New Year, New Kittens

Having lost a cat last may that was one in a billion, I had no intentions of ever adding more cats to the household. Watching the vitality ebb out of our home and the remaining cats, it became apparent that something needed to be done. Watching my number one cat, Snooky, gain a massive amount of weight since Ragnar’s disappearance made me realize just how sedentary she had become without a male to show off in front of.

My sister’s quest for a long hair tiger tabby for the holidays ended up roping me into things including a visit to a pet store. Eventually she got a short hair tabby tiger after no luck.

Winter Mornings

 

It is a marvel how much clear skies and a morning sun transform the dullness of winter into something spectacular. Two mornings ago was such a day, so I tried to photograph the beautiful frosting on the trees around the property. Sadly, they photos were blurry messes thanks to me having a subpar day which even the autostabilization on the Fujifilm HS25EXR couldn’t overcome.

Second chances are far rarer than people would like to admit, especially when trying to capture a moment in time. Thankfully, today gave me such an opportunity.

Super Bad Moon Rising

While the title sounds like the name of a pretentious rock band, the lunar eclipse that happened last night was truly a “super moon” as well as a “blood moon.” Heralded by some nitwits as a sign that the world was ending, it only brought about a final battle between photographers and the ever dimming lunar face.

Okay, make that just one photographer, me.

After a week of feeling fairly terrible, the rare combination of fair skies and a rare celestial event prompted me to get the telescope out last night. Once outside, the amazing amount of light pouring out of the sky into an only slightly hazy atmosphere led to the brilliant idea of trying to take some photographs. Brilliant idea or merely a touch of lunacy? That ended up becoming the question of the night.

Autumn Is Called Fall for Good Reason

Seeing the best Fall colors in years has driven me slightly crazy this month. In trying to get back into photography, the lure of brightly colored leaves been a source of frustration thanks to uncooperative lighting and trees refusing to synchronize with each other. Then there are the winds making sure that I remember autumn is called Fall because of the leaves dropping from trees.

In the midst of this pursuit for the elusive perfect autumnal picture life has gone on.

Testing the FujiFilm HS25EXR, Part 2

More fooling around without a clue in order to see Fuji’s camera can do. As will become obvious, there is a lot to be learned yet. More photos and even a video only scratch the surface of what this far too capable mid-sized digital camera is capable of.



Ever behind on the times due to a lack of money, I feel like I’m constantly reinventing the wheel. It doesn't help I've forgotten everything about photography in the past five years. Due to dependency on automatic settings, pictures are never quite what I hope for, so expect to do better than this if you get your hands on the HS25EXR or one of its close relatives in the HS family.

In my previous post, I mentioned how post processing is needed to get good results. Spoiled by my Canon’s producing great results straight out of the viewfinder makes this a new experience. The two unaltered (other than resizing) shots above are a good illustration of why EXR mode is threatening my sanity.

Testing the FujiFilm HS25EXR, Part 1

Or a complete amateur’s fooling about with a new used camera in hopes of replacing his well out of date travel camera.

After failing to make a decent video of a once in a lifetime swarm of tens of thousands of dragonflies flitting around the property, I came to the reluctant conclusion my trusty Canon S1 IS was truly out of date. A newer used camera with HD recording was needed – hopefully one that took good stills as well. Hunting on eBay netted me a steal in the form of a FujiFilm FinePix HS25EXR 16 megapixel “bridge” camera capable of true 1080P video at 30 FPS.

Rave reviews online of this intermediate between snapshot and DSLR classes convinced me this would be a massive upgrade in capability. However, first snapshots had me wondering if I’d taken a step backward. Equipped with a bewildering array of settings, the HS25EXR was far more exotic than anything I’d used before. Of course that didn’t stop me from trying on my own.

Hokey Smoke!

While finishing up the Beowulf review tonight, I heard a loud impact on the air conditioner. Sometimes a panicked cat will jump up there, so I checked it out to see if there was an emergency. Instead, I beheld this:

I blinked multiple times because I had never seen anything like it. Then I realized what it was and was even more shocked. It was an honest to goodness flying squirrel!

For some reason I had always thought they were bigger than this little guy, but there was no mistaking the flat tail and membranes between the legs. I had no clue they even ranged into Minnesota.

Summertime

Aside from being a great tune, that is what today is. Summer has officially arrived with the solstice, but the weather has actually moderated compared to the past few days.

The corn is growing and so are the weeds. For the moment, the thistles have the height advantage.

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival–Martial Arts Special Edition

Each weekend at the Renaissance Festival has a theme and special acts. While it was a Middle Eastern theme featuring belly dancers, there was a one day only demonstration of martial arts on the schedule. Of course I was curious about it and went over to check it out at the 1 PM performance.

Instead of people kicking and punching while breaking the occasional board, I was delighted to find it was a Japanese sword combat school putting on the display. Even better, it wasn’t bamboo rods but sharpened steel blades being used.

 

Things opened up with traditional drum beating and horn blowing. The latter turned into a comedy routine along the way. A man in full armor (rusty at that) came up to harass the horn blower for not being loud enough.

Whereupon the blond belly dancer defended him with a giant foil covered cardboard can opener and chased the knight off. It was bit of levity before things got serious.

The master of the dojo instructed his students to sit on the mat, senior students in front, juniors in back. There they performed individual practice draws. Yes, those are sharpened blades.

