What the heck is TtV photography anyway, and why would you bother?

A couple of you have asked me about my new fascination with TtV photography, so I thought I’d post a little tutorial here.

The idea is simple enough: take a photograph through the viewfinder of another camera. The viewfinder camera is usually a vintage twin-lens reflex camera, the kind that you would have held at waist-level and looked down into the viewfinder. It doesn’t need to be in working order, it just needs a largish and relatively clear viewfinder. A little bit of schmutz on the viewfinder does give your images character, though! I started with an old Kodak Brownie Hawkeye that I got from my uncle when I was wee, and I recently won an auction on eBay for a lot (pun intended) of vintage cameras including my new baby, a Kodak Duaflex IV. It’s in amazingly good condition for a 50+ year old camera!

duaflex

This is a terrible, blurry shot of the top and back of the Duaflex, but at least it gives you an idea of how nice and big the viewfinder on top is. (Note to self, check the LCD display every now and then. You’re not shooting film anymore, you can fix your mistakes on the fly!)

duaflex back

The second camera, the one that actually takes the picture, can be a point-and-shoot, or a dSLR, or if you’re really old-skool, a film camera of any kind. The first tutorials I read said you need a macro lens, but I don’t use one. You align your subject in the viewfinder of the vintage camera, check your focus, and shoot. You’ll end up with a shot that looks kind of like this.

pinwheel fullsize

Then you crop it to square, leaving that characteristic bit of black frame, and do however much or little post-processing twists your knickers. I like a little bit of an urban-acid cross-processed look to mine.

Once you’ve taken a few TtV pictures, you realize that there is an annoying glare on the viewfinder, and that’s why people build amazing Rube-Goldberg-esque contraptions to eliminate the extraneous light. I’ve heard of TtV junkies using everything from a Pringles can to elaborately decorated and personalized contraptions. I’m using a highly sophisticated contraption myself, constructed from yellow posterboard and scotch tape:

duaflex in contraption

And, equally stunning in its sophistication, here is my visual summation of the TtV process. Because sometimes a picture *is* worth a thousand words. Try not to be too awed by my mad photoshopping skillz.

ttv illustration

And this is the final product.

260:365 Colour wheel

It’s a lot more challenging than it looks to get your composition right, not least because everything is flipped right to left, so when you want to adjust your image to move the subject more to the right, you have to swing to the left. In fact, there’s ongoing debate in the TtV community as to whether you should flip your final images or leave them reversed. (So far, I lean toward the latter.) Getting your camera to focus on the image in the viewfinder and not the viewfinder glass is another troublesome spot. But IMHO, when it does work, TtV produces dreamy, retro images that are oddly compelling.

I’m totally hooked! In fact, I’ve discovered that there’s a group on Flickr of devotees who are doing 365 projects entirely in TtV. Hmmm, that may be next year’s challenge — if I didn’t think my family would completely disown me if I even thought about it!

If you’re curious and would like to see more, check out my TtV set on Flickr!

Edited to add: I finally got around to rebuilding my contraption and writing a better version of this tutorial in May of 2010. Check it out!

These are the things I want to remember

These are the things I want to remember about life with 20-month old Lucas. I write them here because they are ephermal, because they’ll disappear in the blink of an eye or the beat of a heart and I won’t even notice they’re gone, and someday I’ll be sad that I didn’t capture them a little bit better.

I want to remember how he says “Yeah!” with such enthusiasm when you ask him a question, like “Do you want to wear your Bob the Builder jammies tonight?” and he says it so that you cannot mistake the exclamation mark at the end.

I want to remember how he grabs me around the neck and squeezes hard when I pick him up, often crushing his face into mine in a sweetly aggressive sort of mashed-up kiss, as if he has just a little bit too much love for an ordinary hug and kiss to express.

I want to remember how even though he is perfectly capable of saying “Nimon” he calls both of his brothers “Tittan”. He started out calling them “Ninon” and “Ninnan”; now, they are the two-headed brother monster with one name.

