Justfolk's photos

We had some heavy rain the other day, followed by a couple of very warm days, and now we have many Agaricus on the lawns and roadsides. Very nice to see. Here a fairly new one was shoving up near some rather older specimens. I'm not sure what either one was, though there were lots of much plainer-topped Agaricus in the neighborhood (they are probably A. campestris).

It seems a little unseemly to participate in social media without posting recent cat pictures. So in regular, ritual obeisance I post this of Minnie, my most willing model. Requisite geek talk: this is with the Olympus 45mm f/1.8 lens, a wonderful piece of glass and plastic, maybe some metal, too.

The moon was just above the horizon and flashing those low-sky colours through dark scudding clouds blowing in from the North. I like the dirty look that the jpeg artefacts produce. :) I keep trying to get interesting pictures of the moon. I've decided I don't have a very good sensor in this OM-D for detailed shots; my longest lenses shoot clearer on my E-P2.

C was a graduate student who had earlier had a part-time job working with me. In early 1995 she visited my office with her son, S. In the following years, she went on to get a PhD and he went on to be an engineering student. This was TMY (Kodak T-Max 400) film in, I think, either the Flexo camera I was using at the time or the Rolleicord I had just got. The two pictures of C and S were the only ones on the roll for which I used a flash. The negative sat around for twenty years but C asked me this week for a copy of it, so I pulled it out and scanned it this morning.

This was Saturday morning, looking out a hotel room's dirty window in Quebec City. Despite the EXIF time stamp, it was well before 9am and yet another gigantic cruise ship was starting to turn towards where she'd tie up a few minutes later. In the six days I was there, there was at least one, perhaps two, every day, and the city swarmed with that peculiar kind of tourist that takes big-ship cruises. We mixed with them everywhere. Or almost everywhere; we spent some time in the neighbourhood of St Roch (off to the left, out of the picture here) and managed to get a feel for what locals' downtown was like. It's a beautiful city and -- despite the grunge on the window and the over-sharpening -- this shows some of it for me.

While in Quebec City last week, I walked into this very hidden courtyard, formerly Le petit séminaire du Québec, but now a private school. There was not a lot of colour in the scene, except that the whitish walls had a strong blue cast from the sky, though there was a lot of tonal variation, mostly just undulations in the plaster surface. I desaturated most of the picture and was left with the bicycles' colours.

Also in Quebec City last week, I went on a ghost tour. This was the leader, explaining the unjustified execution of a man accused of fomenting revolution in the late 18th century. I've heavily manipulated this picture's textural surface.

I spent a few days this past week in Quebec City and, while touring new food places in the neighbourhood of St Roch, saw this refrigerator and its protective building in the square in front of the neighbourhood church. People leave fresh food and meals for other people to come and take. It is sad that such a thing is needed, but it has worked for a couple of years.

This was shot through the dining room window. It is of some flowers on the railing just outside the window. I've started to like the Olympus E-P2 again. I've had the camera for about six years and didn't like it much when it was new. I bought it thinking it was going to be a digital camera for people like me, stuck in film mode. It wasn't. It was noisy and cumbersome, and it had too many menu-hidden adjustments. Having used a lot more digital cameras in the meantime, though, I've come to appreciate some things about it. This was with the Olympus 40-150 zoom, at its longest extension (which is almost the only way I use that lens). This is a square crop of about 40% of the frame. A low-fi .jpg was made for posting.

When my neighbours left a month ago they asked if I wanted a birdbath. I said "Sure." But, because of an outbreak of some bird diseases here, I left it dry. This morning, I put some bird seed in it and immediately attracted a couple of snowbirds.

The flicker was checking the peanuts I had out for the bluejays. When he saw me, he moved away. I never got a picture of him standing still.

I've been feeding this guy and his friends peanuts the past couple of days. While I worked this morning, he cleared away this morning's entire lot and then hung around reminding me to refill it.

My friends here have been, one after another, taking lovely pictures of the moon. I have been trying unsuccessfully for a couple of months to get as good a moon picture as I have seen. I'll keep trying. My longest lens is an old Tokina 80-200 zoom. It is from the 1980s, I think -- a friend gave it to me last winter. I have also tried the Olympus 40-150 zoom which is made especially for the M4/3 cameras I have. Surprisingly to me, the old Tokina produces better images. And another surprise -- I am getting better pictures on the (older) Olympus E-P2 than on the recent OM-D E-M1. I suspect this last fact is a matter of handling, not of different qualities of the two cameras but I haven't narrowed it down yet. This is a substantial crop of a picture I took over a month ago, and I made this tiny .jpg for uploading. I chose just one of the colour channels for best contrast, if not sharpness; then I did some judicious sharpening overall. The darkness at the bottom and on the right are leaves on the tree I was shooting through. It is not as good as my friends' pictures, but I am improving. And I will get around to using a tripod one of these nights. :)

I was at a conference in June 1990 and this was in the auditorium at the Monument Lefebvre, Memramcook, New Brunswick. It is an important site of national heritage for Acadians and, while showing us the site, these four Acadiens, Yves, Ronald, Deborah and Muriel, burst into singing the Acadian national anthem, Ave Maris Stella. The singing was excellent and the impromptu performance very moving. Ilford FP4 in my Minolta X370.

Marc had just received the verdict on his PhD oral defence -- he'd passed. Here, he was with his wife and daughter as we were all getting ready to leave the defence room. He still had his academic gown on. His daughter smiled a moment later, but I like this picture better. Under fluorescent lights, the colours were a little more garish than I'd like, so I converted it to b&w. In so doing, I punched up the the local contrast all around (except their faces), to give it a kind of cartoony feel. There is little in real life that is as cartoony as getting advanced academic degrees.

This was June 1990 and I was at a conference in Moncton, New Brunswick; I think this particular picture was a side visit by many of us to Sackville. We were late for something and about a dozen of us were rushing along the road. It might have been an evening meal associated with the conference: C, J and V all look rather well attired for a scholarly conference. I was not especially adept at developing film at the time and I suspect now I may have developed two rolls of FP4 with a roll of Tri-X -- the FP4 rolls aren't bad, but the TriX is pretty badly over-developed. This is about 2/3 of the frame on one of the FP4 rolls. It was shot in my Minolta X370 slr.

One shouldn't let too much time pass between posting cat pictures. Here is the requisite picture.

When you touch the seed pods of these flowers they suddenly explode. They never fail to make me jump, even though I am expecting the pop. Apparently they are an invasive species here in North America. But they don't much get in the way around these parts.