Noble Street Studios. Please click on the image for a larger photo.

I will be going into the studio at the end of May to record my third project with Trevor Dick. I think the team is very excited to be tracking at Noble Street Studios. Our home for the week provides a 1,200 square foot live room, 2 isolation rooms, an SSL 4056 E/G and a great collection of preamps including Neve 1084s and 1073s. The monitors are PMC and Genelec and the studio is equipped with an impressive collection of microphones.

A friend passed me a link to this Kickstarter project. Perhaps because it has something to do with cycling.

The bicymple has no chain. A very short wheelbase. A direct-drive, freewheeling hub. It looks a bit like two unicycles fused together by two parallel top tubes although it apparently is far closer to a bicycle ride than a unicycle ride. The frame and forks are CroMo Steel. There is also an optional rear-steer mode.

The Kickstarter goal was $20,000 and Josh Bechtel has already raised over $45,000 for the project.

Interesting design.

Not that anyone should be surprised, but there is a website dedicated to bicycle design. Some really interesting machines on their site. The bicycle can be reinvented.

Click on the image for a larger photo. This was one of a series of photos that I had taken at Frontenac Park several years ago.

I received an email from someone who found the photo on another website — John McAlister. Matthew contacted me last March about some of my photos:

Hi Richard

Thanks for the quick and informative reply!

Frontenac is one of my favourite places – similar beauty to Alongquin, but not so many people know about it and it feels more isolated. I’ve got a young family (2 year old and six month old) but we are slowly building up the tradition of visiting Frontenac every summer. Perhaps a fun trip would be just my wife and I in the fall – get away for a bit and enjoy some more rugged camping!

One last question for you – I like the first photograph in the link you sent so much that I’d like to base our painting off it – we’ll definitely have some changes, like removing the grassy knoll from the foreground so that it looks a little more like a small like than, like you said, a pond, adding the canoe, and a couple of birch and white pine (although keeping it mostly hardwood/maple to preserve the Frontenac feel). I would like your permission to pass the link for the photograph on to the artist. Please let me know if this would be ok. I’d send you a link of the painting when it is done (it would likely appear on the artist’s website).

Thanks,

Matthew

And, a little more than a year later, I received another email.

Hi Richard

Hope you are well. We received the painting this weekend that was based on one of your photographs of Frontenac Park. I’ve attached a photograph that the artist took of the painting while it was still in his shop. Hope you enjoy, and appreciate the artistic liberty that was taken! If you’re interested, he also painted another similar one based on one of his preliminary sketches. I’m pretty sure it is the first painting you’ll see on this link (called My Lake View): www.richardtpranke.com. I guess some of the colouring was changed a bit – less brilliant red, but still beautiful.

Now I just need to go find the spot in the fall…

Cheers,

Matthew

I have been fortunate to see a number of my photographs used as inspiration for artists. It is such a wonderful joy to see how an artist builds on a photo. Here is the final painting based on the above photo. Click for a larger image. The artist keeps his website here.

The meeting ended a bit earlier than planned today and I had a free hour to do a bit of shooting. I went up to Graffiti Alley which is located just south of Queen Street between Spadina and Bathurst. An amazing area to take some pictures. Click on the image for a larger photo.

Locked in meetings for the next few days and evenings. I did have a chance to walk around the downtown on Sunday evening. Click on the photos for a larger image.

Lions Gate Bridge (click on the photo for a larger image).

I was reading a Gartner report on The Psychology of Serial Innovation. The report highlighted ten ways companies act to squash innovation:

• Don’t select an aspiring innovation goal
• Don’t ask people to innovate
• Don’t recognize or reward people for their contributions
• Publicly humiliate anyone who suggests something new or who tries something that fails
• Only allow creative types to innovate
• Ask for ideas but don’t act on them
• Insist that innovation projects use the same tools, business cases and methods as the rest of the business
• Wait for people to complete routine tasks before giving them time to innovate
• Make the innovation process bureaucratic and slow
• Prevent people from discussing the ideas they are trying

I then read Fast Company’s list of the most innovative companies in 2013. The top ten:

• Nike
• Amazon
• Square
• Splunk
• Fab
• Uber
• Sproxil
• Pinterest
• Safaricom
• Target

I did not know half of the companies on their top ten list.

Fast Company’s take on innovation is a bit different from Gartner: social is now a layer for everyone, software is the wow factor, data makes a big difference, and long-term investment still matters.

Harvard Business Review talks about how a company can define a managerial approach to innovation. And HBR offers a quadrant model to help choose the most appropriate approach to innovation.

There are so many definitions for innovation. Is it introducing something new? Is it radical change to products, processes or services? Is it fresh thinking that creates value? Is it incremental and continuous improvement?

Whenever I think about this topic, the Cupertino Riders come to mind. They helped to create and popularize mountain biking. From the Mountain Bike Hall of Fame:

The origins of mountain biking were totally innocent. It came into being not as some faddist vision of profit-oriented marketing types, but rather as the product of true cycling enthusiasts trying to find something new to do on two wheels. These cyclists found through fun and competition that the old one-speed klunkers they were using could be improved with modern cycling technology. One thing led to another and mountain biking “the sport” was born.

No corporate process created this innovation in cycling. True believers did. I wonder if the same is true for most examples of innovation.

Not that long ago I was shooting with an entry level Nikon camera and a cheap kit lens. I think I was able to capture some good images. The first shot above was taken in the Valley of Fire State Park in 2006 with a Nikon D50. Handheld, harsh midday sun, JPEG processing straight out of the camera. I was back there again in 2009. This time I had a much better camera, the Nikon D300. I was shooting with a tripod. And I was using a pretty good piece of glass, the 12-24 f4 zoom wide angle. If you click on the images for a larger picture, you will probably notice some differences in image quality. But candidly, I wonder how much of the difference is associated with better technique and more creative skill behind the camera. Both images are pictures of big rocks. The first one seems a bit flat to me and the second one seems to have made better use of the light.

I really have to remind myself when I travel that as much as I might debate the choice of camera body and the lens, or lenses, that I might take along with me, that a good photograph is so much more than the equipment in hand. Yes, I would love to travel with my full rig but I cannot carry all of that gear when I fly. A decent body with a couple of primes is likely all I need.

But I am still looking at which lens to take to Europe this summer.

At least I have three more months to decide.

It was the coldest of rides,
It was the warmest of rides,
It was the age of the rider,
It was the time of the year,
It was the epoch of pain,
It was the epoch of even more pain,
It was the season of Colnago,
It was the season of Campagnolo,
It was the spring of hope,
After a winter of indoor spinning.

Extreme weather changes make it so difficult to plan outdoor rides during this time of year. Friday, the bike computer tracked a high of 7 degrees and the wind chill did feel more like 4 degrees. Perhaps even colder. And Sunday? Well, it became summer. At least for a day. The bike computer tracked 18 degrees for the day but I think it was actually warmer.

Friday’s wind chill had its way with my back and I suffered through a pretty severe bout of spinal pain. Fortunately it cleared up very quickly. Two days later and I was back riding for several hours in the beautiful sunshine.