Friday, September 5, 2025

Flowery Friday 18

Up to now I've been presenting the flower photos in order taken, with the exception of whatever flowers make it into the of the day feature. That will probably continue, just because.

The other day I was looking over the 'not blogged in 90 days' folder. There's currently 284 photos in it, and while I can't really do any searches on it to find just flowers, there are well over 100 flower photos. I suppose some of them could well be considered a photo of a bee instead of a flower, and fair enough. Some are more an overall garden photo than an actual flower photo, and I'll let the pedants argue about it. 

Given I probably won't be doing flowery Friday while in New Brunswick, I've got enough flower photos to be doing this till Halloween, maybe longer. There could be a flowery Friday 25 this year if I spread things out, or take more flower photos. After all, the roses are still blooming, and one lily is opening up.

(Except, in late breaking news this morning there was frost on our neighbour's garage roof. I don't think any of it reached the garden, but it's the first sign of winter coming.)

I've mentioned before that I don't trust the Blogger readership statistics. Whatever it's counting has really taken off starting maybe 4 months ago. I don't seriously believe I've got a whole bunch of new readers. If I actually do, welcome, glad to see you, and don't be afraid to comment. However, I suspect it's bots crawling all over the blog. I mean, a huge spike in readership overnight? Not gonna buy that, unless a whole flock of night owls has discovered my blog. I hope I'm not somehow acting as an AI training environment. Maybe I should start putting in nonsense paragraphs talking about out of focus photos. Hmmm. My readers are smart, they'd be in on the joke, right?

As a digression we went to the Cirque show Echos last night. As always, I was amazed at the skill and daring of the performers. I can't imagine how much work must have gone into making that huge cube work. And yet, if there was a story thread holding it all together, beyond the girl and her dog watching the shows, I missed it. Maybe there's some symbolism to the boxes and paper that I missed.

But anyways, if you're not a bot, you're here for the flowers. And no, I'm not going to inflict you with the "I'm not a robot" test.

We are starting with July 3 going to the 6th.

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Of the Day
Driftwood (NZ)


Film


Linda


Newfoundland


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


90 days, or so ago
What passes for a public beach in Calgary, aside from Sikome pond.


Flower


Landscape


Dino related


Celina, in partial denial.


Wednesday, September 3, 2025

The cult of denial

So, I was thinking yesterday morning, if the Pastafarians or the Satanists can get a religion going, why not Celina? She is big on denial. She denies us the fur love. She denies the silence when we're trying to concentrate on something. She even denies the fuzzy blanket love sometimes. Right now she is a one cat cult of denial, but who knows what could happen if she put her mind to it? I mean, look at this little face of denial. A second after this photo she turned her face away, and denied me the photo love. Curtis loved having his photo taken. Just saying. Feel free to caption this photo in the comments.



You've probably heard this joke. What's the definition of a religion? A cult with seniority.

This is why I dislike seeing religion based rules. Religion is by definition irrational. I don't want people governing my country, or really, any country, on the basis of irrationality. If you have to pray to some god to give you wisdom to make good decisions, you aren't smart enough to be in elected office. It's happening in the US just now. Really badly. And happening in Alberta, only not as bad. Yet.

There's a rant brewing on the self-centeredness of groups of people who validate themselves by denying other people rights based on the colour of their skin, their sexuality or gender, their religion, or even their economic status. Stay tuned.

A smaller form of irrationality is the local Costco parking lot yesterday afternoon. Holy doodle! I drove past there, and it's like opening day again. The parking lot is full. Idiots making a left turn to get in are blocking the through traffic. It took me 3 light cycles to get past the clot of traffic. There's people discovering they are trapped and trying to bail out. Then at the bottle depot I just beat the rush. I got in, and the nice lady gestured me to an open tray, or whatever the place is called where you dump the returnables. Then people started flooding in, unloading cans and bottles into the other empty trays. I get out, and people are pulling bags and bags of returnables out of their cars. More cars are pulling in, to the point I had to wait before I could get out. 

