Trial, Error and Moderate Success

I left off my previous post with mutterings about a tie-in with a post yet to come. This is that post..

On my drive home from the Fourth Pond Visit on Sunday, I noticed in the rearview mirror that the sun was rising directly behind me over the centre of the road.

I thought it would make a good photo opportunity, but both Monday and Tuesday didn't have a sunrise, if you know what I mean.

Wednesday looked promising, so I set out shortly after five o'clock. That would have been a little late if I hadn't known where I was going and that I just wanted to photograph the rising sun at 5:30 and not one of my more typical pre-sunrise photos.

I set up the camera and took a preliminary photo while waiting to see Ole Sol.

Unfortunately, at 5:30 there is traffic, even on a semi-rural road, and I kept having to move my camera over to the shoulder. Therefore, each subsequent  photo will have a slightly different composition. You can see the beginning of the rising in the next picture.

 The sun is really beginning to be noticeable, below.

Sol was just about getting to the perfect position over the very centre of the road, but that's when a whole procession of cars came by from both directions, and I had to scat. The sun moves quickly, so I missed the perfectly centered photo that I most wanted.

There was a problem with the above photos anyway: one that I will try to learn from should I ever try this composition again. In my attempt to emphasize the road, I used a wide angle setting, which rendered the sun rather small.

Whilst I waited for the cavalcade to pass, I re-oriented that camera to experiment with some alternate photos from the side of the road . Then, I rushed back to middle, but I still had to shoot quickly because another car was coming from behind but still a distance off (I wasn't being reckless!). With the camera now in landscape orientation, I just snapped the photo and headed off to the safety of the shoulder once again.

The above photo is a pretty decent result although the sun isn't exactly where I wanted it to be.

I may try this again on a weekend when traffic is lighter. Maybe I will get the exact photo that I want then. We shall see.

However, I am still happy enough with the last photo if that is all that I ever get in this spot. I enjoy the process of getting out there all on my lonesome and attempting to be a little bit creative, which is something that doesn't come naturally to me.

Fourth Early Morning at the Pond

As I have mentioned previously, every day is different, so I am being only partly repetitive to take you to the pond yet again. I might not even have posted this visit at all, but it ties in a bit with the next post that I plan to write.

Most of my photos are from a similar location – from the adjacent road. 

There is a path around the pond that I had thought might offer alternative compositions. One evening I walked some of it, and the whole path was lined with weeds and wildflowers. One of the main wildflowers was that noxious wild parsnip, which I am not about to plow through to find better sightlines. Besides, as you know from previous whinging, my body being what it is, I don't like to venture on long treks.

Palaver out of the way, here are two photos from that morning – essentially the same photo but the first vertical and the second horizontal. The sky was different than on my three previous moorings. In my four trips, however, I still haven't been blessed by that awesome sunrise that one longs to capture. Not that I am complaining, for I have liked all of the images that I have managed to take.

What I saw in my rearview mirror a little later on the drive home, led to my next photoshoot a few days later. Stay tuned . . . 

About Shawarmas

OK, I will relent and tell you about shawarmas, but I must chide some of ye elder bloggers in the process.

Shawarma is a popular Levantine dish consisting of meat cut into thin slices, stacked in a cone-like shape, and roasted on a slowly-turning vertical rotisserie or spit. Originally made with lamb or mutton, it is now also made of chicken, turkey, beef, or veal. Thin slices are shaved off the cooked surface as it continuously rotates. Shawarma is one of the world's most popular street foods, especially in Egypt, Iraq, the countries of the Levant, the Caucasus, the Arabian Peninsula and the rest of the Middle East.

I got that ↑ description in about 30 seconds from Wikipedia via a Google search. It's ain't hard, eh? 😎 It's especially easy on the computer.  You simply highlight a word with a double-left click and do a search with a subsequent right click.

OK, lecture over: here are a few images pilfered from wherever. As you might suspect, the eating thereof can be quite messy, but it is a pretty darn tasty concoction. I always order the chicken shawarma with peppers, onion, lettuce, tomato, and garlic sauce. Scrumptilyicous, I tells yiz all.

Once or twice a summer we will go downtown, get a shawarma and sit by the river to consume the delicacy.. We usually do it with the kids, one time having all cycled there from our place and along the trail to downtown. At least, I think we did that. It's just a town, so the trip isn't quite as onerous as it might seem from my description. We can cycle it in 15 - 20 minutes.

This time around, Shauna picked us up and we drove together. We were going to drive separately and meet there, but with downtown in a bit of an uproar with construction, we decided to just contend with parking one car. As it turned out, parking space was not a problem.

Forgot is our Middle Name

Sue had asked JJ to come over to help with weeding. My only task was to ferry the boy back and forth.

