Checking on the Poppies

I wanted to keep checking on the poppies, so we returned to the scene from just 4 days previously. Life moves apace, and the first poppies from that walk were at the floppy and fading stage. I did find a few fresh blooms at another house on the same block. I keep experimenting with soft backgrounds in portrait mode.

The same house will soon have more poppies. It's nice that they are coming into flower at different times to extend the short season just a little bit.

An allium from the same neighbourhood.

Once again, the phone camera did the trick. I would not have been able to shoot photos like these, with the soft background, with a normal camera unless I knew ahead of time what specific lens I would need, assuming of course, that I had such an expensive lens in my possession.

Togetherness

Every now and then, Amazon Photos sends me a short slideshow, the most recent one featuring Sue and yours truly in various photos from June 2019 to just recently. Not too surprisingly, we're sometimes drinking coffee in the car. :)

I cannot embed the slideshow, but I have linked the photo to it. Just click on the image and go although you will get a click confirming a redirect. There are 15 frames in the 46 second show.

A recent togetherness outing took us on our second Tim's Coffee Walk of the season. There was a fire engine out when we passed the firehall, so I snapped a picture from the sidewalk.

We kept on walking to The Junction where we perched at a picnic table to sip our coffee. Unlike on the first visit of the season two weeks ago, there were hordes of young kids and parents around the play structure. You  are not going to see them per se in the background because I focused on the coffee cup with a wide aperture in portrait mode and the background is very much blurred.

The Ugly Stuff Artisan

 At Dark & Deadly on Sunday morning, we enjoyed a very nice caramel coffee (I forget its actual name) and a really scrump breakfast sandwich. It was so good that it will be tough to enjoy the Timmies or McDonalds versions, not that we often do that. In point of fact, it has possibly been years since we last frequented McD's, and if we do get Tims, it is usually a turkey-bacon-club sandwich at lunchtime (again, infrequently).

However, what I am primarily posting about is what we saw at D&D and not about the food and drink that we consumed. Take a look.

The apparatus intrigued me more than the art, at least at first. The stand held both a phone and a light to help him both see and record what he was doing, and I think that is darn cool.

These is one of his items that he displays at the café: a mug, or rather a clay face somehow attached to a pre-made mug and selling for $60. It suits the Dark & Deadly theme very well.

These were all smaller creations.

The artisan is on Etsy as DWCUglyStuff where he has sold almost 2000 items. He said that he sells all over the world and more to Americans than Canadians. Here ↓ is a sample from his Etsy page.

I don't even know exactly what they are, I mean what they are made of, as Sue was talking to him more than I, but I am calling it clay for now until I know differently.

It was interesting to see him puttering away and to learn just a little about his work. And it was very cool to see his phone and light setup. It would be appealing to have a stand like that, even though I have no earthly use for one.

BTW, if you are close to local (I know there are a few of you), you should drop into Dark & Deadly someday if you are in the area. It's a unique café with good coffee. It is located at the orange balloon to the centre-right image below. This is the link to open the real, scrollable map in Google Maps. 

Iris Satiation

Having come across the poppies seen in yesterday's post, we thought to visit the museum garden to see and photograph the irises. We have seen nice showings around town and have known that there are irises to be found at the community garden. We were right but were surprised to see many spent blooms. Sue attributed at least some of it to the strong overnight winds and rains.

Of course, I am about to post photos of some irises that we did see.

Although I rather like the first photo, I may not have any show-stoppers up there but my iris-hunger has been sated for another year. :)

Sue later sent a photo of me taking a shot.

Poppytime

We had been planning to walk straight ahead on the trail that extends north past the bridge, but when I spied bright orange flowers off on the street to our right, we changed our course.

The orange poppies shone brightly in the sun. Orange and red can sometimes be difficult in digital photography — for me anyway. These displayed as too red at first, but I was able to edit them back closer to orange. They were in a rather unkempt bed, but I don't mind how the surrounding grass looks a bit like a texture.

There were four blooms in this group.

We walked around the bend and back toward the trail and came across more poppies in a front yard that grows rather impressively wild.

There were five blooms in this cluster, but you can see that there are many more flowers about to pop, so I must put it in my brain to return.

I took one more photo of cluster of five and included the fence because it is good to have a fence picture in the files for Happy Fence Friday on Flickr.

I the same garden there were a couple of allium flowers. I put the iPhone into portrait mode to try to focus on one foreground allium, and it worked fairly well. 

I should probably use portrait more often because it is about the only way to control depth of field with the tiny phone lens. I cannot shoot RAW using portrait mode, but the image is still pretty good, so portrait remains an option.

Lights in Blue Hour

I returned to the bridge rainbow lights on the next night, looking for views from the other directions, just for a change. Although I did like some of my golden hour photos from the previous day, I went later on this night, for just blue hour photos. Blue hour occurs post sundown for 20 to 40 minutes, and is generally considered to be the best time to shoot night lights. Even within that brief time frame, the first part of blue hour may tend to be too light and the last part too dark for best results, but one does one’s best.

I began right behind townhall, which of course means that I couldn’t get much of the building in the photo.

There was a man and his dog in the frame. It makes for a different sort of photo. More about this person below.

I boldly walked right in front of the pair to get an unobstructed view of the bridge. The dog was extremely happy to see me.

The friendliness of the dog gave me a chance to exchange a few words with the man. I was trying to be very friendly — for me anyway. I had discerned from his body language and movements that the fellow was rather unhappy, perhaps distraught. I perhaps shouldn't say, discerned, but let's say that was my strong impression. He was drinking something, and when I got close, I could smell beer. Nothing wrong with that of course, but it seemed to me that he was in angst and was seeking consolation in the ale. I tried to be cheerful and upbeat. Of course, I did not overdo it and soon retreated but hung around the area for a few more minutes, both watching him and also thinking about possible photos. The pair soon left.

Edit: Sue observes from body and clothing that the man is a woman.

I proceeded over to the other riverbank, the one just off to the right of the above photo, looking back at townhall. There isn't much room to work in over there, and I have never gotten a good photo from that side. 

The problem is that to get the whole bridge in the photo from that restrictive location, the building gets distorted. You can still see a little distortion in the photo ↑ even though I tried to fix it in post. (Note to self: perhaps try a wide angle lens in future to maybe achieve less distortion: perhaps and maybe. lol)

It worked better when I gave up trying to get everything in the composition. Including just part of the lights and part of townhall in the frame was a better choice — not great, perhaps, but better. I still got most of the colours.

That's it for the rainbow lighting of the bridge to celebrate Gay Pride Month.

Lighting with Pride

It is Pride Month. For now at least, the bridge is lit in a suitable array of colours. Of course, the photos are posted in the reverse order of shooting. My final photo of the evening but first in the post is from the other side of the river near the parking lot, but the rest were all taken with townhall in the frame. However, a sliver of townhall does sit on the right edge of the first photo. Aside from that first/final image I think my fav photos is the third one. However, I never find that shooting the lighted bridge goes as well as I would like. Perhaps, I began when it was too light out.