Category: Nick

some cats in black and white

whbeebe1 Comment



So tonight I was cleaning up one of my cabinets and found (again) one of my original OM-D EM-5’s, the second (not the mark II) that was released with an updated paint scheme. For a long period of time the older Four Third’s cameras, especially the E-3 and E-5, came with a speckled paint scheme which resisted scratches and dirt. Personally I like the way it looks better than any other paint scheme.

I pulled out the battery and charged it up, then reset the date and time because it had fully discharged. Then I put on the 14-42 EZ pancake zoom. I love that lens mechanically because when the camera is off the lens automatically collapses into a pancake size. Power on the camera and it extends, ready to take a photo. It’s great for travel, especially when paired with the old E-M5 or E-M10 or even the Pen F. I also set the #5 Art Filter to grainy black and white, and took a few quick snaps of the cats as they moved into the cat chair in the kitchen.

These photos are a rebellion against the multi-thousand-dollar cameras and matching lenses, and the insane focus on sharpness and bokeh and all the other edge-condition features that are driving the art out of photography. Think it’s too grainy, or too contrasty, or the highlights are blown, or the shadows crush detail? Good! That was the intention. The only technique I care about right now is the overall composition. The EM-5 I have is now a good decade old, which makes it ‘vintage’ (according to Apple). A vintage digital camera. Who’d a thought it would come to this?

More to come…

P.S. These are JPEGS straight out of camera, with only cropping to 1:1 in Lightroom.

last caturday in april 2022

whbeebe2 Comments

Two gingers lounging on one of the dog beds. The bed is big enough for one of the two dogs, one fourteen-year-old female Yellow Lab and the other a seven-year-old female Black Doodle. Big dogs. Yet the cats have discovered that they too can lounge about on the dog beds and the dogs won’t bother them. In this instance Beau is lying across the top, while Nicholas lies next to him across the bottom corner.

There are a number of observations in this small photograph.

  1. Nicholas, at 10 months, is as long as Beau at 6 1/2 years. I don’t know how much Nicholas weighs, but I’m sure it’s close to Beau. When Nicholas finally grows up, he’s going to be one big ginger, maybe the biggest of the three males.
  2. That orange ball in the lower left corner is one of Nicholas’ play toys. It was originally a dog toy, and the dogs still like to play with it. So now does Nicholas. He’ll bat it around the floor and chase after it. My wife has even told me she’s watched Nicholas lie on his back and hold the ball in his forelegs. I have yet to see that. I can’t wait.
  3. All the cats have discovered that the dog beds are great to lie on, and they’ll gather together in groups of up to three on one bed. I suppose if I had a hookah close by they’d fill it with catnip and use that too while lounging.

It’s never a dull moment around here.