Lawn Ornaments

Some people decorate their lawns and gardens with statues, gazebos, painted truck tires with flowers in the centre or motorcycles pasted with 'For Sale' signs. Our back field, which JG mows and I guess should qualify as a Very Large lawn, is decorated, this summer, by a doe. We see her (I am just guessing that it is just one her, but the behaviour is characteristic) almost every day. She checks out the feeding station, nibbles with more or less enthusiasm at the plants in what used to be my rock garden, and reclines here and there on the mown grass, ears twitching. She is very decorative.

The header photo shows her, with a lot of editing, wandering in the dusk. The editing was necessary because the light when I shot this was pretty poor and I got a blue cast on everything. It will do until I get a better one. Although, I do have a lot (erm, far too many) deer-on-the-grass photos. A disciplined photographer would purge.

Over the last week or so she has been joined, from time to time, by a turkey and twice by a small and somewhat nervous varying hare. Or two; the hare size varied. It is more than a bit distracting, actually, as I should be getting on with the housework instead of peering out the windows.

If one must self-isolate, it is surely a fine thing to be able to do so here.

Playing In the Middle

184/365.
This is one of the shots I took for the 365 project a while back.  it was bland and uninteresting but has become a lot more fun with the contrast enhanced and the gamma twiddled.  (How professional I do sound, I don't think.)  It was, though, supposed to be shot right down the gap between the red wine glasses and I blew that.  So, 'not in the middle' might be the better title.

I use Corel's PhotoPaint to edit photographs.  It is an immensely complicated program and I have never mastered all of its features, but it is a lot of fun.  The rose I have just put in as the blog title photo has been altered with one of the 'Effect' choices in PP.... it's called 'ZigZag', for obvious reasons.  You can also choose to apply the effect of a conté crayon or watercolour or many other artistic choices, or make the surface look like bubbles or stained glass, and on and on. I can play for hours, alas.

A while back I was whinging about organizing my photos.  I picked up a copy of Corel PaintShop Photo 2010, but I'm not impressed with it.  Too complicated and some of the features are not obvious (like applying tags.  Ggggrrrrr).  A couple of days later I was poking around in Blogger where I was offered a free download of Version 3.8.0 of Picassa 3.  The download only took a few minutes and when I activated it I found the best picture sorter I have ever seen - at least, for my purposes.  Unlike PaintShop Photo, you are not stuck with using trays (although you can), the red eye fixer is stellar and, best of all, the program organizes photo folders by date taken but also retaining the label I gave to the folder when I created it.  This mirrors the way I think, unlike the Adobe organization tree that doesn't, and I find it fantastically easy to use. 

It also cranked up all on its own (a bit disconcerting) and did face recognition on all my photos, with an easy to use labelling system for the faces.  Excellent quality recognition, best I have ever seen.  Once this was finished, the result gave me a good indication of how many doubles (and triples and quadruples) I have among my picture folders.  And what a lot of photos of my grand daughter's smiling face I do have.  Best of all, if you double click on any thumbnail, an option comes up that allows you to identify the exact folder where the thumbnail originated.

This software is so easy to use that I am now gearing up and sorting and cleaning up all (almost 1000) photos I took on our trip out west last spring.  I am doing the flowers first, and am going to use some of the edited shots as 365 material, since editing and labelling can be a big part of photography.

185/365  This is a shot of a bunch of California poppies taken last May not in California (although we were there) but in a park along the Columbia River in Oregon.  The flowers were ubiquious throughout our drive along the coast and they are spectacular.  This one was in the middle of an island in the road into the park.  The rest of the grass had not greened up around them but there they were and aren't they glorious.  Contrast enhanced and cropped.

Playing

When I need to learn or refresh my mind on how a program works, I play.  Here I am playing in Corel Photopaint.

 126/365  This is a preset effect called 'zigzag', set at normal.

 127/365  I made this into a duotone, returned the colour to it (RGB) , on one colour plane and then turned it back into a .jpg.  Not sure I could get the same effects again. She is a flaming red-head, though.

128/365  Playing with the light values in gray scale and then scrubbing the background. 

Okay, playtime is over.  Must read minutes and meeting notes now.  Snivel!

