The end is in sight

The end of 2024. What were you thinking? Maybe I don't want to know.

On a macro level, this has been a shitty year. There's a Churchill quote, “democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.” I'm pretty sure a fairly small group of people have decided they need to test this for themselves, and have convinced enough others to vote that way by flooding the zone with shit. And it isn't even smart shit that one could be forgiven for falling for. It's all so stupid that you'd think a smart kid could see through it. The rest of us are horrified.

It doesn't help that elected governments are doing shitty jobs at running things. I almost don't know where to start.

Calgary city Council. During the longest public hearing ever, council demonstrated it's skill at not listening to more than 700 speakers and not reading many more written submissions. I blogged about it here. More recently, the City ended municipal grant funding to community associations on essentially no notice. They say they'll make up new rules, to be announced next April, and they think we can apply in the summer, and it will take 8 to 10 weeks for anyone to learn if their grant application is accepted. In the mean time the contractor quote is out of date, and it's winter, so outdoor work will be put off till spring. If there was any urgency to the repairs, like a failing furnace, the community association would have to eat the cost, and cannot apply retroactively. I'm pretty sure some manager looked at their budget and panicked. I'm also pretty sure some community associations got screwed over because they were preparing a grant submission and were cut off.

Alberta Provincial Government. Danielle Smith was a failed and disgraced politician running a talk radio show. I'm convinced she ran for Premier to increase her audience and is secretly surprised she won. The number one rule for a radio show host is to do anything to avoid dead air time. And that's what she is doing, spouting all sorts of shit to stir up controversy and to make her tiny base happy. The Green Line fiasco is a recent example. They sort of cancelled their funding a month after saying they were supporting it. Today their pet engineering company tasked with finding a different line than the one they had approved, released their report to the media, but not to Council. Another recent example is a border security force that allows sheriffs to arrest people on their own property without a warrant, within 2 miles of the US border, just to appease a cognitively deficient felon who isn't even in office yet.

Which leads me to our federal government. National borders are a federal responsibility. Smith gets snarky about the feds stepping into areas of provincial responsibility. What's that line about sauce for the goose? 

Here in Alberta one needs to consider which way the wind is blowing if you want to say "Trudeau" in anything but pejorative terms, because lots of people reflexively spit on hearing that name. Then there is a volley of abuse citing real and imagined offences dating back 45 years. If the Trudeau's, senior and junior, could have done all that they must have super villain powers. Again, the most recent example of stupidity is the temporary change to the GST. Or not ending the postal strike. I could easily believe there are more recent examples. 

The one that personally gets my goat is reneging on the promise to bring in a form of proportional representation. Not that the version he wanted was much better than first past the post, but starting the discussion could have led to better results. I blogged about that, and other political stuff, here. 

Don't get me started on America. I had to stop reading their news, it's bad for my blood pressure and peace of mind. I've been saying for a while that it's a failing empire, and I believe that when historians analyze when it went over the edge for good, they'll draw the line for about now.

For me personally, it's been a good year. Retirement in general is great. We had a couple lovely trips, and have a couple more teed up for 2025, with one more in the planning stages. Not that airline travel is any fun, and has been getting worse for years. It's almost like the airlines are actively thinking of ways to piss off their customers. They charge extortionate rates for checked bags, and are then surprised that people try to bring everything as carry on? Are they stupid? Now we go through the rigamarole of sizing bags at the gate, which slows things down, and makes everybody unhappy. Well, except that one Air Canada gate agent. I think she was enjoying telling that one idiot that his oversize bag was not going in the cabin. His choice was to check the bag, or not go.

The trip to Churchill was an exception, but that was a charter. 

Those who are following along on the blog, awaiting with bated breath for every new posting, are probably pretty disappointed in me. This year has continued the downward trend since the high point of 2019. It looks like 2025 is going to have the fewest blog posts ever. I suspect it will end up being less than 2x a week. That's well down from more than once a day at peak, and down lots from the overall average of a blog every 1.5 days or so. I am unrepentant. It is what it is, and if I'm silent, it means I have nothing to say.

