This Old Blog

two seniors say hello It's Thanksgiving week. I'm taking a few days of personal time before Thanksgiving Day because I'll be flying on business to Japan on Thursday. My wife and I are running around trying to get as much done as possible before I leave her alone with the two Labs and the three cats. She'll have our two daughters to come and visit as well as all her friends and our neighbors, but still, I worry. And because I worry I plan accordingly. One trip was to our vet with Max and Lucy. Max needed his ears checked, and Lucy needed to have a minor operation checked to see if she was healing well. Both little guys came away with flying colors. Max in particular is happy because his ears are in great shape. Max is a Lab, and Labs are Hounds, and a Hound's ears are very important to them. you don't smell like a puppy... While we were in the waiting room for out turn with the vet, many little characters, large and small, came over to pay their res...

Max turned 13 today. He's now the third-oldest Lab we've ever owned. The longest lived was our first, a yellow named Rhett, who lived to be 16. Second longest was Rhett's companion Katey, a black who lived to be 15. Katey was my very "first" dog; I never owned one personally when I was a kid. Katey was still alive when Max first came to live with us in January 2000. Katey was born on a January. A month later, in February, I had to put Katey to sleep because she'd developed a large inoperable tumor, and our former vet didn't catch it in time. Sixteen and fifteen is a long time to live for any large breed; typical lifespan for a Lab is supposedly twelve years, so I can't complain when they pass. To celebrate Max went out for his typical walk. He's not quite as energetic as he once was. He and I both walk a bit slower these days, due to problems with our joints (me primarily with my knee replacement). My wife took Max and Ruby to the vet for so...

Taken the same time as "party of two", this photo of just Ruby shows why I prefer sepia over neutral black and white. There's just more life in the sepia output, and the dark areas are truly dark. Part of this is the composition, but part of it is the internal tinting that takes place. Both of these (rubester and party of two) were taken with the E-PL2 and Panasonic 14mm at f/2.8. Foreground/background separation is rather nice. Again none of this was retouched; SOOC. Love me, love my Labs.

max and ruby Can't get through a TV program without the Labs showing up. It's showering again this evening so everybody came in to be with me. I'm watching " Dinotasia ", narrated by Werner Herzog (who sounds an awful lot like Christopher Lambert ). The Labs keep looking at the TV whenever the dinosaurs roar, then turn around to look at me as if to ask "what was that?" I guess Labs don't like dinosaurs.

Photographers are as fickle a bunch as you'll ever deal with. We can never settle down with any given camera or lens before we grow tired of its charms and yearn for something newer, fresher, more attractive and exciting to us. Take as an example my affair with the M.Zuiko 2.8/17mm. I've written about the 17mm in the past . The copy you see mounted on the E-PL1 above is my second. The first copy I had was silver. I purchased it because of its small silver size and because it was considerably cheaper than the Panasonic 1.7/20mm at the time. I used it quite a bit on my E-P2 until one day its front cosmetic element fell off into a Boston street back in March of 2011. The lens didn't stop working, but it fell out of favor when it lost a bit of itself. I was a fool to feel that way, but a friend wanted a µ4:3rds 17mm to play with so I sold him that one for $100, less than half what I'd paid for it a year before. And then a short time later I went out and got this copy,...

Max with Plumbago blooms About a week ago a NEX-5N arrived at the house with just the stock 18-55mm kit zoom. Today I finally received a Fotodiox OM-NEX lens adapter so that I could use my OM lenses with my NEX-5N. In order to use my manual focus OM film-era lenses with the 5N and the adapter I had to enable Release w/o Lens under Menu | Setup . I then selected Peaking Level of High and a Peaking Color of Red in the Setup menu. And then I went back to shooting raw. Unless the subject is colored red, focus peaking works a treat with the 5N. This is the one feature above all others I would have liked Olympus to have added to its digital cameras, especially the Pens. I managed, after a fashion, to learn how to manually focus my OMs with my Pens (E-P2, E-PL1 and E-PL2), but it was a slow process. With the 5N focus peaking system, correct focus is absolute and certain, and for me at least a lot faster. I've also noticed another feature I appreciate on the 5N, and that's ...

It's been Primary Tuesday all day today. I'll vent my spleen about that in another post, but right now I want to give thanks for having my Labs to come home to at the end of the day. It's not like I don't love my wife, I do; it's that the Labs (and all make of dogs, I'm sure) give us their unconditional love, day in and day out. There is no quid pro quo with a dog. They're a vital part of the healing oasis I come home to every day. When they played as buddies four years ago, like big Max did with little Ruby, they both played as pups. "Dragon fights" is what the girls called them. Teeth bared, chuffing and huffing and soft mouthing each other. They circle and pounce, and Max was always the one on the ground, being careful not to step to hard on little Ruby. They'd make you laugh so had at times it was difficult to photograph them. These were taken four years ago when Ruby was still a pup. Max was really beginning to like playing with Ruby ...

