The first blossoms!

There they are, the first blossoms of the year.

The garden is still pretty scruffy looking, though. It's still too early to start cleaning up after winter. Mainly because it isn't after winter yet. Or at least, not over last winter.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB) Gotta love as found driftwood art. There's several more of these coming.

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

90 days, or so ago. Here's two more found photos. These are from a 2021 photo tour.

Flower

Landscape

Yet another winter over

We had another 15 cm of winter come through last week. As of yesterday the snow is just about all melted. We'll probably have a few more such performances. Such is springtime in Alberta.

"But the little plants, how are they?" I hear you asking.

They seem to be just fine. Here's the rest of the front.

During the ongoing purge I found this big panorama I'd meant to do and didn't. No idea why. Just over 20,000 photos deleted from 2021. Mostly random clouds just before or after sunrise or sunset. Lots of boring astro photos. A great many flower duplicates. Event photos that didn't even get 1 star. A great long sequence of what I think was during dragonfly hunting, but without an actual dragonfly in the photo. That was about 1,000 by itself. The bridge is the Lethbridge railway bridge, which is a pretty amazing thing.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick. The bottom of the stairs at Hopewell Rocks during almost high tide. They put a rope across the stairway, and post a person there. Several of us lined up neatly to have a turn at leaning over the rope to get the photo. The stair guard was thoroughly bored with the show.

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did, except nobody has ever complained about too many photos of Curtis showing up.

90 days, or so ago. Actually, this and the panorama above are from 2021, discovered during the great purge. 

Flower

Landscape

Some city panoramas

For a while I was quite taken with Calgary's skyline. When you're a new photographer Calgary is a lovely city for skylines. For it's population, Calgary has a lot of tall buildings. That's what oil and gas money and egos will do. For a while it seemed there was a bit of a 'my building is taller than your building' sort of thing happening. 

There's good viewpoints in nearly every direction from downtown, and with all the lines it's easy to tell if you goofed on focus. Add in the east west avenues, the wide variety of angles for sunrise and sunsets, with all that glass for reflections, and it's photo heaven for those into it.

The photo culling continues, and between some that have not been blogged for whatever reason, I discovered a few new ones I hadn't edited at the time. No idea why. The first 3 are from 2016, then 2 from 2021, then 2 from 2022. for Calgary residents, think about the vantage point. All are public property, no special access required.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

What's interesting is that the Calgary Tower is essentially invisible, except for being off to the edge of #3. Built in the late 60's, for nearly 20 years the tower was the undisputed king of the skyline. There are so many photos of the tower, a small skyline, with a Rocky Mountain backdrop. 

Then the crane-birds arrived and big buildings started to go up. In the early 80's what is now called the Suncor Energy Centre, and was then informally and derisively called Red Square, started to edge higher than the tower. The proper name for it was the Petro-Canada Centre, and according to some locals it was all a plot by Trudeau (the father, not the son). There were people that believed there was a law on the books in Calgary prohibiting buildings from being taller than the tower. There wasn't, of course, although there are about shadows on the Bow River. And the buildings kept going up. Now there's 7 buildings taller than the tower, and several more that are almost as high. 

I've had my share of views from the top of various buildings. I've never yet paid for a trip to the top of the Calgary Tower, but have been hosted several times. And yes, I like jumping on the part of the floor that gives you a view straight down. The photographer within wishes they kept the windows cleaner.  One of my buddies at the time (late 80's) worked on the top floor the Petro-Canada Centre, and we spent much of a weekend there working on a long and complicated document for our SCA group. There was a day long meeting (early 90's) at the top of what was then the Nova Gas Transmission building, but I don't know what it's called now. About 2013 I had a shared window office on the 42nd floor looking west from Banker's Hall. About 2019 I came back from New Zealand to start a job that had me visiting a client at the top of Brookfield Place. Sometime 2019 or so a photo tour took me to the top of The Bow, to get sideways photos of Telus Sky being topped out. I've had job interviews in the TransCanada Tower, and in Western Canadian Place, and while they were in meeting rooms high in the building, I was paying more attention to the interview than to the view.

This isn't the first time I've blogged about the skyline, here, for example. Or some of the views from The Bow, (the tower not the river) here, and here, to look down on the top of the tower.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

Another skyline view, if you aren't sick of them.

90 days, or so ago

A Waterton panorama from 2021. No idea how many days ago that was.

Flower

Landscape

Another sort of skyline view.

So many photos of flowers and clouds

There I am, deleting what are essentially duplicate photos of ones I edited. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands. You'd almost think I was an incompetent photographer, given how many photos it takes sometimes to zero in on the one flower photo I want to edit. And clouds, waiting for a sunrise or sunset. Bees and dragonflies, trying to get them in focus, and mostly along the way I deleted the ones where there isn't a bee or dragonfly in the photo, or it's out of focus. Mostly. Lots of times looking at a photo now I have no idea why I clicked the shutter. I'm up to mid 2021, in case you were wondering.

And cats. Lots of photos of cats, but I'm only deleting the ones actually out of focus or are really dark.

I'm not particularly looking for overlooked gems along the way, but occasionally find them. Like these two from mid 2020.

And yeah, another winter is coming later today. Or so they say. I try not to think about it. The plants don't care, they are happily sending up shoots.

The great book roundup happened yesterday according to plan. Even getting into the software wasn't bad. It just has to be done in the right order. I should have taken notes because it could be a while till I need to do it again. There were only a few where the software didn't recognize the ISBN number. I just realized this moment that a couple of my photo books have an ISBN, and I should see if the software recognizes them. Hmmm.

Which reminded me of the death document we're working on. The book database is a low priority item that probably won't make it onto the list, but I got reminded that it isn't just user names and passwords. It's that pesky two factor security. What happens if some app is looking to send something to my phone and it's not available for some reason. Maybe I'm out of town. Or it's been stolen, or fell into water and I haven't replaced it. Or maybe I can't replace it because it and me died at the same time. With traffic getting worse and worse here, it's become something to think about. 

The police had a road closed in our neighbourhood the other day, essentially at the same intersection where some pedestrian crossing lights were recently installed, and where a bit before that a pedestrian was killed by a speeding car. I wondered if it had happened again, but I haven't heard one way or another. Even though I'm currently president of the community association, that doesn't mean I get told anything.

The whole photo deleting thing has me thinking about books. Some will get read again. Some might be used as reference material for some reason, although probably not the Britannica. Some are old enough the pages are going yellow and brittle and might fall apart if I tried to read them. They're more than 100 years old, after all, printed on cheap paper. Some were done during the cheap printing era and the glue in the binding has died so it's essentially a stack of loose pages now. Some will never be read again. Some I can remember where and when I bought them. Others I have no memory of ever reading, and have no interest in reading now. Something to think about.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film and 60 days, or so ago

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

Why ever didn't I publish this, and maybe I did

Flower

Landscape