Sue Meets Elaine

Sunday was a lovely day, so it would be nice to be out, but with my knee acting up, it wouldn't be good to go far. We opted to drive to Riverside Park where we could take just a short walk.

<tongue in cheek> One of Sue's worst traits is that she is very friendly. She greets and talks to people when we are out walking. </tongue back in place>

On this day Sue and a stranger, Elaine, seemed to hit it off, and they had a good ole chinwag. Elaine is fairly new to our community but hails from Bancroft, which is near where we used to cottage, so the two ladies had something in common. 

Sue was quite taken with Elaine‘s hair, so I imagine that she was taking a photo of it in my picture, which is another double exposure experiment on my part. (I did mostly take doubles on that day, but not of the ladies, other than this photo.)

Not wanting to be left out, I also took a hair photo of Elaine and her coif.

Now, if only I could get Sue to stop being so nice and friendly.

😊😎😉

 

Sweet Vinegars at the Library

There was an event at the library. Given that my name was on the poster, I thought it proper to attend. Of course, I would have showed up regardless, but, as you can see, I was given a very undeserved billing.

Back in  November, I posted here that local poet, Claudia Radmore, dropped by and presented me with two copies of her new book of poems, Sweet Vinegars.

She gave them to me as a token of appreciation for permitting her to use my photo for the cover. I had photographed the wildflower in passing sometime earlier, and since Claudia was authoring a poetry book based on local wildflower discoveries, she asked if she could use it. Well, of course she could.

Having received these two copies of the book that contained an acknowledgement of my photo inside, I had thought that it was all very nice and that we were done. I didn't expect to be part of her presentation, but as you can see from the flyer, I became part of the evening, or at least my photos did. 

Without going into much detail of how it came about, I gave Claudia permission to use my Flickr flower photos to go along with her recitations. Once again, I might have thought that a few background photos would be end of it, but I was wrong, as usual,  for Claudia interspersed almost 80 of my flower photos through her talk when she paused for breaks.

Some of the pictures go back years, and I had forgotten about many of them. I was pleased to see them again and was happy with how good most of the looked on the big, shiny screen.

Above: Claudia is about to begin her presentation.

Below: the crowd (I am way in the back), the cover photo, the ending screen about poetry month (bottom right).

So yeah,  my photos looked pretty good up there. Sue took many many pictures of my pictures during the evening, and while I could go through my old files and find the originals, I am happy enough to show you her pictures of what appeared on the monitor.

To give you a bit more of an idea of the many photos that Claudia showed, here are three of the collages that Sue put together.

When Claudia finds an interesting wildflower in her peregrinations, she will research it when she returns home. She will find the Latin name and other bits of information may also pop up. With permission, I share her ragweed poem. Of course, I am too lazy to type it out.

There is such a thing and the National Quail Symposium,
and the other facts about childbirth and tea are also true.

After the Storm

You recently saw my crocus photo and then the storm photos of the following day. The crocuses were completely covered when we passed by on the day after the storm, but on the next day, they began to make a comeback. It was a comeback that I was not about to take lying a down, if you get my drift. Sue used her telephoto to shoot down from our lofty heights: no lying down on the job on that day.

I should back up. The first thing we see when we enter our little park is the pond. There hasn't been much life recently, but there was an occupant on that day. Said occupant was a biggish but slender bird that I couldn't quite recognize. When it moved, however,  it as obvious that it was a heron. Apparently, when they are young they can be pretty slender. The poor thing may we forced to retain its slim figure for awhile yet because it wasn’t exactly feasting on pond riches on that day. 

After the heron, we continued on our little walk. The path beside the pond that leads to the trail was flooded and barricaded.

It was only then that we got to the crocuses, but of course, I have presented this in my bassackward sort of way and we've already been there, so to speak.

Meanwhile, I did something to my knee, I think it was on that photoshoot with Nick when I had to get around a rutty field while also endeavouring to avoid as much April, barnyard mud as possible. It seemed to cause me to do awkward things to my aging joints. On Thursday night, I was up after about only two hours of sleep because my knee wouldn't stop aching, in an almost never-ending, pulsing beat. I was fine once I was up and sitting, but I don't recommend it as the best way to spend a night. I say all of that to say that our daily walks may be put on hold for a few days.

Caturday 81: Lacey the Editor

I already posted today, but I found this buried in the queue, and it is Caturday after all.

Hey Lady! Watch your spelling!

That, my dear, is a comma splice.

Barn Again

I am coming right back at you with more barn photos. I'll begin with the final capture that I took on that day with Nick. The angular distortion is due to the effect from my wide angle lens. Frankly, I sometimes like wide angle distortion, and I like this photo. This last photo of the shoot was almost an afterthought. I was really done but Nick was still shooting, so I took another for something to do. Oddly enough, I think it may be my fave of the shoot.

As with some of the other photos, both yesterday and today, this was two-shot HDR merge in post processing: one exposure for the barn and a darker exposure to bring out some detail in the sky.

