More Glimpses of Europe : Vienna, Venice, and More

We passed through Wien (Vienna), Austria, where we visited and toured the beautiful Schoenbrunn Castle.  Again, photos were not allowed inside the tour, but even these mostly exterior photos hint at the grandeur of the castle :

We stayed three nights in Meste, just a short bus ride from Venezia (Venice), Italy.  Two days in Venezia was not nearly enough to see it all, but we got a pretty good flavour of the city, and visited many interesting shops too.  Here are some of the classic Venice views :

 

The highlight of Venezia for me was the San Marco Piazza.  It was crowded, noisy, the restaurant where we enjoyed sitting on the plaza was too expensive, but the architecture was gorgeous.  These samples don't come close to expressing the many wonderful views :

I really liked this image of Adam and Eve and the serpent in the Garden.  You can see the finger pointing so clearly.  "It wasn't my fault, it was the woman who gave it to me."  "It wasn't my fault, it was the serpent who deceived me."

Finally for today, another beautiful cathedral, the Saint Jacob's Church which we visited in Brno, Czech Republic :

Stay tuned for a few more photos when I next have the opportunity to organize and post.

Glimpses of Europe : Dragons, Cathedrals, Cobblestones and Castles

Our family had the wonderful privilege to take a 3 week vacation in Europe, returning this past weekend.  It was my first time, as it was for the kids.  We ended up visiting 6 countries, spending a good part of our time in the Czech Republic, where my husband comes from.  I amused myself by taking about 1400 photos during our trip, of which I hope to share a small sampling.

It's hard to know where to start, since there was so much to see.  We visited a number of beautiful cathedrals.  This one is Katedrala Svate Barbory (Cathedral of Saint Barbara) in Kutna Hora, Czech Republic (not far from Praha) :

This one is the Saint Vitus Cathedral in the Prague Castle :

I am fascinated by dragons, so was pleased to see a number of statues and images of dragons, many of them featuring Saint George slaying a dragon.  The dragon at top, who is dismayed that a pigeon is sitting on his nose, is from Klagenfurt, Austria :

I was also amused by the many buildings in the Czech Republic which appeared to be held up by statues, many of them with anguished or strained looks on their faces.  After all, it is heavy work to hold up a stone building :

The timing of the trip was fortunate for me, in that it was eight weeks after my nasty ankle sprain, so I was pretty much back to walking normally, navigating stairs, and mostly without pain.  None too soon, since the walking surfaces were quite challenging, with cobblestones featured in most of the roads and sidewalks in the Czech republic, and even in some of the other countries we visited.  Here is a sampling of some of the surfaces on which we trod :

In the Czech Republic, the castles were classified as either a Hrad (fortress), evoking scenes of great sieges and battles, or a Zamek (chateau), displaying elaborate exterior and interior decor, often with grand formal gardens and collections of unique and now ancient trees.  We visited a number of both types.  To my dismay, the zamek could only be visited by guided tour, and photos were not allowed, so I only have the images in my memory, which make my otherwise grand house seem rather plain in comparison.

The boys preferred the hrads, which usually involved some hiking to access. This is the Hrad Spilberk in Brno, CZ.  It was built in the 13th century, withstood a three month siege by the Swedish army in the 17th century, and has been modified and used as a prison at various stages of its history (for a more extensive historical description, see the Spilberk Castle website).  We walked through the dark, damp and very dreary dungeon which served as prison cells for large groups of prisoners :

I'll share more photos when I next have the opportunity.

Mosaic Monday : Fairy House

I received encouraging comments on the recent photo of my little fairy house, which has survived 3 years now in the garden, with incredible durability, since I built and installed it there in May 2008. So I have assembled a mosaic of photos over the years (click the mosaic for a slightly larger view).

I wish I could have found the photo from three winters ago, when it was completely covered in a mound of snow. See this post, which shows it just prior to being buried.

Pop over to Little Red House for more of this week's Monday Mosaics.

