What is seen, or rather unseen

I'm such a guy some days, wandering along oblivious to the world. I'm better now that I carry a camera around sometimes. I look for situations that would make a good photograph. Or what *I* think would make a good photograph.

Some sunrises I'm meh. Like this morning. There was some nice colour, and the undersides of the clouds had some interesting texture, but the overall shape? Meh. So I finished making coffee and did not scramble to get dressed.

A couple weeks ago I was working on the novel while sitting in a different chair than I usually do. It was mid afternoon, and I was thinking of getting up to do something. Maybe a walk. Then I noticed the afternoon sun had lit up these dried roses in a way I had never noticed before. These roses have been here for a long time. Many years, quite probably more than a decade. I had never paid any attention to them.

But I jumped up, spilling Curtis out of my lap (and yes, I know the cat judge shall hear of this) to grab the camera. It was actually a tough shot, trying lie down on the floor, shooting up a bit, almost into the light, with the sun coming right into my right eye. Even doing the articulated screen thingie didn't help, since it was right in the sun as well. In the end I took a bunch of different shots with different settings, trying to get the rose framed with a nice background, and capturing at least some of how bright that red was.

One of the main pieces of advice I say to myself these days is to look behind me during a photo ramble. Often. I have been rewarded so often that it's becoming second nature. A followup piece of advice is to make sure you're standing still while in the middle of a river, then turn around. Trying to look while walking on slippery rocks could be an extremely expensive mistake. Camera. Lens. iPhone. Wallet. Bones. Possibility of drowning in 3 inches of water because my head hit a rock and I blacked out for the wrongest 30 seconds of my life. Maybe that one should be first. This is NOT the voice of experience. It's the voice of cheap, and getting more cautious.

It's also the voice of falling down hurts more than it used to. For a while I was using these Repsol flip flops I got on points. They were fine, dry. But wet they were slippery. I should have turned them back in right away. Bad design, and I know better.

A couple weeks ago a woman was coming out of the female locker room, as far to the left as she could be, talking about the sauna, which is a few steps dead ahead and to her left. The problem is the male locker room exit is right there. I was walking along and then there was someone in front of me. I stopped to avoid running into her, and slipped right out of my flip flops, and landed on my left hip and thigh.

As I was going down, I was thinking, 'this is how old people break their hips.' I'd always prided myself on having pretty good balance and spatial awareness, and never thought such a thing would happen to me. One of the pool staff helped me up and offered to get ice. I carried along with my workout, taking it a bit easy, figuring that if I'd broken anything there, I'd know. Unlike that time with my elbow. (see below.)

I kept expecting a huge bruise to come out, and a couple weeks later, nothing has. I'm a bit surprised. My run the next day was a bit short, but it didn't hurt. It's been a bit sore to lie on my left side, but running, swimming, biking, walking, hiking, and kneeling, to say nothing of plank, pushups and squats haven't bothered me.

So I got lucky. I'm walking more carefully now. I'm also thinking about some of the exhilarating downhills I've done on Estela. Many at more than 80 kph, and a couple at more than 90 kph. Now I'm wondering what I was thinking. I can now imagine all too well the results of anything going wrong at high speed.

So the story of the elbow. It just occurred me that I passed the 10 year anniversary of that bike crash. It was a low speed bike crash, certainly less than 10kph. No links, you'll have to go to my blog archive for September 2008 and look for the blog titles with 'OW' in them. No, Susi, you don't want to. You know perfectly well what's there. For the people that are not Susi, and you aren't eating anything, that one has the very best comments ever in this blog, and for good reason. That one blog title is NOT a tease. Don't say I didn't warn you.

Cover hunting

Some of you know that I take photos for my local community association. Several of my photos have made the cover, which is nice. I was asked if I had any nice wintery scenes. Duh!

Except its trickier than it sounds. The cover is an odd size, 174 mm wide (a bit under 7 inches) x a hair under 210 mm (8.25 inches) tall, and there's the masthead and other text info that takes up some space. I almost don't even try to compose for it. I take a big shot, and send them the whole thing. They can crop to suit and place the text where they like. One shot I sent them has a small little red for sale sign low in one corner but it's otherwise nice. People with mad Photoshop skillz can remove it, or even easier, put a word on top of it.

The walk through Fish Creek looking for cover photos was wonderful. I went there while it was still snowing a bit, only to find an amazing number of footprints and bike tire tracks. I chatted with one of the fat bike riders (it's the bike tires that are fat, not the rider) and got some photos of him.

