I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love night shooting! It’s technically challenging, but with enough practice it works out more often than not. I did this engagement shoot in the early summer last year, squeezed in a brief period in Toronto (a week?) between my annual birthday trip (Norway & Germany, in this case) and a trip to Vancouver. Taken with my Pentax K100D, it’s the first time this particular photo has seen the light of day. I like motion blur, and this photo has two sets: the high-speed of the cars on Front Street and the slow-speed of the twirl.
I’ve probably mentioned this before, but I use the 17-55mm f/2.8 all the time — I almost never take it off the D300. Aside from my gripes about barrel distortion, I am in love with this lens. It’s responsive and sharp, just like anything that deserves my adoration (haha).
Anyway, I switched out the 17-55mm for the 50mm on Thursday night at the end of my shoot with Shamim in High Park as the streetlighting conditions were too low for the 17-55mm. The 50mm is a fraction (we’re talking less than a tenth of the price) of the 17-55mm, but it performs decently with enough light. This shot was taken with the 50mm, and it looks a lot brighter than it was in reality.
Today I decided to leave the prime lens on the D300 to shoot a couple of details around the house before I tackle the monumental cleaning job that comes after having company for over a month. I don’t know about you, but the last thing I want to do with houseguests around is heavy-duty cleaning. The lovely flora above is from K&E, who left yesterday. K is Xena and Beano’s catsitter from Ottawa, but this trip was a holiday rather than a sitting stint.
Having the place to myself again meant I could whip up balanced meals such as hash browns, corn on the cob, and coffee in my underwear, and leave the bathroom door open for the cats to harass me directly after a trip to the litterbox (ew). Stay tuned for more writing, more photos, and more musings now that summer is mostly over. The House of Fielding is returning to its regularly-scheduled blogging — while I’m at home, anyway. We know this won’t be for long.
On Saturday the last of my houseguests left, and when I arrived home after a full day of volunteering at The Brides’ Project, Beano and Xena looked at me as if to say, “Oh, it’s just you. Where are the other people who spoiled us rotten? Bring them back, you hardly pay any attention to us!”
It’s true, though, I was barely home this past week since I was working early mornings, to the point where it took five days before K&E crossed paths with me at all. For a few days it was a full house: there were four of us plus two cats in my apartment, which made the beasties very confused about where to sleep at night and who to bother during the day.
Some of you ex-Orkut readers may recall Eric from my former-to-the-former West Coast life (two lives ago?) when I lived in Vancouver and hung out with the Seattle gang, who’ve since splintered off to different parts of the country themselves. Last week I dug up this photo from Seattle on New Year’s Day 2005, which Eric doesn’t remember. David had just picked up the rings from the jewellers that we’d designed ourselves [mine, all], and was excited to show them to everyone before he flew back to Pennsylvania. I can’t recall the restaurant, only that it took a while to find one that was open on New Year’s Day. It’s a bit mind-boggling to think of how much life has changed (for all of us) since.
Fast-forward four years and nine months…
Eric took the train early Tuesday out of Toronto, which marked the end of the Canadian leg of his world tour. Eric’s maintaining a blog of his nomadic lifestyle as a self-described peripatetic programmer, which you may find a useful read if you’re also a self-employed person with wanderlust and aiming to take your solo show on the road. While I’ve been a remote worker myself (most of the last decade, come to think of it), I generally haven’t written about the logistics of doing so but I see the benefit in sharing the practical matters online. Many people talk about unchaining themselves from a fixed working location, and, being Gail at Large, I’m all about mobility…
In August I created a photo set of my urban wanderings with Eric, which doesn’t include Montreal (I’ll write about that separately) but includes the mobile phone uploads:
