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Rest in peace, Tuna

Oh man – it’s so hard to write this…

On Saturday, March 13th, 2021 at 10:30am, our little furry friend of 11 years passed away.

Tuna (which was the name Zuleikha gave her) chose us as her family, not vice versa. She must have “belonged” to someone else before since she had a flea collar when in July of 2010 I took the first photo of her sitting on our fence like this:

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A cat with no name (yet), Mörfelden-Walldorf 2010

About three months later she came in, ate, slept, and stayed pretty much forever. Until that Saturday 2 weeks ago.

I have countless photos and also some videos of her, some of which are in an album on Flickr, so go there if you want to see them. For here, and for now, I’ll only show you our “Easter Greeting” photo from last year:

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Easter greetings to all cats and humans, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

And the one which is still my background wallpaper on this Debian Linux machine on which I’m currently typing this, and also the company’s work notebook which runs Red Hat Linux. It’s Tuna on a hot day on our veranda, taken with my 25mm lens wide open:

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Tuna enjoying 28 degrees, Moerfelden-Walldorf 2019

We buried her last Wednesday at an animal cemetery in Frankfurt Rödelheim, which is the closest to us with a distance of about 20km.

I’ll add a photo of the grave when it has a surrounding like the others.

Don’t know what else to say except that I’m deeply grateful for the 11 wonderful years that she’s spent with us. Thank you my little friend, and rest in peace…

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A short walk with Tuna (our cat)

Today I wanted to take a walk again, so I took my camera as usual, and headed out. A few minutes before I did, I had let the cat out at the opposite side (our veranda), so she was through the fence… and when I went I thought why not head into that direction, maybe I’ll see her? And sure, I did. So instead of walking very far, I waited what she was about to do, and simply followed her around some other house, and so on… so here’s Tuna, outside:

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Let’s sharpen our weapons a bit…, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021
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Another house, another fence, another hunting ground, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021
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Is anyone looking?, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021
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Let’s go!, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021
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Intruders? Where?, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

After returning home I let her in again – she was waiting in front of our veranda door when I came into our living room – fed her, and the she seemed to think about what just happened…

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In retrospect…, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

And of course, after eating, and cleaning up herself a bit, a cat has to rest…

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Ok, now let’s rest a bit…, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

That was a nice short walk. Interesting to see where she’s roaming around…

And as always, thanks for viewing.

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17mm

Last week was my birthday, and I got a new lens: the Olympus M. Zuiko 17mm f/1.8 which is wonderful. Here it is on my camera, took that shot using the Google Pixel 4a phone:

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New (to me) lens, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

Some first images taken with that lens:

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Flowers, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021
Just a little ad…
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Tuna the cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

As always, thanks for viewing.

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Low light, high ISO, and simulated black & white films

Olympus cameras, and Rawtherapee – a winning combination. These are from today:

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Tuna the cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021 (ISO 3200, simulated Kodak Tri-X film)
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Birthday flowers, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021 (ISO 6400, simulated Kodak T-Max film)

As always, thanks for viewing.

Edit, one day later:

That photo of Tuna above may look nice and bright – but in fact that scene was pretty dark. Here’s a video which I took right before that shot, and which shows the actual lighting (during daytime!) as it really was:

Again, thanks for viewing.

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First snow for 2021

We’ve had a bit of snow last fall, and I’ve written about that, but for this winter we now had the first one… just took a photo with +0.7 exposure to keep whites white, then adjusted the white balance in Gimp, and cropped it to 800×600 pixels so I could send it with mail. Now I also uploaded it to Flickr, from where I show it here again as usual:

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First snow for 2021, Mörfelden Walldorf 2021

Also on Flickr, but from yesterday short before my lunch break: a photo of Tuna on the heated floor (and carpet):

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Nothing better than a heated floor, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021

Oh, and since I don’t have an own nice snow song, here’s one from “Südwestlicht”, from 2013, made entirely with Linux:

As always, thanks for viewing, reading, watching, and listening. Be well, and keep warm everyone… 🙂

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Last and first portraits, and a radio show

The last portrait I took in 2020 was this one:

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Tuna on the table, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
last portrait of the year 2020

And while I’m writing this, I’m listening to our member-announced radio show. Have a listen:

https://www.wikiloops.com/radio/17557-New-years+Radio+features+2021.php

Blows me away. That’s so cool, thanks to everyone who contributed here…

And my first portrait of the new year, taken with the Pixel 4a mobile phone:

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Tuna sleeping on the carpet, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2021
first portrait of the year 2021

Thanks for reading, viewing, listening.

Happy new year to all of you 🙂 And the same of course to all of my friends over there at the ‘loops 🙂

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Today, 16 years ago…

… in a hospital in Bremen, Zuleikha was born. Don’t know if I can show you her picture (haven’t asked yet), but here are her birthday calendar, and our cat, both in black & white and with a simulated Kodak Tri-X film:

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Birthday calendar, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020
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Tuna the cat on ZUleikha’s birthday, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

As always, thanks for viewing.

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Tuna, sleeping on boxing day 2020

Sending out so many Christmas wishes on behalf of the family got our brave little companion a bit exhausted – so as usual she was resting next to my feet a bit:

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Tuna the sleeping cat, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

Although I had the camera set to black & white already, this is “developed” using RawTherapee on Linux only, with a Kodak Tri-X film simulation. I also cropped the image into the 3:2 format like we had in the old film days. Light was pretty much non-existent, so this is ISO 1600 with a bit of electronic noise added to the simulated film grain. My 25mm/1.4 lens is fully open, still this was 1/8th or even 1/6th of a second – I’m really thankful for today’s IBIS (in-body image stabilisation).

As always, thanks for viewing, and for reading.

Edit, ca. 3.5 hours later: alive and kicking again. Here taken with a studio strobe:

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Tuna on the sofa, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

Again, thanks for viewing.

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Merry Christmas from Ms Tuna (and from her family)

It should speak volumes when you have your real camera in reach but still take the mobile phone to take a portrait. No, the handling of the phone is much worse that that of a real camera – but I still like what it does. This is “OOC”, or “out of camera”, with the phone’s software in “portrait” mode, and “enhancing” it after the shot:

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Merry Christmas from Ms Tuna, Mörfelden-Walldorf 2020

As always, thanks for viewing. And merry Christmas to those who celebrate it.