Choosing the Gold

I have already shown JJ's rush and goal in a previous post, but I have been trying to select just one photo for my Game Shot on Flickr. In this case, Jonathan's photos (of the previous post), as much as I love them, didn't make the cut.

Ideally one looks for a peak action moment that tells a story.

Narrowing my selection down to three photos, this one of the goalie swimming (the technical term lol) to corral the puck won the bronze.

I like the fact that the goalie is way out of his net and that the puck is lying tantalizingly in front of him. The problem is focus. I have to open the aperture so wide in the arena to get enough light onto the sensor that not everything can be in focus. While that can be good in the sense that it may help to focus the viewer's attention, generally speaking we want the closest object to be in focus. It usually just doesn't feel right if that is not the case. In this photo, the goalie is pretty well in focus but not the other players and, most importantly, not the nearest players.

For the gold, I hummed and hawed between two photos. I love the intensity in this image. You can see it on their faces although it would be good to see a little more of the puck carrier's face. There is also both the near pursuit plus the more distant pursuit in the background. I really don't mind that the background heads get chopped. Some might, but I don't.

That vied with this one, another goalie pic, for my choice of Game Photo. This captures a great moment with good separation between the elements and not the same congestion as the first goalie photo. Even the referee adds to the story in my opinion; his skate is in the air, and he is about to blow the whistle to stop play with the goalie about to cover the puck.

I did choose the goalie photo for the gold, as it were, but I am still mildly torn. You are welcome to chime in.

Appreciation Event

Some of you may recall that the town celebrated its 200th anniversary in style for two weeks (and somewhat beyond) last summer. There were fireworks, trivia night, monster bingo, the amazing race, an all day outdoor concert, the celebration parade, the classic car parade and street dance, summer fest, an old time picnic, the RCMP musical ride, and perhaps something that I have forgotten.

Bob and I were the two semi-official photographers to help record the events.

This past weekend, there was a little gathering to thank all of the various volunteers.

This was all well and good. It was fine to munch goodies and sit and talk with others, including the mayor and a councillor who spent much of their time at our table. We are all just folk in this town, with no pretensions.

Then came a short speech or two, and that was fine as well. But I groaned, and not just inwardly, when the deputy mayor began to especially thank two people. I pretty well knew that Bob and I were being singled out.

So, off we went to the front to receive our little tokens of appreciation.

Don't get me wrong, I really do appreciate being, uh, appreciated.

Ironically, there was no one to photograph the photographers being acknowledged. Sue pulled out her phone, but it was dark and she was at a distance. Nevertheless, her efforts do record those few moments.

The deputy mayor is speechifying while we don't know what to do with our hands.

Glad handing all around from the mayor and deputy upon the bestowing of gifts.

A Good Goal and a Good Game

Because the team has been playing mostly out-of-town games, I haven't had the opportunity to shoot any of Jonathan's games for almost a month. I did get to one of those away games, but I prefer to just shoot in our local arena.

It was a good game because the boys managed to get a tie. While that doesn't sound great, please remember that they are winless in league play. And this was against a pretty good team.

They were actually winning 4-1 halfway through the contest, but then the quality of their opponents took over, and they were hard pressed to escape with the 4-4 draw. Their goalie played very well and was a big reason for the draw.

But the extra good news is that Jonathan scored his first goal in league play although he had previously also scored one in a tournament game.

He is a fairly fast skater, so he motored from his zone all of the way up the ice.

Trying to follow with my eye glued to the camera, I don't know whether he shot on the net or whether he lost possession of the puck, and it strayed beside the net. However it got there, it did end up to the side of the net.

Then I lost track even more, but he apparently brought the puck back to the front and banged in a goal. In the heat of action, somehow the camera got focussed on the referee, and JJ is all blurry at the front of the net, but this is the play that resulted in the goal. The referee signalled goal a second or two later.

I did a little photoshopping for fun and stitched three of the photos from Jonathan's rush up the ice. It wasn't that easy to blend the images because both the background and light changed to some degree, but it was worth trying. The three images, particularly when you get to the third, were quite far apart as he covered a lot of space on the rush.

With his personality type, Jonathan can be rather laidback; perhaps this will give him the confidence to push ahead more, for he has some skill, and while not the biggest kid, he is also not the littlest and has enough size to hold his own when fighting for the puck.

Old Age is a Massacre

Photo by Danica

I know that I used this photo last week, but I thought that I would put it to use again in order to relay the quote, which I think I saw on someone's blog last week, "Old age isn't a battle: old age is a massacre." Do bear in mind that there is some humour both in the quote and in this post.

(The pedant in me notes that the colon in the quote should be a semi colon, but that's how it was written in my source.)

Notwithstanding the faulty punctuation, I think it's a great quote which approximates my recent reality.

