Six feet apart is? Better than six feet under?

At one time London, Ontario, had quite the number of book stores. Many had been around for decades. I believe today the city is down to one chain, Indigo, with two locations. But it is a good chain, well-run and a fine place to shop for Christmas gifts.

When the young lady approached, yes Indigo has staff, what a concept, and asked if she could help I was all "yes you can!" You can help me get not a book but a picture—a picture that conveys the mood of the city today. And the young lady with her message-bearing shirt was perfect. (I cropped the shirt when taking the picture. I'm left to wonder how the message ends.)

Masks and social distancing are rules of the day and it seems that everyone is following these rules. One hears of some resistance but I have to say that I have not encountered any as of late. Some folk grumble but as long as they grumble in a muffled manner from behind a mask, I'm O.K. with their complaining.

Possibly one of the last warm fall days

Sunday was a wonderfully warm fall day in London and our street and any place where one could walk was packed with people, many wearing masks. Days like this are becoming less and less frequent as December approaches.

Computers bring the world inside

I've been trying to show my granddaughters how computers can bring the world inside. I've told them about the City Daily Photo group and how I've learned so much about St. Louis in the States, Antigua in Guatemala, Mumbai in India and the list goes on: England, Bulgaria, Italy . . . Posters may have noticed that I have shared some of the work found here on my personal FB page. My friends and relatives need to see something positive at this time in their lives.

My oldest nephew took a bus up a narrow mountain road to Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes. I showed him how I used Google Street Views to wander the ruins: Machu Picchu.

So, last night my youngest granddaughter took me on a tour, a tour of her iPad apps. We were able to visit interactive fantasy lands and she was delighted. She also liked the idea of the picture of her working on her iPad and so she cooperated in making the posted image. She stayed focused, kept playing but kept rather still. Why? Because of the slow shutter speed, she'd tell you.

Soft window light and lots of it best for food pictures

 

I see food pictures posted in Facebook and Twitter now and then. All too often these pictures are terrible. They most certainly do not make one want to sample the dish. The big mistake is light. The photographer uses room lights to illuminate the dish, like fluorescents or LEDs, or they blast a strobe straight at the plate. 

For good, sometimes great, pictures of food simply use window light. You want soft window light and not harsh, full on sunlight. And it is nice if the ceiling in the room is a good, clean white. It is the white ceiling that is reflected in the cutlery. 

The middle of the day is best. The light is stronger. Put off your shoot to evening and you may well not have adequate light. It most cases I prefer a small aperture to that I can use a small f/stop like f/11 or f/16. But, if necessary, one can work with shallow depth of field as long as the colour is accurately mouthwatering.

I used this technique to shoot food shots for many publications. I never had a photo rejected.

And what food is shown? This is the lunch my wife served her neighbourhood lady friends who stopped by to help her make Christmas cookies. All the ladies wore masks and staked out their own corner of the kitchen in which to work. It was a Covid-19 aware day.

I remember when air was free

When I was a boy air for one's tires was free and available at almost every gas station. Not today. Today air is at least a buck, if it is available at all. Out on the highway, the four-lane roadway linking London to Toronto and the rest of the province, one can pay for air with a credit card or debit card if one doesn't have a loonie and two quarters handy. That's right, air is a buck and a half at the rest-stop beside the freeway.

A loonie is the name Canadians have given their one dollar coin. The coin carries the raised image of a loon on one side, hence the nickname. There's another thing that has changed. When I was boy we had dollar bills. But bills were expensive and they wore out quickly. 

The one dollar coins costs more initially but they last forever. But time is still hard on money, coin or bill, it loses value over time. For this reason, among others, the metal coins are being superseded by plastic: credit cards and debit cards.

Snow plus warmish day equals fog: advection fog

It snowed the other day. The ground was still deep in snow early this morning. But come mid-day, a warm breeze from the south began melting the snow and soon thick fog covered the ground.

This is called Advection Fog: It forms when a warm, moist wind from the south encounters snow covered ground. This contact between warm air and cold, moist ground causes the air to become cool, saturated with moisture and fog is formed.

Is this Vietnamese folk art

 

If you want an amazing bronze or marble sculpture then Asia is the area to look. Craft shops throughout Southeast Asia crank out replicas of famous Western sculptures in big and small sizes and everything in between.

That said, these ceramic pieces in the window of an area body shop operated by a couple who once lived in Vietnam bear no resemblance to much art found in the West. There is rolly-polly buddha feel to these ceramic cat pieces.

