Category: Cats

cats and dogs, living together

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From left to right, Beau, Danï and Ruby taking a nap

I have never seen anything on YouTube nor read anything on the web that matches our current conditions in this house with our two large dogs and six various cats. Everybody gets along with everybody else. Ruby, the Yellow Lab, has always been a companionable animal with every living creature she’s ever met, including not only our current clowder, but all the first generation cats in this house.

How do we make it all work? Through kindness and fairness. All living creatures understand those two fundamental acts. We are always kind to everyone, and we are fair whenever we do anything positive for the animals. What we do for one we try to do for all in some way. It’s like raising human children. We are kind to our animals and we play no favorites. No creature in this house feels the need to compete with the others for anything.

I wish the outside world were more like this, but as current events show it’s not.

some cats in black and white

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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.