I need a shave!

It's that time of year again!

June 18th and 19th will be my third year participating in the Canadian Cancer Society's Relay for Life in Orleans, Ontario.

The Relay for Life is an overnight non-competitive relay that celebrates cancer survivors and pays tribute to loved ones. It's a night of fun, friendship and fundraising to beat cancer.

Thanks to your generosity last year I achieved my goal and, as a result, I shaved my head. It was a lot of fun and I would do it again... but where’s the fun in that?

Last year I set two goals. The first was to reach $1,000 and I would shave my head. The second was to also shave my face (moustache and goatee) if I reached $2,000. I didn't reach that second goal so I got to keep my facial hair.

I've had my facial hair for a long time and I’ve kinda grown attached to it. :) In fact, my kids (14 and 11 years old) have never seen me without my moustache. I have friends who have also not seen me without it.

So. here's the plan for this year:

I set my goal at $1,500.

$1,500 will let me shock my kids with a clean-shaven face.

I have approximately 4½ months to reach my goal. Want to help and support a great cause?

Visit here http://convio.cancer.ca/goto/scottpaterson

Or click the SUPPORT ME button on the left column of my Facebook profile.

Like they say, every dollar helps. That’s a fact.

Thank you for reading!

(P.S. if you have any better ideas that aren't painful, extremely embarrassing, or illegal, feel free to suggest them!) :)

Smoke photography

I am inspired by Photocritic.org’s smoke photography collection.

One tiny problem. Ok, maybe two.

I don’t have a remote flash for my camera, nor do I have a stand for my SpeedLite 380ex flash. I don’t think the 380 would work with a remote anyway.

But, after studying the photos and the setup, I realize that I may not need either.

What if I set up the camera and “smoking device” in a similar manner and then switched the camera to bulb exposure mode. With my infrared shutter remote in hand, turned off the lights in the room, stood off to the side, triggered the shutter and then fired the flash test mode?

Would that work?

Hmm… another photography project on my To Do list.

One year later

One year ago today I quit smoking. I am still nicotine-free.

I was going to write more about it but I’ve written enough before. If you want quit and would like to know what worked for me, click here for a previous post.

Oh ya… congrats to me! :)

Week 24 - Concentration

Concentration
Originally uploaded by Twister65

Tough choice this week. I had a few photos to choose from an decided on this one.

Another shot taken with my 50mm. I really like this lens and I so like B&W photos.

This is my daughter playing Lego Star Wars on my XBox earlier this week. She was so into the game, she hardly noticed me snapping away with my camera.

Week 23 - Feeed meee!

Feeed meee! (23/52)
Originally uploaded by Twister65

I had plenty of photos to choose from for this week, but I figured that seeing pictures of our stairs being stripped of carpet, scraped and sanded wouldn't be too interesting. :)

So, here's our cat, Sam, once again gracing my blog. I bought a 50mm f1.8 lens off a seller on Ebay earlier in the week and it arrived on Friday. While testing it out, Sam decided she wanted to be fed and was quite vocal about it. I couldn't pass on the opportunity to snap a shot or two.

Week 22 - Red Squirrel

Red Squirrel (22/52)
Originally uploaded by Twister65

A fairly easy choice for this week's choice for my Project 52, although one of my recent B&W shots was a possibility.

We had put our Christmas tree out in the back yard, leaning up against our shed. I remember making a comment at the time that I'd better not find any squirrels making a home in it.

I was off work on the Monday, alone at home, and puttering around with my camera when I heard what I thought were birds at the bird feeder. I peeked out the back door window and saw this red squirrel running around inside the tree branches, snacking on small pine cone buds. He definitely saw me, and was only about 4 feet away. There was no way I could open the door to take the shot, so I poked the lens through the blind and snapped a few.

The only thing I did to this photo was crop it and increase the saturation a little to bring out the squirrels colour a little more.

I'm really pleased with how it turned out.

Beige? White? Hot pink?

At some point this afternoon, Facebook statuses started appearing with a single word. That word was a colour. Any colour.

I was puzzled. What’s with all the status colours?

I did a little searching and found the reason.

Women on Facebook were changing their status to the colour of bra they were wearing to raise awareness for Breast Cancer.

Cute. Fun. Many status comments were hilarious. Some guys had fun with it, posting the colour of their underwear. Or the fictitious bra they were wearing to hold their “moobs”.

Some other guys, like me, were puzzled. And some, when they found out what it was for, thought it was “useless”, or “retarded”. They said that it did nothing. It was no different than a chain letter.

I questioned this.

How could this be useless?

They asked what it was for. I knew, and I told them. By asking what it was for, they proved that it worked. It raised awareness.

The debate began.

I argued that it’s comparable to… wearing a pink ribbon. Or, wearing a poppy. Neither of those is a waste of time. They both serve a purpose. They raise awareness.

It was said that those two are different because they raise money for charities.

True, they do, but by us wearing them they also RAISE AWARENESS for those charities. What other purpose do they serve? A thank you? Sure. If you want to say that their sole purpose is to raise money, then wouldn’t it be a better idea to take the money spent on those little ribbons and use the money for the charity?

Perhaps. In fact, I could argue that a Facebook status is better than a ribbon, or a poppy because it costs nothing.

It is impossible for a charity to raise money without raising awareness first. If you know how, speak up. I’m sure they’d love to hear it.

By giving you something in return for your donation, and you wearing it, you are helping to raise awareness so more donations come in.

It’s silly to think that nobody has ever heard of breast cancer.   But awareness isn’t just about telling you something you’ve never heard of.  It’s about making you think about it, regardless of whether you’ve heard about it before.

I really makes me sad to think that some people think it was a dumb idea. A waste of time. That it served no purpose.

If one person made a donation as a result of those “useless” and “retarded” bra colour status, then wasn’t it worth the effort? Did it not raise awareness?

I proved that it worked. I made donation this evening to the Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation.

I now challenge you to do the same. Doing nothing is useless.

Canadian Breast Cancer Foundation

American Breast Cancer Foundation

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