I'm taking the day off, and am fobbing you off with an old photo from my Minolta archives.

This is one of my most favourite photos that I've ever taken. He's a boy I once taught maths to. He looked very bright, and he was.

What this picture illustrates is why I so miss my old Minolta Dimage XYZPQR Whateveritwas camera. (There's a picture of it in this posting from way back.)

This photo illustrates why, despite its defects (like absurdly short battery life), I regret the Minolta's passing. It separated the photo-ing from the flash-ing, by putting them at opposite ends of a bit of wire. This meant I could throw fascinating shadows, avoid stupid direct flash shadows, avoided red eye, and I could side light faces instead of flooding them with in the face direct light. I could also direct the victim's attention away from the bit doing the photo-ing. Too bad it stopped working, and when I got them to mend it they sent me another which also didn't work.

To photo indoors, I now set the Canon at "P", and something else to "200" or even "400". What does that mean? I'll tell you what it means. It means I can take photos indoors that come out, without using flash. They don't come out all that well. But they come out.