Justfolk's photos

There is a winter storm blowing this afternoon in mid-January. And I am dreaming of summertime. I'm also dreaming of 126 film, thinking I need to take some. This was shot on some 1989-expired 126 film that I shot in late June 2012 in my Yashica EZ Matic. It was at Red Cliff, an abandoned WW2 gun emplacement and postWar radio listening site. I still have a few rolls of 126 film that expired just over 25 years ago.

We were at some friends' house for supper last week. The hosts were very proud, as they should be, of their new pair of kittens. During the meal the two cats jumped up on a shelf behind me; I roughly aimed my camera at them to take a half-dozen shots. I cropped and burned and dolled this one up for the hosts; they won't be kittens very long and my friends will need something to remember them with. This picture reminds me of a 1980s calendar picture. But it *is* the Internet so we have to make allowances and show off our cat pictures.

This was a thirty-second exposure in the evening sky about two weeks ago. The North Star was somewhere in the upper left, or just outside the frame. My neighbours' Christmas lights are mostly just bright white here. If I were really smart I would have done a series of exposures and melted them together. But I'm not.

By strict tradition, Christmas ends on Old Christmas Day, January sixth, but no one I know is strict about it. Our hosts last night had been unable to fit in a date during the regular Christmas season, so they held a party replete with cake and tree on January ninth. Here it was around midnight and I got some good near scowls from those near some of the food. A good time was had by all. This is a mash of two pictures with lots of burning and cloning, if not to hide the join, then to mask it.

Nic (wearing the bow tie) successfully defended his Phd thesis this afternoon. His supervisor is immediately to the left of him, and one of his supervisory committee on the extreme left of the picture (I was another). His external examiner is on the screen (two internal examiners cannot be seen), and the Associate Dean is the person at the table on the right. The technical person looking after the video links is in the far corner. Nic's not really a PhD yet -- he has to be officially granted that at the graduation ceremony in five months. But we all called him Doc anyway. We are told not to take pictures at these events, but it was over at this point so I grabbed a shot or two so the external could see what she looked like to us. (This is a mash of two pictures, the joining of which you can see clearly in the lower right.)

K visited a month ago and I took her picture while she took mine. I used well-expired Lomographic 800 film in my Mamiyaflex and she used her telephone. I did not like the colour, so I blue-filtered it into this b&w. I haven't seen the picture she took of me but I bet it is nothing like this one of her.

Here they were without masks.

Mummers visited us one evening during Christmas, the first night we were back in Ganny Cove. As we gave them drinks, we guessed at who they were. I guessed there were three men and one woman; I was wrong. Once they had drinks, they "stripped" (took off their masks) and we found out who they were. They were all men. We only knew two of them -- they were both close neighbours -- but the other two were from a mile or so away and we didn't know them. That sort of thing, mixing up the groups, makes for good fun with mummers. We were told there had been a group of sixteen going around the night before. That would have strained our supply of alcohol. :) We've come back into the city now but it is only the fourth of January yet, so there are three more nights of Christmas, so I expect the mummers are still about.

I asked them to look in different directions; they chose these. The picture was heavily cropt, manipulated, noised, and desaturated to get to this.

London Dock is a favourite rum locally. She has an old label and a new label bottle.

The recent bride and her cousin, tête-à-tête. Or maybe just trading geeky thoughts about the television set-up for the wedding pictures.

This was at a party in honour of the bernlaw's daughter who just brought home her new husband for everyone to meet. There was lots of kissyface, hugging and famjam snuggling.

Half the crowd had already left when we got everyone else together for the Big Scowl. This was around nine o'clock last night, Boxing Day after five or more hours of good times mainly celebrating the recent wedding of the two in the middle. The newish bride is scowling at her father who is scowling back at her, and the newish groom is behind her, a quick study to the Art of Scowl. I think, with two dozen scowls and near-scowls, this was a record for us.

After a couple of festive meals, we were all slowing down.

Parkus is sixteen months old and his parents, my nephew and his wife, are giving him a good time. He was already past his bedtime and he was slowing down.

I only guess that this is a *male* Amnerican goldfiinch; it has a lot more colour than the goldfinches often have this time of year. The males tend to be brighter than the females. This is another picture taken this afternoon with the 300mm "reflex" lens on the Olympus OM-D E-M1.

I'm still testing the 300 mm lens on the Olympus E-M1. It's not a very sharp lens at the best of times, but it does get me close when the sun is shining and I can use a fast shutter speed.

A dozen of us had decorated Mark's tree, and Mark had fed us a great, big pre-Christmas feast and we were getting ready to go. Neil had something more to say.