I like looking at the e-recycling bin they have. We have one at our community clean up events, and the guy running it has to turn away people trying to drop off all sorts of stuff they can't take. There's lots of that in the bottle depot version. What surprised me is about a half dozen old CRT style TV sets or computer monitors. Someone must have been hoarding them in their basement. There was the usual selection of flat screen TV's, some computer monitor sized, some big, some huge, and one that was bigger than some beds I've slept in. No idea if they were functional when they were tossed. During the community association event, one guy toting maybe a 50" screen was asking people if they wanted it because it still worked. When someone asked why he was getting rid of it, he said he got such a good deal on a bigger one he had to get it. There's the consumer economy and planned obsolescence in action.

In other news, laptop domestication seems to be well in hand. I'm still getting used to the exact feel of the track pad, and sometimes still like to use a mouse. The screen is lovely! I did some file organization and discovered terabytes of duplicated data. I didn't notice the slower external hard drive before, but I am now. Working on photos in Lightroom is fast. I'm trying to learn more about Lightroom, most recently exploring the mysteries of the tone curve, which I haven't used.

I was down in my library the other day, and found this book. I had no memory of reading it, or even of buying it, but since it's sitting with two other books I remembered buying in Newfoundland last year, I'm guess that was it.
The Social Photo by Nathan Jurgenson.




It made me think about photography. As it turns out, almost none of my photos are the subject of the book. He is talking about social photos, specifically those taken for social media like Instagram or Facebook, or their many ilks. There's no real value to them, other than to say here I am and this is what I am looking at. They are worth essentially no attention, and get exactly that. I've seen people scrolling through Instagram, flicking their thumb to scroll the feed so fast no photo can be on screen for as long as a second. It's all advertising and posers posing. And people wonder why I don't put photos there anymore. It reads a bit like a scholarly article, complete with many quotes from various authorities. I'll add it to the pile of books intended for the used book store. Or arrange a meet up and I'll give it to you.

I'd like to think at least some of my photos are of more value than that; worth someone looking at them for maybe a few seconds at least. For some of the abstracts they might wonder what it is or enjoy looking at a photo of kids doing something interesting, or a beautiful woman smiling, or a lovely landscape of a place they'll never go to. Other photographers might wonder how I got that particular photo. Sometimes a photo inspires words from me, which might or might not be a good thing.

Of the Day
Driftwood (NZ)


Film


Linda


Newfoundland


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


90 days, or so ago
This needs a bit of explanation. The Sprawl is local independent journalism. Jeremy Klaszus is the founder and editor. I met him at a Fish Creek event early June, and we chatted a bit about obsolete technologies. He has a small printing press mounted on a tricycle. So cool.
 

Flower


Landscape


Dino related


Monday, September 1, 2025

August Image of the Month

I'm taking a bit of a risk here, since I started this on Aug 30. I could take one of the cameras for a walk today or tomorrow and could possibly come back with a better image than the ones so far. Maybe even one high up in the running for Image of the Year. One can dream.

Dreaming is all it was. I got buried in Lightroom, and tiding camera gear in the basement in preparation for darkroom season. It's still smoking hot during the day here.

Two of these will be new to you. 

2nd Runner Up
This is a bee at 1/1000 of a second.



1st Runner Up
Only because I mentioned shutter speeds for the other two photos, this is 1/320, no special processing.


Image of the Month
Hand held at 1/10 of a second, making an interesting counterpoint to the bee photo.


Friday, August 29, 2025

Flowery Friday 17

There's been lots of flower photos this year. I think it has something to do with the itch of wanting to take photos, but feeling kind of lazy about going anywhere. Plus the flowers are so gorgeous it's hard not to take photos of them.

Here it is, nearly the end of August. We are in the middle of a series of smoking hot days here. Linda is already starting to think about putting the garden to bed for the winter, what with her two trips this fall. Plus the car dealership wants us to make an appointment to change to winter tires. There was a sign in the window of a shop I went past the other day saying, 'winter hours'. It seems like just last week was monsoon season, and the week before that was winter.

Enjoy the flowers while you can.

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Of the Day
Driftwood (NZ)


Film


Linda


Newfoundland


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


90 days, or so ago


Flower


Landscape


Dino related