I want to remember how he begs for whatever bit of tasty treat you’ve got not unlike a labrador puppy might, by standing as close to you as he can making obvious eye contact with you, all the while encouraging you to share with a musical “Mmm hmmm! Mmm hmmm!”

I want to remember how he must be just like his big brothers in all things, and how he loves to draw when they draw and play with lego when they play with lego. I really don’t think it’s occured to him that they are any older or any different than he is.

I want to remember how he loves certain videos and how he asks for them by ‘name’. Bob the Builder is of course “Bob!” (always with the audible exclamation mark) and Blues Clues is “Puppy!” The Muppets episode with Mark Hamill is less easy to convey; he gargles in the fashion of Angus McGonagle, the Argyle Gargoyle who gargles Gershwin. I’ll need to get the new Flip video camera out for that one, I think.

I want to remember how he loves for us to sing “Old Macdonald” in the car, and how when we pause to allow him to name an animal, he says “Cow!” each and every time, over and over again. (And yes, the exclamation mark is audible on that one, too. I think like any new skill that gets acquired by a toddler, he’s busy incorporating the exclamation into his repetoire through fierce and constant repetition.)

I want to remember how hard it is not to laugh when he is vexed and falls to the floor in a disappointed heap, not exactly throwing a tantrum but utterly exasperated by being denied the whimsy of his desire.

I want to remember his good ear for mimicry, and how he can repeat several words in a sing-song of sounds even though he’s only stringing together a word or two at a time. He will stack up a couple of blocks and then look at me and say, “Don’t you do it!” daring me not to knock over his tower the way he knocks down the ones I build for him. And he is pitch-perfect in capturing my tone as he climbs up onto the table and then scolds himself: “Git DOWN!”

I want to remember the way he chortles with glee and relief when we say it’s time for “Blankey and Soo” the bedtime duo. “Banky Sooooooo” he repeats.

I want to remember the way he looks solemnly into my eyes each night as I tell him the story of his day, agreeing with “Mmm hmm” to the key points, around his mouthful of soother.

I want to remember how utterly beautiful, and exasperating, and exhausting, and fulfilling it can be to parent the ball of curious and relentless and lovingly adorable energy that is Lucas at 20 months. It’s so hard to believe some days that it won’t be like this forever, that it might not be like this next month…

The one with the pancakes in a can — no, really!

Attention marketers and PR types: even if you have a product that might not otherwise catch my attention, if you can contextualize your product as a fun blog post in my head, you’ve got my attention. A good product is fundamental, but you also have to catch my attention — and inspiring my sense of whimsy definitely helps.

That’s what happened today when I had my first — and, I can only imagine, my only — experience of drive-by pancaking. Pancakes from a can, no less. No, seriously!

The Batter Blaster people were in town this morning doing a media tour, and they canvassed a few local bloggers to see if anyone might be interested in having chef Anthony Elman drop by and make a pancake breakfast for the family. That’s not a pitch you get every day! They were pitching a new product called Batter Blaster, which is basically pancake batter in a can. Unfortunately for me, I was already at work by the time I got the e-mail. I ended up exchanging a few e-mails with the PR team, and they offered to drop off a free sample to me downtown and, intrigued, I said yes.

I have to admit, at first I rolled my eyes. Pancake batter in a can that looks suspiciously like a whipped cream canister? But I read the ingredient list, and was surprisingly wholesome. Organic, no less. Since Monday is one of the days that I am on my own for dinner, this seemed like an easy and fun dinner idea. When I was a kid I used to absolutely love the frozen pancake batter you could get in a milk carton. In fact, not that long ago I wondered to Beloved why you can’t get that anymore.

So that’s how I came to meet Julie and Anthony, my Batter Blaster peeps, for an illicit mid-afternoon drive-by pancaking in the Market.

Julie and Tony

They’re super-nice by the way, and they’re surprisingly passionate about their pancakes. Not only did I get dinner, and pictures, and a great blog post, but they had more ideas and recipes, and even threw in (snicker, I swear I am not making this up!) a set of Batter Blaster t-shirts for the family.

