First 2026 Flowery Friday

No idea if people are rolling their eyes at the return of Flowery Friday. But Linda has been out getting flowers, and the ones that live here are starting to come up. Least I can do is appreciate and encourage them.

These ones are from very late April.

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These are from May 7 with a really wide lens, knowing there'd be a bit of edge distortion. I'm thinking about trying some new things with the flower photos this year. Stay tuned.

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5. Some of the plants Linda just bought.

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8. More of the new plants. They are up on the table and chairs because we have a baby bunny living in the back yard, and we don't want to have it nibbling expensive plants.

9. Look carefully. The very first peony shoots are coming up.

I got asked for an example of one of the unposed photos of Antje.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film and almost 90 days ago.

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

Flower, or rather, sort of a flower. This is what's left after all the peony blossom petals fall off and a long hard winter.

Landscape

Bonus. Michelle from the noir detective session, working on Antje.

Some of the rest of the photo session

On Sunday my friends Michelle and Antje came over for a fun photo session. Part of it was the two noir detectives. That story is here. It also includes a couple portrait photos of Antje by herself, but which are part of the noir series so I put them there.

While I've taken many photos of Michelle over the years, some posed, some not, all the ones of Antje so far had been unposed, in outdoor light. She wanted to be part of the session, but was a bit nervous about formally posing. We decided to start with her, and play with light. These photos show the evolving sequence.

My thoughts around portrait photography is that I like to work with real people to capture a flattering image of them as they are. People have wrinkles, freckles, errant hairs, skin blemishes, and any number of other "flaws" that they think make for a poor photo, and I say bah! I think people are sick of perfection, and now are suspecting that an image that looks too good is AI generated. Yes, some poses work better than others. Subtle makeup and lighting can change the image, but I'm not going to turn a real person into a magazine cover.

1. One of the fun things is capturing unposed photos behind the scenes. We were just getting started, with Michelle touching up some lip gloss.

2. Starting off with soft lighting, seeing how the shadows looked. 

3. Conversion to black and white, trying to see what the texture of her skin does with varying levels of light.

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5. Starting to relax in front of the camera. 

6. Another sort of behind the scenes look. I'm not sure what was happening here.

7. Finally getting the light to show up on her hair, but without overexposing her face.

8. Michelle fluffing and arranging hair. I think she was trying to make that little curl go away. It's really nice to have an assistant for this sort of thing. That way I don't have to touch anyone. As it turns out, this is one of the really nice photos from the day, with Michelle framing Antje.

9. Yes, there actually was coffee in the mug, so it's not just a prop.

10. And we get to the winners!

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12. Antje had always wondered what her eye would look like in a macro photo. I was happy to oblige.

As with the noir detectives, I could work on these forever in Lightroom. Mostly it was careful and subtle adjustments to highlights and shadows, overall exposure, and darkening the background. An editing pro might wince at what I've done, and take the images in a different direction entirely. That's their vision. As long as my models are happy, I'm happy.

It was a fun session! We all worked together trying different ideas. Some worked, some didn't. There's already been some thoughts about another session. Stay tuned.

May 1, post me, pre Linda

Maybe I did a bad thing. Several bad things. No, nothing perverted, get your minds out of the gutter.

I took my winter boots downstairs. Again. Each time so far it's snowed. It has to stop doing that sooner or later. Doesn't it? Then again, it has snowed every month of the year, even August.

I took the snow shovels downstairs to the store room under the stairs.

I got the water barrels set up, since there's a chance of showers this evening. Plus City Council passed a stupid boneheaded bylaw about mandatory water conservation measures that regulate when people can water their lawns. This, while the City loses more than 20% of it's treated water through infrastructure leaks. Another bylaw boondoggle. Don't get me started.

I opened the outdoor taps and set up the hoses.

At least I didn't wash the car and I haven't taken the snow tires off yet. That's on May 6.

This is the state of the garden on May 1, after I got the water barrels set up, and before Linda started cleaning up. She was looking things over, wondering where to start, and thinking she was behind already, but no. There was snow in the back yard only a few days ago. We startled a baby bunny living under the big bag that is covering out patio chairs. It can eat all the grass it wants, but we don't want it chewing on the flowers. The cherry and apple tree are beginning to bud out.

This is all what it looks like, in a documentary sort of way. So many that I'll skip the Of the Day feature.

1. The green barrel is new. It's a collapsable barrel from Lee Valley, source of all sorts of amazing stuff that you never knew you needed. 500 l capacity. It took a while to figure out how to set up, and I hope this works. The plywood is because the bottom of the barrel is the plastic fabric, so I'm thinking it wouldn't be happy sitting on the patio stones. The white barrels are 200 L each. 

2. I used to set the barrels directly on the bricks, but that was a pain in the butt to set up. Plus this gives an extra bit of elevation for the siphoning to work. I hope.

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4. The Barcelona barrel. 375 L capacity.

5. A new post that captured Linda during a shopping trip. This corner of the back garden gets a surprising amount of sun, so it's no surprise the spring plants start here.

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11. The blue vase that we use as a water barrel mainly because it looks so nice, but I've no real idea what the capacity is. Maybe 100 L? I was thinking of putting the collapsible barrel here, but it's really a bit too big for the space, and only a small part of the roof drains into it.

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