I was very happy this week to get a couple of gorgeous images from our friend Ron Barrons.  Ron lives in Hamilton, Ontario where our son and his family also reside. We’ve had many happy times in Hamilton with family and visiting Ron and his wife, Brenda. Ron has been a guest on Madang – Ples Bilong Mi  here.

This one gives me goose-bumps. I could bore you to tears with my analysis of this image. It’s got it all. The composition is perfect, using just about every rule to perfection. Note at the right side on the horizon that you can see the bridge connecting Hamilton to Toronto. Click to enlarge (I wish I had a higher resolution image for you) and you’ll see it better:

That bridge makes a wonderful focal point in the enlarged image.  All of the lines and shapes seem to point to it. You can’t keep your eyes away from it, but it doesn’t dominate.

Here’s another fine composition by Ron. Though I hate being cold, I do envy the photographers who live in temperate regions with beautiful deciduous forests that glow with surreal colours in the autumn. Ron beautifully captured the serenity of this scene. I don’t know where the image was shot, but I’d like to go there and sit for a while, in a warm coat with a cold Chardonnay and a cigar:Nice job, Ron. Please, keep them coming!

Well, I feel a little inadequate this morning to compete with that. Hey, it’s not a competition anyway. It’s a sharing. So, A couple of mornings ago, I got this mid-telephoto of the sun rising above Madang Town across the harbour from our house:The shot shows the limitations of the sensors in point-and-shoot cameras such as my Canon G9, my carry-about camera. No matter what I did, I could not bring up any decent detail and colour in the shadowed town. The dynamic range of brightness in the scene was just too much for the sensor to capture.

The main advantage of a big, full 35mm frame (called FX) sensor in an expensive digital SLR (single lens reflex) camera is that each ‘bucket’ (pixel) that collects photons of light is bigger. This means that the number of photons counted from adjoining buckets will be more accurate because the random fluctuations caused by several factors will be smaller. In other words, there will be less noise  in the image. Noise shows up as little speckles that shouldn’t be there. The bigger buckets also collect more photons, so the calculations in the computer in the camera can more accurately deliver a wider range of brightness levels (dynamic range).

Here’s how I think of that. Imagine marking off an area in your yard ten metres square. First, put out 1,000 little buckets filling the area as best you can and wait for a big rain. Now measure the water in each bucket. You’ll find a comparatively large difference between buckets, when you would have expected them to be all the same. This is noise. Now remove the 1,000 buckets and replace them with 100 buckets filling the area (they will have to be bigger  buckets). Now wait for a rain which drops about the same amount of water. This time, when you measure the water in the buckets you will find that there is much less difference between them. You have reduced the noise. That’s one important reason why bigger sensors are better. You don’t want more pixels, that can make the noise worse, because each pixel must be smaller. What you want is bigger  pixels.

There are other reasons that bigger sensors are better, but those are even more boring.

This shot made me a little happier:It’s a little fakey looking, because I had to massage it pretty vigorously with Photoshop, but it’s cheery, so I’ll satisfy myself with that.

I went a little crazy with the panorama concept in this one:If you click to enlarge, you can see quite a bit of detail in Madang Town, including a blurry band around the tall coconut tree to the left of centre where Photoshop failed to blend properly the adjacent frames when it was building the merged image.

We’re having fish tomorrow! Somebody bring the tartar sauce.

I very much enjoy featuring images sent to me by my friends on Madang - Ples Bilong Mi.  Unfortunately, few friends send me samples of their work. I’m pestering a few of them to do so, but shyness seems to interfere. If you are a regular reader of this journal and you have images that you think will be appreciated by our audience, then please feel free to email them to me. Work them over until you are happy with them and send 1600 pixel (longest dimension) JPG images that are between 200 and 300 Kilobytes. Include some text describing the images and I will include that also. I’ve featured Trevor Hattersley’s images before here and here. Heidi Majano has also had a guest appearance.

Don’t be shy. Have a try.

We’ll start with a couple of shots from Trevor Hattersley. He’s been a keen amateur as long as I’ve known him, probably about twenty years. He recently purchased from me a spare (ordered two by mistake from Amazon) Olympus SP-590UZ superzoom camera and has been diligently learning to use it feature-by-feature. Up at Blueblood a couple of weeks ago he was playing with macro shots and came up with two very nice fungi:This one of Bracket Fungi has very accurate colours, perfect focus and nice composition. A shot that anyone should be proud to display.

Here’s another fungi shot by Trevor:Again, we have interesting and accurate colours, good composition, fine focus (click to enlarge) and a generally interesting and aesthetic image. Well done, mate! I was happy to see that Trevor resisted the urge to use flash on these shots. They are very natural looking – just the way that your eyes see them.

