Frida

She’s Gone

| paulamyes
Ramasees, Frida’s favourite toy lying on Frida’s pillow.

 

It only seems like yesterday when I blogged about the arrival of Frida into our lives, and now 13years later I’m writing that she has passed away.

It has been an incredibly strange few days with no Frida. While she wasn’t a noisy dog the house seems so quiet now. I didn’t realise how much of a presence she was in our lives. If you went to the washing line she went with you. Every time I cooked she was sitting beside me. She’d follow us into the bathroom and wait while we showered. Now that constant presence has gone and the silence is deafening.

These videos are how I like to remember her.

 

 

Oh Happy Day!!!!!

| paulamyes

Bit of an odd morning today. It was a distinctly grey day and I wasn’t intending to take any photos. While getting set to take the dog out for a walk along the river at Blandstown the Beloved Significant Other said she was taking her binoculars to look for birds. I thought about taking mine but when I saw that they were in a pouch with my camera I just grabbed the whole shebang.

When we got there I wasn’t sure whether Frida – our dog – would walk. She is very old now and has to all intents and purposes given up on walking. She loves a ride in the car, but you can’t guarantee that she’ll get get out for a walk. With a bit of assistance she got out and was quite happy to head towards the river. When she was young long grass would send her silly and she would madly runabout causing mayhem. At 13 with arthritis in one of her back legs and kidney problems it doesn’t happen very often anymore but all that long grass along the river and she was off!

 

 

A hairy wrecking ball with four legs. Frida mid bully run when she was a lot younger.

 

While trying to avoid being bowled over by a deranged bull terrier the Beloved Significant Other said she thought she could see a Rainbow Bee-eater. Oh how I scoffed. “Impossible” said I. “They don’t arrive back from Northern Australia and Papua New Guinea until November.” I added being all ‘knowledgeable’. But when I raised the camera up and looked there was a female Rainbow Bee-eater, and listening very carefully I could just make out the chirping call of another. Never had I seen one this early in York before. I’d read that in some areas of southern Australia the winters are becoming much milder and some of the birds aren’t migrating north in autumn. Whether that applied to these birds I don’t know.

 

Birin-birin by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Birin-birin or Rainbow Bee-eater (Merops ornatus). York, Western Australia.

 

Birin-birin by Paul Amyes on 500px.com

 

 

So as we headed home I couldn’t work out what had made me the happier. The fact that Frida had just had a bully run or that I’d seen the Rainbow Bee-eater. Probably both. Oh! I did photograph some other birds. Here they are below.

 

Chestnut-rumped Thornbill by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Chestnut-rumped Thornbill, Acanthiza uropygialis. York, Western Australia.

 

Djindjokoor by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Juvenile Djindjokoor or Brown Honeyeater (Lichmera indistincta). York, Western Australia.

 

From this …

| paulamyes
Frida’s normal state – resting in her bed.

 

This is the natural state of the English Bull Terrier. Most people have this image of them being highly aggressive canine fighting machines, but the reality is that they prefer comfortable beds, cuddling up to blankets or preferably people, and sleeping.

…to this

 

A rare moment – Frida running along the Avon River bed.

 

Every now and then something miraculous happens and the Bull Terrier will erupt into a highly excited state where it runs at full tilt round and round. Heaven help anyone who gets in the way as its like being hit by a fury anti-tank missile. This is known as the “bully run“. It usually lasts about 2 minutes then the normal state is resumed.

 

Teaser

| paulamyes

Been playing with a new lens – and so far I’ve been very impressed and it’s made me reconsider my camera system. I’ll put up a full report in the next week or two. Here are a couple of photos to whet your appetite.

 

Back lit bully. Frida modelling for a lens test.

 

Bully blast off! Frida helping test the auto focus capabilities of a new lens.

 

Both shots were taken with the Canon 6d, which continues to amaze me with its picture quality, and converted to monochrome in AlienSkin’s Exposure 4.

Frida Says

| paulamyes
Frida says “Wake me up in spring.”. Panasonic G85 with OLYMPUS M.45mm F1.8 lens. Exposure: 1/15 sec, f2 at ISO 3200. Processed in AlienSkin Exposure 4.

Warning

| paulamyes
Warning by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Warning Bull Terrier on guard duty! York, Western Australia. Sony A7r with Sony FE 50mm f/1.8 lens. Exposure: 1/800, f4 at ISO 200.

I’ve had a tremendous change in my workflow of late. Initially when I trained in photography at college we taught to do all our processing in Adobe Photoshop. I think version 4 was the then current one. By the time I started lecturing in photography at the same college things had moved on considerably. Photoshop was no longer the main emphasis, although still taught. The new kid on the block was Lightroom and that is what we focused on. It provided important digital asset management (DAM) as well as allowed a certain amount of non destructive photo processing. Over time its features became more powerful and I rarely opened up Photoshop. Of late I have become dissatisfied with Adobe. One of the main things that started this malaise was Adobe shift away from  perpetual licences to “rent ware” or monthly subscriptions. Initially I went along with this, but it seemed that there were a lot of bugs in the software and I spent a lot of time on the phone to Adobe trying to fix niggling little problems. It was almost as if now because they had a cannula into our wallets there was no incentive to do any quality control on their products. So I stopped my subscription and went back to using Lightroom 6 and Photoshop CS5 vowing to find an alternative to Adobe products. Well I’ve now settled on one!!! It is Alienskin Exposure. I’ve just upgraded to version 4 and am really happy with it. The above photo was processed using Exposure and I’m now using it every day. In fact the photos I’ve submitted for my latest book were all processed with it as well. If you’re in the market for new photo processing software what not give it a burl.