This is another Photoshop double exposure that I described doing yesterday, and it is almost the same as yesterdays' photo, but nothing is ever exactly the same.

While I converted many to mono, I kept this in colour. I like the bits of rusty red here and there.

Back to mono.

Finally, a true in-camera double exposure: a barn shot and a grass shot. The grass is a little too dominant over the barn, but the abstract is kind of interesting and fun. I probably could have achieved better results by doing it in Photoshop rather than in-camera, but it is also fun to see what the camera comes up with. I saw Nick’s version of this photo, or of a very similar one, and the overlying grass was not as dominant in his version. Different cameras behave in different ways. 

It was muddy on the farm and the light wasn’t special on this occasion, but perhaps we will return. I am thinking that it will be drier and warmer in another month, but, of course, there will be bugs by then. Sigh. 

Barnstorming with Nick

Nick had told me of a barn that he found. He had passed it one day when there were great clouds and light, but, unfortunately, he didn't have his camera. Then, I think he returned once later for a dawn shoot.

On Monday, he saw promising afternoon clouds and light locally, so he called me at almost the last minute, and we arrived at the barn around suppertime. As is the way with outdoor photography, by the time that we arrived at the location, we were not greeted by either great skies or great light, but we pulled out our gear and made photographs regardless.

Nick was introducing me to double exposure photography. I have dabbled a very little, but Nick has done quite bit of experimentation. Het set me up and told me what to do. For this initial image, I first photographed the barn and then I took a separate photo of the sky in another direction. 

As long as we put the camera into double exposure mode, it will blend the two images as it sees fit. This is the result, or close to it. I say, close to it, because it is not exactly SOOC (Straight Out Of the Camera) because one still does a little post processing. For one thing, I am pretty sure that I darkened the sky and lightened the barn a bit

 

The next photo was a similar setup at about the same time and place as above but using a different part of the sky for the second shot. However, I didn't care for the camera's blending. Fortunately, I had programmed the camera to save the two individual photos as well as the blended result, so I took the two individual photos and layered them myself in Photoshop. Therefore, it is a double exposure but done in Photoshop and not in camera. I also decided that I would convert to b&w. The result is a more traditional photo than the above, and I quite like it.

We moved closer to the barn where among other setups, I chose the angle, below. I will limit today's post to four photos, but I think that I can safely promise to post photos very soon. Or is that more of  threat than a promise? 

This next image was also from two exposures, but I didn't shift the camera this time. I just made a normal exposure for the barn, but then I made a darker one because the barn exposure had blanked the sky. 

In effect, this was an HDR image, for those who might know what that means. It was not done with HDR processing, however. Once again, a few might know what I mean by that.

Then, Nick had me do some more multiple exposure photography. Below, I took one shot of part of the barn and another just of the grass. Once again, I didn't love the blended result from the camera, so as above I combined the two images manually in Photoshop. I think it's an interesting outcome.

Whatever your opinion of these experiments, I found it really nice to be out there photographing with a friend and trying some new things, both in the field and also later at home on the computer.

I shall return to you soon with more photos from the shoot and will also, hopefully, also return to the barn at some point in nicer weather and at a nicer time of day.

On the Very Brown Trail

Some of you have noticed that I have been doing comment moderation for a couple of days because I was being spammed rather furiously. One morning I woke up to 84 spams. I dealt with the the spams and also reported Jessie, but there were soon a 50 more.

I hate moderating and have now returned to normal because, let's face it, the blogger spam trap captures almost all of the spam. If it misses a few, I can easily send them into the great beyond in another simple step. It's just that the hundreds from Jessie caused me to turn up the security temporarily and probably needlessly.

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Chronologically, this post came before croci and snow storms, but those posts seemed that they should take precedence, so I take you back to the beginning of the week.

The options for our daily hobble have been greatly reduced for the past few months because the trail isn't cleared during winter and walking becomes too difficult, or at least it does for a pair of seniors. First there comes snow, and then melting and refreezing and resulting ice, and it goes on and on.

We become reduced to three main options: the bridge (trail), our neighbourhood, and downtown. Gone are Riverside Park, and the Riverwalk Trail, and even our local part for some of the time

There are two or three options for the Riverwalk Trail. On Monday, we drove to the arena and walked from there.

We chose to get back onto the trail because it was mighty windy — AGAIN! — and the trail is usually a bit sheltered. But you can see from the billowing of Sue's cape that we weren't able to escape the stiff breeze nearly as much as we would have liked.

The river beyond Sue is swollen but not as much as in some years. Although I recently have been taking whitewater photos, the volume has generally been a little less this year, despite us having endured a snowy winter.

The world is not terribly attractive in this brown phase when the snow is gone (although it did snow on the next day) but when the greening has not begun. Nevertheless, we and a very few other hardy souls made the most of it.

Perhaps, we will soon try Riverside Park as well. There is still a bit of flooding in there, but I expect that a good chunk of the park path is walkable or soon will be.