Now let’s move to another friend a world away. Ron Barrons hails from Hamilton, Ontario in Canada. He’s a very experienced and knowledgeable photographer with a good pair of hiking boots. Since Hamilton is the Waterfall Capital of the World, it’s not surprising that Ron has a plethora of beautiful images of water tumbling over rocks. The Niagara Escarpment is responsible for this cornucopia of waterfalls, something for which local photographers are eternally grateful.

Here is a beautiful shot of Grindstone Falls:

This one is of the cascade below the falls:Ron has the “silky water” technique down pat. This requires a tripod, a neutral density filter to cut down the amount of light coming in through the lens, and long exposure times. The result is that the water takes on a very fluid and smooth look which intensifies the appearance of flow. You can see some of my Hamilton Waterfalls and our adventures in waterfall country here, here and here.

Ron is not a one-trick-pony. He sent several gorgeous Canadian Autumn shots taken from the heights around the Niagara Escarpment. This one is a beaut:

Here is another, looking up at the escarpment itself:

I could not resist the urge to try making a watercolour of one of Ron’s beautiful shots. This one is of Rattlesnake Ridge:You will need to click to enlarge to see the full watercolour effect. Ron was kind enough to allow me to modify his work and publish it here.

I know that many of my readers must be serious hobby photographers. Please send me images that move you and allow me to showcase your work here.

I’m not fooling around. I mean it.

I haven’t done a blessed thing since I arrived in Chatham, Illinois except eat (too much), sleep, and fool around on the computer (mostly on Facebook – it’s a stone gas, man!). So, for images, I’m going back to Hamilton, Ontario to show you a most unusual monument.

Its called the Monument to Workers. It’s located at Hamilton City Hall (Main W. and Bay Street):

Of course, the monument itself is  of interest to the community. Hamilton is a steel makin’ town and has plenty of other hazardous industry. Workers die every year in Hamilton factories and many more are injured. As I was photographing, a guy rode up on a bicycle to chat with Eunie. He said that he had worked in a steel mill and had once stood beside a fellow worker and watched in horror as the man lost an arm. That’s pretty gruesome. Nobody can argue that dead and injured workers don’t deserve a fitting memorial.

What is of interest to an outside observer is why the figure has no head. It flies in the face of logic. Nobody we asked knew why. I’ve Googled it until I was blue in the face and found only this, which provides no explanation.

I don’t want to get into gory speculation, but I am puzzled. The first and most obvious question is how is the figure is hanging onto the wall without a head. Then there is the curious presence of the hook-like appendage between the shoulders. Eunie says it’s a halo. I’m not buying that. Why did the artist choose to depict it in this manner? Nobody seems to know.

I mean no disrespect whatsoever by bringing this up. I think that the monument is a marvellous idea. Casualties of our industries are seldom memorialised in such a powerful manner. I applaud it and am touched by it.

Yet, the puzzle remains.

If anybody out there knows the answer, please comment so that we may all understand.

I gave you some images of Hamilton, Ontario waterfalls the other day. I’ve done one post today, but I can’t sleep, so I’ll lay another one on you.

As we were waterfall hunting, our friend Ron Barrons pointed out an interesting tombstone. It’s where George Webster was laid to rest. Webster’s Falls was named for him:

I couldn’t find anything on the web about him except that he has a lot of local things named after him.

What captured my interest is the inscription on his tombstone:

Come near my friends and cast an eye.
Then go your way prepared to die.
Learn here your doom, and know you must
One day like me be turned to dust.

A loving husband, a dutiful son, and affectionate brother.

Well, there you go.

We made it to Chatham, Illinois by plane, train and automobile. It wasn’t as funny as the John Candy – Steve Martin movie, but it was not without its moments. Nevertheless, we said goodbye to Canada and hello to the U. S. of A.

I’ll be raving on about things we did in Canada for a while until the stun-gun effect of being back in America wears off. Today we’ll have some cute little critters that I shot (no bloodshed) at the Ontario Royal Botanical Gardens.

Here’s one that, despite being a rodent, practically everybody loves. Yes, it’s a sweet little chipmunk. He’s eating some peanuts (unsalted, of course) that I put on the ground:

The chipmunks are extremely tame in the park. They will come up and eat right out of your hand.

Here is an interesting colour of squirrel that I’d not seen before. Below the border, in the Midwest we have mostly red squirrels, sometimes called fox squirrels. You can see an image of one in one my previous posts here. Up in Canada, around the area where we were playing, they have black, reddish black and grey squirrels. They may all be just different colour phases. I don’t know and am to lazy at the moment to look it up.