Dry River Bed

| paulamyes

Australian summers are hot and dry, and while we are not in a drought cycle like the Eastern States, it does get very warm here in York. 45º C is not unheard of. The hot weather and the lack of rain means that the Avon River largely dries up with the exception of a few deep pools, and so I often go walking along the dry river bed with Frida my faithful canine companion as it allows me to view quite a variety of wildlife that congregates around the pools.

Western Whistler by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Female Western Whistler, sometimes called the Western Golden Whistler, (Pachycephala occidentalis). York, Western Australia. Olympus OMD EM10 with Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 II lens. Exposure: 1/1000sec, f7.1 at ISO 500.

 

Southern Scrub Robin by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
A Southern Scrub Robin, Drymodes brunneopygia, achives vertical take off. The Nyoongar name is Djibot. York, Western Australia. Olympus OMD EM10 with Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 75-300mm f/4.8-6.7 II lens. Exposure: 1/1000 sec, f7.1 at ISO 500.

 

White-faced Heron by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
White-faced Heron (Egretta novaehollandiae). York, Western Australia. Panasonic Lumix G85 with LEICA DG 100-400/F4.0-6.3 lens. Exposure: 1/1000 sec, f6.3 at ISO 250.

 

Brown Honeyeater by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Brown Honeyeater, Lichmera indistincta.The Nyoongar name is Djindjoko. York, Western Australia. Panasonic Lumix G85 with Panasonic LEICA DG 100-400/F4.0-6.3 lens. Exposure: 1/1000 sec, f6.3 at ISO 3200.

 

Sacred Kingfisher by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Sacred Kingfisher, Todiramphus sanctus. Known by the Nyoongar as Koonyenok. Avon River, York, Western Australia. Canon EOS 550d with a Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary lens. Exposure: 1/1000 sec, f6.3 at ISO 250.

It’s not just birds we see, there are small fish in the ponds (difficult to photograph) and masses of different insects like this damselfly below.

Blue Ringtail Damselfly by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Blue ringtail damselfly (Austrolestes annulosus,) at rest on the Avon River, York, Western Australia. Canon EOS 550d with a Sigma 150-600mm f/5-6.3 DG OS HSM Contemporary lens. Exposure: 1/1000 sec, f6.3 at ISO 1250.

 

Frida usually takes my photographic hijacking of her morning walks with good grace. She usually waits for me either in some convenient shade or as shown below standing in some water. She’s not as daft as she looks!

Keeping Cool by Paul Amyes on 500px.com
Frida waiting patiently in the cool of a water pool.

The other morning we were quite surprised to have a fox pop out of the long grass on the river bank and on to river bed. Initially it took off, but when it saw that Frida wasn’t in hot pursuit slowed down and turned back. The fox and Frida then played a mad game of chase up and down taking it in turns to be the chaser and the the chasee. Quite delightful to watch. It was like the canine equivalent of Kevin Costner’s film Dances With Wolves. Unfortunately by this time the battery in the camera had run flat so I was unable to take any photos of this rather special occurrence. Although this being a predominantly farming community most round here would not regard it as such as they belong to the “only good fox is a dead fox” brigade. A couple of days later we went back to see if the event could be repeated and I had a pocket full of batteries to ensure that I got some photos. We did find the fox in the same location but this time both it and Frida were indifferent to each other and the fox disappeared into the undergrowth on the opposite bank. Again I stuffed up the photography and all I got was the slightly blurred image below. Perhaps we’ll try again.

 

Red fox (Vulpes vulpes) on the Avon River river bed. York, Western Australia.

The soundtrack for summer in the Western Australian bush is provided by Broome based band the Pigram Brothers and their track Dry River Bed provided the title and inspiration for this blog entry.

 

When your drifting on the ocean
and the sea is a perfect blue
But those storm clouds on the horizon
are keeping you true to who are you
So take me away ‘cross the spinifex plains
where the true mirage never ends
And the smell of the rain is a long way away
lay me down on my dry river bed
Don’t have no white picket fence,
don’t have no green english lawn
Just got heat waves dancing for me,
on the red dirt where I was born
Feel the heart of my country,
beating to them lonely blues
Gotta get back there, gotta get back there,
I’ll be back there real soon
Pigram Brothers – Dry River Bed
Music and Words: ( S Pigram/A, D, G, P, S Pigram, P Mamid)

Recovery Mode

| paulamyes
Frida doing post surgery recovery.

This is Frida. I wouldn’t say we own her, more like she deigns to live with us. Anyway she had surgery to remove a lump last week, and she is now taking recovery very seriously. The lump turned out to be benign 😊👌.

 

Frida doing post surgery recovery.