Image of 2019

In a sense, I've been working on this all year, but in the actual writing sense this has started on Solstice. Getting the draft started, and going through all the images to review the star selection. While I'm doing that, you might want to review the image of 2017 and image of 2018 posts. I'll try not to repeat myself.

This was a huge year in terms of photographic output. HUGE! I'm past 50,000 photos and not done the year yet, as of this writing. Of course, 2 months in New Zealand, and 10 days in Yukon might have something to do with that. Lots of star shots in those, which don't get edited in the same sense that the photos you usually see on the blog.

On the edited front, as near as I can tell, about 3600 were done for me, and a further 2000 or so were done for the Community association, and I'm not even sure how many for other client shoots. There are additional ones edited for specific purposes that I'm not counting here, like those for a time lapse, or one particular client shoot. Let's just say I'm not entirely consistent in my Lightroom use.

Right now there are 217 with 4 stars, and 25 with 5 stars. These 242 will be the pool for choosing image of the year. After all, on further consideration, some of the star ratings change. And I could get the shot of the year over the next few days. No, I'm not going to treat the 12 images of the month as the finalists. It's like drawing for the big door prize, all the tickets that won a minor prize go back in the hat.

As in previous years, there was much temptation to choose best within categories, but no, that way madness lies. So many categories are possible, and some overlap. Winner, a couple of runner up, maybe an honourable mention, that's it. There can only be one.

Last year there was a big image showing some of the finalists, so I'll do that again. Hang tough. I'm going away for a while. Don't hold your breath. I got down to 13 and dithering. Then my famous buddy Neil suggested I not wait, and post the photos I like best on his Facebook workshop page, as several others had done. I did the 13 and got some nice comments, thank you. Even now the likes are still coming in.

But 13 is a weird number to screen shot nicely, so I dropped the weakest one, and you get 12.

And now I dither more. Longer. Harder. I think I've got two of the finalists picked out, at least based on one theory of best photograph. If you've read about the previous years image winners, you'll know I have several theories about best.

Which one took the most work? Probably 2 and 5. For 2 I was up I the middle of the night, walked 100 m to the beach, then worked to find a place where the camera was out of the light of the moon, and out of the really strong wind. It took me a long time to get the camera set up for these shots. Finding level with all the conflicting lines seemed to be really hard at the time, to say nothing of all the technical camera stuff. With 5, it took two separate trips to the log, using a bunch of different lenses trying to get the effect I wanted. It was probably the most technically demanding shot of the bunch, with everything having to be just so.

The easiest? Number 4 was one of many of the camera doing its thing, though the editing was tricky. Number 6 was one improvised shot as we were about to leave. Number 9 was one of many. 10 I hopped out of the van, took two shots of the ferry, and hopped back in the van again. If you think of number of shots taken vs used, then 8 wins. I had hundreds of shots chasing dragonflies that day, with only a few to show for it. But so much fun!

In the end, photography is all about the light, and the skill of the photographer in catching it. When I look at these photos and think of where I've captured extraordinary light, the answer becomes clear. Now, which order? Hmmm.

2nd Runner Up
This one has been growing on me ever since I took it. I keep coming back to the smoky twilight, the reflections of the trees and ferry in the calm water, and the textures in the mountain side. Dawson City ferry.

1st Runner Up
This was image of the month for November. Fish Creek Provincial Park.

And the 2019 Image of the Year!
The view from the gazebo at Larnach Castle, New Zealand. I, and other people think it looks a bit like a painting because of the particular quality of the light.
(This was not assembled until after I got home, so it wasn't in the running for January image of the month. It's 11023 x 3149 px, or about 3 feet by 10 inches for a high quality print.)

Fun with light.

Much of this was experimental for me. Part of the joy of photography is capturing the light, but another part of it is creating the light. There are lots of ways to do this, and some things that look really cool are actually quite simple. My buddy Cam is a bit of a DIY kind of guy. We headed out to Ralph Klein park where I joined Cam, Kathy, and my buddy Sean.