The boys were fascinated by the idea of pancakes from a can, and were keen to “help” make dinner.

boys

When you squeeze the trigger, the batter is surprisingly light and fluffy, and kind of melts into a traditional pancake batter as it settles. (Please admire the artistry of taking a photograph one-handed with a right-shutter camera while using my right hand to dispense the batter!)

squirt

I taught the boys the fine art of waiting for the bubbles to surface, and they took turns squirting the batter and flipping the pancakes.

watching

And the true test? Damn, they were really, really tasty pancakes. I mean, really good! Light and fluffy, and better than I usually make from the just-add-water mix.

with syrup

We all agreed.

yum

In fact, I had to step up production when my helpers started absconding to eat the pancakes and I couldn’t make them fast enough.

three in a pan

In fact, we ate the whole can! I think the boys had about five pancakes each. I’d made myself an omelette, because I’m trying to watch my carbs again, but I couldn’t resist one or two myself — they were just that good.

empty table

So that’s the story of how I got drive-by pancaked by Batter Blaster, the pancakes in a can. I wanted to mock this product, but I have nothing left to mock. It was a tasty, easy meal; the clean-up was minimal; the boys played along; I made one meal for all four of us; AND every single piece of the empty can is recyclable. The PR pitch was fun, and so was dinner. Plus, I laughed a lot when I explained it all to Beloved when he got home, from the drive-by pancaking to the free t-shirts.

I’m telling you, sometimes life is stranger than fiction. Pancakes in a can. Who knew?

Project 365: TtV photography and a new toy

So I have a new obsession, a subset of my 365 obsession, which in itself is a subset of my photography obsession, which, it might be argued, is a subset of my “living my life out loud on the Internet” obsession. My new obsession is TtV (through the viewfinder) photography, in which you take a photograph by shooting through the viewfinder of another, usually vintage, camera.

This picture, my photo of the day for last Sunday, is taken through the viewfinder of a camera that I’ve had since I was a kid, my uncle’s old Kodak Brownie Hawkeye.

250:365 TtV apple

But this one is taken through the viewfinder of my latest toy, a Kodak Duaflex IV that I won on eBay this weekend. (It’s the first auction I’ve ever won! I bid on and won a lot of six vintage cameras including a a Baby Brownie Special, and a Brownie Reflex Synchro, THREE Brownie Hawkeyes including a flash unit — that’s in addition to the Brownie Hawkeye I already own, mind you. The other cameras are in middling to rough condition, as you might expect for a lot of vintage cameras, but the one I really wanted, the Kodak Duaflex IV, was in near-mint condition including an original leather case. (You can click through to see what it looks like, but mine is in much better condition.) I got it all for the stellar price of $10.99!

So now instead of murky, fuzzy TtV pictures like the apple above, I can shoot clear and dreamy ones like this one:

253:365 Tea-T-V

I am absolutely fascinated with TtV photography now, and have a half-written post discussing it in more detail for next week. (Edited to add: TtV how-to post is now live!)

The rest of my pictures are all over the map this week. There is nothing even remotely resembling a theme, or a coherent narrative. There’s the obligatory cute baby shot, for example:

248:365 Pucker

And there’s this one. I’d stepped out of my office on the way home into a cool, rainy afternoon, and suddenly there was this massive moving sea of umbrellas crossing the street in front of me… some sort of Japanese tour group, from the look of it. I tried to get a few shots, but they moved surprisingly quickly, and by the time I hopped up on a bench for a higher vantage point (in a short skirt and heels, no less, what a sight I must have been myself!) they’d moved on. This is an *almost* shot that didn’t quite capture what I wanted, but was still good enough for the POTD.

252:365 Umbrella madness

I took this one the same day I wrote the post grumbling about how difficult the homework-dinner-prep-baby-wrangling part of the day is, and you’d never know it from their inherent cuteness how stressful it can all be! But lookit the grip Lucas has on that pencil — not bad for a 19-month-old!