These are photos taken in November 2008 when Ruby was ten weeks and Max was eight. Their fourth and twelfth year birthdays, respectively, are coming up in August. For whatever reason I got all sentimental and started to look for these particular photos. Max has certainly grown older since then, with prominent dark areas around the eyes. Ruby has just grown up, although if you see them standing side by side there's no mistaking smaller Ruby from larger Max. Max is still as energetic as ever, and takes to his walks with the same gusto he's shown since he was a five month old juvenile. Ruby has been "trained" by Max, and acts as his backup annoyer when I don't move fast enough to dress them out in their leads for their daily walks. The only difference is I'm now careful not to walk Max nearly as far as I once did. His age, my knees, and the heat and humidity make me more cautious about the time and distance on any single walk. Instead we spend time out in the b...

It's still a lazy time to hang around the house and do all those house chores, inside and out, that have accumulated of late because of work and my bum knee. The knee is actually healing, and I'm able to get out and Do Something Useful, like raking up bag after bag of leaves that have fallen and continue to fall as our extended fall season continues. We really don't have a real winter in central Florida, we just have a very short spring, a long hot summer, and a mild fall that runs from November to March. I've actually gotten some of my best fall foliage photos in early December up in Tallahassee. Max and Ruby like to hang with me in the back yard while I work; it's a dog thing. I've had Labs do that since I've had Labs going all the way back to when my wife and I first married nearly 30 years ago. So in between filling trash bags with leaves I grabbed the E-P2, quickly mounted the M.Z 45mm, and went back out to grab a few shots of the Old Man watching ...

This was the first Christmas day when neither of the girls were home. All we had were a collection of Labs and cats to keep us entertained. And for the most part we stayed in the house and entertained ourselves with the various gifts we'd gotten each other. My wife was very pleased with the Nook Tablet I'd gotten her, and kept remarking how easy it was to use compared to the Nook Color I'd gotten her last year. I'll put a review of it up on thewsreviews in short order. All of these except for the first were test shots taken with the M.Zuiko 45mm and the 40-150mm R lenses on the E-P2, under various lighting indoors, out, and mixed. I'll be doing more detailed personal reviews of the three lenses I got in December, but for the now let me say that the two new Zuikos were light and whisper quiet. And for what I paid for the 40-150 R ($160 on sale this month), I have to say that the 40-150mm R is an incredible bargain considering how good it is. From what I can ...

I've been telecommuting since Thursday. I've still got the bum knee, and working from home reduces the stress and strain of driving cross town to work, then clomping up four floors to my office (even if I do use an elevator instead of the stairs). Destinations such as a kitchen area and bathroom are a lot closer at home than in an office building. I can't wait until the 15 th and my official audience with the orthopedic surgeon. I can't believe this has been going on since my trip to Detroit before Thanksgiving. Right now I'm the only two-legged creature in the house. It's not that you can say you're alone when you have two Labs and three cats to keep you occupied. I've been sleeping out on the La-Z-Boy lounger in the back of the house these past weeks because it can keep my leg and knee at a proper angle, and I'm close enough to the kitchen and the freezer to grab ice packs for the knee. But I still have to rise and shine each morning and go to ...

Max over Ruby (Max/Ruby) Traveling up to Tallahassee for the next few days to visit daughter #2. She's been out of school since she graduated in late May, working at both the Brogan as well as a free internship at FSU's Master Craftsman studio. It's what she wants to do as an artist. We're going up to visit her at Thanksgiving, as this will be the first (probably of many) Thanksgivings she won't be coming down to stay with us. I've taken the week and split off the first few days to travel and visit since she'll be busy working. The Labs are coming along as usual. Max is all of eleven now, and Ruby is a big three-year-old. Still, Max is the alpha male and does as he wills with sweet young Ruby, even using her rump as his pillow on the way up. It looks a little sexist until you realize that Ruby will often sleep next to Max, resting her head on his back. In some ways they both still behave like litter-mates, even though their births are years apart. I...

Today was a very mixed experience. The high point was taking the labs to get their six-week grooming, followed by a quick trip to the local vet for a photo session for the vet's clientele. It's always something of an adventure with the Labs and having their formal photographs taken. While the vet had one of the nurses take the "formal" photo, I was there to document the behind-the-scenes efforts to get the Labs to cooperate. That's my long suffering but sainted wife in between the two holy terrors. The low point was my left knee and Max's right rear leg. I have bone spurs in both knees, and I'm afraid that the one in the left knee might have gotten dislodged (I was crammed into an Air Tran 717 going up and Air Tran 737 coming back) and is now giving me hell. I'm headed to a local emergency room tomorrow morning if the pain and swelling don't go down. Then, to top it all off, Max decided to favor his hip or his right rear leg. We don't ...

Don't stop... How time does fly. It was Megs who rescued "little" Max eleven years ago. Max, who once lived two houses down from us, was not a happy little guy with his then-current owners. They kept him out in the back yard more than he cared for, and Max, typical of his breed, figured out how to work the fence gate and get loose, looking for people who would play with him. So he'd go over to the next-door neighbor who was between us because the woman who lived there felt sorry for Max and would give him treats. And then he'd come over to our house because he could smell the presence of Katie, a 15-year-old black female, and Babe, at the time our six-year-old chocolate female. Before he came to live with us, my wife would occasionally see him in the front of the house, but before she could get through the front door he'd disappear like a ghost. In January 2001 we finally found out the story of Max who was all of six months old at the time and a 60 po...