Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Lit Stage Photos

I took photos all day of every group, but the best photos are the evening ones after the stage lights come up.

Brea Lawrenson was the penultimate act. I photographed her when she first came onstage, but went back for a second shoot when the lighting became somewhat more effective.



Here's another of her and most of the band on the full stage with some of the crowd in the foreground. The huge headliner banner of the final act, Jason Blaine, was prominent as it was all day. I found that it added to most photos rather than having a drab background.


The lights were really in full mode when it was dark for the final act, which was Jason Blaine. He is a country singer (they all were that day) who is (or was) local and made good. I don't follow country music, but I understand that he has done well in Canada. I don't know if he's made an impact on the huge American market or not.

I like this shot for the smokey but light and colourful background.


Another close shot of just Jason (if you can excuse the partial performer to the right). I like his stance.



He caught me in this shot. This happens quite a lot. He didn't seem to mind me at all.


The whole band (or at least the front members) and much of the stage.


I did shoot all day (as a record of the event), but it's the night light photos that I really like to shoot.

Tuesday, July 30, 2019

Sue's Concert Photos

As mentioned in the previous post, Sue spent 11 hours with me at the concert. Mostly, she took crowd photos and did a great job. I can do it, but I am a little awkward and out of my element.

First a photo of Sue taking a photo of other volunteers working near the entrance, followed by the photo that she took.



I have a number of those pairs of photos, but that is enough for now. The first performer of the day, Bailey Rogers, who quite obviously a good sport. This was after her set.



Concession stand people.



More volunteers



Beer Tent


Kids



Civitan Citizen of the Year and a lady in bright colours.



Some random guy, who wore his name tag on his hat, with one of the town employees responsible for coordinating the event.


The seniors tent. We sat right behind it under the shade of the trees.


Finally, the view right behind us as evening began to fall, not that we spent much time looking at it.


There are more, but one has to stop somewhere.


Monday, July 29, 2019

Busy Photographic Weekend

The title says it, but I am not going to post much of it at this point but just give a little overview. All three events are related to the town's celebration of our 200th anniversary.

Friday Night was trivia night in which six teams went through more than 7 rounds of local trivial questions from geography to literature, history and beyond. Actually, only 4 teams of 4 registered to participate, but a few people came to watch the proceedings and were persuaded to join in. I only went to shoot the event, but was asked to join one group to give it the required fourth player.

These were my teammates to whom most of the trivia burden fell. As lifelong residents, they knew much more than I did.  Early on we were in third place but slipped to fourth before the evening was done.


Saturday was to be the big day: a 10+ hour concert in the park. How would we manage that on a hot day? Well, we arrived early and set up our chairs in the shade. We couldn't see the stage, but we could hear the music, and we stayed pretty comfortable in the breeze.

When a new group would come on stage, I would head up, take some pictures and retreat to my spot in the shade after about 5 minutes. I will only show one photo for now of country singer, Jason Blaine, who was the headliner. After 11 hours in the park we were tired, and since I had done my job, we left rather than stay for another hour, as good as he was.

I only managed a few photos of him, but I love how the background
lights and smoke turned out in this photo.

Meanwhile, Sue was a brick. She didn't really have to be there at all but decided to assist me. Just having her there to secure my extra camera while I went wandering was a huge help. But beyond that, she did her own wandering and shooting, making friends in the crowd. Here's her shot of happy ladies in the beer tent, which was teeming later in the evening.


The Sunday event was a version of the Amazing Race where teams had to try to find 200 clues (for 200 years). I managed a few pics in two locations, but when I went to what I suspected was to be the third place of convergence, no one was there. It was hot, and I was tired, and with Bob also on duty, I called it quits. He will have done a fine job.

Many stops involved taking pictures of their accomplishments. 

And that is that, for now anyway. At this point, I am almost too tired to even look at the hundreds of weekend photos, never mind edit and cull.

Thursday, July 25, 2019

Two Evening Photos

Can you imagine a post of mine with only two pics? Well that's all you get for today, and I'm sure that it's a treat not to have to pore through as many as I have been posting lately. I do think that one should try to keep pics down to a moderate level of, say, 4 or 5, but sometimes we just want to post a whole event for purposes of record.