Are these art? I'm sure a lot of folk would argue these cats are not art. I'm not so sure. There is a clear aesthetic at work here. But, one thing that I think we can all agree on is that these cats are visually fun.

Why immigrants are good

It has been years since my body man and his wife lived in Vietnam. It was the country of his birth. But, Canada got lucky and the oh-so-talented Vietnamese gentleman took his wife and moved to Canada. Here, he and his wife have run a small but successful body shop and outside the business they have raised a son and a daughter.

The other day my wife got struck exiting a parking lot. The accident wasn't her fault but in Ontario we have a no-fault approach to accident repair. The accident was credited to the other driver; he will see his insurance rates climb. But the repairs for the damage are being covered by each of our insurance companies. Each insurance company covers their own client. That's where the no-fault comes into play.

So, our car goes into the body shop for a time-out where it gets to hob knob with other cars in for repairs, such as this bright, red muscle car being given a second crack at life. I'm in awe of body shop craftsman. I kept the car of my youth, a Morgan Plus Four, for forty-five years thanks to fine body shop experts and talented mechanics. These people give a whole extra dimension to the concept of "to recycle."

Second snowfall of season

Today the second snowfall of the season hit London. Kids were out with sleds, other children were busy making snowmen and housebound pets were out frolicking in the cold, white magic.

Farhi: a name frequently encountered in Ontario

The former Bell Building in downtown London, Ontario, now bears the Farhi name like so many hundreds of other buildings in more than 35 municipalities across the province. One cannot miss a Farhi owned building or plot of land, Shmuel Farhi plasters all he owns with his name writ large.

Built with bricks and mortar and code

Today our civilization is built not with just brick and mortar but also with code. We no longer rely as much on machines with carefully meshing gears but more and more we rely on computers with carefully meshing code.

The image today was created by my seven-year-old granddaughter. She used her iPad running a favourite app plus my white, blue-striped shirt. She moved the camera lens over my shirt, watched the resulting image on the screen and when she liked where it was going she fine-tuned the image, did a screen-grab and sent the file to my computer using wifi and Facebook Messenger. 

Is this art? What do you think?

A complete car once cost less than a set of tires today

Reportedly, the first VW beetle sold in the States back in 1949 went for $800. I can recall buying a bug for something in the neighbourhood of $1600 a few decades later. I  needed a dependable car for my first job as a photographer at a daily paper. 

Today the bug is out of production. The last cars sold at the London dealerships for something in order of $35,000 Canadian. Yes, today a set of tires with rims can cost more than an entire car once cost. A great example of the power of inflation, yes?

Despite the cold and wind, outside is a good place to be.

Today was chilly and the wind drove the cold right through one's coat. Still, for the little kids on the street, it was still a good day for playing outside. If truth be told. there are not many days when it is not good to play outside. So grab a hoola-hoop and play.

Christmas cookie making in a time of COVID-19

Suburbs are not cold, impersonal places. Suburbs are filled with people. This should not come as a surprise. And people are gregarious. They like to get together. And they do.

Each fall some of the ladies on my court get together to do some Christmas baking. It was tough this year. COVID-19 made the ladies think twice. But their group is small, only three ladies, and all agreed to wear face masks. The province advises no more than four at such a gathering.

Despite the cold fall weather, windows were left open around the home and cool air moved constantly through the stove-hot kitchen. Much of the time, the ladies practised social distancing. And masks were worn constantly.

At the end of a long, private drive, another Hall's Mills home

There are not many homes in the Hall's Mills neighbourhood, and there seem to a fair number of empty lots, all this would work to make this an enviable place for one's new home if it were not for one thing: water. Flood water to be exact. Hall's Mills was established before there were municipal laws restricting the erecting of buildings on flood plain lands.

Existing buildings are permitted to remain and these buildings can benefit from minor renovations, alterations or additions as long as everything is done with the approval of council in cooperation with the Upper Thames River Conservation Authority.

Clearly modifying the homes in Hall's Mills is difficult. I understand some homes have been purchased by the city, rented out briefly and then demolished. It appears more than the nearby river is out to sweep Hall's Mills away. 

For all these reasons, a visit to Hall's Mills is a trip back in time. The homes appear very much as they did when built, sometime more than a hundred years ago.

Hall's Mills homes may go back to before 1900

Hall's Mills is one of the oldest neighbourhoods in London, located in the west end of the city, immediately to the south of the Thames River. There are not all that many homes in Hall's Mills and as homes come down it is very difficult to get permission to rebuild. This is flood plain.

