As promised here are the pics of the Northern Lights.



An HDR of the lights i was able to get

TTYL
M&N

I just thought all you faithful readers would like to see another one of my newest ink pieces finished. This is another that has taken forever, thankfully it's done. Anyway here it is.

Tonight i made it out with Claus in some seriously cold weather, not to mention a pretty strong wind. We toughed it out and were rewarded with some nice northern lights. I'll post them at some point tomorrow so you can have a look.

Thats all for now
TTYL
M&N

Today was the Grey Cup and with that comes the on set of Christmas decorating time. This weekend has been rather relaxing for me (Nicole) as Friday night I relaxed while Michael was out helping Donald with a Skidoo until about 1:30am, yesterday we took it pretty easy and enjoyed a great night of games at Roy and Florence's (new grade 8 teacher and her husband). And today was Christmas decorating followed by a lovely evening dinner and music time.

Here are a few pics of our Christmas decorations, it's not a whole lot but we enjoy them and it truly gets us quite excited to be coming home and hopefully seeing most of our friends and family. P.S. If you want to see us we'll be home from Dec 20th (won't be in until late that night) till Jan 3rd (fly out Jan 4th from Ottawa at 9am).

Here is our tree, this is now the third year that we've used this awesome tree that Mike created:

Our lights around the windows:

Our banister into the kitchen from the living room:

And the others:

And this is us tonight relaxing after our day of decorating and evening of feasting and music playing:

Oh and we got out on my first "ride" on the snowmobile today around town, it was cold LOL!!

Hope everyone had a great weekend!
ttyl
M&N

Again not much to tell, but i thought you might like to see a shot of the sunset we had the other day. By the way this was shot somewhere around 2:00pm. The days are getting really short now, I wish there was more to tell. Maybe in the next few days there will be something worth talking about.

TTYL
M&N

Man we are boring...Nic and I really didn't get up to anything this weekend. So there really isn't anything to tell you all about. The weather hasn't been all that nice as of late so I haven't even gone out for a walk.

But as per usual I was still taking pictures...

Here's three of the shots that i think turned out pretty nice.

The next door neighbor's dog resting by a komatick. Sadly that is the closest he will ever get to pulling it, as he is strictly a pet.

Maybe this outboard engine needs a tarp???

This one here i thought was cool. It is an extreme closeup of Nics eye. I sharpened the picture and added a bit more blue to her eyes. It's a view that i think few people will ever see of the human eye.

I'll try and get up to something interesting in the next few days so i will have something to talk about.

TTYL
M&N

Hello Down there. I wish we had something interesting to tell you but sadly I do not. The only news is my web page has gone through a massive overhaul ( Thanks Ryan ) www.michaelhdavies.com. I have also finished another commission that I have been working on for what feels like weeks.

There was a man in town a while ago who was turning 60 years old. He celebrated his Birthday on the 60th longitude and the 60th Latitude. It was pretty neat to think we hit the exact parallel which was quite a ways out to sea. After a examination of the Gps we realized that in fact we had not got to the exact crossing. Due to really high waves we were as close as we could get and had to turn back. At the same time we were at that crossing he had a team in Russia at the other one, that's one elaborate birthday party. To commemorate the occasion he asked me to draw his portrait. This is the piece that I have been working on and finally finished today.

Sorry there's not more to tell
Maybe more in the next few days

TTYL
M&N

Well the last ship of the year has come and gone. When I was watching the ice conditions I had my doubts if it would be able to make it in. Then I heard the ship brought one of the coast gaurd's ice breakers along with it to cut a path. I was quite sure then it would arrive. As luck would have it the Ice breaker was not need so it stayed anchored outside of our fjord and the ship came in by itself. When it arrived I saw a site that i didn't think I would ever see.

A snowmobile actually went out and met the ship as it came in. Apparently the ice is thick enough to drive a sled on so safe for walking, I was told anyway. I was not willing to test it out even though I probably would have been fine.
The ship was here to pick up and drop off fish from the plant here in town. My next thought as i saw the ship was how the heck was the pick up and drop off actually going to happen. Again there was an answer...

Looks stuck right?. Well with a pit of full throttle from the outboards and a long pole the little boats were able to break free. Travelling down a previously hacked open channel to the ship.

