Justfolk's photos

One of the old names for what people mostly call the Milky Way in English was the Maiden Vein. That's the name my own family's ancestors would have called it. (Some people spelt it "Vane" because of the idea that you could predict wind directions from it.) This was near the NE end of the Maiden Vein last night, pictured by my X100 camera sitting precariously on a deck rail and leaning back for the 25- or 30-degree upward angle it needed for this shot. You can see Andromeda down (and in) from the the upper right corner.

A group of us were making a weekend of it in Port Rexton which is in the part of Trinity Bay my ancestors settled 350 years ago. The island you can see here on the horizon, Fox Island, was where one of my ancestors is said (by oral tradition, if not by documented history) to have been hurled over a cliff to his death. That would have been around 1700 (if it actually happened). Fox Island is about two km away from where I set the camera to take this picture last night at 10 o'clock or so. The camera sat on the railing of the deck that runs around the house we had for the weekend. I took a half dozen sky shots in that fashion. I got a recogniseable picture of Andromeda in one (that was just above the area in this picture, above the right corner), and a recogniseable one of the Seven Sisters, the Pleiades, in another. The Pleiades are just barely to the left of this shot, hardly even outside the frame, perhaps even just hidden in the wisps of fog. To get the Andromeda shot, I had to angle the camera up by leaning it against my wallet. All that light in the foreground is lamplight from the window.

It was dark enough to see the Milky Way and, beyond it, Andromeda. This was a thirty-second shot. There were three people -- one kept wandering around and you'd almost not know he was there. Another moved a little, and the third hardly moved at all.

I don't especially like pigeons, or rock doves, whatever you call them. They hang about on edges of roofs leaving their crap behind them, and they spill birdseed I leave out for tinier birds, so it goes all over the ground, no doubt attracting other pests. They sometime look very ominous, like so many crows, but crows strike me as much smarter animals.

These two young women are doctoral students and were present yesterday at the celebration and launch of a booklet based on the work of several other, more junior, students. I took a lot of pictures there but none was better than this one.

I posted (to Fbk) a bunch of pictures from this back yard party at a friend's house. Another friend, unable to attend, asked if Fred, here with white shirt, wore socks. So I blew up a small part of the only picture that showed Fred's feet. But I couldn't tell.

The three of us have known each other for several decades. And last night we were at some mutual friends' backyard party. You cannot trust a Labour Day party for its weather, so almost everyone was dressed in jackets, scarves, etc.

I don't know if Henry keeps his own bees, or grows his own flowers. A friend of mine, who lives on this street, tells me the stand was used a month ago at the annual civic Regatta and that Henry is a young boy. Nice signs.

You never know whether your regular roots will hold in a heavy gale.

I like homemade headstones; they give me a feeling of someone's control over an aspect of death that really has gotten out of control for most people. It's a vernacular art form that calls attention to the blandness of commercial headstones. I like to think that Mr Noftall, born in 1929, made his own stone, leaving a space for his death date (1993?) to be added later. And that makes me think I could do the same, leaving a little hole where someone could pour new cement in to finish off my stone, after I'm finished off myself. And the Garlands' family or friends, continuing after a decade or so to tidy up the grave, level the stone, repaint the letters, and leave flowers: they strike me as far more attentive to their dead than those who pay for "perpetual care" of a gigantic expensive headstone. Expired Kodak 200 film ("200-8" is the negative edge marking), probably from about 2007. Shot on my Olympus XA just before it died. Let this be a memorial to it.

I have owned almost a dozen Olympus XAs over the past twenty years. They are brilliant little machines but they are susceptible to massive and catastrophic failures. I have kept on buying ones that seemed to work despite their faults. This one was a very good little camera for about six years until I had it with me a month ago on a trip out of town. Its shutter gave up the ghost and only allowed itself to do fifteen- and thirty-second shots. I didn't know that fact for some time, so I took a few dozen pictures with the handicap. The negative frames are all very close to black as a result. However, there are traces of images in several, and here is one. I like it. This was expired Kodak 200 film. According to the negative's edge markings, 200-8 is the formulation; that places it around 2007, I think.

I had not used my ZeroImage 612 pinhole camera for a couple of years when I used it one morning before breakfast in Tilting Harbour, on Fogo Island. The film was Fujichrome 64T Type II (RTPII), a roll which had expired in May 2006. I did not take good care of it in that time and it spent several years in the bag with the pinhole camera. The camera was set at 6 x 12 cm, the largest frame it will do and i see I neglected to take a hair out of the frame (on the left here); the hair shows up in several pictures on the roll. The film was developed as C41 which is a convenience but ensures the colours will be awry. I shot each picture at thirty seconds. I have another roll in the camera now and I think I will try one stop down from that, shooting at fifteen seconds.

After she successfully made it through her PhD oral defence, Martha and a half dozen friends and members of the examination board went for some drinks at the campus bar. Here, outside the bar and before the drinks, she was on the phone to her mother telling her she is now Dr. Martha. I supervised her thesis. Those are her two sister-in-laws watching. I've known her sister-in-laws longer than I have known Martha, which is over thirty years. A square crop from a picture taken in the Fujifilm X100.

The greater Trinity Bay (the water beyond these islands) has no less than four places named Heart's Something: Heart's Content, Heart's Desire, Heart's Delight and this area, Heart's Ease. The other three were named in the 1800s but this was the original Heart's place, with a name that was recorded in the 1600s. Just why it was called Heart's Ease is mooted back and forth but my own (unproved and undocumented!) theory is that it was named from the water in reference to the sea arches, which stood (and most still stand) along the shore (the shore we cannot see from this vantage point). The local pronunciation of "Arches" would have been something close to Harchees, and this in fact is the local name to this day, with and without the initial H. Archie's Beach, then, is the local name for that barasway or tombolo that you see in the centre, going from the mainland to the first island, Archie's Island. This shot was taken from atop a hill known alternatively as Blow-Me-Down and Jack Baker's Hill. Up and down the eastern coast of North America there are hills rising sharply from the water; they produce unexpected wind patterns for sailboats and have been named Blow-me-down (or Blomidon, etc.). So, I suspect that name was the name used by passing sailors. But Jack Baker's Hill refers to a man who lived in the area and who probably used the land for wood cutting or the like. Perhaps he lived along the path that goes out this way; I don't know, but I suspect that is the name used by the locals, the liveyers. The curvature of the Earth is of course an artefact of my using the 8-mm lens (EXIF-rated at 7.1mm) I had on my Olympus OM-D E-M1.

Saturday night past there was a full moon and, uncharacteristically, we not only had clear skies and a warm evening, but also almost no wind. At 11:00 there was no light but for the moon and the stars. I put the camera (Fujifilm X100) on the railing of the deck and took this picture of Ganny Cove and the South sky. It was 30 seconds long at f/2.

I saw several of these, each about ten cm across, today. I thought, "A suede bolete!" I think it may be Russell's bolete and should have picked one to check the spore print. I did cut one down the middle (and saw a yellow flesh that did not change colour) but I didn't bring one, and now I just have my pictures to figure it out from. And my on-line friends to help. :)

My bernlaw, left, is an accomplished painter. He was explaining something about technique here to two friends in front of some of his paintings in the stairs.

It was a birthday celebrated during a road trip with old friends and thus in a hotel room. The cake was a tiny cupcake. This was with the little pancake fisheye "body cap lens" by Olympus (9mm f/8). I always think of it as a pinhole lens, but it isn't -- the aperture is about 1.5 mm wide and there is glass in it. The shot was hand-held at an eighth of a second, but the E-P2 has stabilisation and it *is* only 8mm, so it's certainly a passable image.