Running Hard

I have just deleted a whole paragraph of whines about old age and too much to do.  I got tired of listening to myself complain to myself, if that makes any kind of sense.  Tomorrow I head off to the city to grandkid sit for part of the weekend, although not much sitting will be involved, I am pretty sure. Little Stuff and I are going to be making pies because the big fund-raising event at the local Community Hall takes place on Sunday.  It's called the 'Hunters' Dinner' because we hold it during deer hunting season - there are a lot of hunters and hunt camps around the area.  We feed over 300 people usually in a couple of hours, and we have a reputation for good quality pies and lots of them. 

There are lots of orange figures staked out through the bush this week and the four-wheelers are humming in and out of the hunt camp on the next lot over from ours.  I don't think they have any deer yet because no one has arrived on our doorstep with a dripping bag of liver  - JG told them we like liver and we have had a gift of one every November ever since those unwise words.  And I am having the annual attack of driving nerves I have every hunt season since I hit a spooked deer and crunched up the front of my poor Jeep.  (Okay, poor deer also.)

There are fewer deer visible this fall than during the last several years, but we still see them most days because we put feed and corn out on a rock at the bottom of our back field.  Here are three of them, looking hopeful.

096/365  I think this is a mom and two almost grown children.  We haven't seen a single buck this year.

Alas, it is November.  Frost and wet rain and wet snow and falling temperatures and dark, short days.  I find it hard to keep my spirits up until the Christmas rush overwhelms me and there is no time at all to brood.  I've been admiring other people's frost and first snow photos; here are my attempts.  Please don't notice that the planters are still on the porch and not cleared away until next year.

097/365 Please note the stylish snow tam Mr Pumpkin is wearing.

098/365  Flash frozen geranium close-up.  

099/365  Hoar frost.

I'm still also playing around with self-photos in my trifold mirror.  This one is a little better than the last try. 

100/365  Looking over my own shoulder.

Yahoo.  100.  I am now going to find out what the prompt is for the coming week.  And admire some of the other 365ers' work.  There's a link to the list in the upper right corner of the right column -- go and take a look.  Some of the work is truly excellent and all of it is fun.

More Catching Up

We had a lovely, lovely sunny fall weekend - a bit cool, but not imposibly so.  The YD went canoeing on the Petawawa River and had, according to her, a lovely time.  Brrr.  It is 8 C out there this morning.  She did not take the large white dog, figuring it would be too cold for her.  Her father rolled his eyes at this, but I didn't - the LWD will wade into water at the slightest provocation and getting her coat soaked at these temperatures would not be good for her if you couldn't dry her off.  Ah, the joys of pet ownership.


At any rate, we had this glorious sun and I decided to play with shooting directly into it.  Probably not good for my camera sensors, but I wanted to try.  I also wanted to capture the oak on the front lawn as it was looking very nice decked out in deep red and rust.

071/365  -- notice how cleverly I have hidden the satellite dish behind the trunk.

 072/365.  Dramatic, in a strange way.

I was also up early one day this weekend and as we are still on Daylight Saving time, I got to see the sunrise.  It was very cool and still and damp - there was not a bird chirp or rustle of leaves.

073/365.  What I saw first - and took without the flash on the camera, being somewhat dopey and not outside of my first coffee.

 074/365 A few minutes later, with flash. I can't decide whether the colour did intensify or using the flash changed the sensor reception.

I'm still playing around with the oxymoron prompt.  Can't leave this kind of thing alone.  I looked at my office desk the other day and one of my mother's expressions surfaced in my mind -- "A fine mess you've made of it!' she used to say.

075/365

I have tidied all the mess into one pile this morning, as my cleaner is here and I don't like to watch strong women weep.  But I will have to disentangle it later and Do Somthing with most of it.  Maybe a bonfire would be a good option.  Maybe not, though.  There is, I think, a cheque lurking in there somewhere.  No better incentive to file than finding money while you do it.

076/365.  If only this fellow were a bit bigger and more, um, animated.

Goodbye Sun

A long line of gray clouds is pushing in across the sky, ending five days of the most perfect fall weather I remember for a long time.  All of Thanksgiving weekend was spectacular; days full of sun and skies so bright a blue as to dazzle the eye.  My family came out from the cities where they live and played and took marvellous photographs, while I stuffed stuffed bird in and out of the oven and prepared The Feast.  The event also included JG's birthday and so two cakes were added to the traditional pumpkin and apple pies.  And cookies, some of which were part of JG's birthday gift.

056/365  A work of art!  Little Stuff and her mother made this woodland scene for Grampa.  And it is delicious!