This is the main part of the facility. I didn't do the purple sky, it did it on it's own no matter how I manipulated Lightroom. Live with it.

A cool effect.

Another view of the facility. It really is a cool place. I've been here several times now, and never yet been in the building. Unfortunately, it's also bright. Standing here (which is right beside the pillars you'll see in the next photo), it's easily bright enough to read a book. Which makes the light effects tougher.

Cam, Kathy, and Sean contemplating the scene, thinking about what we'd do. The aircraft light trails were part of the fun. I'm going to see if I can make a time lapse out of some shot sequences.

Me watching Cam doin an orb. You can see we put some lights at the base of the pillars, but they didn't light up as much as we had hoped. Kathy did some lighting with a red flashlight, but I'm not happy with those shots.

Cam working one of his magic light gadgets.

Cam doing a light flower.

I think this was Sean channeling a slinky.

Kathy doing some interpretive light dance.

Cam working on his eye of Sauron death ray.

Me signing my name in light.

Cam and I having fun with some blue haze.

Yes, I'm still working on Image of the Year. I'm down to the final three, and trying to decide which is winner and which is runner up. Wouldn't want to rush such an important decision.

Don't forget to Ask Me Anything! I've got some questions already, looking for more. Maybe I'll attribute one to you, if you don't ask.

Deadwood of the Day

December Image of the Month

And so a new year begins. It's a dull grey day out there, so that means it can only get better, right?

All together now, gonna be the best year yet! Now go for it.

I had started looking at images for the year end back on Solstice, but I was keeping December in mind as well. It was a big month for image count, but most of them are not eligible for Image of the Month. I don't generally use community association photos, or any private client photos. Once I thought about it the right way, the choices were easy.

2nd runner up
A project in progress. My first snowflake. I'll be trying again.

1st runner up
A E Cross Conservation area. Taken on a whim, wondering of the brilliant sun on the snow, and the dark shadows, to say nothing of the cows, would work.

Winner!
The light, the three important mammals of the house together in a photogenic way, the relationship between the book and the activity, how can this not be photo of the month?

Goodbye 2019, hello 2020

Another year done. Wow. It went so fast. A year ago we were planning and getting ready to pack for our big trip to New Zealand. That was a 2 month whirlwind. Then home and  a catchup whirlwind while working a short term contract. Then a summer of photography and lawn mowing and BBQ in the back patio. Then Yukon and more photo editing. More photography. A surprise trip to Ontario for a funeral.

And here we are, preparing for another trip to New Zealand, though we don't leave for a while yet. I've no idea what 2020 will bring. I've got several photography related ideas in the works, some people are pitching various proposals to me, and of course, the BBQ will get a workout again. I still want to drape a model in run gear over this log, but now is clearly not the time, unless she is much more intrepid than I imagine.

I know there are lots of people worried about 2020. How climate change will affect them. What our idiot politicians will get up to as they feather their nest and screw us over. Wondering if things will hold together just long enough for them to hit the magic number for retirement. If this will be the year they'll finally sell their house, or buy their dream home. Or get off the street and into any form of housing, with 3 square meals a day in the bargain.

But keep in mind that humans are good at figuring things out, and that of all the smartest people who have ever lived, half are alive right now. Maybe try not to think about scientific progress happening one funeral at time, or that by appearances far more than half of all the stupid people being alive right now too.

2020 for sure will bring some responses to the AMA, since I've had some questions already. More are welcome.

So in the spirit of openness and reading into the situation whatever you wish to, here's three sort of abstracts.

I'd like to convince you those big poles are specialty fishing equipment to guide boats in the marsh leading to the open water, towards the clouds on the horizon.

My eyes did not see that sundog.

Part of the charm of abstracts is that people wonder what it 'really' is. You will have to wonder a long time.

Deadwood of the Day

Itching

There, you see the power of habit? I was sure I was going to take the rest of the year off, thinking about image of the month, and image of the year, and photo plans for the year, and for a proposed private photo shoot. (No, not shooting hot women in skimpy lingerie.)