To get to the point (finally, AC), as we cycled through the park with the kids on Tuesday, I noticed a striking stand of flowers at the back of one of the homes that abut onto the park. I made the quick calculation that they might be in golden backlight come evening, so I went back the next evening, Wednesday, after supper.

Well, I was both right and wrong about the light as it was almost a perfect time, but trees were blocking most of it. However, I did catch a few flowers on the edge of the clump. Hopefully, you can see that my thoughts were on the right track as the light was pretty good. Sometimes if not most of the time, we are forced to ignore the truth that light is the most important part of photography, but if we can catch the better light, it makes a ton of difference.


I wandered about a bit and snapped some photos that I trashed (although I was in a mood and should have kept one of the geese) and got to the river edge. In the distance I spotted a heron. It's not the best shot, but it's always nice to capture a heron.


The stonework behind the bird reminds me that there was once a building back there, but I forget now what it was, and I am too lazy to look it up again.

Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Day Two with the Kids

Day Two and the final day until next month. Today they are off across province for a week to Sarnia where their mother was brought up and still has good friends.

Due to deteriorating knees, I am not going to cycle much this year. In fact, I didn't think I would at all, but I determined to do this one excursion with Sue and the kids, and it went pretty well.


We cycled along the Riverwalk Trail to the newer trail, specifically to the bridge which was part of the railway until the railway closed that line about 10 years ago.



Looking n the other direction, I asked Danica to take a photo of the little bridge from the trail bridge as a test shot, for it's a spot that I may wish to return to some early morning.


Then we cycled around to that bridge. Now the trail bridge is in the background.


From there we biked along the trail back toward home, but the kids stopped at one spot where they lingered for quite awhile. By now, Danica was in firm control of the camera, which you can see her wearing above.


Home for a pit stop and then a drive downtown for lunch where we ate shawarmas by the river behind townhall, the spire of which is beside my head, below.


Our lunchtime view.


We had been hoping to get gelatos for dessert, but the place is closed on Monday and Tuesday. Monday closings are typical in smaller towns, but closing an ice cream store on a Tuesday in summer boggles my poor little mind. So it was off the McDonalds for McFlurries and another through-the-window photo experiment, this time by JJ. It didn't work quite as well as the previous one, but it is still a neat little gimmicky shot.




Later, we headed out one more time for chips (fries) by the river.




Phew! A lot, I know but that's how the day went.

Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Day One with the Kids

Time was that we had the kids a lot a lot during all seasons but not so much anymore. But we still fill in for a few days each summer — for how long I don't know. Yesterday was our first stint for this summer; today is our second. There will be a fairly big break before the next one.

They are very attached to their devices and were on them about two minutes or less right after their arrival.


But then we played Monopoly. As per usual I spent much time in jail and paid many taxes. It's uncanny, I tell you. It or a variation occurs in every game. I am not making this up. I don't know how many times I got around the board, but at least three times I landed on the Go to Jail square. And at least three times, if I did get to GO, I hit the tax square and had to forfeit my $200. I didn't even pay my $50 to get out of jail in this game; I just waited and rolled the requisite number of rolls. I figured that I was at least safe from taxes and rents in there.



After lunch we were off to the coffee shop for drinks and dessert where we always take these similar shots.



Then, I had the idea to send Danica outside to take a pic of us back through the glass. I love how the reflections give a double exposure effect. Danica's shadow is in there too.


Danica got into selfies. She takes a lot of selfies.


I noticed myself in the background of this selfie. When this occurs the background person can look tiny, so I hunched down to exaggerate the effect.


She then got into a different kind of selfie with help from JJ and his phone.


From there it was off to the library where Danica explored around the Ancestry program which she often does. I had a book with some of her previous work to try to help with a few things. It's funny how roots interest her (always have), for aside from me, they don't interest anyone else in the family in the least.



Then it was time for home. JJ did some art while Danica did whatever she does on her phone. I made supper, and we had a game of Sorry, which of course, I lost.