Saturday, October 29, 2022

A time lapse, amidst other stuff

The question is, what other stuff to include? My recent adventures with epoxy? Probably not, once you learn I didn't glue myself to anything. Along the way I learned that the two part epoxy has a shelf life unopened, and a shorter one once it's been opened. Of course the tubes they sell are 10x too big. So saving the tubes from the last time I did this repair didn't accomplish anything. All done now.

The photo walk with a buddy? Nothing to show you yet, since it was all on film. The light was nothing special, so I'm not holding my breath waiting for the film to be developed. In any case, I've got another dozen exposures to go on this roll, so don't you be holding your breath either.

Yes, I'm still carrying around the small film camera on errands to places I don't go so often. The idea is to be looking for interesting photos that wouldn't occur to me if I wasn't carrying a real camera. It's been interesting so far. While I haven't captured anything astonishing, at least I don't think so, I have stopped and looked at some scenes in a thoughtful way.

We've pretty well got the garden put to bed, and when I say we, I mean Linda. There's still some organization to do in the garage and basement so we aren't tripping over stuff. The snow has not entirely melted, which is a bit of a surprise.

I gave up on Instagram to share photos. It kept showing me things it wanted me to see, not what the people I've connected with wanted to show me. I hadn't looked at it for a while, and just took a quick scroll though. It doesn't change my mind. I'm thinking the pool of photos that I'm missing by not looking at Instagram because they won't appear anywhere else, and that I want to look at, is pretty darn small.

I've got an account on VERO now, and I'm quite liking it. I'm interested in just the photos part of it, at least for now, but there are sections for movies, music, books, links, and places. But the big thing is no algorithm. It just shows you, in chronological order, what's been posted by the people you've connected with. Plus, it doesn't play games with resizing or playing with the resolution. 

It's an app, not a browser, so I can't give you a link. There's a phone and desktop app. I mostly look at it on desktop. Feel free to look me up. So far I've been trying to post a photo a day, with some photos from the recent Yukon trip, and some of the stars from previous years. If any of my performing buddies want photos on there, but don't want to start an account, I'd be happy to do a photo session with you and post them there.

And the Art of Photography tome is ready for me to pick up. This time I'll take a photo of the cover and take notes for the blog.

I'd mentioned in an earlier blog that if even one person request a bigger version of the aurora time lapse, I'd tweak it a bit and put it on Youtube. One asked, and I obeyed. Here. Enjoy. Here's a different still from the time lapse.


Of the Day
Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Green Fools

Caribou

Lynx

Landscape
Sunset over Marsh Lake, Yukon.


Tombstone

Film

Friday, October 28, 2022

She would have been 103

As it is, she only made it to 98. Only. I'm not sure if she aspired to the century mark and was steamed because she missed it by THAT much, or if she was tired and ready to call it a day.

When she was born they were still dealing with Spanish Flu. The bloodbath of WWI hadn't even been over for a year. I suspect that everybody would know of someone, or more likely, several people that died of either of those. 

Airplanes were essentially flying death traps and any landing you walked away from was good enough. Penicillin was still a decade and a half a way, so people could die from an infected cut. Anesthesia for surgical procedures was a thing, just barely, and dental X-Rays weren't quite yet. Telephone was a thing, but was still under active development. Oddly enough, the facsimile machine predates the telephone. Television was a decade away.

Those few things paint a picture of the world just past living memory. Things changed fast. The first heavier than air flight was 1903, and in 1969 men walked on the moon. Only 66 years. There were probably lots of people old enough to read about the first flight in the newspapers, and were still alive to watch the moon landings on TV.  I remember reading an article that extrapolated the transportation speeds into the future, and predicted by the start of the 21st century we'd have faster than light space travel. Now, 53 years later, it looks like we're going back to the moon again. 

The medical world didn't know how to deal with Spanish Flu. The death toll was enormous, and all they could do was tell people to stay isolated and wear a mask. Now we know how the disease is transmitted, and how it affects the body. We have vaccines, though it isn't a sure prevention. We have medical grade masks that are better than anything available back then. 

Imagine isolation 100 years ago. No internet. Probably no electricity. Probably no telephone. No television. Maybe you could get someone to drop off some books with food. Depending on exactly where and when, isolation might be enforced by the local police.

Isolation is a piece of cake now. With a high speed internet connection, you can watch nearly any movie or TV show ever made, listen to nearly any music ever recorded. Cat videos alone could take up a significant fraction of the rest of your life. You can video chat in real time with nearly anyone else in the world. Is there anything you can't order through Amazon or other on line services and be delivered in a few days? 

People have all that, and still complained. It was such a hardship. I have no sympathy. Remember, I translate someone saying "I'm bored" as "I'm really stupid" and I avoid them. 

