After posting yesterday, Shauna sent us a snapchat version of what Jonathan could look like in 6 years when he is 18. This is using the same photo that I posted yesterday. (Bad angle though, which makes it hard to compare. I could try to fix the perspective, but I would probably fail, so it is what it is.)
This was me at ~16: also the same photo as yesterday but cropped. Of those fuzzy, old photos.
This is all just for fun. We have always seen some hereditary genes in Danica, but Jonathan has been a bit of a puzzle until now.
Onto The Last Daylily.
It isn't quite the last daylily flower, but there are very few still to bloom. Although I have taken a few flower photos in the past that I turned out well and that I like well enough, flowers and macros aren't really my thing. This is so, even though I have a macro lens. Some of the problem may be accessibility; it is somewhat difficult to bend, get down and stay down. Sigh.
Besides, whenever I have had thought to photograph a flower this summer, it has been either too sunny or too windy or both. Yesterday, however, when I went by the flowerbed to put out the garbage, this almost-ultimate, but still not quite penultimate, bloom caught my eye. Although there was still a slight breeze, I took the shot because there will be very few more opportunities.
I took another from the side, but I composed it badly. So I cropped way into the pistils in post and salvaged something at least.
Have a good day. It will be hot and humid here today, but we are looking forward to Danica coming for a sleepover: her first since Christmas. JJ will have his turn early next week.
Sue came into my room last night singing, We Rise Again.
Sha and the kids are overnighting in Kingtson where they are shopping and visiting extended family. Of course, pictures were posted on FB. I hadn't seen them yet, but Sue was seeing a certain likeness between JJ and me.
I scoffed, for I had never seen a similarity, but when I looked at the photos, I was startled. I saw it too, for the first time ever.
JJ started life with very light coloured hair (like my Dad) , so there was no resemblance there. And in recent years, he has worn his hair with one side long. But he has cut it, and now we begin to see a certain likeness.
We then looked for comparison pictures of me as a kid, but couldn't find one that showed the similarity. My goodness! Photos were awful back then fuzzy and faded and we took very few compared to now. I was thinner and taller at that age and combed my hair in a wave up front. There is more of a resemblance when I am older (see later photos, below) and ditched the wave.
Anyway, whether you see the resemblance or not, I scanned some photos, which give me something to blog about today when I wasn't going to bother.
First, his pic (and Danica's) in a restaurant in Kingston. I converted it to b&w because all of the old photos will, of course, be monochrome.
Coincidentally, I also paid a visit to Kingston when I was twelve. Little similarity to be seen here, though. Here are Dad and me on a rainy day at Old Fort Henry.
Here is Jonathan by the water, followed by me near the water in a hideous swim suit, also on the same holiday (I think). Nothing obviously similar here as I am definitely skinnier and, seemingly, taller.
I found a few other snaps of me at about the same age: at Christmas with my grandmother and parents.
Although I am a few years older than he in this next photo, I can seen more similarity here when I was ~16, filling out a bit, and styling my hair differently.
Years after that, I think my university grad pic also shows some resemblance, but who knows what he will look like in 10 years time. My hair is really low and most like his of all of the photos.
It was startling to see something that has never been apparent before. Actually, we could never figure out any resemblance of JJ to anybody at all. We can see inherited genes in Danica, but Jonathan just seemed to have a completely different set of dominant genes.
And, of course, because it is the 2020s and not the 1950s, I can post a video clip of the song sung by my favourite band, The Rankins. It was done as an Encore in a noisy venue, and I have started the clip after the clapping when they began the song. They also sang this at their Farewell Tour stop in Ottawa and Raylene just about blew the roof off. She died later of cancer, and I suspect that she had been diagnosed at the time, and this song meant an awful lot to her. (It's a poor, amateurish clip, but it means something to me, so here it is.)
Our little backyard has no grass. What it has is a weed barrier with mulch on top. We do this for two reasons.
It's a trip from the garage in the front to the backyard with a lawnmower because we have to go around the next townhouse and then go through the gate into our backyard.
The ground/soil here is awful, and the grass that grew, or didn't grow as the case may be, was pretty doggone pathetic.
Although mulched, it's not exactly barren; we do keep five flower pots back there. There is also a tree, a lilac bush, a big joe pye plant, plus two little flowerbeds at the back by the fence. One of the flowerbeds has a big Hosta and a little inuksuk. The other has a penstemon and daylilies.
The main mulched part actually looks pretty good, or at least it did in previous years. It's clean look, at least, and dad's forget-me-nots still, somewhat miraculously, sprout in the mulch in spring.
That's in most years, but it's different this year, for volunteer petunias are running rampant. Sue took this photo from the bedroom window. I have labelled the potted petunias. The rest are volunteers growing in the soil-less mulch.
While I have seen the occasional volunteer petunia before, I find this mass to be quite astounding, In the photo, the flowers above the potted plant extend quite a way toward and even under the deck, blocked from in the photo by the deck and potted plant.
Keep in mind that petunias are annuals here, but somehow, seeds have lived through the winter and flowered in the mulch – mulch, not soil.
Here is another, wider view, with the two pots circled; the rest are volunteers.
I am not sure if I like this helter-skelter look. I think I prefer the clean look of the bare mulch, but I do find the resilience of the flowers to be mighty impressive. They say that life finds a way, and so it has in our backyard.
Here's the latest in my Lights in the Night photos. While I haven't previously called my recent photos that until now, I figure that I need a name if I am going to continue the theme. What I am trying to do is take photos of town buildings before sunrise, at that time when it is beginning to lighten but the lights are still on. I am tending to sleep past that hour these days, but as the sun is rising later and later, I will, perhaps, be more consistent. But then there will soon be more people around, so that will be a problem. Regardless, I did awaken early enough yesterday to make* a few photos.
I just went around the corner to take some photos of the Shoppers pharmacy. It's not the most compelling subject, but at least I can tick off that box.
You can see how the sky is blue, which should be better than in the black of deep night. While clouds are considered to be preferable, maybe just the straight blue works well enough in this case.
I took a closer photo, which I prefer in b&w.
Next, I drove around the corner because I spotted some pre-sunrise colour in the distance over another building. When I got there, however, the colour was gone, at least from my vantage point.
But then I saw a fairly attractive nearby medical building, which was quite nicely lit. I got the starburst (rays) effect by using a very small aperture. I don't always prefer this effect, but I like it in this case.
I also like this photo in b&w.
Who knows when I will make my next wee hour pilgrimage. After a somewhat restive night, I sure didn't arise in time on this Monday morning.
* Sometimes, photographers use the word "make" rather than "take" when referring to their photo attempts. I usually avoid that usage because it tends to sound pretentious to me, but I used it deliberately in this case to make a point because I think it fits the recent discussion of RAW photos and some of the comments that ensued.
Note: If I am now labelling these photos as Lights in the Night, this would be the third post after the car wash and downtown lights posts.
Yesterday was our 5th visit to a local food truck called SmokeBox. While this sounds like an awful lot of visits, they have taken place over a period of more than 3 months.
They make the best tasting burgers, and they're also very big and filling. They must be half-pounders, and we can fill up on about a half burger. They do cook other specials too, such as the chicken parmesan that we once ordered. It was also fab did us for 2 meals.
We normally, order the Swiss Mushroom burger, which is quite wonderful, but they had a special burger recently, a maple, apple chutney and brie concoction, that has to be the best that I have ever tasted. When I commended them on that burger yesterday, they said that it may go on the standard menu very soon.
It is not a chip (fry) truck, but we order the pineapple claw as a side, and it is also fabulous. There aren't actual pineapple bits in the slaw (thank goodness) but the taste is drizzled in somehow. Yum.
I wanted to take a specific photo, which I will get to, but I'll begin with the truck itself.
The cooking is done through a window on the left side ↑ that you can't see ↑ so I took a photo from the side. ↓ As you can see, the cook sticks his head through the window to access the smoker. It is a job for a good, young back.
At first ↑ the smoker wasn't yet smoking as much as I had seen previously, but I got this ↓ next photo from the front side a bit later. It was the photo that I had wanted all along although it isn't a good as I thought it might be. It does capture what I wanted however – The Big Smoke, as it were.
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There was a question about RAW photos on the previous post. This is my answer for those who are interested, which I don't expect will be everybody.
Think of a RAW photo as a negative. You have to develop a negative into a print. But you would also have to develop it to share online. (I know that you would probably scan the print to share, but stick with me.)