I am working on all that, and posted 13 of the image of the year finalists onto Neil's workshop page, where some of you have seen them already, so I need not repeat myself. If you haven't seen them, hang tough, they are coming soon in (surprise) image of the year in early January.

Habit is an amazing thing, for good or bad. Blog essentially daily for almost a year and a half, and it's a habit. I suppose there are worse ones to have. I twitched about not blogging yesterday. I nearly did, by accident while working on the previously mentioned drafts.

I don't make New Year's Resolutions, but it is a good time, a good marker to start working on new habits. So rather than resolve to lose weight, make it a habit to go for a walk every day. Not too far or too fast at first. But every day, preferably outside. (If you work downtown, and it's minus WTF, a brisk walk through the +15 counts. Or laps inside a big mall is fine.) Find the time. I am not talking a 6 hour hike. I'm talking 30 to 60 minutes, less to start. Cut out the worst TV show from your TV habit to make the time.

Eat the same, or better yet create the daily habit of adding one piece of fruit to your diet and subtracting one sweet thing. Just start doing it. Apples are awesome and convenient to take to work. Drop the store bought cookie/muffin/doughnut/pastry/whatever that is a congealed chemical stew of preservatives. At the end of the year you will be thinner. Not necessarily lighter, as some women getting into triathlon have learned to their initial dismay, but thinner and stronger.

Get into the habit of not spending money on cheap shit made by slave labour in China to make yourself feel better. You won't. Put that money into your TFSA, and when you top out on that start on your RSP. (Under most conditions, for most people, there are exceptions, consult your independent financial advisor ((and not the effing big bank flack that shills for their overpriced and under returning financial 'products' that are as good for you as that preservative laden cookie)) to find out if you are one of those exceptions.) If you ask nice, and convince me you're serious, I'll give you the name of my advisor. She doesn't mind tire kickers, particularly, especially if they ask good questions along the way, but I'm not going to send her someone unready to take advantage of her expertise.

The upside to not spending money on cheap shit is that you have more of it working for you, rather than for your not-friends the banks. As you stay in the habit, your money will start working for you, rather than for those not-friends and against you. After a while, this gets good.

The downside is that a lifetime of asking yourself, "Do I want to afford this?" and usually saying no) is that it becomes difficult to actually take money out of the RSP when the time comes. You over think buying small luxuries that you can easily afford.

So now I'm going to try to break the habit of blogging every day, rain or shine, and blog somewhat less often, when I have something to say, or a compelling photo to share. Like this one. I was trying to capture exactly how the sun was reflecting off his fur.

Plus a sneak peek at one of my upcoming projects. This is an experiment. No, that's not a mirror image.

Deadwood of the Day

365! Actually 504 but who's counting?

So here I am, achieving my accidental goal. I've blogged an average of once a day for all of 2019, and the year isn't quite done yet. The trip to New Zealand early in the year helped, what with producing so many good photos I was often blogging twice a day, just to not fall so far behind. And sharing photos of a lovely place that many people have not visited, of course.

What's the 504, you ask? The once a day pace average actually started mid August. Over the 4443 day lifetime of the blog there have been 3271 blogs published. That's 1 every 1.358 days, or 1955 minutes and 30 seconds or so. Just so Julie gets her numbers fix.

As I mentioned, I don't think I'm going to continue blogging at this torrid pace. Probably more than weekly, but certainly less often than daily. Somewhere between 52 and 365 blogs in 2020. Hmmm. So if you've been coming here every day with your morning coffee, or your evening tipple, don't be disappointed. Well, I know you will be, but please keep coming back, I love my readers. Or you could subscribe and get it by email. Or watch for me on Facebook, I'm planning to still notify people when I blog. Or make like some of my readers, they wait till they have a bit of time, and read a bunch of blogs in a row, and comment! Thank you so much for the comments! I love getting comments.