251:365 Homework time

I’m really pleased with how this shot of Tristan’s hockey skates turned out. I think the black and white emphasizes the shapes and the textures, which is what makes this shot look particularly interesting. (IMHO, that is!)

249:365 Hockey skates

And this bike caught my eye when I was going for coffee one morning… I’m not sure why but something about the shape of it appealed to me, out of the dozens of chained-up bikes I walk past every day downtown. It was a drizzly grey morning anyway, so desaturating it to b&w wasn’t much of a stretch, but then I used Photoshop to remove the b&w from the bell, leaving it the original gold colour. I like how all the lines in the picture lead the eye toward the bell.

251b:365 Golden bell

This was yesterday’s picture and yes, it is an editorial comment on how my day went. I don’t know why some days fall apart, and why some days go so spectacularly sideways, but yesterday was one of them, from start to finish. I’m glad it’s over!

254:365 Sigh

And finally, this week happened to include the end of September. In case you haven’t been paying attention, here’s a September recap in the form of the monthly mosaic:

September mosaic

September was a good month. A long month, but a good month. Expect October to be stuffed with shots of fall colour (if the rain ever stops) and more TtV experiments!

Five things that are freaking me out about H1N1

Are y’all feeling a little freaked out by H1N1, the so-called “swine flu”? I’m not usually one to get my knickers in a twist over the panic-du-jour (Y2K, avian flu, computer viruses — why are all the major media panic-attacks linked to either computer or human viruses anyway?) but this one is slowly but surely unnerving me.

Here’s five things that are freaking me out about H1N1.

1. Healthy 40-year-olds are apparently a high risk group, as are toddlers under two.

2. Schools may close, kids have to stay home for up to a week. So, I have an (extremely generous) one week of family-related leave, of which I’ve used most days already. One kid gets sick, needs to stay home for a week, then you know it will be exactly a week later when the next kid gets sick and has to stay home for a week, and there’s no chance that would coincide with whatever time the school is closed, and the nanny happens to be in another risk group so I need to consider protecting her… thank goodness for the generous leave, I couldn’t imagine facing it otherwise.

3. The seasonal flu shot may make you even more susceptible to H1N1.

4. I’m trying to keep the hyperbole from getting to me, but I do find myself conscious of all the shared surfaces I touch in a day — everything from the rails near the bus exit to the door handles at the Rideau Centre (I’ve actually started using my sleeve instead of my bare hand to push them) to the ATM keypad. It’s a slippery slope from here to OCD (and I haven’t even told you about my counting thing!)

5. I’m on the fence about the whole vaccination thing. I get most of the standard vaccines for the boys, and I’m mildly opposed to the Jenny-McCarthy-fearmongering that goes on around vaccines, but vaccinating Lucas for this one gives me the willies. Our family pediatrician doesn’t recommend the seasonal flu vaccine for kids who are otherwise healthy, but he does recommend H1N1 vaccination, which is enough for me. Almost. I read every word of every article like this one, though, trying to figure out which is the lesser of two evils. The one thing I can say is holy hell am I glad I’m not pregnant right now.

So what do you think? Will you get the H1N1 vaccine for yourself, and/or your kids? Is the hype getting to you, or are you rolling your eyes at the Chicken Littles among us? Have you made any other sorts of preparations?

Flotsam and jetsam – a “cleaning out my inbox” post

A few tidbits that have dribbled out of my inbox lately, worth a mention but not quite an entire post…

Remember when I blogged about the MoonJars? I just received their newsletter, and now you can enter to win a set of 25 standard MoonJars for your child’s classroom. Follow this link for details. (The contest is aimed at classrooms or community groups for Grades K-3. Entries should be submitted on behalf of classes/groups through their teachers or parents.)

I won my first-ever auction on eBay this weekend! I’ve bought stuff before, and I’ve bid and lost things, but I’ve never actually won an auction. I’m so stoked! The item was shipped from Mississauga yesterday, and I’ve been using Canada Post’s tracking feature to watch it migrate across the province. Did you know you can get e-mail tracking updates? How cool is that? I’m ridiculously excited to watch its progress across the province. It arrived in Ottawa at 6:36 this morning — with any luck, it will be waiting for me at home tonight. Yippee! (You’ll have to wait to see what I got, but it has to do with the 365. Fun!)

