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. 

Furgone Conclusion

I was listening to another Sleepy Time History podcast. It kept putting me to sleep, which was, of course, at least part of the intention. It was interesting as most of their podcasts are: How Humans Lost Their Fur. I wanted to know more, and  while I do intend to get back to the 2+ hour podcast, I wanted to know the essentials in summary form, so I hit the internet for just the very basics. This is my summary.

Scientists have deduced that we lost our fur between 1.2 and 2 million years ago. I know that is almost a million year difference between the two dates, but there was no observer available to take notes. From what I can gather, I think the consensus is that 1.2 is the likeliest time frame for the process to have been completed, but it may very well have begun earlier.

They ascertain this by trying to trace the MC1R gene, which is the gene that governs skin pigmentation. No, I don't know how they trace this.

When our ancestors had fur, which they did by the way, their skin underneath the fur would have been light. When they began to lose their fur, it was important that their skin would then become dark as a defense against the strong African sun, under which humanity began.

Under those conditions, dark skin was advantageous to human health and well-being, so natural selection over scads of time favoured darker skinned individuals to be healthier and more successful in life and, therefore, in reproducing.

It happened because of climate change. There was a time way way back when the climate became drier, so the vegetations also changed to more grassland and less tropical forest. When the forests shrank, the ancestors of those who became humans, would have found it advantageous to stand up and walk more. Walking upright is much superior to ambulating on all fours over distances. An upright position would also better allow them to scan for dangerous predators. It became an evolutionary advantage to walk upright, so that is what occurred over thousands of generations  

Our furriness became a hindrance because fur was an insulator in the African heat, humans began to shed their fur. However, with less insulation they also began to require another way to deal with heat. Glands developed to cause early humans to sweat, and the subsequent evaporation helped to dissipate the bodily heat. Concomitantly, humans also developed dark skin to help protect from the harsh rays.

That is how exploring the gene that controls skin colour helped scientists to determine when humans also lost their fur, for the loss of fur and the development of dark skin occurred in connection with each other.

That seems to be the bare bones of the prevailing theory as best as I can understand it.

Almost ironically, about a million years later, when a group of homo sapiens left Africa for Europe, dark skin became a disadvantage in the long winters of the ice age in Europe. People no longer required protection from the harsh African sun but rather needed to absorb all of the vitamin D  that they could from the weaker northern sun. Light skin then became an evolutionary advantage that natural selection favoured in more northerly regions.

Porches and Sky

We went looking for porches, and we found two good ones right on our main street. I find myself processing a little more liberally lately. When I accidentally warped this porch, I liked it, so I kept it. I also removed a lot of distraction such as drainpipes and satellite dishes. I've also been doing that more freely.

The other porch was along the opposite side of street over The Granary, which I pronounce with a long a although many use a short a. There is an apartment, perhaps two, up there. I wonder if people use the porch in the evenings.

That same evening, Sue called be over to the back window to see the clouds at sunset. They were great clouds in themselves, but have a look at the red spots toward the bottom of the clouds. Isn't that terrific?

There are building and fences in that scene, but I boldly cloned them away. It's how I am rolling right now. They were distractions that had nothing to do with the sky, which was the star of the show.

Going for the Gold

Sue had a golden hour prompt to fulfill for her photo group, so Saturday evening took us to the river opposite townhall, which can light up well at that time of day We got there shortly after 7 although, Alexa told us that golden hour would occur between 7:30 and 8:30. There was a longish wait, and I will spoil it somewhat by telling y'all that there wasn't a great version of golden hour that evening. The almost blank sky didn't help.

My first shot is a selfie as we waited on the bench.

People passed by on the bridge. I took a few photos from a distance, but I managed to catch this fellow in the gap right under the flags. I kept him and the flags in volour but turned the rest to b&w. I was just playing. I did a lot of playing with this set of photos.

It was a long zoom with a phone followed by severe cropping
because I couldn't get very close.

