Justfolk's photos

I had a roll of expired (just three years expired) Lomography 800 film in my Mamiyaflex when K and her daughter B dropt in. I've taken pictures of B since she was a baby and neither one was averse to posing for me again. The colour was pretty awful, so I converted it to b&w. The film has a lot of circles and numbers on the length of it, transferred from the backing paper. They don't seem to interfere here much with the image.

C dropped by before heading off for the holidays. With my Mamiyaflex, I took a picture of her and then she took the Mamiyaflex and took a picture of me. I took advantage of that to take (with the X100) a couple more of her holding the Mamiyaflex. It will be interesting to compare these with the Mamiyaflex shots (which were on outdated Lomography 800 film).

I was home this afternoon working, checking the birds from time to time. I saw a usual crowd of snowbirds (juncos), plus a half-dozen blue jays of which pack this guy was a part. There was one solitary yellow spotted white-throated sparrow. And a hawk. (I don't know my hawks at all well so I'm not sure what he was. When I raised my camera, even though he was back on to me, he decided to take off, so all I got was a blurry picture of him. When first I had glanced at him, though, I saw his speckled chest and my first thought was that he was a flicker; based on that I think he was probably sharp-shinned.)

N was a researcher who came to see me about her work on traditional work techniques in June 2000. I took her picture with the Agfa 160 film I had in my Canonet. I scanned the negative a couple of years ago but did not like the scan much -- really contrasty and blotchy in colour. However, a couple of days ago I found it and reduced some of the contrast and saturation. I also cropt it square. I like it now.

After a meal we put on the Rubber Soul album because, after all, it was the fiftieth anniversary the day before. One Beatles thing led to another and this picture was during Abbey Road when, if we weren't up dancing, we were all singing along. Or air guitarring. Abbey Road -- it's 46 years old.

This was a thirtieth of a second. . . not much steadier.

My cat's right eye. At a twentieth of a second, there's not much hope of a hand-held shot through a 300 mm lens being steady.

Looking out my window at the juncos and chickadees today, I spot this chickadee doing chin-ups on an empty feeder. Well, you know: I had to take its picture.

I have been enjoying taking pictures of birds out my window so I decided to indulge myself and buy a cheapish long lens for my Olympus M4/3 cameras. So today I got a Tokina Reflex 300mm f/6.3 lens and tried it out immediately on the Pen E-P2. There was nothing to take a picture of except myself, in the door knob. At f/6.3 in the low light of indoors, you gotta turn the ISO way up so this was shot at ISO6400 -- just to get a fifteenth of a second.

This was the view from an upstairs window, late on Saturday night, late in November, with below freezing temperatures and some snow blowing around. It was a thirty-second exposure because it was completely overcast; the clouds were somewhat lit by the moon above, but there was little light about.

. . . I was going to say the fish grabbed my camera and the other one looked on with disgust while the first one selfied, but I didn't think you'd believe me. This was at Cayo Santa Maria in Cuba. It was three and a half years ago . . . but who's counting? It's a tiny fragment of a bigger picture.

While all hands sang and danced around them, the priests left the front of the church, and Ron's nephew followed, carrying the urn with his uncle's ashes. You can see him near the right edge; the urn looks like a bunch of bananas. A quarter-second exposure makes for interesting patterns.

I took a dozen pictures at the funeral today for Ron Hynes, the greatest troubadour Newfoundland has ever produced. His funeral was in the largest church in the city, the Catholic Basilica, and the Basilica was jam-packed with people: SRO. Rather than a religious ceremony, it was a celebration of Ron the man and it ended here with a dozen or so performers who had individually and in smaller groups sung his songs in the hour-long service. Together they sang his song St. John's Waltz and the entire crowd sang along, swaying and even dancing to it. A friend of mine called it a Hootenanny Funeral. None of my pictures turned out. I wasn't paying close attention and only realised near the end that my ISO was too low for sensibl pictures. Oh well. This is a tiny crop of one of the pictures during St. John's Waltz, and I like it anyway. I can figure out who most of these people are and I like the jokey-teary effect that it has. Ron was like that too sometimes. Afterwards lots of people raised glasses in Ron's honour.

Our street got some new bits of sidewalk this fall. When I took this picture, five weeks ago, the water valve for someone's house was still covered in new concrete.

Fifty years ago, Carla Emerson's father composed a twelve-minute orchestral piece that included a harp part for her. It was never performed, at least not until tonight. Tonight she played her part with the rest of the orchestra and received a standing ovation both from the orchestra and the crowd. She's 93 years old and well loved as a teacher throughout the community. She's still teaching, and active in a dozen other ways too. I've known her for decades. She's the mother of two of my friends and -- for instance -- she goes to their parties. I had a lively conversation with her a few weeks ago at one. The signs as I went into the hall said I was forbidden to take pictures. But I thought: if I don't, who will?

I have a thing for old bikes. This one was old in September 2004 when I took this picture. I expect it was old in about 1970 when it was thrown to the back of the barn which had stood in this spot until a few weeks before I took the picture. It spent a lot of time in a pretty damp area; there's a lot of rust there. Lever brakes. Leather seat leaving only its springs. Probably British in origin. I wonder if anyone can figure out its make and age.

I've always been prone to nineteenth-century pictorialism. I like this version much better than the more photographic, flatter version I posted here a few minutes ago.

The street going up the hill was named 160 years ago for the R.C. church that had been built near its bottom, and the church had been named for the patron saint of Ireland whence came many of the population of downtown St. John's. The smaller church beyond (on the left) was a Methodist church built a couple of generations later. Its congregants no doubt were proud of the fact that their spire was nowhere as imposing as that across and down the street. This was taken in pouring rain from about 200 metres away with the 75mm lens on the OM-D E-M1. Typically grey November weather.