There’s a kids’ consignment sale happening on Sunday, October 18 called My Kid’s Funky Closet . According to the e-mail I received, ” It has been happening for 4 years now at The Glebe Community Center in Ottawa. The Ottawa Police provide their child finger printing service and Little Rays Reptiles put on a show. They collect for the food bank and snowsuit fund as well. They have consignors who make money selling their gently used children’s items and maternity wear and people at the show have an opportunity to dress their children at a fraction of the cost of buying new. There are toys, games, bikes, strollers, baby equipment, clothing, maternity wear and vendor booths to visit as well.”

Those of you with daughters might be interested in this one.

Plan Canada just released the 2009 edition of their ground breaking series of reports Because I Am A Girl (BIAAG). These reports highlight the plight of girls around the world and the unique role they play in the fight against global poverty.

Plan Canada in support of the 2009 BIAAG report is filming a documentary across Canada and will be in Ottawa from October 2nd to the 5th filming at locations across the city. This documentary is aimed at capturing the experiences of teens, tweens and their inspirations. These experiences will be captured and replayed as a documentary to be released in Spring 2010.

If you think your teen or tween might be interested in participating in the documentary, the latest filming schedule will have them at the Rideau Centre downtown on Saturday, October 3 from 12 pm to 2 pm.

If people are unable to attend the events they can still support the campaign by visiting www.becauseiamagirl.ca and find more ways to get involved. You can also follow the documentary crew as they blog about traveling across Canada and talking to girls who are helping to achieve positive social change around the world.

And finally, I’ve been chatting with one of the producers for All in a Day on CBC Radio. They’re thinking of doing a sort of parenting panel debate on when is the right time to let kids walk to school by themselves. We’ve had a lot of similar discussions here, so I said I’d ask y’all to see if anyone is interested. Even though I’m still shepherding Tristan back and forth at age seven, I think I’m pretty close to letting him walk by himself — assuming he’s ready for it.

I’m a little conflicted on the subject, but want to subscribe to the “free range kids” kind of ideals and believe that it is just as safe now as it was when I was a kid for kids to be roaming the neighbourhood. If you want to debate the issue, and especially if you’d argue a more conservative approach, let me know and I’ll pass your information along to Sarah at the CBC.

Five things that are making me cranky

It’s Monday and I’m feeling peevish. Consider yourself warned. When I’m finally and properly annointed Queen of the Universe, here’s the first five things I’m going to fix.

1. Twitter and Internet Explorer 6.

For the last couple of weeks, Twitter has been on a campaign to kill IE6. In fact, it’s not just Twitter, it’s Internet-wide, but Twitter is being particularly annoying about it. I didn’t mind the constant message box at the top of my screen saying “There’s a better way to surf” but now they’ve moved the icon pictures over top of the text, so that the leftmost 20 per cent or so of the text is blocked. Dear Twitter, I *know* Firefox is better than IE, but my IT department disagrees. Please let me read my tweets in peace. I promise, we’ll upgrade sometime in the next decade. We’re on it!

2. Trying to leave a comment on Blogger.com blogs

Once upon a time I had a blogspot blog, but in 2007 I made the leap to WordPress and haven’t looked back since. Is it me or are blogspot/blogger.com blogs actually trying to make it as difficult as possible to comment? Blogger.com users, is there some way you can simplify your comment process? It’s so annoying that even if you’re one of my favourite bloggers, I’m not likely to bother leaving a comment if you’re on a blogger.com blog. It never remembers my info, I have to go through a ridiculous number of screens with captchas that only show up about half the time, and it’s an entirely far too convoluted process. And that’s for the ones where I don’t have to invoke my OpenID or worse, revert to my old Blogger.com ID because the blog is not open to non-google-account comments. Really? Life’s too short.