It's not that there is anything life-threatening going on, I want you to know (knock on wood). But I seem to have been engulfed in three separate health issues for the past six months, each of which has required the marshalling of medical forces. Not that they have been too successful, but that is another story.

There have been two sets of x-rays, two ultrasounds, two CT Scans (one of them still to transpire), a cystoscopy, several hospital and doctor visits, with a colonoscopy impending later this month. Oh joy! And this is subsequent to the double hernia operation last spring. Ugh!

Monday found me driving into the city for a consultation at the foot clinic in a rather large hospital.

Q: Just how big was the hospital, AC?

A: It was so big that I had to keep asking for directions while trudging hither thither and yon for countless miles.

Q: Were they really miles, and were they really countless?

A: I confess to slight exaggeration as they weren't miles but kilometres (we're in Canada, eh?), and I think it was just three or four. Or fewer. It could have been fewer.

Whatever the actual distance, I did have to do a fair amount of clumping, which seems to me to be a tad ironical for a poor, limping bloke visiting a foot clinic.

The first stop was to the imaging department for a set of x-rays. That was far enough in kilometerage, but then I had to trudge for a pretty fair piece to the actual foot clinic somewhere in the forbidding bowels of the basement.

Speaking of bowels . . .

No AC: just don't  . . .

Men's Shed Jam

Our friend and neighbour, Al, has had much to do with beginning a Men's Shed group in our town.

Men's sheds or community sheds are non-profit local organisations that provide a space for craftwork and social interaction. The movement originated in Australia as a way to improve the health and wellbeing of older men. However some have expanded their remit to anyone regardless of age or gender, and have similar aims and functions to hackerspaces. There are over 900 located across Australia, with thousands of active members.[1] Men's sheds can also be found in the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, United States, Canada, Finland, New Zealand and Greece. (Wikipedia)

Their main point of contact in this chapter, and I am guessing in most, is in a common workshop n which they can work on their own projects or even community projects. When we had a kitchen drawer completely fall apart they rebuilt it for us; they accept donations but don't charge as such. When my friend needed help setting up a big computer desk, I asked if they would help, and they did.

I don't do handyman stuff, so I haven't had anything to do with the group other than once attending a Christmas get-together.

But when Al mentioned that they were beginning a little jam and singsong, I thought of my friend, Bob, who plays the guitar.

For the first jam, Bob didn't take his instrument, preferring to get the feel of the situation.

Last week, they convened the second jam, to which Bob did take his guitar. I also took my instrument, the camera.

As they jammed, I wandered about and took a bunch of photos, But then I somehow formatted the memory card. That's a new example in what can go wrong in life if you try hard enough. I have never done that before at least like this when I didn't even know that I had done it at the time. However, I managed the to do it, my photos were gone.

I realized that I'd have to start over, but my battery was running low, so I went upstairs to get my spare. Guess what? It was spent.

Fortunately, I did have some juice remaining in the original battery, so I was able to get some shots before it completely expired.

While I took shots of all 7 musicians (or just a singer in one case), only three were in good acceptable light and background, so those are what I will show you now. I do plan to print a little photo of each, including the ones that I won't show here, for the next jam, which I expect will be the last that I attend since I don't play an instrument.

Al, our former neighbour and still friend, playing his dobro guitar. He's in his mid-eighties and keeps rolling along.

 My friend, Bob, looking intently at the music. Don't swallow that pick!

I think this was the picture of the day. Another jammer: having a good laugh while playing. Or maybe I do like Bob's photo (above) better. They are quite different.

Just one more in passing: I taught this fellow (below) in my very first year of teaching in a fairly distant city. Somehow, we both ended up in this not-so-big town. He was in grade 11 at the time, so there is probably a little less than a decade between us. He wasn't in as advantageous of a photo spot (light and background) as the others, so I don't think the photo, but I thought I should include it for interest. And really, the photo is still acceptable.

Sue and Snow

Some snowfalls are pretty and nice with beautiful big and soft flakes, but Friday's was not. It was downright nasty with blowing and drifting, and we needed several passes to just keep the walk clear. We also cleared the driveway just in front of the garage because the plow can't get that close.

The plow had come by once, very early, but it continued to snow, so you couldn't really tell unless you knew. It did make its return visit just after 5pm.

This is a 45 second video of Sue clearing the walk before I pointed the camera up and down the street. Nasssty (in Gollum's voice).

That was on Friday. Yesterday, Saturday, it was bright and cold, and we're running out of places to put the snow.

Maybe we'll have to get a stepladder to add more snow to the pile.

By this time next month, winter should be on the wane, but it doesn't always go gently into the good spring..

Caturday 17: Catnaps

I didn't think there would be a Caturday today. I mean how many Caturdays can a body do? But then I chanced to gaze downstairs yesterday afternoon.