First portrait victim: Bonnie.
This is one of my cats, Bonnie, a sweet tortie. She patiently endured about a half-dozen camera flashes in order for me to secure a shot I liked.
Second victim: Max.
Max, my other cat. This shot was taken with the Tamron 70-300mm telephoto/macro lens that came in the camera bundle deal. It was set on macro, obviously.
Product placement?
A no-name brand of diet cola, if you're curious. I've wanted to take shots like this for years. Across the span of just a couple of inches, the image is out of focus, comes into focus, and goes out of focus again. Look at the detail... you can see the etching of the brushed aluminum. This shot was also taken with the Tamron lens, at a distance of about three feet from the can.
Tribute to Jody.
Jody is a net friend I had for ten years, first in Albuquerque and later in Dallas. He died fourteen months ago today. We never met face to face, but I talked to him just about every day, and he came to be something like a brother to me. Unfortunately for so many people, a rare form of cancer came into his life a few years ago, and finally ended it. The little cedar chest holds a small share of his ashes, given to me by his roommates when I went to Dallas for his memorial. The cheetah figure is meant to be iconic of him, and was sent to me by a young woman he went to college with. The portrait behind is, as you might guess, a picture of Jody himself in happier times.
Big Dipper, little plane, dark field.
Friday night I decided to test the camera's nighttime abilities. Even with my still very limited knowledge, I got some shots I was happy with. I went out to the flood plain where Old Cummer bridge is (if you remember it from an earlier posting; the bridge is about 30 yards away, just off to the right in this shot). This picture was taken at a crook in the East Don River, which is just behind me, as is the beaver dam that diverts its course. This view faces north, and was taken from a tripod; a 17-second exposure at f3.5/ISO 1600. The one thing I bought with the camera that wasn't bundled with it was a $29 infrared remote. With the camera set on "bulb", one click on the remote would open the shutter, and the next would close it again. What I was trying to do was see if I could actually photograph the constellations, down in valley where the light pollution is minimal. What you see here is the Big Dipper — so happily, the answer is yes, it can photograph the skies. The streak near the bottom is a plane, travelling right to left, for the 17-second duration of the shot (basically, I closed the shutter when it reached the tree).
Today, I went out with my friends P-Doug and G to the east end of the GTA, partly to continue putting the camera through its paces. In Uxbridge, there's a gorgeous mausoleum build by, and for, Thomas Foster, one-time federal MP and Mayor of Toronto in the 1920s. It resembles the Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.
Approaching the Thomas Foster Mausoleum.
Here is G approaching the entrance to the mausoleum.
Beneath the entrance.
An up-shot from the lower right. I decided to shoot this in black and white, red filter, to make it a little moodier and more dramatic.
Floor detail of the mausoleum.
This is directly under the dome. I was invited by the curators to lie down on this spot to photograph the dome... which I did.
The dome of the mausoleum.
...And this is the result. I couldn't get all this in one shot; this is actually two photographs, mated in Photoshop. The colour quality and lighting were so consistent between them that this took only a couple of minutes to stitch.
If you can't read the gold lettering, it says, "Take this my body for it is done and I have gained a new life glorious and eternal."
Wall detail.
The tile work in the mausoleum is truly beautiful; intricate and a real credit to whomever the artists were who inlaid it.
The pretentious NYC condos at Bayview and Sheppard.
And, just as a change of pace to wrap things up, here are the NYC condos to be seen as one drives along the 401 between Bayview Avenue and Leslie Street. This shot was taken at a mall exit on Sheppard Avenue, just east of Bayview, and faces south. The buildings occupy the narrow strip between Sheppard and the 401.
