Justfolk's photos

October 18th this year was World Toy Camera Day and I used my last roll of well-and-truly-expired Kodak Supra 800 in my Lomography Fisheye Camera as celebration. I finally got the film developed today, ten days later, and see 39 shots on it. There were two or three other decent ones, but these are the two I like best. The film expired somewhere around 2001. This is the view across my desk.

When these ferns die back in the fall, as these ones are doing, they send into their roots, or rhizomes, all the nutrition needed to reboot themselves in the spring. As it happens, that little chunk of protein is like the meat in a Brazil nut: just as sweet, white and nutty, and about the same size and shape. Because of the similarity in shape to a banana, that is what kids have called the morsel. Picking bananas means digging up the rhizomes, with a rock or a stick, for a snack in the woods. There are a lot of wild foods that kids eat that their parents don't know about. I have never heard of adults eating these bananas, but I suspect that it is something Europeans learnt from the native people hundreds of years ago.

Mu has been a PhD student in my department over the past three or four years; yesterday he was awarded his degree. I sat on stage and took pictures of the people I knew, including Mu. He had a moment before been given the hood for his degree by the Dean of Graduate Studies (which hood another student on the right is about to get), and had just been congratulated by the Chancellor of the university whom he is just turning from. The October graduation ceremonies are always more spare than the May ones. As a result, the balcony was nearly empty. On stage here are a former Chair of the Board of Regents (the brilliantly bald pate), and ahead of him A. M. Curren who a few minutes later received an honorary doctorate. Curren gave an excellent speech to the students, urging them to read Naomi Klein's new book (This Changes Everything) and to save the world.

In about 1930, my father owned a tiny camera that produced half-frame shots on 127 film. This is a scan of a contact print of the original negative, which was something less than 4x3 cm. The lens on the camera was a little better than a glass marble, and I am grateful that the central part of the picture is as clear as it is. Dad hung out with a bunch of natty dressers, young fellows who liked to ride bikes in the summer, and to ski in the winter. I know the name of one of these men, a good friend of my father until they each got married and drifted apart. But the other two I do not know. I don't know the date, but I'd guess these guys are all about 18 or 19 years old. My father was born in 1911, so I would guess this is around 1930.

Besides my five sisters, the red flash behind is one of my two brothers. We'd been out to supper. I ate a delicious meal of porbeagel.

We were at a meeting about the estate of our mother (who died eight years ago). The lawyers' office had a great view across the harbour.

I have often thought that a more reliable indicator than temperature of how I will feel when I step outside the door is light level. (I especially do not care to be told what the wind chill is: I dress when I am outside.) I think it would be great for the morning radio weather guy to tell me something like, "And this morning it is five stops down from bright sun." Or, "It's a real EV16 kind of day, today!" Or, "With clouds moving along in those high winds, you can expect the light to be changing rapidly from bright sun, down to three or four stops below that and back up again." Wouldn't that be good? This was 2007-expired Konica Minolta VX200 film in my Rollei Giro 28. The film was a gift from a friend, along with a dozen other rolls.

I've known Ben for five years and his girlfriend Sam for perhaps a year. I had never met his parents until this visit to my office. They all gladly posed for me with my Olympus 35DC (a great camera) loaded with a roll of (my dwindling supply of) late-1990s Supra 800 film, the grainiest colour film I have ever used.

I am coming to like (some) digital cameras more, as I discover I can make them make mistakes. What I disliked about them years ago was that every picture was predictable. I didn't predict this picture, and I like it a lot.

This is two-thirds of a second in a graveyard. Self-portraiture on a shiny gravestone.

They look like they fell together, like siblings in a big family.

This is a much poorer-kept sibling to the knife that belonged to invisibleshield's father. This one belonged to my father. Luke's (invisibleshield's) picture is at www.flickr.com/photos/lukequinton/14051805407

These days at the university I work in, a PhD thesis is defended by its author in front of some live people and at least one person attending by an Internet and telephone connection. This was a defence I attended (as an "internal examiner") last week. The external examiner is in the lower left screen while the student (now a PhD), her supervisor (on the left) and the other internal examiner (on the right) are in the upper left. I am in the upper right screen. All of us in the room with official roles were wearing our academic gowns. There are official pictures taken at these events but none looked like this. The screen images were very faded, so I took advantage of the need to bring up contrast to cartoonify the image a bit. :)

For the past year or so this hose has been strewn around the walking path that runs past where I took its picture today. Since the last time I was there, someone pulled it all together nearer the building. An the plants grew up through it. Thus this picture.

The underroad is probably a hundred years old. The overroad is about forty years old.

There were a dozen flies, mostly near its feet, when I saw this gull first. When I moved in for the shot all but one disappeared. I think it was hit by a passing car or truck.

It was late May and there were no leaves yet and the sky was mixed.