Fujifilm

Some great undulating topiary on my way back from voting in the 6th democratic elections in South Africa. Let us hope our path straightens out now.

A local monument to the great, cosmic turtle, A’tuin - which slowly paddles through space on its mysterious journey, it’s head full of ineffable thoughts, with the world borne on the shoulders of the four elephants that ride on its back.

School kids walking past parliament and a statue of the first prime minister of The Union Of South Africa. Maybe they’ll get to live in a country that’s not exploited by tyrants or thieves.

“All the world seems in tune on a spring afternoon As we poison the pigeons in the park, And maybe we’ll do in a squirrel or two As we poison the pigeons in the park” Tom Lehrer

Obz is still Obz on a Wednesday night. Warm lights and lots of merry noise on Station Road on my shop run.

Misty night on the bridge over Observatory station.

I realised the other day that some people who’ve known me for years don’t realise I have really bad eyesight. I have a genetic condition from my old man called keratoconus - in theory causing a progressive thinning and bulging of the cornea. In practise it’s a very easy disability to live with. Especially as our optometrist is a bit of a genius and my condition has - if anything - improved over the last ten years under his care. Upshot is I have to wear old-fashioned hard contact lenses. Specs don’t correct my vision. While they correct my short-sightedness, I still get a kind of multiple double-vision effect from the distortions in my cornea. But at bed time I do wear specs. And my grandfather used to collect spectacle frames. So when I needed some in ‘96 or so, I asked my gran for a pair of 1920s-1930s wireframes which I still wear today. Going to bed selfies take a bit of time if you’re like me and insist on taking them at f1.8 with a manual focus lens. But surprisingly, I usually manage to get a frame or two in focus.

Even more drastic dieting actions may need to be taken with this fat Crumb. I’m testing different jpeg setting with the XE1. The idea is to see if I can get the pictures I want without have to do any post-processing at all. RAW files are great for specific things you may want to do to a pic, but it’s a pain in the ass to have to process every single pic. This will hopefully be a bit more like shooting slide film - where I’d choose the look I wanted when I chose the film to load, and the rest was simply down to camera, composition, and timing.

We’re moving this boy towards set meals. He’s a serial snacker. A snacktopus. And it’s showing.

This is our last autumn in Ash Street. We’ve lived here since 2007. Without any plan in that regard we’ve both lived here longer than either of us has ever lived anywhere else. We’ll miss wonderful neighbours but it’ll be good to be moving… a full 3 or 4 blocks away.