A black and white morning

The white part is outside. It's snowing. Again. I've lost count, I think this is 6th winter. In between them we've had shorts and T shirt weather. The poor plants probably don't know if they're coming or going.

The black part was a fun shadow photoshoot with Michelle and Linda. I've done a preliminary edit, but these need some tweaking and tuning, and fresh eyes. Its been a big photo weekend. A Friday discussion of a photo session for some neighbours. The community Easter Egg hunt on Saturday, with over 500 people! This has turned into one of our biggest events. Then Sunday Michelle was over to explore an idea she had. Stay tuned for those images.

In the mean time, some other black and white images.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

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

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Discoveries while weeding

So there I am, many many images migrated to a fast drive that isn't on the verge of failure, and looking at them with a fast laptop that can chew through building previews in a civilized time. So I'm going back through the Lightroom catalog, month by month.

Let's just say there's a lot of wincing, and asking myself why ever I would have edited that photo in the first place, let alone to look like THAT. Eek. Photomatix was a thing for a while and I feel a little dirty looking at them. I'm telling myself it was a learning experience. It's said that before you can become a good writer, you have to first write out the million bad words on top.

Maybe the same is true of photography, though I'm nowhere near a million images. But as I'm weeding out the ones I can see no conceivable reason to keep, I'm finding the occasional good one to edit. Like this panorama. Not a deathless image, but a nice wide panorama. 

Mostly I'm deleting the ones where I have a group of photos working my way to the image I want, and keeping that one. Deleting the obvious out of focus or really blew the exposure, but mostly they got deleted along the way. Deleting lots of photos that are not of anything in particular.  There's lots of random cloud and river photos going away. 

I am not deleting any photos of Curtis or Celina in case you were wondering. I might well go back and maybe edit the ones that are an overlooked gem. In fact, I'm sure I will. Here's one. It's been a little over 5 years since he left us, and he's as photogenic as ever.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

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

Actually I'm pretty sure I did, but I'm not going to go back and look. I liked it because the light was just right for seeing an image like they do in real estate sales magazines.

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Community vs the world

I got asked the other day why I'm willing to put (what they see as) so much time into my community association. 

There's macro and micro reasons why, and they sort of tie together. At least I think they do.

I've said for years that reading the world news is like wading through a river of shit with people making splashes by throwing rocks into it. It keeps getting worse, primarily because too many world leaders are idiots pandering to their deluded bases. Trump is only the most obvious and malignant example, but there are others trying hard. 

One of them is much closer to home than I would like. She is a failed politician that was trying to build her radio audience, and somehow got voted into power. She is well along the conservative road of destroying public institutions by withholding funding, then claiming they don't work, and selling it off to a private enterprise buddy for pennies on the dollar.

Public education is just one of the examples. In case you missed it, not one one thin dime of taxpayer money should go to private schools. The public school Catholic Board should be abolished and the schools merged with the rest of the public system. Public schools should be atheist; religious education should happen at home. If people want to send their kids to a private school, they should pay the whole freight, and then the kids go to the public school exams for access to higher education. All the money that is currently going to 'charter' (read private) schools should go back to the public system where it belongs, so they can properly serve all children. Parents and teachers shouldn't have to be buying supplies for basic education.

I took a vacation from Facebook for a while. The recent return is wading in that river of shit again. The actual news is bad enough, the AI generated misinformation is worse, and the posts that tell actual lies to stir outrage are worst of all. But other than not looking at it, there isn't much I can do about that river.

But what I can do is help make my community a better place to live. The community association is one way of doing that. We put on events that people enjoy coming to. They can hang out with their friends and neighbours, and meet new people in a safe and fun environment. We run a volunteer pantry to help with food insecurity. We rent out facilities for a wide variety of programs, for a variety of ages ranging from elderly to toddlers. We maintain outdoor facilities like ice rinks in winter, a small skateboard park, basketball, tennis and pickleball courts during the summer. We advocate to the city and province about issues of concern to our residents. 

Those residents aren't some mythical "other". They are the people living down the street or around the corner or a short walk away. We share our roads, paths, and sidewalks with them. We see them shopping in our in our local stores, or having coffee or lunch in one of the restaurants. Their kids are in one of the 3 schools in our neighbourhood or maybe go to one of several day care facilities here. Some are wealthy and some are struggling to make ends meet. Some are really old, some are newborns, and every age in between. Going to school, working, looking for work, retired, volunteering. Buying a home, or selling one, or renting. Riding the bus or driving to get to where they need to go. All of us, doing our thing in a shared space. Don't you think it's better to share space with happy people?

What I do, what our amazing staff and volunteers do, makes a real and appreciable difference to where we live. I've said many times that my lens for looking at proposals is, "Does this make our community a better place to live?"

A simple example from last night. One of the people who rent a room had to push their event back an hour. That wasn't a problem since the room was empty for the revised time. The problem was the key fob would only open the door till 6pm, and they were there at 7. I zoomed over and let them in. A dance class could go on with their practice. Happy kids.

A couple recent sunset photos for you.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

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

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

So there was a stressful moment there

I'm the kind of guy that likes to scope things out in advance. One example was the MRI last October. I'd been past the South Health Campus enough to know where it was, but not enough to know about parking. I wanted to scope it out during daylight. I found a good spot and decided to check out the inside of the building so I'd know where to go. Hospitals can be quite the maze. Found where I needed to go, sort of accidentally got checked in, and they took me early. Score!

Most recently our senior's group asked me to give them a presentation with photos of our trips to New Brunswick and Newfoundland. They'd liked the presentations about Yukon and New Zealand. I was happy to, but a bit twitchy about our projector, and how the new laptop would work out.

I went over to the hall a couple times to figure out the best way of presenting the photos, and to be sure the laptop could talk to the projector. The laptop has an HDMI port, and the projector has an HDMI in, but in between there's a dodgy switch. 

After some playing I discovered that of the 3 cables, only one would work, and in only one of the switch ports. I could cope. So there I was on Tuesday, setting up that way. Then the fun started. The screen image flickered, showing the laptop desktop then the blue screen of death. Back and forth a bunch of times. After a bit of fussing I got the image to stay up. I was doing my introduction, and went to show the first image, and, blue screen of death. Sigh.

I ended up unplugging the switch and plugging the projector HDMI directly into the laptop. That's a short cable, so I had the laptop on top of the equipment rack in the AV closet. I had to duck in and out to change slides.

One lady's husband had worked for Parks Canada in Fundy National Park for a long time, and had seen much of New Brunswick. Another lady had traveled there and seen some of it. I'd brought along the travel books, and people loved those.

So other than a sweaty few minutes trying to overcome the projector issues, it went really well. And people wonder why I pushed to have the AV equipment upgraded during the upcoming hall renovations...

In other news I was out for a walk near bridge 9. It's been warm, snow and ice is melting, the water is gushing, but it's still a sloppy enchilada out there. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

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

90 days, or so ago (Actually Feb 2)

Flower What the side bed looked like late 2016

Landscape Votier's Flats.