Off it goes for a load

Again a snowmobile went out with to the ship. I was pretty happy to get this shot. A boat a ship and a sled all on ice or in it.

This is just an Hdr that turned out quite well

I thought you might enjoy this shot, The old way and the new way.

Nicole decided this weekend to try out something out new with her hair. I like it a lot, and so does she. Last night i woke up in the middle of the night and rolled over and got scared half to death because I had forgotten that she had dyed her hair. HAHAHA

I'll finish off by saying after a pile of work Ryan (my brother) and I were able to get my web site back up and running.
Thanks for all the hard work Ryan
So you all should go and have a look. www.michaelhdavies.com

TTYL

M&N

Only three pictures today but they are good ones!!!

They other day Nic came home for lunch as usual. After she left to go back to school I received a phone call from one of our friends here in town. I was told that there had been a few ptarmigan sited near the G.N building. Being that I have only came across the "arctic partridge" once up here and that was purely by accident I figured I should walk over and see if I could get a shot of one.

You have to understand for two and a half years I have gone out many time with the specific task of getting pictures of the wildlife up here. Every time I have gone out on a "hunting" trip I have been skunked. That being said Claus has almost always been with me...He's Bad luck? Maybe.

Ok so... I walk over to th G.N (Government of Nunavut) building, and surprise surprise nothing. At this point I was awfully close to the base of Mount Duval. I though to my self "I might as well walk over" and did just that. Climbing up onto a plateau I spotted something in the distance...way in the distance. I brought my camera up and looked through my lens using it as Binoculars. I could tell it was a animal, but again far to distant to get a good shot. Crouching down I crept very slowly towards this dark shape. After what seemed to be hours, but more likely 30 minutes I was close enough to see what i was looking at...It was a Red/Arctic Fox napping in the middle of no-where. That's when I got excited....this animal is way up on my list of "gotta haves" for photos.

At this point I slowed my approach way down and got as low to the ground as possible. I was able to keep the wind at my back, as not to share my sent with the still sleeping fox, and continued to move closer. The light was starting to fade drastically and i was very concerned that there would be enough light for me to get a few decent shots. I took a few "setting" shots to test the light conditions. My best guess was I had maybe five to ten minutes to be able to get any shot let alone a good one.

I was able to get within 20 yards!!! amazing that this fox was still fast asleep!!! I brought the camera up snapped my first shot...Ah BAD LIGHT...I got a very blurry image. Quickly i made some changes to aperture and shutter speed and snapped another shot..."crap" another garbage shot. The fox then moved slightly and i thought that he might be slowly come out of his snooze, being stirred by my click, and soft words of disgust I had for the Lighting that I was fighting with.

One last try...I made a few more adjustments, readied my self. When he opened his eyes..."Crap" i said, he was awake, I was lying down pointing a lens at him and these guys don't really like people to be this close. I wasn't worried that he would attack me, more that he was going to be gone in a flash, and all i would have would be the story and no shot.

I flicked the cam into "continuous high shutter mode" turning the camera into a fully automatic weapon of Photography, a blistering 15 frames a second. The camera chirped to life sounding like a assault rife without the bang of bullets. I rose slightly to one knee still with my finger firmly placed on the trigger, and then the fox was gone. When my adrenaline settled. I held my breath and started to review the last 5 seconds of action...I was able to get off about 65 shots in that short amount of time. As I slowly looked back through my images my heart sank as most were blurry or not exposed properly (the light being as bad as it was had forced me to have a slow shutter speed which is good for objects that aren't moving but a blurry mess for ones that are moving even slightly). The only fox I have seen in person here and not one usable image... "crap" (well maybe I used a bit more colourful language ) But!!! after i went back through my shots in disbelief that I had nothing i found this.

YES YES YES

I was able to get only ONE shot that was alright. Just before he turned to look at me as he was coming out of his stupor.
Yeah me.

You might be saying to yourself "nice, a fox, whats the big deal?" Well the amount of hours I have spent here in search of one of these animals is almost uncountable. I have covered many miles on foot and on snowmobile only finding tracks. So this is a huge image for me....

