Back to Early Morning

I must confess to not being too photographically ambitious lately, but I did get myself going fairly early one morning. I just drove down to townhall area to see what I could see.

And here it is. Sometimes, black and white is the way to go.

I played around with ICM (Intentional Camera Movement) where one deliberately moves the camera while using a slow-ish shutter speed. I took several and put them together in post. I may experiment more with this technique, which is something to do when you don't think you are going to get a very good photo in the traditional manner or you have done it before and want something new.

Looking the other way: the Boulton Brown Mill, now an apartment building. There are always cars parked to the right, so I avoided them, but perhaps I will juts go with the flow next time.

Across the river, the restaurant lights were still on.

Beside the restaurant is an old house and present business with interesting red doors although this photo is only so-so. It may be worth another shot sometime, perhaps just focusing on the door and reflection rather than the whole building.

I like the bw photo and the restaurant lights photos best in this series.

Failed Predictions

I came across a few failed technology predictions here in this article.

A Sampling:

• 1876: “This ‘telephone’ has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication.” — William Orton, President of Western Union.1903;
• “The horse is here to stay but the automobile is only a novelty — a fad.” — President of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company;
• 1946: “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night.” — Darryl Zanuck, film producer, co-founder of 20th Century Fox;
• 1995: “I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse.” — Robert Metcalfe, founder of 3Com, inventor of Ethernet. (BTW, 1995 is when I first got on the Internet IIRC.)

It reminded me of a fellow teacher who bought a computer something like this sometime before 1995.

As you can see it was a 40mhz machine. It would have had a 386 processor, and it would have run DOS as windows was still not a thing. It left my still relatively new 386 25mhz machine in the dust.

Yet when he said, "I will never need another computer," I shook my head with skepticism — metaphorically, of course, for I didn't wish to bring him down from his happy place.

It didn't seem like too many years later that I purchased a Pentium (586) 90mhz computer with much more RAM, disk space, and an internal modem to boot.

I don't even know the speed and capacity of my present computer, but it is much beyond that Pentium 90 of mine and has a powerful graphics card. And it's already getting more obsolete than I would wish.

OK. I looked it up — a 64-bit machine, running at 3.40Ghz with 16GM RAM and who knows the rest, like how big and fast my graphics card might be?

About an Outage

I am frequently up by 5 and when I am not, I am almost always up by 6 with 6:30 being about the absolute latest.

But not on Sunday morning after a somewhat rough night, bodily speaking.

I had slept past 7, which is when the power went out. This was a scheduled outage, but in the way our luck runs, we had not been forewarned. If we had been warned, I would most likely have made sure to arise before 7 to make the coffee.

Even without warning, on almost every morning of the year, I would have had the coffee on by 7 because that is what I do. But not on that freakin morning. No siree, Bob! (Or whomever you might be.)

And so, two sad-sack 72-year-olds found themselves driving to Tim’s for coffee. We then took our drinks to the park, and as the morning was a tad chilly, we sat sipping it in the car. (The ‘it’ being sipped in this case refers to the coffee and not the morning or its chilliness although in a poetical sense, I did somewhat drink-in the otherwise fine morning.)

It was delicious, the best cuppa in a long while. I don’t know how that happens, but happen it did.

Later, I went out for a second cup. Also Tims. and it was not very good. Go figure.

I mean the coffee packets are standard issue, day after day, year after year. So why should cups be so variable? I beggars the imagination, it does.

Back to the park after my slight digression: as I sat there drinking coffee as well as drinking-in the ambiance of the park, I found myself once again contemplating the spider web.

You see, a spider lives in the car mirror, the one on the driver’s side. Always the driver’s side: never the passenger side.

This has been going on for years now although I have to assume that it is not the same spider. In fact, one year, the spider of that particular season blew off on the highway. It was a sad parting, especially for the poor arachnid.

We have shot the hose in there and torn down the web — to no avail. The web is always always always rebuilt in lickety-split time.

And I don’t really like to tear down all of that work, so I leave it up for quite awhile in an effort to let nature take its course. I mean to say that I feel badly for she of many legs, especially since I never seem to see any provender enmeshed in the webby result of her dutiful travails. I don't know how she survives in there for month after month without any apparent food.

I tried to take a picture with my phone whilst there in the park. It didn’t turn out very well, but it does offer some proof that I am not making this up and that I have not completely lost my marbles. I mean to say, just because I am 72 . . .

. . . now what the heck was I saying? And where am I anyway?

Back to School Portraits, Round 2

I do feel compelled to post a few more back to school portrait photos before I let the subject go completely. I don't have much experience with portrait shooting, but with Sue's input for staging, we managed.

For portrait shooting, a large aperture is preferred to blur the background. For this purpose there are actual portrait lenses at a fixed focal length of 85mm. Apertures will open to f1.8, f1.4 or even down to f1.2 if you are really into portrait shooting. Of course there is a price to be paid, starting at ~$1000 for the 1.8 and ~$2500 or more for the 1.2.

I have none of these lenses, but a 70-200mm lens which opens to f2.8 can stand-in quite well.

The evening was overcast, so I did not have to deal with contrast, the sky essentially becoming a giant soft box. The photos just required a little warming in post and not all that much either.

Without further blather . . .

Caturday 6

Six months into her new home, Lacey has settled in nicely although that interlude with the visiting Abby tried her sorely, and us too for that matter.

She will never be a true lap cap and is still leery about being petted, at least when someone approaches her rather than her approaching them. However, if she decides to get on your lap, only for about 10 minutes, she truly enjoys the love.

