses makes them mountabe for Canon camera bodies, and the prices tend to be slightly lower. However the telephoto range I'm looking at does not seem to have any reviews online, which would make me a bit cautious. I'm going to have to dig deeper and do more reading so I understand all the mumbo-jumbo better.

Be prepared for picture bombardment over the next little while!

Last week

I am finally in my last week of work! Not that it has been horrible, but I am very excited to move to PEI and into my new apartment... and start vet school :)

I also recently splurged on a Canon Rebel XTi... it is a digital SLR camera that will get me into some trouble taking up my time :) Luckily for me it only comes with the standard kit lens so I will be limited in my scope of photo taking abilities 1st semester. I am reading up on lenses... it is all very confusing. There are so many choices and I'm not sure what I want (other than a big zoom lens) Hehe. Lots of time to figure it out though.

I went home last weekend to visit with family. My Aunt, Uncle & family were down visting from Ontario. It was nice to get to be home and see them. On Sunday we went to Kingsbrae Gardens, and I took advantage of Dad's camera being handy! Here are a few shots:












And finally my little man, Cody. He's been a bit of a pain to mom and dad over the summer. I will (and I'm sure mom and dad will) be happy to get him back with me next week. I miss his annoying meows and love bites. :)

MQHA Summer Sizzler Day 1 & 3

This past long weekend in August was the traditional 4 day Quarter Horse show in Sussex, NB. With almost 100 horses stabled for the weekend, and thousands of dollars in prize money, this was the weekend to be there! I was able to attend 2 days of the show along with my Dad's camera on loan :) I was pretty happy with the results of my photo shoots... day one was about 400 pictures and day 3 was about 600 pictures.

Friday was almost unbearably hot in the mid 30's wih no cloud cover. I was feeling the heat, but I felt worse for the horses and riders all dressed up and working their butts off. Not the most pleasant feeling I'm sure! The riding rings were very dusty, and with so many horses it could be hard to take a clear shot. Editing pictures helped some with the clouds of dust, but there were several pictures that would have been great if it weren't for the clouds of dust surrounding the subjects.










Sunday's weather was much more pleasant with temps in the low 20's with a nice breeze and partly cloudy. It was still very dusty in the rings, but I managed to take more pictures this day :)