Check one creature off on my "gotta have" list.
Whats next on the list?
A white one would be nice fingers crossed.

On the long walk back home I was cold and hungry. I packed the camera away and started to head down the hill. This time I heard what I thought was a raven...Turned to find find there was no huge black bird but a few Ptarmigan. I couldn't believe my luck. I quickly pulled out the camera a took a few more shots.

What a day !!!

There's my adventure for the week. Hope you enjoyed the pictures half as much as i did taking them.

TTYL
M&N

Where to begin...?
As you might already know, Halloween in the north is a pretty big deal. The whole town seems to get involved. As you might expect i had my camera with me and documented the whole days festivities.

Last year i had made Nic a mummy costume...complete with open wounds and zombie make-up...She asked if we could go a little less gory this time. So I put together my version of a Geisha costume for her. This remarkably was quite well received by everyone that saw it. So much so that she was voted best dressed teacher at the school, which i was pretty happy with. Later that night she was then voted best costume overall in the entire town. I was very pleased then.

Here are a few pics of the get-up

Of course i made the fan as well...and the hair style was a group effort. We bought a long witch wig and after a can of hair spray had it styled approximately the way we wanted it. The flowers in her hair are from the base of stick candles we have up here.

Not to be left out Siku again got to wear her Halloween costume

This year Nic and i stayed in our own house for the candy portion on the night. Those of you who know me understand that i couldn't just have a normal looking hall way for the kiddies to come in to. A bit of tape and some random stuff lying around, not to mention Nics old costume and a bit of spider webbing. We then had quite the scary room complete with scary music.

Being that we live where we do, and not anywhere near a pumpkin patch. We had to make do with some battery operated ones in the windows. Still effective i think.

The kids here only trick or treat for a set amount of time. This year it was from 5:30pm until 7:00pm at which point the town gathers at the school for a town party. Many prizes to be won, and some extremely creative costumes.

This section of the night was for the "guess who" contest. People will dress up in very concealing costumes and try not to be guessed who is who. Even to the point of disguising their walks and mannerisms.
Believe it or not...this is the front of the costume.

and my personal favorite

all together walking for the contest

of course it wouldn't be a Halloween party if there wasn't a few witches

This little guy had enough of his face paint

This is just to prove i wasn't the only one there with a camera

The entire town really seems to enjoy this event. The laughing hardly stopped from the time it started to the end. Even the kids look mesmerized...who needs TV anyway?

Special night...everyone gets treats

Our good friend Patrick also got into the spirit and competed against Nic in the competition. Unfortunatley for him he didn't win.

Here he is before...

and after...he is the Sheik!!!

And finally Nic parading around for the judges.

And finally finding out that she won!!! Yeah !!! oh and there was some prize money..EVEN BETTER !!!

That was our weekend. Hope yours was as good as ours.

TTYL
M&N

As previously mentioned last week was PI week. Mike ran some art courses, I took part in the art course and worked on my online course... This blog however is to show you what some of the other ladies from the school did. One of the projects that went on throughout the week was the making of traditional seal skin amauti's. Daisy the Inuktitut teacher from the school and her daughter Sandra the grade six teacher took on the huge task of making these amautis. They asked another local lady Mary (the one who made Mike's kamiks) to join them.

Instead of what you might expect to see for cutting (scissors) the ladies use an ulu as this is the best tool for cutting through the seal skin.

Here are the three women involved in this project:

Here is a closer picture of Mary sewing:

Here is Daisy working on her amauti (Sandra made one and Daisy made one):

And a couple pictures of the "final pieces" awaiting to be sewn together:

This first one is the tail of the amauti:

It was pretty neat to see these women working together, they certainly accomplished a lot over the week!
That's the great thing about PI is that people can participate in all kinds of projects that they might not otherwise have the time to do.

The other thing worth mentioning is that these ladies represent three generations .. sort of... Mary was Sandra's grandmothers best friend, Daisy the mother and Sandra the daughter. What a cool experience for the three of them
Sheila the school secretary and Daisy's other daughter as well as Lily, Sheila's daughter, Daisy's granddaugther also had the chance to participate in some of the activity in the kitchen throughout the week.

Anyways that's it for now, hope you enjoy the pics!

ttyl
M&N