Colour Mosaic Monday : Black

I almost forgot, this is the last colour - black - in the series at unglazed.  I'm going to miss that series - thanks so much to Jen for hosting!

The colour black made me think of the Orca whale watching expedition my husband and I joined in Victoria BC, when passing through on our anniversary cruise 1 1/2 years ago.  This photo mosaic looks a bit like a series of 3 postcards.

I really like the photo with the boat.  We were that close at times, too, so maybe they got such a neat photo of us in our bright orange zodiac too.  Exciting!  The bottom photo shows 3 dorsal fins.  The tall one apparently belonged to a juvenile male.  The other two to his mother, and sibling (too young to be sure if a brother or sister).  For more photos of that cruise and excursion, see this post from May 2009.

The colour black also made me think of my dear curly-haired rat Jenny.  Here she is shortly after bringing her home.  She's quite a bit bigger now, but just as sweet.

I know that to anyone who has not experienced a pet rat, it sounds very strange, but we have been amazed at how clean and fun and gentle and affectionate our pet rats have turned out to be.  They are truly the hidden secret of the pet world - very much like puppies in rodent bodies.  If only they didn't have that tail which is a turn-off for most people.

Colour Mosaic : Brown

When Jen at unglazed suggested Brown as one of the colour themes, I didn't think there would be much to show - at least not from my garden. But when I browsed through my photos, I found a number of brown-themed ones which amused me, which I've combined into a mosaic (click image for a larger view):

In the mix you'll find bison from a nearby farm in Agassiz, BC, some of my homemade chilli and ginger chocolates, a campfire cake I made for my daughter's 10th birthday, a photo of my asian pear tree espaliered against the fence, a closeup of a wasp's nest, and a photo of our rat Sam when she was a little baby.

Colour Mosaic Monday : Purple

I was feeling too tired tonight, but I couldn't resist creating a purple mosaic for both Mosaic Monday at Little Red House and Jen's Purple Theme this week at unglazed.

Purple is one of the favourites in my garden, where all but one of these photos - can you guess which one? - are from my garden (click the image for a larger view).

Late Colour Mosaic : GREEN

Before I left for vacation last Sunday, I prepared my green mosaics and emailed them to myself, so I would be able to pick them up on my laptop, and join the colour theme at Jen's unglazed blog.  But as technology would have it, the email didn't make it out of my Outbox before I left.  So I'm posting them anyhow, and hopefully they will provide some enjoyment or amusement to someone.

This mosaic is a combination of wildflowers from some of our trips, as well as greenery from my garden:

My second blog is a combination of photos from a trip to Disneyland and Universal Studios a couple of years ago, as well as my daughter with Sumi, one of the mascots from the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver:

Colour Mosaic Monday : ORANGE

I recently stumbled across Jen's 8 week Crayola Colour meme on her unglazed blog, and decided to participate.  I missed last week's theme of RED, but I am happy to join in for some Orange photos today.

The following is a mosaic of flowers from my garden, including daylilies, asiatic lilies, and martagon lilies (given to me by my Taiwanese friend Lily, whose mom grows them in her garden and eats the bulbs - myself, I find them far too pretty to think about eating them!):

The other orange mosaic is a miscellany of non-garden photos, including the kids wearing their bright orange vests on a canoe adventure last year across the Barnet Inlet to Indian Arm, a little pumpkin I prepared at Hallowe'en, some golden raspberries (okay, those are from my garden!), and a house sparrow (see the bottom of the "W") who found a great nest location in the safety of a Mark's Work WearHouse sign:

Today is also Mosaic Monday hosted by Mary at the Little Red House.  Enjoy!

More Wildflowers at Mt Hood

As promised, I am posting more wildflower photos from our trip to Mt Hood.

Trilliums:

Cornus canadensis (Bunchberry or Perennial Dogwood):

Adiantum aleuticum (Western Maidenhair Fern):

Other native wildflowers:

And finally, one of the kids at the fishing dock at Trillium Lake was pulling up salamanders by the bucketful, using only a line with a worm attached to it.  I couldn't resist to pull one out to get a better look and a photo:

It seems that this may be a species of Taricha, or Western Newt.  Apparently they produce toxins, including in their skin, but I didn't feel anything.  It was adorable.  I would have picked it up even if it irritated my skin.

