Transitions

I went into the office for the better part of the day after the police took my statement about the robbery. I worked until 4:30pm, then made the mistake of spending time photographing around Slavia until 5:30pm before heading home. During that time the imp of the perverse that had decided to pick on me manged to tie up traffic all along every surface road I wanted to take, with one wreck after another, all the way up to the intersection of the 408 and I-4. I didn't get home until an hour later. Since I didn't have anything thawed for supper the wife and I went out to our local Lime Grill for supper. My wife told the cashier and the manager on duty about my day. When we were just about finished with our meal the manager came by with complementary sopapillas, a random act of kindness meant to offset some of the long day's events. And come to think of it, it did. I took the E-PL2 with the Leica 25mm with me to capture, well, whatever. Lime Grill is surrounded on three sides with plantings of roses. I saw this particular bush, and in the early evening light I grabbed a few photographs, letting my mood influence my photography.

At noon I'd gone out almost aimlessly walking in the heat of the day, giving a half-thought to lunch. I'd put the E-PL1 on grainy black and white and happened to take this photo looking north on Rouse. When I got home and finally looked at the results of the art filter I was far less than pleased. So I took the raw file and ran it through Lightroom and Silver Efex Pro 2 to get the moody effect I had in mind to start with.

While I was on SR-426 I happened to see this old church with the Seminole historical marker. There's a newer version of this church just up the side road. But this old Jamestown church now stands closed up.

While driving down the side road that passes by the Slavia cemetery I came upon this fence line with the weathered solar panel attached to a wooden post. We all talk about solar power as if it's New, but solar power for trickle charging batteries for remote sensors is technology that's decades old. I don't know what this particular sensor is for, but it's next to a cattle gate, so I would assume it's to let someone know if the gate is opened. Looking at it, the tableau struck me as an interesting mix of old-old barbed wired fencing and new-old (or is it old-new) solar powered tech used to monitor a gate. I guess I need to get out more often.

Technical

Top photo taken with the Olympus E-PL2 and Leica 25mm. EV adjusted -1 to keep with the darkening light; the camera wanted to compensate by making the scene brighter than it really was. The Leica was opened up to f/1.4 and I adjusted the focus point towards to the top of the sensor to make sure the front wilted flower was in focus. Then I cropped 16:9 in Lightroom, tweaked the contrast and blacks a bit, and voila! I had a JPEG for the web.

The rest were taken with the E-PL1 and the Panasonic 20mm. While the 20mm is nice, it's not Leica nice. I did use the autofocus adjust on the E-PL1 to put the focus square right on the solar panel. If you pixel peep the photo you'll see the panel and wood post are nice and crisply sharp, but the rest of the photo gets progressively softer as you move from right to left. I would have liked a strong falloff, but it was broad daylight and I had to stop the lens down to avoid over exposure. That's the problem with the E-PL1, it's maximum shutter speed is only 1/2000 sec instead of the 1/4000 sec of the E-P2 and E-PL2. And extra stop of shutter speed would have given me an extra stop to widen the aperture, and a more pronounced falloff from the plane of focus. But, hey, it was a $150 camera. I got essentially what I wanted, which is all that matters.

What I needed my cameras for today was a way to help expunge the emotions that came from the violation of the robbery. I can't suppress emotions, so I might as well channel them and harness them into something creative, like my photography. For that need the cameras were flawless performers.