3. The new “coffee shelf” system at Tim Hortons

This one has been around a while, but seems to be spreading like H1N1. Now at Tim Hortons, instead of the clerk simply handing you your coffee at the cash register, you have to move two feet down the counter and pick up your coffee on the little coffee shelf. While I get that the intention is to keep the line moving along, if I’m still standing there fishing coins out of the bottom of my purse would it kill you to hand me my coffee where I’m standing? Do either of us really benefit from you walking down the counter to place it up on the shelf and me walking down the counter to retrieve it, and then me walking back to the cash where you’re already serving the next customer and double-checking “This is the one with three milks, right?” because you only have to walk all the way back to your office ONCE with somebody else’s double-double to make sure it never happens again.

4. Homework for five- and seven-year olds during the arsenic hours

Okay, so I’ve already whined about being on my own with all three boys three nights a week this semester, trying to cram in dinner and lunch-making and baby-herding and all the other joys that have to happen daily between when I get home from work and when Beloved gets home from work. I was just getting the hang of it all when suddenly it’s all out of control again, because we’ve added nightly homework to the mix. Because keeping Lucas off Tristan’s homework and keeping Tristan focused on his task and keeping Simon engaged in his task and keeping Lucas off Simon’s homework all while making dinner and empyting school bags and getting things organized for the next day? Every single night? Is going to make my head explode. Likely this week. It’s not even the homework I mind so much, as the fact that it’s interactive, parent-participatory homework. Sure, I’m all over staying involved in my kids’ education, but not to the tune of 20 minutes a night during the most horrific part of the day. Save me!

5. Loblaws

I really think they’re just existing to piss me off lately. I’ve been a loyal Loblaws shopper for years, but I really think it’s time to find another grocery store. I’m so sick of having my favourite products suddenly disappear, never to be seen again. And then, three or four weeks ago, they completely rearranged the inside of the Barrhaven store and I swear to god, I have not been able to find anything since. For someone who blazes through the grocery store as quickly as possible, using the store layout as a mnenomic device in lieu of a shopping list, usually with a cranky 19-month-old passenger throwing things out of the cart as fast as I’m putting them in, rearranging the store is about the most cruel thing you could possibly do. And then, I just read this weekend that the delicious SunTech tomatoes that are grown in Manotick, at most 10 km or so from my house, are now trucked to Loblaws via Ajax, outside of Toronto. Yes, they are shipped 350 kms to the west, to the main distribution centre for Loblaws, only to be trucked 350 kms BACK to Ottawa. And Loblaws still has the temerity to blithely label them “Grown Close to Home!” Gah!

That’s what’s twisting my knickers these days. What’s making you cranky today?

Greeting cards, free shipping and 50 per cent to charity on Mothership Photo!

I‘ve got all kinds of neat stuff going on over at my Etsy shop for Mothership Photography! I finalized my first sale this week — cool, eh? To celebrate, I’ve got new products and a couple of special deals.

First, in addition to fine art prints, I’ve also created greeting cards for sale now, made from some of my favourite flower images from this summer. Right now, I’m offering sets of four 5×7 matte cards and sets of six 3.5×5 mini cards, all blank inside,
and a set of five thank you cards made from one of my favourite baby-toes images. Check ’em out — I’ll wait here until you get back!

setof4cardsminicards

As a part of my grand opening special, I’m offering free shipping worldwide for my first 25 sales.

And, last but certainly not least, as many of you know October is breast cancer awareness month. Breast cancer seems to be haunting many corners of my life these days: two sweet friends have recently conquered it, one colleague is fighting it, a few friends of mine have lost their mothers to it, and one of my best friends may lose his sister to it. Cancer terrifies me; I lost my Granda to colon cancer when I was nine. So while it’s not much, from now until the end of October, I’ll be donating 50 per cent of my profits from all of my Etsy sales to the Canadian Cancer Society.

Let me know what you think — you guys have given me some great feedback so far, and I appreciate it! Stay tuned, there’s more to come!

