The Blue Brick | Photography and Handcrafts by Shireen Nadir

Tito socks done!

Published May 16, 2013 Knitting 5 Comments
Tags: knitting, Purl Soho, socks, Sporty Striped Peds

Pattern is the ever-reliable (and now memorized) Sporty Striped Peds from Purl Soho.

Shodan doesn’t seem impressed. That’s ok.

Photo Restoration and the Sacred Junk Room

Published May 15, 2013 Life , Photography Leave a Comment
Tags: family, life, photo restoration, photography

Every Mother’s and Father’s Day I have the honour of celebrating 2 sets of parents – my actual parents and my parents best friends, who predate my existence by quite a bit.

They are a fixture of every family event, where after a few drinks they’ll tell the same stories time and time again. Great stories, accumulated over 40 years of friendship. My aunt (I call them aunt and uncle) is very fond of telling me that my first act in this world was to make my mom vomit all over her.

They have a 3 bedroom condo, divided into an office, a bedroom, and a junk room. When I was a kid the junk room was my haven – stacks of National Geographic back-issues, boxes of mysterious things, from little figurines to marbles, I spent a giant chunk of my childhood in there. When, on occasion, my uncle was supposed to clean the junk room out he’d simply swap it with the office, so ‘my’ junk room would still be there when I came over.

For Mother’s Day this year I restored a childhood photo of my aunt – a photo that is now more than 60 years old.

I gave it to her on Sunday, so happy with the results!

Lee Filter Big Stopper

Published May 13, 2013 Photography , Travels 2 Comments
Tags: Balls Falls, Big Stopper, canon 7d, Hamilton, Lee Filter, Niagara Escarpment, photography, waterfall

I took a new toy to the escarpment on the weekend – the Lee Filter Big Stopper. The Big Stopper is a lens filter that drops your exposure by 10 stops, allowing for much longer exposures even in bright sunlight. Long exposures make for some great special effects, and waterfalls were an obvious place to start playing.

Here’s an example where I left all settings the same except for the exposure length. The Big Stopper comes with a handy little card that helps you calculate what the exposure length should be, based on what you metered for without the filter on. You double the exposure length 10 times – so in the example below, 1/60 of a second became 15 seconds.

I still felt the results were a bit underexposed, so in the next example I’ve added 5 seconds to their recommended length for a 20 second exposure.

After that I started playing with showing as much contrast as I could. In the 2 examples below you can see that exposure length, ISO and aperture have all been altered to show a nice contrast between the short and long shutter shots.

I also played with layering my 0.9 graduated neutral density filter on top – to great effect. In the top shot below you can see that the shadow on the right is cutting the shot in half. In the bottom shot I’ve got the big stopper on, plus the graduated filter rotated and moved so it just covers the areas at the right and top. With very little processing you can see the result is a much more balanced exposure.

My only 2 concerns are both minor – the first is that, despite the foam lining on the Big Stopper there is still definitely light-bleed. This will be an issue if I ever go for a really long, say 30 minute exposure. Easily solved with a little electric tape. The second concern is that, despite it being a neutral density filter, there is a definite colour cast. Because I shoot exclusively in RAW however, this is easily corrected in lightroom.

Can’t wait to take this to the coast :) Here are some of my favourite long exposure results from the weekend!

Balls Falls Conservation Area

Published May 12, 2013 Photography , Travels 1 Comment
Tags: Balls Falls, Big Stopper, Hamilton, Lee Filter, photography, Waterfalls

I’ve got a new toy :) It’s the Lee Filter Big Stopper, and it deserves it’s own post. We took it out to wine country yesterday to test-drive it – it really shines when used with running water and where better to go than the Escarpment, which boasts more waterfalls than anywhere else in the world?

These photos were all taken at the Balls Fall Conservation Area (which also boasts a solid sense of humour, being down the road from a place called ‘Pecker’s Point’). We climbed down and shot both the lower and upper falls. The hike in between is lovely, shady, and filled with boulders and magical green light. New gear, out on the escarpment with Tito, great weather and waterfalls. Only blueberry pie could have made the day better :)

Pinterest Cookie – Nailed it.

Published May 10, 2013 Life 1 Comment
Tags: cookies, life, The Ambitious Kitchen

I won’t lie – they’re not even a little bit good for you. Not even if you ate them on, say, a bed of spinach. But….wow.

They are chocolate chip, peanut butter, sea salt cookies. Easy. Tasty. Best cookies ever.

I found them on Pinterest, which links to this amazing site; The Ambitious Kitchen. I definitely recommend giving the site a look – there is some yummy looking stuff in there that I plan to try next! In the meantime – here’s their recipe for these amazing cookies:

Ingredients

11/4 cup all purpose flour
3/4 teaspoon baking soda
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon sea salt, plus more for sprinkling
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter at room temperature
3/4 cup dark brown sugar
1/4 cup granulated sugar
1/2 tablespoon honey
1 egg plus 1 egg yolk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon plain greek yogurt or sour cream
1 1/2 cups chocolate chips (I used mini chocolate chips)

Instructions

In a large bowl, combine the flour, the baking soda, the baking powder, and the salt. Set aside.
With an electric mixer, mix the softened butter and peanut butter together until thoroughly blended. Add the sugars and beat until smooth. Next beat in the egg, honey, vanilla, and yogurt until combined. Add the dry ingredients slowly and beat on low-speed just until combined. Gently stir in the chocolate chips. Chill dough in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes-1 hour, or place in freezer for 20 minutes.
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Once ready to bake, roll dough into 1-inch balls and place onto ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 9-12 minutes (depends on size of your cookie) or until cookies begin to turn a tiny golden brown and crisp up around the edges. Do not overbake! Remove from oven and let cool on cookie sheet for 3-5 minutes and sprinkle cookies generously with sea salt. Transfer to wire rack to cool completely or just inhale them like I do. Repeat with remaining dough.

Notes

-Cookies may appear underdone in the middle, but they will become more firm as they cool. It’s important to allow them to cool a few minutes before removing them from cookie sheet. -You may require less or more baking time depending on the size of your cookie. -If you are using all-natural peanut butter, try adding in another 1/2 tablespoon of flour, as cookies tend to spread too thin when baking with all-natural peanut butter.

Aurora Roving in Progress

Published May 9, 2013 Knitting , Spinning 2 Comments
Tags: aurora, Inglenook, Leslie Ordal, roving, spinning

Remember this lovely thing? It’s finally being spun, and by someone who knows what they’re about no less.

That person is not Mouffette, though she is clearly instrumental in the process.

It’s being worked up by the immensely talented Leslie Ordal, with an eye to keeping the different colour sections intact. It’s already looking pretty delicious – we (I say ‘we’ as though I am helpful somehow) are aiming for a 3 ply fingering weight yarn.

The plan is to knit this into something for my neck, something that will benefit from these gently shifting gradients, and something that I shall proudly wear when I finally hit the arctic and fulfill my bucket list item of shooting the aurora from further north than Sault Ste. Marie :)

I haven’t decided what that something is yet though, and I’m open to suggestions!