So whichever don't go on the cover will show up here sooner or later.

Here's some that are not in consideration for the cover. The light was erratic; you can see in some shots it's very flat and cloudy, and in others the sun has broken through.

Bridge two is my favourite, any time of year.

Not far from here is a panorama shot that I think has good odds of being the cover.

Shooting just under bridge 3. I like this pattern of rocks, but I'm still working on getting really nice light for it.

Just about the sunniest shot of the day.

This is the fat-bike cyclist I was talking to.

Not the fat-bike cyclist I was talking to.

Not sure why I like fences.

Construction

So much of it! Everywhere! We still have the detour on the detour near the local Safeway, though that looks like it's wrapping up. There are many new stakes along the south side of Anderson road, so we suspect excavation will begin there soon.

These first three are the new ring road. I've no idea what the writing on the stake means, but clearly there is meaning. In the month since I've taken this, there have been no holes dug nearby.

Fish Creek near the TUC (Transportation Utility Corridor, as it is referred to on many signs and drawings), or the Ring Road as most people call it.

This was in the cul-de-sac just behind us. I showed this photo to my buddy that works for BC Work Safe, and the reply was unprintable. You can see he hasn't fastened the safety harness.

This is the 24th St storm drain. That hold is a long way down and is in complete shadow. I was holding the camera over my head to clear the fence, and sort of guessed at the settings. They are pushing this huge drain underneath some other utilities that are under the street. Nothing went boom or whoosh, so I guess they did it right.

More ring road, this is the bridge that will transition 130 Ave to Bullhead Rd. What you see is going to be freeway underneath. They've left room for about twice as many lanes as I thought were going in.

Always fun to watch cranes at work.

So, the retirement thing

It's been a year and 5 months or so since Linda's last day in the office. Three months for me. It's been wonderful, but we're still getting used to it. Every day retired makes it less likely I'll take another office job.

So today, now that I can sleep to whatever hour I like, most days, when am I awake? 4am. Wide awake. At 4:45 I gave up, got up, coffee, breakfast, and beat the rush hour traffic to Repsol. Or so I thought. The rush was in the pool. There are always 100 m of lanes available for the public, and so there was. Except the public was already 11 or 12 deep in them. I recognized some of the swimmers and had no desire to try to keep up. Even the dive tank was full of synchro swimmers.

I hung out in the hot tub a bit, then chatted briefly with my buddy Katie. Once a few lanes in the competition pool opened up I was over there. If I'd had to be in the office, I'd have made do with the full lanes. But as long as I was home by 10, life is good.

It actually turned into a good swim. 50 m backstroke to warm up. 500 m in 9 minutes flat. It's been a long time since I've done that, and I could feel the water feel today, unlike much of the recent months. 400 m backstroke working the core hard on the flip turns. 3x100 in less than 1:45 on 2 minutes. 20 minutes brisk water run. 50 m backstroke, then 200 easy easy watching the guy sharing the lane with me thrashing trying to keep up. It's the little things. I wasn't working as hard for that 9 minute time as I have for times substantially slower. I could get into exactly what I was doing with my hands a fraction of a second after entry, but I already see some of you yawning. Yes, you! Stop it!

 Linda was off to a yoga class, then lunch with a buddy and other stuff. Yesterday was the opening bell at the Millarville market. All who know her, know she conquered and returned home with goodies.

What was I doing? Researching astro lenses. There's a trip to the Southern Hemisphere coming up, and it's likely to be the only time I see those skies. I'll want to get nice night sky photos. Black Friday sales coming up. Just saying.

This photo is from a year ago, and is one of a category called 'no idea why I didn't blog this at the time.' It's clear she was enjoying retirement then, and is enjoying it now.

Speaking of night lenses, here's a night shot from almost a year ago, in the same category.

Sunrise, sunset, so quick

A year ago was a stellar time for sunrise and sunsets. (Did you see what I did there?) This year, not so much. Still, there was that chessboard in the sky a few weeks back, and some sunset colour with the nearly full moon. The last one I was hoping it would get better, but this was as good as it got.

I was thinking this was the week I was going to GET STUFF DONE. At least get started at it. But here it is Thursday evening (how did that happen so fast?) and precious little of it is checked off. I really need to give myself a bit of a kick in the rump and pick it up a bit here.

The stars of the blog

Life with two demanding cats (as if there are any other kinds) is difficult after the Daylight Savings Time fall clocks go back thing. Us humans get more sleep, typically. Or maybe an extra hour doing something you like. (Keep scrolling down, past the cats, hard as that might be. There's a library teaser photo.)