When I worked at the paper, I had to enter one of the Hall's Mills homes while on an assignment. The home showed clear signs of flood damage. The floors thick, wood plank flooring was heaved and uneven. The owner told me the home had come through so many floods that they no longer knew the exact number of times the plane had been inundated.

The home pictured, is on a slope leading to land above the flood plain. But, this home may still be on the flood plain as the brick work at the bottom of the home has the look of something added to repair flood damage. If I ever get up the nerve, maybe next spring, I'll knock on the door and make some polite inquiries.

Hall's Mills on Thames River floodplain

It was almost two hundred years ago that Cyrenius Hall, born in New Hampshire in 1788, bought the small gristmill and dam across the Thames River. Despite his Yankee roots, Hall worked for the British forces during the War of 1812. Later, Hall added a distillery and tannery to the mill complex. Owing to his many enterprises, the area became known as Hall's Mills and the area still carries the name today. The mill and dam though are both now gone.

Hall sold the gristmill in 1848 and just in time as severe flooding along the Thames River damaged both the dam and the mill in 1851. The mill was repaired, changed hands a number of times and was slowly enlarged until by the early 1870s it was a full two storeys high and producing 100 bushels a day.

In 1883, the Thames River flooded again, severeing damaged the mill. It was repaired with improvements but a fire in 1907 closed the mill temporarily. Once more, it was rebuilt and operated for another couple of decades before be closed and dismantled. The remains were carried away in the Thames River flood of 1937.

COVID-19 has put so much on hold

There are a lot of activities. like this now suspended karate class, that have either been cancelled or severely curtailed thanks to COVID-19. And sadly, it may get worse before it gets better. 

The Province of Ontario has unveiled a new COVID-19 modelling that indicates the province could face 6,500 new cases daily by the middle of December if no new measures are taken. A vaccine cannot come soon enough.

Danger Lurks

It looks quiet, safe, inviting, a good place to stroll with your significant other. Well, it is and it isn't. Do you see the patched sidewalk concrete? The patches are there because the sidewalk heaves in the spring as the spring thaw arrives. And the heaved sidewalk can catch a foot, causing the walker to fall, and to fall hard on solid concrete.

The city knows of the danger and regularly grinds down the ridges. But each winter the sidewalk heaves again. Eventually the city rips out the damaged concrete and replaces it with a new, fresh, smooth sidewalk. Tripping threat eliminated, at least temporarily.

One is left to wonder why, in a city with relatively mild winters, this problem is so common. Does the city put in sidewalks on the cheap, scrimping on the a deep, solid foundation on which the concrete surface sits?

CC-130J flyovers on Remembrance Day

Newspaper photographers are rather amazing. They shoot fashion, food and sports, or course, but their core calling is shooting news. They document life. It is important to note, they make artsy decisions with every photo they take and sometimes, especially with news moments, these decisions must be made in an instant. As can be seen from this image by Mike Hensen of The London Free Press, the seasoned news shooter found the angle to tell the story. This is not always an easy feat.

Hensen's photo shows CC-130J Hercules from RCAF Trenton performing  flyover at the London, Ontario, Remembrance Day ceremony at the downtown cenotaph. See how Mike Hensen tweeted this image and another on Twitter.

Many Canadians support mask wearing

 

When one is outside, one doesn't have to wear a mask. Despite this many Canadians can be spotted outside wearing a face mask. No explanation.

Absolutely surreal

 

This toilet was the surreal image greeting drivers as they reached the top of a steep hill in west London using its tightly looped roadway. I got this from my files to share today.

iPads are strangely ubiquitous

Before the arrival of  COVID-19, all my granddaughters did not have iPads, or what they like to call iPads. In truth, they have less expensive tablets made by Apple competitors. But whether iPads or tablets, these portable computers are now everywhere.

Find a kid and you may well find a tablet. The big force pushing tablets into our children's lives has not been games but school. With the arrival of COVID-19, the importance of computer learning has soared. All my granddaughters do a massive amount of their school work on their tablets. This is true both in school and at home.

But when school work is done and it is time to play, the versatility of these things becomes very evident. These tablets are also good for playing computer games, chatting and sharing pictures with distant friends and relatives and even for taking pictures.

Computer tablets are a good example of a product we didn't miss when it didn't exist but now many of us cannot live without them.

