OCTOBER 17 to 31: IMPROVEMENT

#109 – Royalty – 17 October 2017

Every few years there is a massing of monarch butterflies in our neighbourhood, readying for the journey south. 2017, the autumn of this project, was one such a year (see this NewYorker article– 2017 was a banner year for Monarchs). For a few days, monarchs were on every patch of autumn bloom. I took 624 exposures. I was working close up, and the butterflies were moving constantly, so many were misses. I picked two to post for the project. More recently, I posted a series on Instagram.

#110 – Flying On – 18 October 2017

This one I used as a birthday card for my mother. Her last birthday, as it turned out. She pinned it up in her room, and it was there the morning she died. We left it on the wall when we packed up her stuff. A little tribute as she, too, flies away.

#111 – Steady Gaze – 19 October 2017

When I bought my new digital camera body, I also bought an adapter to pair it with three old 1980’s lenses left over from film camera days. This union can’t offer access to autofocus or autoexposure, but there never was with these lenses. Works beautifully. Because this digital-analogue pairing is possible, there is now a whole secondary market on eBay bringing new life to old lenses. I made two add-on purchases during the fall, one at the wide end (21mm) and this one at the long reach (200mm). A relatively inexpensive way to add to one’s kit, and experiment with different perspectives without emptying the bank.

#112 – Quiet – 20 October 2017

Our street was part of an amusement park on Lake Ontario that went out of business in the 1920’s. Then it was developed – identical fourplexes with cosmetic details randomly varied for interest, just like today’s subdivisions. Every apartment has a deep porch or balcony. There are no functional front or back yards, so everyone is out on his or her porch, side by side or facing each other across the street. Not surprisingly we all know each other. On a summer evening, you can close your eyes and track several conversations and maybe someone strumming a guitar. A simple bit of architectural design that creates a healthy connected community.

#113 – Secret Portal – 21 October 2017

The eye of a needle. In our front window hangs a small stained/textured glass panel, which traveled with Ruth from Australia long ago. In the middle of the panel the maker has set a beveled oval of clear glass. I did not know this was a portal to a magical world until the evening I was pointing my camera at the various corners of our apartment looking for something to happen and twisted the focus ring and suddenly saw – this. Maybe that’s Australia? Only Ruth knows for sure what is going on here.

#114 – Glimpse of Reality – 22 October 2017

And, to continue peeling back the layers (see above), the front window in which the portal hangs opens into our porch, already introduced to you. A few years ago the mature maples across the street that provided essential shade came down in a horrific windstorm (Dave downstairs called it treemagedon). So we put up curtains to shield us from the afternoon sun. It looks like there’s a forest beyond the curtains, but that is yet another magical photographic illusion.

#115 – HOME – 23 October 2017

The home page image. I had 365 images to choose from (in turn culled from the thousands I made), and settled on this one. Why? Well, it’s the home beach. Its impressionistic, I think I like that effect. Its soft and it makes me feel like I am … home. You can’t see any details that might reveal the city beyond. Its taken at sundown, which is the time I might be coming home from the city core and so leaving it behind. I have not, at the moment I am typing this, printed it. It is on the short list. Home.

#116 – Motion Man – 24 October 2017

The Toronto marathon routes across the top of my street every fall. We are at kilometer 33 and the leaders, like this guy, are still motoring as if they had just started the race. Very impressive – as are the many folk who follow by hours later, persevering, sometimes suffering, always conquering. The streetscape is very cluttered. First I tried a few fast shutter shots to freeze the motion, but all I got was frozen confusion – runners, bits of runners, marshals, bits of marshals, buildings, garbage cans, too much information. Then I slowed the shutter down and got this.

#117 – On Pace – 25 October 2017

I run a bit. History of heart disease on my father’s side, so I try to compensate for whatever genetic programming lurks within. Never a marathon. I do have a bucket-list running project in mind. In the Alberta Rockies there is a hike called Skyline, which traces 44 (horizontal) kilometers along the continental divide, much of it above tree level (it’s the elevation profile that makes this a real challenge). I have hiked it several times over three days. But you can also trail run it in one long day (in the summer in Jasper, there are 16 hours between sunrise and sunset, so as long as you keep moving … theoretically this should work). I don’t know if I will accomplish this.

#118 – Sky Shade – 26 October 2017

A best feature of my home beach is the sky, and it is constantly changing. I met a guy in from Saskatchewan (a Canadian prairie province) in the Rockies once. When I remarked on the beauty of the mountains he shrugged, and said he guessed so but mostly they got in the way of the sky; he missed the open horizon.

#119 – WONDER – 27 October 2017

This was backlit by the late morning sun. I exposed it with the camera’s meter reading right on the 0 mark. Even so, there was a lot of haze showing in the viewfinder. Then I way overexposed it in the computer, because this most accurately reflects what I felt the scene was saying. It ends up looking artificial or manipulated, but openly declares itself so, and that makes it ok in my eyes. Title by Ruth.

#120 – Standard Sunset – 28 October 2017

The Leuty Lifeguard Station is the most photographed thing on the beach. With good reason, this little shack has become the iconic object of the eastern Toronto beaches. Another local photographer has made an excellent instagram project photographing it from the exact same vantage point every day for a year to show off its ever changing moods.
In the summer, lifeguards still assemble here in the morning and then row wooden boats (See #39, August 8, 2017) to their stations along the beach, as I imagine they have for decades.

#121 – Clarity – 29 October 2017

In my dream last night I had discovered a new little room in our apartment, and I was out buying things to turn it into a lovely office for Ruth. What a nice guy! Half way through shopping I looked at my purchases and discovered I was actually buying stuff I would want in my new office, including a brand new fancy colour photo printer. Dreams don’t lie …

#122 – Snowfence – 30 October 2017

I was riding home from work, with the camera bag on the bike, when I chanced across this. Technically it’s not perfect – I should have used a tripod to make it crisper, but I didn’t have it. I could instead have increased the camera’s ISO (image signal amplification circuitry) to buy myself a higher shutter speed with less jitter, but I am preconditioned from film days not to and it introduces noise. Alternatively, I could have underexposed at a higher shutter speed, to be carefully corrected later in the computer (which in my case and with my equipment seems to produce less noise than boosting ISO in-camera) but I did not think to do so at the time. Lots is made of the inherent sharpness of lenses, and also of the “sharpness” of sensors (aka megapixel counts). But in real life, sharpness issues are mostly not a function of fancier gear. Bring your tripod.