A Walk and an Inability to Center

I worked on my slides all morning yesterday, and managed to go through all the boxed slide cartridges. I looked at every slide, chose about 45 to scan, and packaged up the rest in a plastic tub according to the organizational scheme I described yesterday. And then I vacuumed the corner where those cartridges were stacked, because those things were filthy. It will be a miracle if I don't get hantavirus.

After that I needed some exercise, so I took a long walk over to Hampstead Heath Extension and up into Hampstead Garden Suburb. I came across the tree above in the wild part of Golder's Hill Park. I think it's a redwood, or some kind of cedar maybe. Not very typical for this area. It reminded me of Georgia O'Keeffe's painting "The Lawrence Tree."

It felt great to get out and walk and I was struck by how much I'm still missing Olga. The fireweed is blooming on the Heath and that brought tears to my eyes, because I took so many pictures of her romping in front of it. It's been almost a year since she died, which is hard to believe. The pain seems recent, and yet it does seem a long time since I held and petted her. We are long overdue for another dog but we've got to hold out until our Italy trip is past, in late July.

It wasn't a sad walk, overall. In fact it was beautiful out -- dry and sunny and cool, very Mediterranean -- and I put on my music and had a great time thinking about London as my personal property. (That's one of the songs I heard on my iTunes!) I'm glad I got that walk out of my system because it's looking rainy again this morning.

And I had a close encounter with a slightly muddy fox! As you can see from the video, it was in a quite populated part of the park near the tiny Golder's Hill zoo. I feel like the fox whisperer, but I know it's just that those varmints are everywhere. You'll also see video of the blooming fireweed, also known as rosebay willowherb.

In the evening Dave and I watched our usual TV lineup, which has lately included "The Four Seasons" and "The Pitt," both of which we love. "The Pitt" is so good we're reluctant to stop it -- we often find ourselves bingeing a couple of shows together. We watched "The Boroughs" on Netflix, which wasn't bad, mainly because of the cast, but it wasn't as compelling as "Stranger Things" (an earlier project by the same filmmakers).

I'll close with a couple of the slides I came across yesterday. Remember how I mentioned that some photographers seem to have trouble framing their shots? Here are two excellent examples, both from the mid-1950s:

There's a person to the left of the woman in pink, and all we can see is a smidgen of their jacket. But thank goodness the photographer included that lamp! (I like the right-hand woman's bouquet of passionflowers.)

I don't mean to be snide about anyone's photographic ability, but COME ON, MAN! Why are we cutting the tops of people's heads off? Why include so much under the table?

Blogger Boud commented many posts back that with some of those old-style cameras, you couldn't always clearly see the parameters of your image in the viewfinder. I think something like that must be at fault here, because this person's framing is completely bonkers. The main subjects of many pictures tend to be shifted upward and to the left, which leads me to suspect the photographer was using a camera with the lens below and to the right of the viewfinder. Fortunately, I still have enough well-centered shots that I have some scannable images, which I will post to Flickr over the next few weeks.