Oh, and I closed my Vero account. As far as I know nobody was looking at it, and they've opened it up to content pirates. Of course, they say it's in the guise of allowing creators to monetize their work to followers. Not what I'm interested in. Goodbye. Social media is pissing me off more and more. I'm trying not to scroll Facebook, and go directly to the groups I'm part of. No advertising there. Yet. The messenger thingie is telling me the browser I use isn't supported, so I'm not seeing all their "features". Which probably means missing emojis. Which is fine. 

Yes, I've begun to think about Image of the Year. I anticipate a good dither.

You'll hear more about this, but 31 people from the SAIT darkroom classes are signed up to exhibit a print at the YYC Exposure Festival at cSpace in February. Yes, me included. I've got a couple on the short list to display, and might well print something I like even better between now and then.

Since this post has been reflective, in some ways, I think it amusing to put some reflection photos in it. These are from the trip to Elk Lakes with Sean.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film I found this couple sketching the Alberta Distillery towers behind me. Behind them is the Michelle scrapyard photo session.

Linda

Newfoundland One of the many, many sets of trail stairs we climbed.

Polar bears

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

The decorations, for real this time

A couple weeks ago, I showed you the decorations that Linda had just finished, essentially about the same time it started to snow. And snow and snow and snow. It's taken till then for enough of it to melt that I could get out and capture some photos of the decorations without the heavy snow blanket. As an aside, it's supposed to snow again tonight, so they may disappear for another couple weeks.

This is all Linda talking the details. I know nothing of this.

1. An arrangement done today using the leftover boughs.

2. The first indoor arrangement. This adds that genuine fresh tree scent to the air. Linda uses floral foam in an inexpensive plastic container with handy handles from the dollar store. The pine cones, floral accents in red are also from the dollar store. 

3. The 'green' version. Linda saves the fibre pots from the spring plant purchases, fills the empty pot with reconstituted coir fibre - brand name 'Beats Peat' for those who want to know & places the arrangement in a hole dug out before the ground freezes in our large outdoor containers. Many of the elements used to embellish the arrangement are in their second or even third year of use. That includes the artificial sprays, the sugar pine cones, the glittered twigs etc. 

4. The grapevine ball was a purchase from Michael's last year. This is the second season of use & since the grapevine is woven over wire will likely last several years. The pine cones & sprays are thrust through the ball to anchor it so the arrangement doesn't fly away in high winds. An inexpensive dollar store glittered 'Joy' ornament is clipped to the ball using one of the clips that came off some of the inexpensive dollar store artificial flower clips. Curly willow twigs are now in their 5th year of use. 

5. One trick to secure the twigs in the coir fibre is to re-use the elastic bands that hold the fresh boughs together. Wrap them around the base of the bundle of twigs & then jam that bundle deep into the coir fibre. Once the wet coir fibre freezes up the twigs stay upright even during a strong Chinook.

6. One of two arrangements in front of our garage. The coir fibre retains considerable moisture but does dry out. Fortunately it is easy to pour fresh water on the arrangement during warmer weather & that helps keep the boughs looking fresh for as long as possible.

7. The matching arrangement in front of our garage. Note how the tips of the fresh boughs are looking a little brown. Floral foam isn't environmentally friendly but it does have superior performance when it comes to keeping things looking fresh. Note how green the boughs look in the ninth photo. The container is narrow so a block of floral foam anchors the arrangement. Those boughs will hold their colour right through to spring, whereas the coir fibre arrangements will be looking brown by the New Year.

8. This pot is beside the front entryway area adjacent to the garage. 

9. Arrangements wrap the entire perimeter of the house. This is between our house & the next door neighbours. The door accesses our garage from the side, but we never use it. The door is locked & the roof overhang tends to keep the arrangement snow free.

10. Linda normally fills all the containers in between the two houses but ran out of time, so decided to double up the bling by repurposing a hanging basket container. Again, the red star & artificial sprays are several years old. 

11. Arrangements in the pots lining the steps from our back door. Although the underlying filler is coir, these boughs will retain their green colour much longer than the ones in the front of the house because the area doesn't get much sunlight during winter. So the coir remains frozen even during prolonged Chinooks.

12. You may be wondering how many arrangements were created. In total 21 arrangements. Linda used 45 bundles of boughs, 2 packages of Beats Peat & 14 blocks of wet floral foam to create the display. It took her between 12 to 15 hours spaced out over several days. 

