Justfolk's photos

My brother, his wife and their daughter were visiting and they picked up my sister along the way. So we had a nice visit on the back deck. And of course pictures were taken. My wife offered to take some pictures with me in them, but I had accidentally slipped the shutter speed to 1/4000. Duhh. So this picture was badly under-exposed. Converting it to b&w almost made it right. It was a good scowlery and that can make up for lots of technical faults.

My blow-fly’s eyes are nothing like a fire. Dull amber fills their copious space. Vivacious green its bod entire. Stark hairs from all ‘cept for its pasty face. ---------------------------- Mr Shakespeare might smile at my brave knock-off of #130. He might smile that I'm too lazy to try another ten lines, too.

My nearly-sixteen-year-old grand-niece B at a family party a couple of weeks ago. She's fascinated by her father's Nikon F (F-something) film camera. He, P, had a roll of Tri-X inside it. Ever since she was a little girl, she's been interested in film cameras. My picture was taken on twenty-years-expired Fuji 400 C41 film, shot at 100 speed. The negatives were very dense and I did a poor job of cutting them. I think I trimmed away a little of this frame. :( Nonetheless, it's a satisfying near-square frame.

In August 2021 I put a twenty-years-expired roll of Fuji 400 film in my Rollei 35TE and shot a few pictures while visiting the town of Grand Bank. This was one of them. Then I put the camera aside and didn't finish it until a couple of weeks ago, in August 2022. I shot it at ISO100, two stops extra exposure, which seems to be right for some images. Across the board, though, the negatives are very dense (which might be an artefact of the film's age).

We didn't plant any sunflowers. The birds eat the seeds all winter and some of them, notably the chickadees, poke a few away in various places. Like in our flower pots. So this year we succoured our gifts and this one is the first to open.

I started a roll of Fuji 400 colour film in my little Rollei 35TE a year ago, put it aside, and finally picked it up again a couple of weeks ago. I got the film developed today. This picture was one from just a couple of weeks ago, at a family garden-gathering. The film was already twenty years expired when I put it in the camera. Thus the mottled texture. The colours were largely desaturated anyway, but this was converted to b&w through a virtual bluish filter to increase contrast. The flash of dark on the left edge is caused by my poor negative scissorring and then refraction from the neg's edge by the scanner's light. Duhhh. But, I think, a nice effect. These women are respectively, my nephew's wife (does that make her a niece?), and her husband's aunt, my sternlaw. They were watching toddlers and kids skylarking.

The ant did a good search of all the crevices looking for something. Probably food. Maybe ants he disapproved of.

They ignored us for a couple of months. Now they are back, loading up on peanuts.

Having eaten a single peanut from my pile, this guy got on top of our garage and proclaimed the news.

Minnie, the next-door cat, watching the birds I too am watching from our back deck this afternoon. (Minnie, about two years old, has the same name as our cat who, at nearly 17 years old, no longer has much interest in the birds.)

I *think* this is a young, perhaps female, blackpoll warbler. That's what I think today. Last week, I saw maybe the same bird and thought it was a female pine warbler. Who knows what I'll think next week. That's one of our apples in the lower left corner. I'm right proud of it so I didn't crop it out of the picture.

I'm not especially receptive to old folkloric techniques, even despite having made my living as a folklorist for several decades. I'm not that kind of folklorist. But when, the other day, I saw an avalanche of first-hand reports on the efficacy of catching (and killing) fruit flies in one's kitchen by stretching clear plastic wrap over a partly filled glass of apple cider vinegar, and poking tiny holes in the wrap, I thought: "Okay, I'll try it." Now I'm willing to provide another testimonial to its efficacy. Here, for your interest is a photograph of nearly a dozen such flies, most of them dead, one still walking around the inside of the glass. If they can get inside, some will find their way out, so not all are despatched. But it is far more efficient than my hand-clapping and cursing at them. I put the glass on a white screen on my ipad to take this picture. The dust at the bottom, among the fly carcasses, is the precipitate from the vinegar. The picture reminds me of plates my grandmother used to have.

I was taking a picture of some of my great-nieces and -nephews playing with a hose; the mother of the smallest one photobombed it.

A dozen and a half friends of Fred gathered today to send his ashes into the Atlantic Ocean, on which he had for several years worked, and for which he campaigned all the rest of his life. This was after the ashes had been poured in, and while we were all a little pensive. There was Irish whiskey involved in the event. And despite the pensiveness, much laughter. Fred would have liked it: thinking and laughing with friends..

We feed the birds sunflower seeds in winter. The bluejays and chickadees stick them in various places including in our flower pots. In the spring a few come up. We have three getting ready to bloom outside our kitchen door and this is the biggest of them.

Yes, chickadee in the chuckleypears. But I like the sound of chuckadee in the chickleypears.

I'm a sucker for the Moon. Any sky, any phase.

Last night was a friend's seventieth birthday. I've known her for 55 years and I've known her husband for 65 years. A half dozen of us gathered on their back gallery ("deck") for a celebration. Her Clivias next to us were in bloom in perfect time for the celebration.