Cats don't know about DST. They only know they are hungry when their tummy tells them. Curtis runs about an hour fast at the best of times, yet we fear the vet-ly eye more than his imprecations to feed us. The vet is on our case to make sure we keep his weight at a reasonable number, which is much less than what Curtis (who's never met a crunchy he didn't like) would like.

In the hour before feeding, Curtis starts getting right up in my face. His fur is between my eyes and whatever I might be looking at. He will bunt my arms and face with his head. A 15 or so pound cat can put quite a bit of force into that, and woe betide any electronics underneath the mug or glass in that arm. There's been some close calls.

Now, with the clock going back, the production starts 2 or more hours before the regular feeding time. There's an old Peanuts cartoon where Snoopy tries to get fed an hour earlier each day, but Charlie Brown is on to him, pointing out that gives him an extra meal every now and then. I'm sure this is the strategy Curtis is trying.

I say be like Saskatchewan and end this nonsense. Pick one and stick with it. And in the nonsense department, we're still thrashing about the Olympic bid. The yes camp is losing it's shit, pulling out all the nostalgia stops from 88. That was then, this is now. Do the math. We can't afford a 2 week party. Or rather, we can't afford the decades long tax hangover. We know the budget is a farce.

The new library cost $245 million. Lots of money to be sure, but less than what is touted as our share of the bid. For that we get an amazing purpose built building that will serve Calgarians for decades, perhaps generations. I'd love to live closer so it would be 'my' library. I'd take my laptop and write there. It is an amazing space!

I was trying to get  shot of him drooped over the edge, but he woke up.

Celina is a hard snoozer, and typically doesn't wake up.

Though Curtis didn't wake up for these. Head pressed against the hated rival object.

The big thing today was our first visit to the new Central Library. All I can say is wow. WOW! This is only a teaser photo. I'm hoping to get in on an exclusive tour with some buddies, before business hours. You'll see better photos then, and there's lots on line now if you look. This is the entrance.

I'm serious. I was expecting nice, after all the build up, but it's beyond nice. On the inside it might well be the most spectacular public building in the city. This is worth some time to visit.

Light and dark trees, a contemplation

Every now and then I like to take a step back and look over my photographic and blog output. There is some overlap between them, since many photos show up on the blog. Such a simple thing, you think, some photos show up on the blog. You would be wrong.

Firstly, photos often tend to come in batches. I might end up with a dozen or more from any one ramble, and the rambles might happen close together. Then there is blog writing. I like the text and photos to go along together, but it doesn't always happen. Then there are periodic blogs like the image of the month, or the macro Mondays, or topical ones like the full moon, or some event. They might displace other photos in the pipeline.

So that means going back to pick out the desired photos. Except after a few days that gets harder. I can easily see when I took any particular photo, but it might have appeared in the blog any time after that date, though usually within a week. But not always.

So then I had the brainwave of tagging each photo as I use it in the blog, and creating a smart folder of the photos not blogged within the last month. I figure if I don't use it in a month I'm probably not going to. Except I'm not 100% at tagging photos.

I was doing some photo review and noticed a few that I couldn't believe I hadn't blogged. In fact, I was sure I'd blogged them. I went back and looked, and so I had. I fixed the tags. Along the way I came across a few that hadn't been blogged, and I couldn't see any particular reason why.

That happens sometimes. I'll edit the photo, but then decided not to use it, and the reasons are usually obvious. These two are from about a year ago. Not my most stellar work, and they are in no danger of becoming image of the month. Yet, right now anyways, they evoke a mood in me. Maybe there were lots of other photos in the pipeline at the time and these fell off the truck, so to speak.

The daylight one is down in Fish Creek during an early morning ramble.

This dawn one was as I hustled across the street to see what sunrise was going to do.

Light on trees can be fascinating or boring, and till you see it on screen you don't know what you have. Our eyes see differently than cameras, and there's lots of times I think I've got a great shot with great light, and on screen it's all ho hum.

We have winter starting again now, and I'm still not over last winter and all the white. I suppose I'll get out again soon, but it hasn't happened just recently. I've been putting a bit of focus on the fitness stuff and making progress, and on the writing, trying to figure out a way of keeping a scene I quite like, but what it's associated with conflicts with something else, and if I chop that out, then the rest doesn't make sense.

There are some photo projects I've had in mind for a while now, and have started to work on. Stay tuned.