13. Each window box of the Nordic lodge in our back yard hold two metal containers from Ikea so 4 containers altogether. Each container holds two wet floral foam blocks which permits a festive evergreen arrangement to add colour to the back garden all through the winter months. The lodge has an overhang which keeps the snow from hiding the display.

14. Again, many of the artificial sprays are from previous years; the red floral clip on flowers were purchased during Boxing week sales so were on sale for 50% or more off the original retail price.

15. Side yard facing the street into the cul-de-sac behind our house. Note how high the snow is. It falls off our metal roof but the pot is under the overhand so the arrangement escapes damage from the avalanche of snow.

16. The mound of fallen roof snow nearly conceals this pot, which is about 30 inches high.

17. A small arrangement on our front door entry area. The roof covers the landing so snow isn't an issue. Linda often tucks the plastic container into a wicker sleigh to conceal the plastic but chose to leave it exposed this time. The reindeer in front of the small wood wheelbarrow are yet another dollar store find. Linda painted the bare wood with tempura gold glitter paint from the dollar store. The small red stars on the reindeer necks were from the dollar store. Linda painted them with red tempura paint that she mixed with glitter glue, threaded through some thin red ribbon she saved from a present & tied in a festive thin bow around each reindeer neck. The photo doesn't show them, but there are Christmas themed stickers embellishing the reindeer sides.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

Linda

Newfoundland

Polar bears

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

The last dark room class

That was fun! 

So this piece isn't about photography, or printing, exactly. Or else it would be on the other blog.

Those 12 weeks went by very quickly, heading up to SAIT on Thursday evenings. I would think about which negatives I'd want to print, and sometimes that meant bringing the same roll several times. A few times I would take another run at the same negative if I'd run out of time the previous week. 

One of the fun things was the other people and the group vibe. Some of the people had done the class several times, and just dived into printing. The rest of the class were learning from scratch. As we walk back and forth from the print dryer, we all look at what the other people are doing. People would bring prints out into ordinary room light to look at and think about what was needed to make it better. More or less exposure time, or some contrast, or dodging or burning. We could consult George, and get an expert opinion on what to try next.

And when I say expert opinion, I mean exactly that. George Webber has been doing this most of his life. He is so generous in sharing what he has learned.

The last class in the semester was a chance to show off what we'd been working on. We took turns putting things up on a whiteboard, and letting people take a close look. We'd talk a bit about the work. The variety was incredible! I won't say I was the star of the show; that would be unrealistic given my lack of experience, and the experience of the other photographers. Still, Some complementary things were said about me and my work.

I thought we'd be doing the review in the darkroom area, but no. We were taken up to the 12th floor penthouse meeting room. Wow! I thought the view of downtown was nice from just above the parking lot I used. The view from the room is stunning. Here's a cell phone photo.

There's a saying in photography that the negative is the score, and the print is the performance. I get that a whole lot better now. There's things showing up in my prints that I've never seen in the digital versions. Things look entirely different. This is one of the reasons I'm liking creating prints.

I've mostly got a handle on how to do a basic print now. Part of the trick is remembering all the steps. I think soon I'll start to try to express some creativity in the prints.

In order to share them, I need to figure out how to take photos of a glossy print without a camera reflection.

This will probably show up as a print sooner or later.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Film

Curtis

Linda

Newfoundland

Polar bears

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

November Image of the Month

You knew, if you've been paying attention, that one of the polar bear photos would make it to the top of the podium this month. The real question was how to pick which one. Or which three and if so, in what order.

There's 12 polar bear photos with 4 stars, all of which made it into the book. Which everyone who has seen it really likes. There were some very nice things said about it at the dark room class, which was nice to hear.

So. Decisions, decisions. I think I'll go have some breakfast and think about it. Here's the choices.

Runner Up

I used this one as the cover for my polar bear book. It's hard to express how big and graceful these bears are. The guide said this one was a good sized bear, probably nearly 5 feet at the shoulder, which means it could lick my face without getting off its front paws. However, I doubt the bear would be that amiable.

November Image of the Month

This bear had sauntered behind the other tundra buggy, and after looking around a moment settled onto this rock. He totally had the attitude of, 'waiter, I'm ready to order now'. A few moments later he settled in for a snooze.