Here’s a sample of the picture quality you get when you slap a craptacular Arsat C 80 mm lens onto a Canon EOS 20D using an el-cheapo adapter found on eBay. Not too shabby, really.
Here are fifty more images that I have taken since Christmas morning. I didn’t quite make my goal of posting 1000 images in 2005, but I figure that reaching 959 isn’t too bad. My goal for 2006 is to pass the 3000 mark (not kidding about that). We’ll see how it goes.
Christmas Morning:
I would have kept going, but we had to rush home from the in-laws to put a turkey in the oven as Ray and Ciara were on their way down from Edmonton for a visit. It was warm enough on Christmas Day that I felt like playing with my 80mm Arsat lens from my Kiev 60 camera. I found an adapter some months back that lets me use it on a Canon EOS body, but it arrived around the time of the layoff and move, thus it wound up languishing in a box until last week. ‘Stick A Fork In It’ was made with the Arsat lens.
Boxing Day:
The following afternoon saw Ray and I cruising east on Highway 12 looking for anything interesting to shoot. We ran across an abandoned yard site with a wonderfully delapidated barn. The next hour and a half were spent working the yard site over.
For some unaccountable reason we had the urge to head just a few minutes drive farther east into Saskatchewan. I’m not sure why we did this, but we did. Ray spotted this sign during our brief visit to Ratland, and we couldn’t let it go without taking a few pictures of it. It sums up the entire province rather nicely, I think.
We cruised some back roads on the way home and finished off the day’s shooting with a row of grain bins near the Strankman farm:
Mud Buttes:
December 27th was unseasonably warm so Ray figured it would be a good opportunity to give his daughter Ciara a tour of the Mud Buttes just south of the tiny hamlet of Monitor. You won’t find the Mud Buttes on a map — the only indication they’re there at all is a small campground sign on the gravel road just before the turnoff. This beautiful bit of geography should be a tourist attraction for the area, but it’s not. Instead, the economic development folks in Consort have been yakking about building a big Indian statue to attract tourists.
Booooring.
I mean, really. Who the hell is going to drive three hours out of their way to Bucksnort, Alberta to spend five minutes eyeballing a tacky statue? There’s a prime tourist attraction out here that no one knows about and the local yokels want to build a statue. Jesus wept.
Ray Ray Go Away:
I don’t know what it is about Ray, but he always manages to screw up the weather when he comes out here. If we’re looking forward to snow and frost shots, Ray brings a heat wave with him that removes any hint of moisture and leaves everything dry and brown. If it’s sun we want he makes it rain. If we want rain, well, you get the idea…
Anyhow, Ray left for Edmonton yesterday afternoon. He wasn’t gone two hours when it started to snow. This morning there was a beautiful fog and everything was coated in frost. It was a perfect opportunity to go out and make the type of images that Ray had been looking forward to, and I did so with a view towards rubbing his nose in it later.
And that’s it for 2005. Happy New Year to each every one of you.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Local photographer graduates from New York Institute of Photography certificate program.
Sean David McCormick has just been granted a Certificate for successfully completing the course of study in Professional Photography offered by America’s oldest and largest photography school, the New York Institute of Photography, located in New York City.
This Certificate is granted by NYI under the authority of the New York State Department of Education, a division of the University of the State of New York. NYI’s Distance Education Complete Course In Professional Photography includes training in all phases of photography including camera handling, lighting, portraiture, photojournalism, and advanced techniques.
The Institute is the largest photography school in the world, training thousands of students annually. While the majority of enrolled students come from the United States and Canada, NYI has earned a worldwide reputation that has also attracted students from all parts of the globe, including Europe, Africa, and Asia.
I realize everyone is probably getting sick and tired of seeing pictures of the same wheat field over and over and over and over and over and over again, but I just can’t seem to help myself. I had come over to the office to check e-mail late yesterday afternoon when I walked around the corner of the building and did a double-take. For a split second, I thought the trees in the middle of John’s wheat field were on fire. The clouds were streaming up from the centre of the trees and the lighting really made them look like smoke.
The images were made using my Canon EOS 20D. The rectilinear perspective distortion visible in some of the bales in the corner of the images is thanks to the Sigma 12-24mm lens (used at 12 mm) hanging off the front of the Canon.