With most point and shoot cameras and phone camera, you are presented with a developed image in jpeg format. The camera has made a decision about how to process the image into a final product. That's it. Whatever other information that was gathered from the sensor is then discarded.
More sophisticated cameras, offer the photographer the option of shooting in RAW format. The photo editing program will give you a basic interpretation of of the photo, but the photographer almost invariably has to push the partially developed result a little further.
Fortunately, the RAW image contains all of the original data that went to the sensor in the first place; no data is discarded. Was the scene brighter than what you see on the screen. It is easily adjustable, Is the colour not quite correct? You can fix that too.
It's not that you can't edit a standard jpeg image; of course you can. But it is more limiting without all of the RAW data, and you can degrade the quality more easily.
Most serious photographers, therefore, shoot in this RAW mode most of the time. Sometimes, they will choose to have the camera save both versions. A football photographer, for example, may want to get their images to the publisher very quickly at halftime and not have time to fiddle with processing. However, they may also keep the RAW version to work on later if they, personally, plan to take the image to print.
I have not been roaming with the camera during this hot spell, but I did get out very early one morning before the heat wave arrived in its fullness. I took the camera to our main street when it was beginning to dawn. Lights are usually still on at this pre-sunrise stage, but the shooting is a little easier than when it is pitch black. Mind you, I could have left it still a little later to get a little bit more ambient light.
The town keeps some Christmas-style lights up all year, and these are primarily what I wanted to shoot, especially if I could include some lit storefronts in the photo.
In this early light, exposures will be long, so one needs to use a tripod. I took one hand-held photo anyway, just to get a sense of the scene. But I forgot that I often have a 2 second delay on the shutter, and I wobbled the camera all over the place, which resulted in funky twirls of light.
But then, for fun in edit, I superimposed that photo on another, steady one of the same scene.
A wider photo with the same store, Amethyst, in the centre.
Then, I took some vertical photos ↓↓ using the tree, which is on the right, in the above ↑↑ photo.
The next photo is the same composition as above, but in the 6-second exposure, a car went by leaving a light trail, so I cropped the photo differently, eliminating the darkened 3rd storey windows. Yes spellchecker, I do want an e in storey.
I moved down the street and photographed the post office, in which the highlight is probably the flowerbed.
All in all, it was a bit of a challenging shoot, so it took me almost a week before I was satisfied enough with the photos to post them. I am often disappointed when I initially see the photos on-screen. For one thing, they are in RAW (ie only partially developed) format, so they require some processing. After that, they may require a little more processing to season to taste until I am somewhat happier with them.
I wasn't certified to teach high school English, at least at the senior level, but for 6 years I loved doing my best and was told by both students and administration that I did it very well. I am not here to brag, but to tell you that although I didn't have the very best background in the subject, I worked at it and became fair to middlin at basic grammar and punctuation. However, I have to confess that I never had cause to concern myself about when to use which and that. Like most people, I have tended to do as the spirit moved me in any particular time. lol
When I saw this link on fb that promissed to explain it all to me, I clicked. It turns out that it should pretty doggone easy. However, habits are hard to break, and I think, when you read the rest of this, you may agree that I should have written which rather than that in the first sentence of this paragraph.
The article here is not a long click, but I will present is the gist of it here anyway.
If your sentence has a clause but does not need it, use "which"; if the sentence does need the clause, use "that."
If the clause is absolutely pertinent to the meaning of the sentence, you use "that."
If you could drop the clause and leave the meaning of the sentence intact, use "which."
from the website https://prowritingaid.com/art/438/-Which--or--That-:-Know-When-to-Use-Each.aspx
Do you agree that I used the wrong word when I wrote this sentence earlier?
When I saw this link on fb that promissed to explain it all to me, I clicked.
It seems to be wrong because the sentence still makes sense if we remove the clause.
In this case, according to the above explanations, I should have written which.
When I saw this link on fb, which promissed to explain it all to me, I clicked.
This is going to go against the grain, but I will try to bear it in mind.
Meanwhile, it has been hotter than the hinges on the doorway to hell here this week. With the feels-like temperatures reaching 40+C/100F, all of the southern part of the province has been under a heat warning. It will supposedly break tonight, and we, including Lacey, will rejoice when we can once again open the windows, at least at night.