With 62 years between us, the boy and I are remarkably similar in some ways or at least in one way. I refer not to a facial similarity, which most definitely exists, but of a certain mental quirk. But I must say in passing that when I look at Jonathan, I am amazed to see my own countenance, or very close to it, looking back at me. Other things such as body type and hair may differ, but Oh! that basic physiognomic likeness.

Unfortunately, however, he appears to have inherited my genetic disposition to wool-gather and, thus, forget little details a whole bunch of things.

Basically, he and I drove around town forgetting things.

The first thing we did after picking him up was to go through Tim's drive-thru. We made our order – ja muffin for me and a plain bagel, toasted with cream cheese, for him. I drove up to the window, paid, obtained the provender, and drove off.

Upon arriving home, he opened the bag. Behold there was my muffin. Alas, there was no bagel to behold or hold or eat.

I had wondered at the size of the bag as we were driving home, thinking it a little small to contain both a bagel and a muffin and even wondering why they had placed them both in one bag.

The thing is that one should always check one's order before driving off, but we are both of such a wool-gathering disposition that neither of us thought of it.

It doesn't stop there, though.

The boy has an infection for which he is taking antibiotics.

But he forgot to bring his pills.

And I had forgotten to bring in the potatoes that Sue had requested that Sha send along with him for supper that evening. I had left them in the car for hours to pre-bake in the oven-like temperatures.

After some time, the boy and I returned for his pills, but there was one other thing to pick up – some sort of stand that he had at home to help out with one of Sue's photo challenges. When we went back for his pills, we were to pick it up. We just had to remember two items – pills and stand. Well, we did remember the pills, but  both he and I forgot the stand. 

It's like we rode around town all day in a state of total absentmindedness.

My mother used to declare that my middle name should be Forgot. I suspect that she might have said the same of Jonathan.

Echinacea in Low Light

I knew the photo that I wanted early Monday morning, but for once I required an almost cloudless sky (which photographers generally despise) to capture the sun rising in a certain location. As it eventuated, it was a cloudy morning, particularly with low clouds, which was the opposite of what I wanted.

Therefore, I decided not to head out, but after awhile, I had the idea of just just checking out the flowers in the front garden. I put on my macro lens and stepped outside.

The echinacea is beginning to bloom and although I tried a few other photos, I concentrated on them. I deliberately opted to shoot low key (underexposed) and handheld, for sometimes I can't be bothered with the tripod. I often like the mystery and drama of low key images, even though they may not be everyone's cuppa.

Here are the results, generally cropped to a square 1:1 aspect ratio or close to it. I like the last two best.

Computers and Shawarmas

That was an odd time in computerdom.

In order to watch Wimbledon tennis, we had signed up for month of live-streaming with the sports channel. But we were getting horrendous internet timeouts. I called our internet provider, and they had me reset the router. It worked.

It worked but resulted in concomitant issues 

The network name changed. The first thing we noticed was that we had to reset the thermostat, but that was just the beginning.

We couldn’t reconnect Sue’s computer to wifi because both the network name and password had reverted to something or other and we didn’t know what.

This went on into the next day when with some thought on my part some input from others, I found how to talk to my router and re-input my former network names and passwords.

Alexa had also been affected, but we got her talking to us again as well.

Strangely enough our Apple phones and tablets had adapted to the new configuration seamlessly both with the original change and then setting the network name and passwords back again. Go figure.

The difficulty had also been compounded by the collapse of one of the three main internet and cellular providers in the country. When I was still confused about what to do about my wifi problems (although we did figure it out later) I couldn’t even make a phone call to my internet provider who largely used the Rogers infrastructure. Anyone who used Rogers was affected. Many couldn’t even make purchases when out and about. Sue met her Friday coffee gals at McDonalds and noted that many Rogers customers were there just to text relatives as McDonalds had a different internet provider.

When we met Sha and the kids for shawarmas, the lady before us couldn’t pay with her Visa card, but our Mastercard went through without a hitch. However, we had also made sure to take enough cash, just in case.

We did enjoy our shawarmas outdoors next to town hall by the river and then came back to ours for Wizard and contemplations about addressing my own computer issues that had nothing to do with the Rogers collapse.

Just for a change, I have photos of our lunch by the river.

Back at the Pond

On another very early morning after another very rough night, I headed back to the pond. I wasn't up to faffing about with making careful compositions using my tripod, so I held my camera over my head and took a few shots. I did this to get above the field foliage that was in the way of the pond at eye level. Holding the camera like that is not conducive to producing tack sharp images, particularly when I was  also shooting at a very slow shutter speed, but I like them well enough regardless. As is often the case they are a bit dark, especially at Blogger size and in low light, but they look good enough at high res on a large monitor.

This ↑ was my favourite shot of the morning. I like this ↓ too but I have previously shown you something similar and a little better. Similar or not, each day and each press of the shutter is not identical to the previous result.

I did take two more photos.

I specifically wanted a fence ↑ for Fence Friday on Flickr, and then ↓ I saw that some clouds stood out well above the treeline for another somewhat different result.