Our world is still changing. Linda was telling me that there's only a couple Dim Sum restaurants in town that do it the old fashioned way, with people wheeling carts around with food, and you point to what you want. Now you order what you want and it gets delivered. All this assumes you know what some particular dish is called. I never did. I just knew which ones I liked, though it's a dim memory now. I can't remember the last time I had Dim Sum, and in fact, the last time I had Chinese food is a little hazy. A lot hazy, actually. I think it was a team lunch when I worked at Talisman.

I talked a couple weeks ago about cell phones in modern life. They arrived only 20 years ago and I was a live adult then. I marvelled at remembering what life was like then, and I can barely imagine 100 years ago. Sometimes I wonder about looking the other way, thinking about what the people of 100 years ago would think of today. Yes, the technology changes would amaze them, but I think the thing they'd struggle with most is the pace of life. People expect everything now. Actually that's an understatement. They expect everything RIGHT EFFING NOW!!! Having a gadget arrive at your door from a sweatshop in China overnight is barely fast enough. If you don't answer in 2 rings they hang up, and you wonder why we never answer our land line. (Which is another bit of technology in our house that is essentially obsolete now.)

I'm pretty sure the last actual paper letter I got from a person was late 2017. Other than a few bills in the paper mail, the rest is junk. Even the email to my original address is mostly junk. Every now and then I go write a bunch of rules to send the junk to the trash without me having to do it. Pity the cell phone doesn't let me do that. Every morning I have to delete a dozen or so emails that are mostly shopping spam.

Before that, I periodically corresponded via letter with the one who would be 103. I sometimes wrote by hand, which was a trial for both of us because my handwriting has never been any better than atrocious. Hers was a semi-elegant scrawl that I had to work to read. Mostly I typed. The fact that much of the news was about people I'd never met didn't help. Letters took a week or so to get back and forth, most of the time. There were time for events to happen that might get discussed in such a letter. There was time to read and write such a letter.

Now, there might be a couple of email exchanges, then it will get buried in the flood of everything else. Things that have to be dealt with RIGHT NOW. Email used to be amazing, now it's a chore, something quaintly old fashioned to young people. They casually say to one another, whatsupme, or tiktak me or probably something even newer that I've never heard of. Even texting isn't fast enough. It seems that people now cannot be out of touch. I think for most people, you wouldn't have to torture them to spill the beans. Just make them sit in a chair in a quiet room. They'd crack before they had to pee.

Don't get me started on emoticons or emojis. There was a reason we invented letters and literacy; it gives us clarity and precision.

Some days I just want to unplug. The other day I happened to be listening to a cover of Midnight Train to Georgia, for the first time since about high school. The lyrics mean something entirely different to me now. Except now that simpler place and time probably isn't there anymore. 

I suppose it's a good thing I'm retired now. I can unplug to a certain extent. I feel for the people that actually can't. 

What photo to show you? Decisions, decisions. Let's just go with a nice placid beach scene. Maybe you'll pause for a moment to enjoy the solitude.

Of the Day
Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape

Tombstone

Green Fools

Caribou

Lynx

Film

Tuesday, October 25, 2022

Struggling for a title

So there I was, in the dark, surrounded by screaming kids. No, it wasn't a nightmare. I was at the Kid's Halloween party with a camera. In one sense it was an odd event. There were a significant number of kids there who had no memory of this event. It was a first for them, and they were a bit boggled, but caught on quick. The other was older kids who had missed it and were delighted to be back. I overheard one conversation that included "it's different seeing your friends at a party, and it's so much fun!" A link to the photos, if you're interested, is here.

In one sense, it's a difficult photo session. The kids are amped up on sugar and a party high, so they're moving fast. It's fairly dark, so (a digression for camera nerds) I'm using an f1.8 lens which happens to be really wide, so I need to be really close. ISO is fairly high so there's lots of noise in the photos, and it takes a bit more work than usual to edit. 

If I'd thought about it, I might have rented the Sigma 85mm f1.4 and got myself organized to try some portrait photos with it. But I know I don't want to buy that lens any time soon, so no use tempting myself with it. Only $1400, after all, so why not get two in case one get's broken?

I'm still having fun thinking more about film these days. I've got a film walk around on Thursday with some friends, and I'm thinking about my choices. Big or little camera, or both? Colour or B&W? Decisions decisions. 

This is the oldest photo in the not blogged in 3 months folder. Taken July 30, when there was moist and green happening. We still have snow, though it's slowly melting.


Which gave me a serendipity photo. Which I suppose could belong in the Bee section in Of the Day


The next oldest photos are the covers of some library books that I no longer remember reading. I really must make notes about them if I want to blog about them. As I think about it, I'm not sure I even finished them.

