A Summer Afternoon.....

Many times when I am playing around with my camera in hand, I grab shots that at the time mean absolutely nothing, but for some unknown reason, it seems like a good idea at the time. This is one of those images. While some parts of the country are dealing with blizzards or hurricanes this week, Southern Ontario is bathed in some of the nicest weather we have had all Summer....even though it is Autumn. It's just a nice temperature, no bugs, and no oppressing humidity like we had from June to September. So, it was a good time for a body to find a cosy corner and spend some time with a book. Books....how much longer will we have them available to us? Many a kid grew up reading book after book all Summer long during their holidays from school. But now, it seems that books are becoming a thing of the past, and more time is spent on various electronic devices and gadgets. The day is likely not too far off when we will not be able to access anything in print, and like photographs, all that information will be lost forever in "the cloud", or cyberspace. If for some reason you did not pay your monthly subscription to access "the cloud", then it sucks to be you. We used to store all of the old family photographs in several albums, or even an old suitcase or shoe box, which was tucked away in a special corner, until needed again when family history was the topic of the evening. But now, oh, all of those family pictures are somewhere on a disc, all mixed in with various other meaningless junk images, and can no longer be viewed because the discs have been corrupted with age, and no longer work, with the latest operating systems of the present computer being used. But sad as that all is, to me, the most sad thing of all is that very precious few even care, or give it a second thought.... Go read a book while you still can....Cheers!  

 

Daisies Magenta.....

 

So, it is November now, and I just turned the clocks back an hour, which usually is a sure sign of the coming of the colder Winter months. But I decided to try to hold it back a bit, and played around with a little bit of cropping, and converting this image to a magenta monotone one, just to see if I like the effect or not. Well, the jury is out on that for now, but maybe some folks might like the outcome, and others, well not so much. Believe it or not, we still have Roses and Clematis blooming in our back yard, and our neighbour was saying today that she still has Hollyhocks blooming. I am hoping to awaken one morning and see some snow on the flowers, as it usually makes for a nice image. It will be time soon to set out the bird feeders, or maybe I should say the squirrel feeders. They are almost impossible to battle against, and maybe it is time to get a couple of the squirrel proof feeders. Anyway, so much for babbling...Cheers everyone! 

Happy Halloween.....

 Halloween Night...a time when all sorts of ghostly thoughts run rampant. As I watched the little kids out trick or treating this evening, there was a beautiful full moon rising, and since it is the second one this month, that makes it a Blue Moon. I can't remember where I read it online, but I seem to recall reading that the last Halloween Blue Moon was 19 years ago. That may or may not be accurate, but hey, you can trust the internet....right? Anyway, for this spooky night, I thought I would do a remake of my Iron Horse Illustration, and make it into a somewhat ghostly night scene, and while I was at it, throw a Blue Moon up there as well, just for laughs. The old steam locomotives were dubbed "iron horses" when the native folks first saw the things rumbling down the tracks, belching black smoke, and making that forlorn whistle sound. It must have sent shivers down their collective spines back then.....and now they are a thing of the past. Happy Halloween to all.....Cheers! 

Full Moon Insomnia.....

Ever had a night when the head just will not lie down? All kinds of nonsense just swirls around in there, and the more you fight it, the worse it gets. If you happen to be any kind of musician at all, you will have had many nights when one crazy tune or another, just keeps playing over and over in your head, especially if you have just learned a new tune that happens to be somewhat difficult to put together. This is especially bad when you are a musician of sorts, and play from memory or by ear, as they say. If you happen to be a "real" musician, and read music, I am not sure if this is as much of a problem or not. However, this little image was one that I was playing around with quite some time ago, and I happened to come across it tonight, and decided to play with it a little more, and post it on here. With an instrument like that, he should have no problem keeping half of the City of Detroit awake. But my guess is that it is most likely awake anyway. The graphics in the background is an outline of the Detroit skyline, taken from Windsor, Ont.. It was a fun little piece to work on this evening, and hopefully some will enjoy it a little. Cheers! 

Wilted Rose Abstract.....

 Well, here we go again. Last evening while I was tweaking my blog a little, for some reason, all of the text for all of the postings vanished....but finally about 3 hours later, I managed to recover it again. I know, some would probably say that it is no great loss, but a lot of effort goes into making and writing a blog, even one as mundane as this one. So we shall give it another chance. This little image sort of illustrates how I feel about things in general. It started out as a terribly wilted rose, and it would have been easy to ignore it. However, over time, I have learned that one should not be too hasty in just writing things/people off, because they do not jump out and immediately grab your attention, or admiration. With a little effort, the lessor of things can be transformed into something that does grab your attention, even if only briefly. To make something out of nothing is rewarding, and I guess it is why I like to photograph things that is well beyond its best before date. It certainly is not to everyone's taste, but you can't please everyone all of the time....enjoy! 

Just A Rose Budding.....

Hierarchy of Musical Instruments.....

It has been quite some time since I last posted anything, and in the meanwhile, it seems that the powers that be in Blogger, has decided to "improve" the whole set up. As a result, I am no longer able to wrap text around an image, which saves a lot of space. The new improved version is extremely clumsy to use, in my opinion, and it appears that a lot of other folks using this set up feels the same. Anyway, I will try to make some sense of it for now. This little image was originally done in colour, but tonight, I decided to revisit it, and do a Black & White version of it, which seems to work well for me. The instruments are stacked, with the violin/fiddle sitting above the guitar. I have heard a lot of really great guitar playing in my day, but there is nothing sweeter to my ear than a well played violin. So it gets top berth. Then off to the side is a button (diatonic) accordion, which I rather enjoy playing either solo, or with a group. The "button" accordion is either loved or loathed, and I started to play it when I was around 8 years old, and still learning..... It has been said that the accordion was invented so that the Scottish bagpipers would have something to look down upon, or sneer at.....whatever, it doesn't matter. It might be on the bottom of the heap, but let me tell you, when you hook it up to a 600 watt speaker system, add a little reverb, then lean into some good old time East coast or Irish tunes, it just blows the roof off of whatever pub you are playing in....however, if you really would like to hear the true richness of the thing, you have to hear it played in a large church with the wonderful acoustics therein...oooohh yeah!