For more lovely mosaics this week, visit Little Red House.

Bear Grass Surprise at Mt Hood, OR

Our family just returned tonight from a wonderful 4 night vacation near Mt Hood, Oregon.  We spent some time hiking, visiting various waterfalls and lakes and other viewpoints, and relaxing at the Mount Hood Resort, mini-golfing, playing tennis, and enjoying some wonderful spa treatments.

Most of the native plants and wildflowers were quite familiar to me, theirs being a very similar climate to ours along the west coast of BC.  But one which I had never seen before, and which really impressed me, was the Bear Grass (Xerophyllum tenax), as featured in the following mosaic.  It was my husband who first spotted the white spider (Goldenrod Crab Spider or Misumena vatia) hiding in one of the blooms (rightmost photo), successful at catching an unsuspecting visitor.  After that, we found many of the blooms inhabited by that spider, many of them successful also.  Click the photo mosaic for a larger view.

I took many photos of the native plants along the trails, including trilliums, Cornus canadensis (bunchberry), Adiantum aleuticum (western maidenhair fern), and the beautiful pink rhododendrons which grew wild in the forests near the base of Mt Hood.  I hope to post more photos soon, but since it's after midnight, it will need to wait for another day.

For more photo mosaics, be sure to visit this week's Mosaic Monday at Little Red House.

Rainbow Mosaic Header

After waiting more than 4 years to create my first header, a photo collage from my garden....

...only weeks later, I am experimenting with a replacement header (click for full-size image):

This one a photo-mosaic made from my garden photos, in rainbow colours. I'm not sure I like this one better, though, it is not as vibrant, nor does it contain as many of my "favourite things". What do you think?

Fun with Mosaics and Collages

I am very excited to be playing with (free!) photo mosaic software, and creating images such as this photo of my son David, made up of 1000 tiles of little David images.  Pretty cool (click the image for a larger view, and also roll back a distance from the computer to see the overall image):

Created by AndreaMosaic.

The first time I think I saw a photo mosaic like this, was in 2006 in Disneyland.  They had some beautiful mosaics, such as this one of Walt Disney with his famous Mickey Mouse, made up of tiny Disney character drawings and images:

I remember thinking at the time that I would love to one day make a mosaic like that, and maybe there would be software available to help.

Recently, I have been inspired by many bloggers who create wonderful photo mosaics (which are really more like photo collages), many of who participate in Mosaic Monday at Little Red House.  My first attempt at such a collage was through Photoshop, but that was painful and time-consuming.  Then I was told about the Mosaic Maker at Big Huge Labs, and was able to create mosaics more easily and successfully, but the interface still left me frustrated, especially controlling which image would be placed where.

Then I heard that Google's Picasa was useful for creating mosaics.  I don't know why I hadn't tried Picasa yet, since I am a big Google fan, and my husband has been urging me for years to get some software for photo organization (I currently save them in folders named by date - usually month - and topic, but it is a painful process to go back and find anything from previous years).  Since Picasa is free (that price is right!) I decided to try it.  I was not prepared for what I would discover, and have yet to discover in the days to come.

Picasa is the most amazing software.  After I downloaded it, it proceeded to search through all my folders, including connected network folders, to find and index (it doesn't actually move the photos, just index them) all sorts of images which I didn't remember that I had (and certainly not where!).  The result is a set of thumbnails which are organized by date and folder name, and can be scrolled through very quickly to see the images.