Project 365: Gunslingers and Hitchhikers and other silliness

A year is a really. long. time. And 365 pictures? A LOT of pictures. There’s only so much wandering around, camera gripped expectantly in one hand, that a girl can do in search of the perfect photo opportunity. Sometimes, you have to get a little silly.

There’s a group on Flickr called Theme of the Week (TOTW) that I’ve been following for months now, but only recently started playing along. The people who post there are really quite clever and creative — but have WAY more time on their hands than I seem to! The theme this week was “Literary Genius” and I couldn’t resist playing along.

You know I’m a Stephen King fan from way back, and I think the first line to the first novel of his Dark Tower series is perhaps one of the best opening lines of all time: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

246:365 The Gunslinger

(You like the cracked desert texture on that? The background is actually a beige plush blanket, but I layered the image with a photo of a cracked and rusted yellow pipe I drove past and stopped to photograph the day before. I didn’t end up using the pipe picture, but it sure adds a bit of desert character, doesn’t it? Have I mentioned how much I love photoshop? And Stephen King? And, erm, George Lucas?)

And then there’s this one, inspired by Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:

There is a theory which states that if anybody ever discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.

Yesterday, I had TOTW and Douglas Adams in mind when a woman walked past me pushing her dog in a stroller.

247:365 ...something even more bizarre and inexplicable

I swear, I stopped dead in my tracks four steps past her, debated it for a nano-second, and turned around and asked the woman if I could take a photograph. It’s a stroller. for. dogs. If that’s not bizarre and inexplicable, I don’t know what is!

The silliness has been with me for quite some days now. The TOTW last week was “Lyrically Inspired.” I’ve walked past this stump near my house maybe three million times and have never been inspired by it — and then in a flash last Friday on the way home from work, it leapt out and smacked me with both a stinky pun AND a TOTW idea. I called it (*snicker, chortle*) “I’m stumped!” I crack me up!

241:365 I'm stumped!

And the lyrical inspiration? Why, Rush’s “The Trees”, of course!

There is unrest in the forest
There is trouble with the trees
For the maples want more sunlight
And the oaks ignore their pleas

The trouble with the maples
(And they’re quite convinced they’re right)
They say the oaks are just too lofty
And they grab up all the light
But the oaks can’t help their feelings
If they like the way they’re made
And they wonder why the maples
Can’t be happy in their shade

There is trouble in the forest
And the creatures all have fled
As the maples scream ‘Oppression!’
And the oaks just shake their heads

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
‘The oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light’
Now there’s no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw

(I was ridiculously pleased with myself for this stunning combination of spot-on theme adaptation, excellent musical taste and wretched punniness, and was quite disappointed when Beloved only rolled his eyes at my obvious self-delight and the photo garned a measly two comments on Flickr. Sheesh, tough crowd!)

Moving right along, there were some less silly things that I photographed this week as well. Well, this one has an inherent silliness about him, but that’s along with a whole bunch of other good stuff and not the entire reason I photographed him! I love the sparkle of mischief and personality in his eyes — pure Tristan.

242:365 Tristan

Much as I love the boys’ adorable faces, I like their other parts, too! (This one had to be judiciously edited to remove a curve of rather adorable bathtime bum cheek to make it safe for Internet consumption but take my word for it, the version I kept for myself is even *more* adorable than this one!)

245:365 Bathtime toes

(Simon long ago coined the term “fancy” to mean the way your fingers and toes get all pruney in the bath. When your digits get fancy, it means it’s time to get out of the tub!)

And although, or perhaps because, it is now officially autumn, Mother Nature still has many colourful gifts to share.

243:365 Seed pod

I figure with all the google traffic I get searching for various sorts of “postcards”, I’d put this up to give the searchers their money’s worth:

244b:365 Postcard Parliament

This one wins the prize as the most vexatious photo of the week. I really liked it, and apparently so did lots of other people. It has tonnes of comments, and plenty of people have “favourited” it — but it stubbornly refuses to jump into Explore even though other pictures of mine with half the number of comments and faves are in Explore right now. Very strange.

244:365 Maple leaf

Oh well, it’s still a pretty picture, and that’s the whole point, right?