She seems to prefer Sue to me, and Sue is the only one she will go to when we are down in the living room watching tv, where she laps up the lap time, so to speak.

I will get visits upstairs in my recliner although she still doesn't snuggle me with quite the same abandon as she does Sue when Sue sits in the same chair. I suspect that she's endured some rough treatment from men in her life, and so anything is progress.

Grade 5 Sendoff for JJ

Jonathan's boarding of the school bus was different than Danica's, of course. It was at a later and saner time, about an hour and a half later. His stop being nearer and one I was familiar with, Sue and I met them at the door.

His stepsisters met him at the stop. I think they adore him. The one on the right has one more year at this school before she joins Danica. JJ has two years to go.

Jonathan has an animated tête-à-tête with the girls.

Meanwhile, Sue, Sha, and stepmom had a friendly chat.

The bus came, and Jonathan lined up between the girls.

All aboard for grade five.

Have a good year JJ!

First and Last

It was Danica's first day to her new school, and very likely the last in which we will be permitted to accompany her to the school bus, which we have been doing for nine years now.

So it was exciting for all and especially for her but also poignant for her grandfather and mother. It is a passage, and there are almost always a mixture of emotions accompanying such an event.

I suspect that this will be the final time that she will indulge us with this opportunity of seeing her off, and I am somewhat surprised that she was willing to allow it this time.

The bus stop is farther from her house, so I was expecting to see them drive up, but suddenly, they were upon me, and I had to ask them to pause for snap.

Danica took her place at the stop across the street and thereafter avoided further eye contact.

I moved to behind the line so that I might get some pictures of her getting on the bus but was able to take this shot of the whole situation first with Mom and JJ keeping their distance.

On she got and off she went.

Sniff.

She now has a phone and was able to text us at lunch hour that school was going well.

Back to School

Last night we met the kids at the park for a back to school shoot. With Danica now having to catch the school bus at 7:30, there would be no opportunity for a morning shoot. Even when there was more time in the morning, photos never worked that well around home.

She is off to a new school for her middle school years although classes do take place within the high school that she will attend. He enters grade 5, but he told me this morning that all of his friends will be in different classes as they are opting to study in English only, and he is still in French immersion for part of the day. Fortunately,, he seems to make friends easily.

I took a lot of photos and they turned out pretty well with minimal editing although I did crop to 8x10 format and warmed them up just a bit from the overcast conditions.

Jonathan

Danica

Together

I do have a bunch more, but I know that you don't love my kids as much as I do. 😇

Birthday Overview

On the weekend I, with the family, celebrated the completion of my 72nd trip around the sun.

It began on Friday with lunch out with friends and continued on Saturday with a bacon and egg breakfast.

On Sunday morning, I was presented with a shirt. More often than not, I am given a shirt on either Fathers Day or my birthday or both. It makes us all smile as there are so many pictures like this, year after year, decade after decade.

Sunday afternoon and evening was the celebration with family. There were a few presents to open. This one is a phone holder for the car. But, of course, the presence of family was the best present.

Then it was off to dinner.

Cake at home afterward.

On Monday, we took a spin to the nearest lock on the historic Rideau Canal. Danica had never seen a lock in operation. JJ decided that video games with his friends were better than any old lock.

They (left) are watching the gates close after the boat has entered,

They moved to the other end to watch the rising of the water. It has already come up a long way but still has a few feet to go.

I may do the whole lock sequence in another post, but this post was to give an overview of the weekend.

Monarch Release 3

The couple, Erin and Curtis, schedule one more butterfly event with more than 40 Monarchs to be released and, hopefully, begin their migration to Mexico.

The kids were back from their holiday week down east, so we volunteered to take take them to see the butterflies.

Fortunately, we got there early enough to get close to the box because it got very crowded shortly thereafter.

Unfortunately, once again, I didn't think to bring my polarizing filter, and so the shots through the glass were very so-so.

Also once again, Councilor Linda showed up in a new and special outfit to mark the occasion.

I pretty well knew that photography would be difficult because of crowding and how quickly the monarchs fly off, but I thought that I perhaps could catch something on a video where I didn't have to time shots.. I don't shoot videos often and am not very adept it doing it, but I decided that it was worth a try.

You will see below, especially at the beginning of the clip, how much of a crowd had gathered by release time. It was quite stunning, really.

Then the kids congregated around in front of the box, which was both good and not so good.

It was good in the sense that, first and foremost, you want the kids, especially, to experience the occasion. But there was a problem. Unless a child got to the front, he or she probably wasn't able to see much, particularly if they were shorter than the others. For that matter, the adults couldn't see much either. Our kids didn't get to the front, so I don't think they were able to appreciate the awesomeness of experience to the fullest.

Erin and Curtis, are doing a marvellous thing, but I think they were overwhelmed bu the huge turnout and didn't quite know how to handle the situation. If they do this again next year, and I really hope that they do, I think a solution would be to have the children sit on the grass just a little way back so that all of the children, and even also the adults, would have a fair chance at seeing the butterflies fly off.

Nevertheless, I held the camera high and managed to capture a few Monarchs making their departure.



It has been quite a wonderful series of events, and I am thankful for having been able to witness them, especially the emerging of the butterfly from chrysalis in the first release. That was extra special.

The release was covered by the community paper; you can read about it here.

One final thing: I decided to composite my various photos of the Emergence of a Monarch from Chrysalis into one image. The various stages are chronological but not to scale as I shot from somewhat different angles and zooms and didn't know that I was going to attempt to do this.