The Supreme Court of Canada on Community Standards
“Criminal indecency or obscenity must rest on actual harm or a significant risk of harm to individuals or society. The Crown failed to establish this essential element of the offense. (Its) case must therefore fail,” McLachlin wrote.
In indecency cases, Canadian courts have traditionally probed whether the acts in question “breached the rules of conduct necessary for the proper functioning of society.” The Supreme Court ruled that from now on, judges should pay more attention to whether society would be actively harmed.
Monty Python on Community Standards
Mr Blackitt: Look at them, bloody Catholics. Filling the bloody
world up with bloody people they can’t afford to bloody feed.
Mrs Blackitt: What are we dear?
Mr Blackitt: Protestant, and fiercely proud of it…
Mrs Blackitt: Why do they have so many children…?
Mr Blackitt: Because every time they have sexual intercourse they
have to have a baby.
Mrs Blackitt: But it’s the same with us, Harry.
Mr Blackitt: What d’you mean…?
Mrs Blackitt: Well I mean we’ve got two children and we’ve had
sexual intercourse twice.
Mr Blackitt: That’s not the point… We *could* have it any time we
wanted.
Mrs Blackitt: Really?
Mr Blackitt: Oh yes. And, what’s more, because we don’t believe in
all that Papist claptrap we can take precautions.
Mrs Blackitt: What, you mean lock the door…?
Mr Blackitt: No no, I mean, because we are members of the
Protestant Reformed Church which successfully challenged the
autocratic power of the Papacy in the mid-sixteenth century,
we can wear little rubber devices to prevent issue.
Mrs Blackitt: What do you mean?
Mr Blackitt: I could, if I wanted, have sexual intercourse with
you…
Mrs Blackitt: Oh, yes… Harry…
Mr Blackitt: And by wearing a rubber sheath over my old feller I
could ensure that when I came off… you would not be
impregnated.
Mrs Blackitt: Ooh!
Mr Blackitt: That’s what being a Protestant’s all about. That’s
why it’s the church for me. That’s why it’s the church for
anyone who respects the individual and the individual’s right
to decide for him or herself. When Martin Luther nailed his
protest up to the church door in 1517, he may not have
realised the full significance of what he was doing. But four
hundred years later, thanks to him, my dear, I can wear
whatever I want on my John Thomas. And Protestantism doesn’t
stop at the simple condom. Oh no! I can wear French Ticklers
if I want.
Mrs Blackitt: You what?
Mr Blackitt: French Ticklers… Black Mambos… Crocodile Ribs…
Sheaths that are designed not only to protect but also to
enhance the stimulation of sexual congress…
Mrs Blackitt: Have you got one?
Mr Blackitt: Have I got one? Well no… But I can go down the road
any time I want and walk into Harry’s and hold my head up
high, and say in a loud steady voice: ‘Harry I want you to
sell me a *condom*. In fact today I think I’ll have a French
Tickler, for I am a Protestant…’
The Urban Refugee on Community Standards
I am thrilled, THRILLED, I tell you that it is now legal for me to engage in consensual group sex in a swinger’s club here in Canada any time I want to. Granted, I live in an area that doesn’t have so much as a Tim Horton’s or a McDonald’s let alone a swinger’s club, but, like Christmas, it’s the thought that counts, right?
Besides, I’m neither Catholic or Protestant, thankfully.
The arrival of a warm winter evening with an absolutely clear sky that is perfect for star trail shots means that you’ve just come down with the latest ’super flu’ making the rounds.
I’ve been creating some photo slideshows for Christmas presents. The idea was to burn them to DVD and give the discs away as gifts. I just discovered that my DVD burner has kakked (focusing errors). No amount of cleaning or fiddling will make it work again. I suppose this is why we’re not supposed to leave stuff until the last minute.
In the meantime, Ray has his own crap going on, and my wife is in agony because nothing is happening the way she would like it to on Christmas day in terms of getting family together. I suppose this is appropriate since I’m told misery loves company, and there’s lots of that to go around today.
I guess I’m off to buy a DVD burner that I can’t afford, but that I can’t live without given my habit of generating 10 GB or more worth of image data each month. Dammit.
I was productive this morning:
I was actually supposed to be helping sort out the cattle that the in-laws were shipping this morning, but it turns out that I’m more help when I don’t help.
*cough*