Meanwhile, I have been lugging my camera around in the car (and driving somewhat erratically) as I looked at the scenery more than the road.  Have you ever noticed how many power lines polute the pristine vistas of Ontario?  So, craft having been the object, I took long shots and have just finished editing out the junk.

057/365  Long view.

I've been somewhat obsessed by these long views - here are a few of the results.  Where I've had to do a major edit, I'm putting in both before and after.  In the one above, for instance, I erased the power lines by using a cut and paste.  The little cloud, for example, is bigger in the cleaned version as I used it to cover some of the power line.  I use Corel PhotoPaint for this kind of thing.

058/365 This one worked

And this one, not.

 059/365 - down our road.

060/365

Here's another power line edit, this one of a local church where the old, crumbling headstones were reset and preserved.

061/365

I should have t aken out the wire on the far left as well.  Or cropped more.

062/365

 This is the original - of a barn a few hundre metres down the road from where we live.  It's taken in the last of the light.  Then I played with it.
063/365

This is what happens when you play with the intensity and light values to equalize the two halves.  Kind of neat.

And, because they are so beautiful, my Thansgiving flowers.  Thanks, YD.
064/365.

Gee, I'm on the last day of September in posting photos.  Sigh.

Someone Else's Photograph

The Elder Daughter and her family took a mini-vacation over the weekend.  She sent me a buch of photographs this morning, mostly of fish with various members of the family, but some of scenery.  And this one blew me away. 

It is a source of both pride and embarrassment to me that my daughters are so much better at things than I am.  Better photographers, better cooks, much better athletes, better records in university and beyond, better at home design and decoration, better dressed.  Well, sometimes.
 I guess I did something right.

Olio

I have been trying to get the photo a day thing under control and have ended up with this weird, weird mixture. 

037/365.  Summer Rain.

The object was to get the raindrops as close to in focus as possible.  ISO up as high as it would go.  Alas, the result looks more like snow.

038/365  Puddle.

Our deck railing is made from slightly cupped 2 x 6's.  I took a whole series of these and none of them worked all that well.  Hard to decide where to focus and not enough light to get an infinity focus.

039/365  Corners
I am still playing with the porch screen and light effects.  Here I like how the pine branches look through the shadowed part of the screen.  Note that the weather has improved.

040/365  September 2nd.
The first hints of fall colour in the stressed trees (water levels are high in the ponds because of a lot of rainfall).  The white stuff all over the water is seed fluff.

I am thinking that I may do a series of vegetation shots, maybe from a set point, to document the colour change this year.  I've got a pretty full calendar for September and if I take my camera with me (anyone have a way to permanently attach the camera to the dumb, forgetful photographer?) it might work out.

Love this project, I really do.  I am putting up failures as well as successes because that is what makes sense to me.

An Interesting Failure

We were out on the Rideau Canal today; I took, I think, 84 shots in total.  I got a couple of good ones, of which more later, but this one is amusing.  We were heading home up the Rideau River, about 4:pm, and going fairly fast.  I had the camera set on auto, no flash, and I had only one instant to get this shot.

Here is what I got.

Sigh.  Overexposed, horizon madly off and the extreme telephoto making the focus pretty shaky, given that I did not have time to let the camera identify a target.

I've played with the shot, because I love the V of ripples.  Here's my best edit.

033/365.

The thoughts I still have about it are these: should I crop out the overexposed shoreline; should I play with the contrast; and, last but not least, should I just throw the dern thing out.

Thursday Evening

This is a cropped edit I received from Anvilcloud, who is one humdinger of a photo editor.  He advises darkening the white reflections, but even without that the improvement is great.  As he has revised it, I think it's a save.  Thanks, AC! 

An Afternoon at the Park.

Little Stuff spent part of July with me while her parents were away, part of it with all of us at a cottage and a few days doing fun stuff with her parents.  In August her parents returned to work full time and her program was to be gymnastics three mornings a week and a local day care for the rest of the time.  But by the start of this last week, Little Stuff had had more than enough of the large, noisy and disorganized daycare where she had been spending her afternoons.  The friend she was counting on hanging around with was being cool to her, and while she was loving the gymnastics, the afternoons and especially the two full days at daycare were reducing her to tears.

The ED called me and asked if I could go in to the city for a couple of days and provide child care: she did not have to ask twice.  I picked up Little Stuff from her gym and took her back to her own house for lunch.  The last bite was not in her mouth when her chum from next door, who had been away visiting overseas for the whole summer, appeared at the door to the breakfast room.  There was a joyful reunion.  Little Friend is a year older than Little Stuff and a grade ahead of her at the same school, so they don’t spend too much time together at school, but they are the best of companions otherwise.  They asked if they could go to the park and feed the animals.  No problem there.  Little Friend went home to gather permission and provender, Little Stuff gathered up stale bread, peanuts and carrots, and we wandered off  to the park, which is a riverside park, very large and full of overfed animals and birds.

The girls chattered non-stop all the way to the park, most of it lost on me.  Little Friend speaks four languages but not one of them is English  - the two of them communicate in soft and idiomatic French and Little Stuff translates as needed.  Going to feed the birds and animals is a regular treat that they have both been doing since they were toddlers and they know just what to do.  In a very short time they were surrounded by pigeons 

027/365 and 028/365

and, aside from Little Friend having a finger mistaken for a peanut, a very good time was had by all, including grama who was photographing like a mad woman.


They played in the park the whole afternoon, checking in with me only to let me know if they were going some distance away.  They climbed trees and giggled and collected weeds and giggled and showed off their new dance and gymnastics to each other 

029/365

and giggled and ran and jumped and .... well, you get the idea.  It was probably the first unstructured afternoon either of them had spent for a long time.

Grama lured in the wildlife with some of the stale bread and took more photographs.  The wildlife gets fed a lot at that park.  

030/365
Check out the tummy on the second squirrel, the grey one.  

031/365
The river carried masses of ducks 

032/365
and gulls, all with one eye for a handout, the park itself is full of squirrels and along the river bank live groundhogs and other small mammals.  When I finally decided that we had to go back (Grand-mere a besoin du cafe!), they were both rosy and exhausted and when we got back to the house they were glad to collapse in front of the TV and watch the Blue Planet video until supper time.

I’ve just described what appears to be a rather boring afternoon in excruciating detail.  It wasn’t boring to me, however; I had a beautiful day, a camera (should have taken a flask of coffee, though) and a happy, relaxed grandkid enjoying some truly unstructured time.

One of the main reasons I started this blog was to leave a record of who I am and how we related for Little Stuff.  She has just turned seven and if I died tomorrow she would remember me, I think, but probably only vaguely.  I was lucky to have one grandmother who lived until I was an adult with children of my own; of my other grandmother, who died when I was four, I have only scraps of memory and mementos.  I want Little Stuff to have much more than that available if, as an adult, she wants to know.  I wonder if she will remember this day, or the days at the cottage, as special, happy ones or if, like me, her memories of these very young years will be hazy at best.

If so, maybe this story and the photos will remind her.  I hope so.  It is always good to remember being loved.

The 365 Project - New Key Word.

Sue's prompt for this week is vintage Sue - Fair is foul or fowl is fare.  To take a look at the project as a whole, follow the link at the top of my sidebar to the right.

Since I spent a happy day in a park by the riverside photographing Little Stuff and Little Friend and some of their friends and activities, I do have only slightly skewed takes on this prompt.  And so, with no more ado, I give you fair is fowl.

025/365

and

Fed is fowl.

026/365

After the Rain

I am not much of a Shelley fan, but this is just too apt.

I am the daughter of earth and water,
And the nursling of the sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
For after the rain when with never a stain
The pavilion of Heaven is bare,
And the winds and sunbeams with their convex gleams
Build up the blue dome of air,
I silently laugh at my own cenotaph,
And out of the caverns of rain,
Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb,
I arise and unbuild it again.
From The Cloud.

017/365

018/365

016/365


The self-portrait was taken against a rainy window but I had to fiddle the contrast and intensity to get the reflection clear.  And, for the record, the camera is a Nikon D90 with an 18-200 Nikkor lens. Yeah, it weighs a lot.  But I'm kind of obsessive about it so it goes everywhere with me.

Where I Live - Monday Mission

Whumping across the landscape, our
Helicopter circles the house where we live.
Enjoying the ride, I
Rapidly click the camera
Edging forward, pressing against the window

It's a lovely, lovely day -

Limpid sun, windless, a fine haze on the horizon.
I take more photos as we swing around,
Viewfinder almost useless as the sun flashes on the window
Enveloping the scene in golden rays.I live in the green and beige house at the edge of the little clearing.

This has been a Monday Mission in the form of an acrostic. To find other participants in the MM, please go to the site of our moderator, the amazing Painted Maypole. And we'd love it if you would play along.