Still clean in spite of puddle art attempts

No special day or anything today. Just about 7 weeks sober, and by that I mean not looking at Facebook. At all. I'd been mostly out of it, then there was a bit just before Christmas, and nothing since. Not even with the tempting messages it sends, telling me someone I  know posted a photo, or commented, or something. But those tiny snippets of something that might, maybe be interesting, but are likely just a teaser, are outweighed by the enormous mountain of crap. The strategy of doing anything rather than looking at FB is working, so far.

There's been an interesting community association project taking some time. I've started on the New Brunswick book. Getting down to the final pool of about the right number of photos wasn't all that hard. Figuring out the order has been a bit tougher, starting with roughly chronological order, but also thinking about which are big photos, about 11.5 inches across on the page, and which are smaller, about 7.5 inches across on the page. There are a few that are taller, or are panoramas, and those take a bit of special treatment. At the moment I'm thinking this will not be a lay flat book but that might change.

I attended a Blurb presentation about using inDesign for book layout. Well, that's way above my pay grade, but the speaker said some really interesting things about laying out text. I pay attention to what the words say, not particularly the font or how they're arranged. Now as I look at the 2025 photo book I can see the text is too large, and the font is wrong. I'm paying a bit more attention to it in the New Brunswick book. 

I noticed that my supply of photos in the 'not blogged in 90 days' folder is getting low, so in between walks for the film photography project, I've been trying to get out with the digital camera as well. I need to get out and walk more often. Linda has been a great example of walking every day for several years now, and doing a series of exercises, and being careful of what she eats. Though that's her story to tell. If there's any interest in that story, you'll have to tell her. A guest spot on the blog could be hers.

It being second summer just now, there's lots of puddles, so I've been out looking for reflections. Here's some of the latest ones.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

I actually thought of shooting or editing this so the sawn off edge of the tree was level and the horizon and waterline all slanted.

Driftwood (NB)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

The aftermath of a walk that turned boggy. Really really boggy. The waterfalls were lovely, and if the walk hadn't been so horrible I might have made another trip with the film camera. It took a couple days for our shoes to dry out.

New Brunswick

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

During the great smoke out of 2017. Yes, the sun is in this image. I thought about re-editing this to make it even more lurid and other worldly.

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Dino related

January Image of the Month

An all new series of photos for you. Two film and one digital for those who are interested in such things. 

2nd Runner Up

The street in front our house can be pretty, sometimes. 

1st Runner Up

During the ramble with Sean down to Waterton. This is one of the compositions I found while waiting for the pink sunrise that happened for about 2 seconds.

Image of the Month

I was down in Fish Creek for an evening stroll in the ice fog. Coming up the hill to the Shannon Terrace parking lot, I saw this scene, and scrambled to get set up before someone walked into the scene to get to the white car. Composition, focus, advance shutter, figure out exposure and reciprocity, settings, double check, and click. Not much editing.

Another S and K ramble

Sean bought a new lens and wanted to test it out on scenes he was familiar with from a previous trip, here. We thought the sky might have some drama, and that's always good with a wide lens. I'm always happy to come along, and brought the film camera to see if I could finish off a roll. Hint, I did.

In order we visited Johnson Lake, Two Jack Lake, Lake Minnewanka, Bow Falls, and Vermillion Lakes. With lunch in the middle of that. You can see Sean's photos here.

I'd never been to Johnson Lake. There was a nice mountain view, which will not be news to anyone. The gem we found is the little brook leading from the lake. We worked the scene for quite a while. The hard part was choosing between the many subtly different photos of parts of the brook. 

I was thinking of the contrast from the last ramble, where we both posted wide open sunny landscapes, and the contrast with this one, where we both think the tight close up photos of the brook are the best photos. 

As always it was an enjoyable trip. 

1. An amusing bit of driftwood in Johnson Lake.

2. Part of the view from Johnson Lake.

3. Various views of the little brook leading from Johnson Lake.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9. The view from Two Jack Lake. There an infinite number of photos of this view, but I took it mainly to see how Lightroom coped with an HDR panorama image. I think it did quite well, and quickly.

10. The bridge just off Lake Minnewanka.

11. The view from the parkade in Banff after lunch.

12. Two views from Vermillion Lakes. We didn't waste any time. A nasty wind had come up, along with a tiny bit of rain.

13.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film From the last ramble.

Linda

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

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

Curtis, the ultimate lounge cat.

90 days, or so ago

Flower

Landscape

Dino related

Almost like a work day

Yup. A Teams meeting to review updates to our community website. It's looking really good so far. Then some followup discussion. Then a flurry of emails. Four hours worth in all. At least there were no power point presentations. It really was much like a work day.

If you missed it, I figured out the problem with the image search feature. Turns out Spotlight can get confused and lose it's mind. The solution is to rebuild the index. Now it's fine.

For a while I thought the Backblaze update was part of the problem, but no. It's been churning away since Nov 21, giving the big RAID drive a workout. Out of 1.1 million files taking up 7.5 TB of data, there is only 180,000 files over 318 GB to go. It seems to be going quicker now, but maybe that's my imagination. You are backing up your important data, right? RIGHT??

In what I hope is an unrelated topic to Spotlight, for two days in a row I have failed to get any of the Connections, a word game from New York times. If you haven't tried it, it's kind of fun, but a bit frustrating at times, here. And it's not like it was before coffee or anything. 

There's a Blurb sale so I've started trying to winnow the New Brunswick photos down to a book size. No idea if I'll make the deadline, but if not there will be another sale sooner or later. I'd rather take my time and get the right photos and text for the book, than rush and regret it.

Another photo from the S and K ramble.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (NB)

Film

During a walk in Fish Creek these trees really stood out, and I wanted to see if I could capture that.

Linda contemplating new territory to conquer.

Newfoundland

New Brunswick

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

90 days, or so ago. And minus a few leaves, it's looking much the same today.

Flower, a 2016 dahlia.

Landscape

Dino related