E-Bikes are amazing

E-bikes come in lots of styles: motorcycle, scooter, bicycle, mobility scooter and awfully expensive toys. All these various E bikes were cruising along under my personal radar until this afternoon. I had no idea these things even existed. I'm just an out-of-touch old geezer, I guess.

Imagine my surprise when two of these big beasts came up up the hill topped by a lookout over the city. Clearly, these machines are powerful. And the two riders appreciate that power and take their sturdy machines everywhere. Municipalities can prohibit the use of e-bikes on paths, trails and other property under city control but in London there are few restrictions.

There are a few rules: riders must be sixteen and must wear a proper motorcycle helmet. And there are rules determining what is and what is not an e-bike. For instance, an e-bike cannot weight more than 120 kg, nor exceed a speed of 32km/h.

The rules certainly leaves lots of room for fun.

Healthy hotdogs? I'm kidding, right?

It's pretty hard to claim that hotdogs are healthy. That said, I'm going to do it. These hotdogs are heart-doctor approved. One and a half hotdogs on buns dressed with strips of Strubs Full Sour pickles, chopped red onion, a slathering of French's mustard and French's ketchup has maybe 100 calories and no more than 50mg cholesterol. There is no trans-fats at all.

Why is the cholesterol so low? These are turkey-dogs from the family-owned turkey farm on the south edge of town. My heart doctors allow patients with serious heart problems meat only every other day. The daily limit for cholesterol is 100mg. It doesn't take much meat or many eggs to push one's consumption above the daily limit.

Being it's November 6th, it is safe to say that this is the last BBQ of the year. I refuse to stand in the snow to grill dinner. Why grilled hotdogs are considered a treat in my household, is a puzzle to me. But my wife and my granddaughters all are delighted when dinner is grilled turkey-dogs. When the hotdogs have swollen and split from the intense heat, the hotdogs are perfect. Serve immediately.

A word about the ketchup. It is French's in our home as in many homes across southwestern Ontario. The local Heinz plant, open for more than a century, closed awhile back, throwing the dedicated workers out of work. French's moved in and took up the slack. French's hired many of the unemployed workers and signed new contracts with many of the area tomato growing operations. French's, which in the past did not have shelf space in many stores, is now a southwest Ontario favourite when it comes to ketchup. French's mustard was always popular.

Remember when kids did stuff with other kids?

The other night we had to drive to a nearby mall. We noticed another closed business. It made me stop and recall for a moment a time when restaurants were packed with diners, cars lined up for take-out and, if it was warm outside, folks relaxed on restaurant patios.

And kids were able to get together in big groups with other kids to sing, to dance, to practice martial arts and dozens of other things. I miss those times.

Avoiding the bus in the COVID-19 era

 

More and more children are being picked up by parents after school. Why? My guess is to keep them off the somewhat crowded school buses to avoid COVID-19. Although the mortality rate for children seems to be exceedingly low at this time, there are other health issues being encountered by kids. Many parents are trying to minimize the risk by dropping their kids off at school and picking them up afterwards. No school buses for these children.

Reaching for a kind hand

I had to look through my files for a photo showing a moment of kindness. It may be stretching it a little but these two little girls both wanted to wet their hands in the backyard fountain. It took a little  kind cooperation between the two for both these young girls to reach the fountain and play in the water together.

First snow

Some folk had grass still uncut, others had leaves waiting to be raked, others had shrubs begging to be cutback in anticipation of winter. But everyone had snow. It was the first snow and it provided a window into the coming winter. Almost everyone complained except for the kids who asked, "Is there enough to make a snowman?"

A new mask for Halloween

Lots of kids were wearing a new mask for Halloween: a COVID-19 mask. There is one poster to the Daily Photo site who is opposed to mask wearing. This may come a surprise but he has a point. Most folk agree masks are a barrier to transferring the COVID-19 virus from one person to another but there are some caveats.

Masks must be clean. And masks must be dry. Masks should not be quite damp, saturated with contaminated moisture from one's breath. Google this. You may be surprised to learn that moisture retention in reusable masks may result in poor filtration and, and this is the big surprise, increased risk of infection.

That said, the child pictured is wearing a clean, dry mask. She is at the door but still outside. And we, my wife and I, are both wearing fresh masks. We wore gloves to place candy in bags and we used tongs to give the bags to the trick-and-treaters. We believe our handing out of Halloween treats was a low-risk activity as far a spreading COVID-19 is concerned.

For more info on mask wearing, check out this post by the ECDC (European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control.) Scroll down to number 5, It is clearly stated that the appropriate and consistent use of face masks is key for effectiveness.