Following the draws, wooden swords were brought out for practice exercises. To the casual glance it looked like kids fooling around, but if you watched closely you could see they were paired off senior with junior. This was as much instruction as demonstration and done slowly for this reason.

Then real duels began. These were much more serious as you can see by the expression on the senior here.

Kinetic would be my description of these bouts. They were primarily self judged and the combatants would break off to bow when they thought they would have been cut. Since they are mimicking the effects of fighting with a real blade, evasion and dodging are critical to survival.

The youngest student had a hard time of it, but the master kept encouraging her to try again. Eventually she got a cut through the tatami reed bundle, if a ragged one. She was so serious and nervous that you couldn’t help rooting for her.

A senior student took on two bundles at once. I thought he was moving slowly until I tried to capture him with the camera. What happened is his movements were so graceful and controlled that it only looked like he was slow. He really made it look effortless.

It was not a good day for this student.

This student came out with a triple the normal thickness bundle. A skeptical master asked him if he really wanted to try this and if he’d done it before. The answer was yes to both and away he went. First cut is shown here and he nearly pulled it off.

The second cut didn’t go as far in as the first, only getting half way. Not looking good.

Third time was the charm and succeeded when he changed the angle of the cut. The master said he didn’t think that was what made the difference, though. Well deserved applause from his fellow students shows the spirit of the school.

This was the highlight of the festival for me and was the last thing I expected to see at a renaissance festival. But as they pointed out, the samurai were still going strong in Japan during the 1500’s to 1700’s. It is nice to know there is a school teaching this here in Minnesota.

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 6

The biggest individual event at the festival has to be the joust. We connected with more friends who had come up and agreed to meet there. It is always packed so we thought arriving a half hour early would be perfect.

We were wrong.

It was already crowded and we ended up on the grass by the horse stables. Not a good vantage point at all. So if you go to this, prepare to arrive an hour early and be bored during that hour unless you have little kids participating in the games beforehand.

The same master of ceremonies that I remember from ten years ago is still conducting the joust. Technical issues with the wireless microphone setup made his brogue incomprehensible at times.

Like I mentioned before, not a good vantage point – especially for taking photos. Between the sun angle and all the floating dust it became apparent I wasn’t going to get the shots I’d hoped for.

The heel of the match, Sir William.

Moving the bars used for the kid games earlier in front of us didn’t help things. I believe our side’s champion was Sir Jacob in the green.

At this point in the afternoon (after 4 PM), the dust was a real pain and not just to taking pictures. Stinging eyes and filled sinuses were the order of the day.

Preparing to joust. These guys really hammered each other on and off horseback. Like professional wrestling it is all staged -- but the physical abuse is staggering.

I never was able to get the actual impact photographed. They converged near the boy who threw the autofocus out of whack. Even when that didn’t happen, my timing on the burst shots never worked out. In this case a direct hit took Sir Jacob out of the saddle with a resounding crash.

Musicians could be found everywhere and we passed this finely dressed lady as we headed out from the joust.

Sounds appetizing, doesn’t it?  Puke and Snot are the vulgar comedy duo that have become a franchise at the festival. One of them died several years ago and has been replaced. Didn’t find any unicorn burgers there, sadly enough.

Another glass blower shop with the dungeon in the background. We went into the dungeon which turned out to be a nice reprieve from the heat and humidity. The displays inside also gave Amber ideas.

I got excited when I saw a sign saying something about vikings at the mill. When I found out it was advertising football games at the pub attached to it I was disappointed. Now if they showed Norse berserkers beating each other to a pulp I’s be interested.

Since the exit is the same as the entrance, we had to carefully avoid the legendary and obnoxious pickle guy seen sans shirt at the right. Meanwhile, I’m being given the evil eye by the brunette on the left. Sorry darlin’, you aren’t my type.

I was going to write something flippant about the unicorn again, but the delighted expression on the little girl’s face made that impossible to do. Maybe the existence of unicorns can be be justified after all. Bah…

From there we exited and made our way out to the parking lot. It had been a fun day despite some dodgy weather.

For once I was financially prepared and picked up a couple of things including a leather check book cover. Only been shopping for one I’d actually like for fifteen years. This particular one isn’t on the Oh Susanna’s Leather’s website, but I’m pleased enough to link there anyway.

Not the end, for there is a special post dedicated to the martial arts exhibit yet to come.

Click for Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4  Part 5

2011 Minnesota Renaissance Festival Photo Tour Part 5

Something I had not seen before were harps on wheels. There were two different women playing at the festival and both were very good. Harps on wheels, what will they think of next?

Hedge wizards. You can’t go anywhere without one popping up.

One of the biggest hits of the trip were the delicious and glacially cold smoothies sold at multiple stands. Expensive like everything else, but so very worth it on a warm day. Once I got one, it was only a matter of time before the others succumbed to the lure.

Concentrated paradise and pain in a cup. They induced slightly delayed brain freezes in everyone but Brannick. Which left him open to smart aleck comments that you can easily guess.

After we warm up on him, the arguments guy appeared. Sadly, nobody was as sharp as the last time and the viciousness was decidedly muted. Epic fail.

Can’t have peasants without mud, can we? This industrious lass had a sign up with “Support the arts” on it.

Overhead a large metallic insect appeared. The zoom lens revealed it to be one of the smallest helicopters I’ve ever seen.

In contrast, a real insect showed up a bit later. Same lens, vastly different distances. Amazing how this turned out given how shaky my hands were. Have I mentioned I love this lens?

To be continued

Click for Part 1  Part 2  Part 3  Part 4