Anyway, here is the prettiest squirrel shot that I manaaged:

I think my aunt had a fur coat that colour way back when. I wonder how many squirrels died to make it. I shouldn’t complain. In my youth I shot hundreds of squirrels (and ate them all).

Here’s probably the most interesting squirrel shot that I’ve gotten so far:

It’s obviously a female who is raising a litter close by. I did not get this shot at the Botanical Gardens, but right in front of the hotel lobby about five metres from the front door. As with most big cities in areas where squirrels are common, they have adapted themselves well, some would say too well, to city life. Where there are humans, there is food.

I’ll wrap it up now, as I’ve been doing computer stuff all day. I hooked up a wireless system in my brother-in-law’s house so that Eunie and I can have internet access while we’re staying here. It was cheaper to buy the gear (forty bucks US) and give it to him as a gift to respect his hospitality than to get some kind of mobile wireless.

Eunie is packing up for our road trip to Buffalo where we’ll stay overnight and rise early for our flight to Chicago, from where we will take the Amtrack to Springfield (NOT the one that is the home of the Simpsons, but it might as well be).

Please notice that I said that Eunie is packing. I’ve learned from bitter experience  that packing is woman’s work. (You lovely, sweet feminists out there, I beg your mercy. I love you. Women are MUCH more equal than I. I bow in humble respect to you and kiss your precious feet.) I only pack if I’m going somewhere by myself and I’d feel ashamed to ask my wife to pack for me (though I’d be infinitely more likely to have everything I need). A man who is wise enough (I’m old; I know stuff.) to allow his woman to pack reserves for himself the privilege to think of, but never mention, those item which have been inadvertently left behind.

So, I’m taking a few minutes to post some images that I snatched from the Ontario Royal Botanical Gardens. These are only a few. I’ll bore you senseless later with others of my choosing. There’s nothing sadder than an old man chaining you to a chair to show you his flower pictures.

About the only botanicals that were in abundance this time of year were lilacs and tulips. Lilacs get up my nose. I do like tulips, but the rank Dutchiness of the Hamilton area guarantees that you’ll come away in the spring moaning, “Erp!, Too Many Tulips!” to the accompaniment of a soft belch.

Nevertheless, let us press on with simulated bravado. Somebody has to look at these things and it might as well be us:

The trees splitting the scene above is a nice compositional touch. If I had any artistic talent, that’s the way I’d paint it.

This is my favourite shot of the day. A long zoom lens can give you the eyes of an eagle:

I was about ten metres from the tulips. The backgound was about a hundred metres away. I really wanted to clear out the little spindly bits in front of the tulips, but I was afraid that I’d get caught by one of the highly dedicated groundskeepers scurring about in their tiny little pickup trucks.

I call this one a ‘calendar shot’. I’m not knocking calendar images. We have to have something to cover up those rusty refrigerator doors. I’m going to have to start doing calendars myself soon, if I’m going to help Eunie keep food on the table. Most of our supporting churches think we’re too old to work any more. Their less-than-polite way of telling us so is to cut off our pay. I say that we’re just getting rolling!

Here’s another calendar shot that I hope will soon be earning its keep:And this . . . THIS!  Is what I mean when I say, “Too Many TULIPS!”

And so, my friends and those I’ve never met but wish I could, after a couple of Rickard’s Reds over lunch, I’m feeling better than yesterday. I’m once again resigned and full of humility and gratitude to receive with as much humour as I can manage whatever is placed before me in however much time that I have left.

Life is a stone gas, man!

We leave Hamilton tomorrow. My old friend Georges Carillet – I’m sure that he’s reading this – would say that I’ve crossed over to the dark side again. Moody and dark, that’s me. It will be at least three more years before I see my son, Hans, his precious wife, Tamara – the daughter that I never had, and my darling granddaughters, Pippa and Audrey.

A couple of days ago Eunie and I went over to Tamara’s brother’s house for a little family dinner and a few beers. I got all moody and went out the the tracks behind Joel’s house just at the base of the Niagara Escarpment. Of course, I brought my camera along. Little whispers were just beyond my hearing.  I wanted to see if I could discern what they were saying to me. I often hear through my eyes.

Is this a separation from something or a rejoining to something else? Or, is it both:

Choosing not to cross at all isn’t an option:

Never mind. I’ve never been very interested in staying on the tracks. Crossing back an forth is more exciting.

If you’re making a crossing, take a friend:

If you’re taking a friend with you, make sure that he remembers to bring the beer:

Life’s full of crossings.

This is just another one.