I took a short amble the other way from townhall and saw some pretty good light on the Hawthorn factory along the far bank. I liked this composition, but I wisded that the Hawthorne were larger.

I did zoom in more on the Hawthorn in another take (not shown), but I missed the nice foreground of the first photo. So, I put my dubious Photoshop skills to play some more by deciding to try to embiggen the Hawthorn section on the original photo. It's the vey same photo as above, but I just enlarged the building part. I've never done this before, and I think it worked reasonably well. This was primarily done manually. I think it’s a more effective photo with a definite subject beyond the leading line of the trampled grasses in the foreground. 

We continued to wait for the light, and about a half hour later I wandered over that way again and took another shot of the Hawthorn. My playtime with this photo involved adding clouds to make the sky and photo a little more interesting. Sky replacement is another editing trick that I have not used much.

A few minutes later I returned to our spot looking townhall and took a photo of its refection in the water. I then inverted it in edit. I also made a b&w version of this one as you are about to see. 

Sue and I both tried various photos of townhall during the course of the evening, but finally, the building caught some shadows along with the light, so I took this one near the end of our shoot. No, the colour and tonality weren't as good as they appear here, but an image is just a collection of pixels, and it is more than okay to polish them up a bit.

A Surprising Loss

I had been watching the Montreal Canadiens all spring as they had a pretty good run, winning two playoff rounds in 7 games each. Because hockey is a tough game at the best of times, it is very gruelling to play two consecutive, long series. In fact, to win the ultimate prize could take 4 series. This is why the Stanley Cup is generally considered to be the hardest championship to win. By hardest, I mean, physically.

While this post is not about that, it helps to set the stage for the rest of this post.

In each home game the Canadiens had a vaunted player from the past, bring out the torch before the initial puck drop. The selected player would walk into the arena with torch, and then he would lift it high. At that moment, all the video screens as well as the ice surface would also burst into flames.

Like this ↓ . (It only takes a minute.)

The man in the video was Claude Lemieux, and he had the honour of carrying the torch on Monday night. Then, on Thursday, around noon, a message popped up on my screen that he was dead. Three days after the honour of carrying the torch, he was gone. What a shock in this weird world for a championship athlete to expire so suddenly and at such a young age. Here I am, anything but a good athlete, hanging on at 78, aches and pains included.

Such is the randomness of life and why we must cherish the days as best we can even though there are some days that we are happy to see the back of. Bad days are a part of life, so we try to make the next day a little bit better, or the day after that. Sometimes, we might even raise our own little metaphorical torches because, somehow, we have made it through another day, which is usually highly preferrable to the alternative

Background

The Montreal Canadiens have long had the line from Flanders Fields emblazoned in their dressing word wall in big letters: "To you from failing hands we throw/The torch; be yours to hold it high." Often, on special occasions, the team will employ a torch in their ceremonies.

The pictures on the wall are former Montreal players who have been inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame.
There are quite a few there to keep the present players humble but inspired.

PS: It was later learned that Claude had taken his own life, which must even increase the sadness of the family. Even later than that, the family also posted this.

No Summer Flowers

Now that spring is fleeing, we returned one more time to the crocus lawn by the abandoned building. As we suspected, except for a feel rather bedraggled and droopy tulips, the spring bulbs are done. We wondered if summer flowers might emerge in due course, but it doesn't seem likely. Grass is already in the ascendancy in the flowerbed.

I don't think I have shown the  building this year, so here it is along with a lilac bush, which I think is the last blooming thing that we shall see there this year. Soon the lilacs will also fade away until next year, but if all goes well, we will visit the crocuses, squill, tulips and lilacs again next year,.

I included the lilacs in another photo, looking back to the former machine shop. You have see already this building this spring, but not from this direction.

We walked around back. This is what the little building looks like back there, assuming that you can spot it amidst the foliage.

At that point the river rages on the other side of me. I experimented with another GIF. I may be getting the hang of this GIF thing. I'll try not to overdo gifting you these GIFs but just include them occasionally.