Then it started on the face recognition.  Oh my!  It automatically locates all the faces in the photos it indexes, and allows you to name them.  Once you identify the first few people in the face images, it uses feature recognition (oh my goodness, I know this is possible, but this was very amazing for a free program!) to categorize other images of faces that are similar.  The interface is very easy to use.  As it finds faces and guesses who they are, you can click Yes or No and correct it with a different name where it goes wrong, or tell it that you don't want that face named at all (e.g. it will find each separate face in a choir).  The success rate was incredibly high, well over 95% correct.  As it learns which faces are which, it gets better and better at classifying, and automatically classifies from the remaining faces.

I left it chugging away for hours, and checked on it occasionally to correct it.  The results are presented as thumbnails in "folders", one for each person you wish to name.  For example, within hours, it had assembled 1,600 photos of my daughter April and 1,200 photos of my son David.  Each face is presented as a thumbnail image (see sample below of 9 photos from David's 1,200 photos), and from that image, you can easily click to see the whole photo, including Picasa's list of who else is in the photo (which you can update if any names are incorrect), and you can click to go to the image in the original folder.  You can select the entire "folder" or images in the "folder", and export either just the face images only, or the full images, to a specified folder on your computer.

When I saw this, I immediately saw the potential of photo mosaics made up of the little faces.  Sadly, Picasa has a mosaic feature but it is the photo collages, not photo mosaics.  Having said that, the collages were very easy to use, and allowed not only images and collage shapes to be specified, but it was easy to drag the photos around, and the software rearranged them accordingly.

But it wasn't hard to find some free (creditware) mosaic software - AndreaMosaic - which received good reviews, and for very good reason.

AndreaMosaic allows you to specify the primary image, and then a folder of other images which will be combined together in a mosaic to create the primary image.  There are a number of other parameters you can specify, such as how many tiles and in what pattern, what orientations of the images you will allow, what colour variations are allowed to make it a better fit, how many times the same image can repeat, etc (see below):

When I first clicked "Create Mosaic" I didn't believe it worked, since it took only seconds to prepare the mosaic, even the one with 1,000 tiles shown at the top of this post.  Even when I increased to 10,000 tiles, it took less than 1 minute to create the image (below):

Created by AndreaMosaic.

At this number of tiles, it takes very close examination to see that those are 10,000 tiny images of David.

Pretty cool. I think this has potential to keep me busy for many many hours. I can't wait for the next opportunity to play a bit more.

PS. Couldn't help but come back and create one mosaic of my daughter April, using this image of her in a floral wreath crown she created, back in July 2007:

Here it is, in 1,000 tiles.  Again, click for larger image, then step back from the computer to view:

Mosaic Monday : Whistler BC

Our family just returned from a 5 day escape to Whistler BC.  My husband attended a conference there, the kids enjoyed two days of snowboarding lessons, and I strolled about the Village, and spent the afternoons and evenings swimming in the beautiful indoor/outdoor pool of the Fairmont Chateau Whistler.  Yes, it was hard to come back.

Here is a "postcard" mosaic : Lost Lake; view from our balcony of the pool with 3 hot tubs (1 more inside!), putting greens and Wizard Express chair up Blackcomb mountain; the family at the Blackcomb Gondola in the Village; and funky photo of my daughter, taken by my son.

After the conference ended, we took the kids to try out the Monkido adventure course, which was a real blast.  I was somewhat relieved that my son was 1 inch short of the adult course, so he did the kids course, and then I needed to stay down with him and watch my husband and daughter show us how it's done on the adult course.  I don't think I'm in that kind of physical condition at the moment.

On the way home, we stopped to look out at the beautiful Brandywine falls, and admire the mossy forest in the area.  This cheery yellow violet caught my eye.

For more photo mosaics, be sure to visit Little Red House this week.

April 2010 Garden Mosaic

I have been following with delight the wonderful mosaics hosted by Mary at little red house, and thanks to Mary for recommending to me the Mosaic Maker at Big Huge Labs, I have now given it a try.  This is a sampling of April blossoms from my garden.  Enjoy!

For more wonderful mosaics posted this week, see this post.

Note that with a free membership at Big Huge Labs, you don't need to have a Flickr account, you can upload photos directly from your computer, and also save them for future mosaics.