I'm a whole lot fussier about books and movies and TV shows these days. I was browsing Netflix the other day, and must have started half a dozen shows, and bailed on all of them pretty darn quick. I'm eagerly awaiting a book from the library. I had it out, and got part way through it. Not quite savouring every word, but having to chew through it, since it was a tome in every sense of the word. I could only hold it up for so long. I'll be sure to blog about that one.

In other news, I got a request to put a larger version of the aurora time lapse on Youtube, thus it will be done, and a link posted when done.

I have no idea what to use as a title.

Of the Day
Driftwood

Flowers

Peony

Lily

Landscape, from early October 2016. I was on the way to breakfast with a friend, and stopped at this nice viewpoint. There is a tonemapped version of this that is more than just a little lurid.


Tombstone

River scene. These are from the Yukon River tour. A distant look back at Dawson.



Moose. Say goodbye to the moose, this is the last one. There are a few caribou photos next.


Lynx

Film



Sunday, October 23, 2022

Unexpected. Unusual.

Life is an adventure. It starts when we were born, and we didn't have any choice about that. At least, that's the way it looks to us. There are those who believe that our lives here on earth are just a part of a greater life that began before birth and goes on after death. Some believe that we have many lives, and we gradually learn as we go, or pay off a karmic burden from a previous life.

I sometimes think of my photo expeditions as a little mini journey of life. It starts when I pick up a camera with the intent to take a series of photos. I might have a specific subject in mind, or I might be going out to see what I find. In this case, I choose to pick up the camera, and make choices about what gets captured by the camera. Sometimes there is a story that goes with the photos, and you need both to make sense of the experience. Or not.

In some senses the story ends when I put the camera down again, but in wider sense that isn't true. For digital I have to take the SD card out of the camera, plug it into the computer, import the data into Lightroom, and then review and edit. For the film cameras, the roll comes out when done, gets taken to the lab to be developed, picked up again, and then there's a digitization process. 

Only then do I see what I captured. Often they are a random collection of photos unrelated to each other. Sometimes I goofed on focus or exposure and the photo is nothing, or maybe (highly unlikely) it's a masterpiece. At best I can call it an abstract and pretend I planned it that way. For intentional photos most of them are 'there I was and this is what I saw.' But sometimes I know I got art when I took it, and every now and then it's the editing that makes the photo.

So today you get a bunch of the unusual photos, most of which probably need a story.

Our front garden during our long autumn at sunset. It looked nice to my eyes, but I knew the camera could capture details in the green and brown stems that my eyes wouldn't see. I hoped the colours would come out and I'm quite pleased. The actual composition might be a bit of a mess, but such is life sometimes.



Another sunset. The surprise is that the colour version isn't much to look at it. A few streaks of light pink with lots of blue sky and crappy looking grass. I took it while using the camera as a sophisticated light meter for the film camera. I didn't even look at it when editing the other photos taken during the same session. Then I went back and tried B&W just to see what it looked like. It brought up all kinds of cloud detail that can't be seen in the colour version.


This started with me looking at a map and trying to figure where I could get a specific photo of the sun rising between the buildings downtown. I succeeded in that, though I didn't know at the time that if I'd closed down the aperture I'd have got a better starburst effect. So this photo is from my Mordor days, as I think of it, where I went crazy with Photomatix. I'd never do that now, unless it was for a specific audience or a comic book cover or something where I was well paid.


And an unblogged serendipity abstract.


Just for reference this is as close as I got to the photo I had in mind.


I was out for a long run when I saw this, and went back with the good camera because it made me think of my buddy Beth of SUAR fame. I'd wondered if she had snuck in a visit to Calgary and hadn't told me. There's a joke there, that I'm pretty sure some of my readers will get. I'd sent it to her at the time and it made her laugh. If she sees it today, I hope it gives her a good laugh again.


Sometimes you have to take what you get. I was hoping for a dramatic sunrise, but without clouds that's tough. Then I was hoping for the flag to be out a bit straighter, but...


And Curtis! What can I say? Im pretty sure I never blogged this because much of it was out of focus. What do you think he wants?


5 minutes and a slightly different direction separate these two photos. And you wonder why photographers sometimes obsess about details. I had thought the pedestrian bridge would be a great spot for sunset photos, but it wasn't then, and it's worse now what with the new ring road. The photo I want to get from it is due east with the moon rise over Anderson road. Sometime in the next 19 years, if it's not cloudy that evening.



Sean, this photo will make you laugh. During our walk the other day we stood exactly where this photo was captured, and I mentioned that I didn't think I'd ever been there before. So much for my memory.


And the long promised time lapse of the aurora from the recent Yukon trip. In this case we were too far north, and for much of our evening we were looking straight up at the aurora. What we saw as a thing band of colour would be a spectacular curtain of light from further south.


Of the Day
Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape
Looks like Tombstone, but it's actually Top of the World Highway.


Tombstone

Green Fools

Moose

Lynx

Film