I've been wondering what to put in this blog post. The year is wrapping up, but not yet over. I'm writing this the afternoon of Boxing Day, so there are several days left to get out and do things. Maybe capture an image of the month, or even image of the year! It happened last year, on the 28th I was down to Fish Creek and captured the honourable mention of all 2018.

Some bloggers do year end top 10 lists, best book, best movie, best game, whatever. I don't really do those, since I know I didn't see 10 new release movies in 2019. I think Arrival was the last movie I saw in the theatre. Maybe The Secret Life of Pets. Both were 2016 releases. That's what happens when dreck like movies made from comic books fill the theatre. Not that try hard to find new release movies to go to; the theatre is such a dreadful and expensive experience. Movies from the library are free, and our media room is ever so much more comfortable, to say nothing of drinking wine during. I'm not even sure what the most recently released movie that I've seen, is.

Books I've started on again, mostly non-fiction, and mostly photography related. I'd have to keep track better than I do, to be able to do a top 10 list. But that reminds me. The whole publishing industry sucks slough water with rocks big time. The authors that create the works you love, are mostly shy retiring creatures, loving nothing better than to make up worlds in their head, to capture a stunning turn of phrase for you, as they work on a mug of tea or coffee. Now they are being forced into do much of their own publicity, and if there is an activity further from writing than publicity, I can't imagine what it might be. I visited one of my buddies that was doing a book signing in Chapters, and can't really imagine a more soul crushing experience. So if you are browsing and see a book you might like, for the love of literacy just buy it. The author only gets a fraction of the book price, even if it is a self publishing gig, but that fraction might be what puts them over line to be able to write another book. If it turns out you don't like it, sell it to a used book store, or put it in one of those little library boxes you see around, or donate it to your local community centre or assisted living centre.

(Long bridge from blogging frequency.) I will be doing image of the month, and image of the year, but they won't show up till January. I might blog when I get a stunning photo I want to show off, or rant when the mood strikes me, or publish a novel snippet just because. Or maybe because I get off my butt and produce a photo book and want to tell the world. Who knows?

So what to say. That's usually not a problem for me, and this blog is already getting long, but then again, it's a year end blog. A milestone. Or a yearstone, if there is such a thing. Stupid damnyouautocorrect, changed that to headstone. Grrr.

The year was fun. I did a short term work gig that was mostly ok, aside from freezing my ass off in their office and dealing with recalcitrant SAP data that lacked adequate index fields. I had several fun photo gigs, some even paying me an honorarium, which is the sincerest form of flattery.

There was lots of travel. New Zealand, Yukon, Cypress Hills and area. From just about as far south as you can go without going to Antarctica, to just north of the Arctic Circle. Fun! No wonder I've more than 50,000 photos from this year. And why choosing image of the year will be so hard. My only regret was not getting out to the east coast for the fall colours.

I went back and looked at my files. I have tagged 4601 photos as blogged. I'm not sure when I started this. If I believe the photo dates, it was late 2017, but I thought I started early this year. Of course, lots of my blogs I'll go back and pick earlier photos for some reason that seemed like a good idea at the time. I'm trying to wrap my head around inflicting 4600 photos on my faithful readers.

The books are still getting out of hand. Every now and then I bestir myself to add them to the list and move them to the basement. Normally this means zapping the bar code with a reader, and the database looks up the book info for me. Except it didn't. It needed updating. And with a bit of help from their help line, we discovered that one must replace the contents of the master folder, not update. Once that was figured out, it all went well. Except we are running out of book shelf space in the basement. This might be the great project of 2020, going through the books to determine if we are likely to read them again in our lives, and what to do with them if not. Anybody want a mid 80's vintage Encyclopedia Britannica?

That gets me started musing about projects for 2020. I already mentioned a photo book. That seems like a nice way to display photos, and might make a nice gift for certain people. I've talked about the difficulties of choosing photos to get printed and hung on the walls, namely running out of wall space in no time at all. We have thought about getting a big TV display installed in our living room over the stairs, and setting it up to display the edited photos in rotation. I once saw a TV display done up to look exactly like a framed painting, but the cost was outrageous. I'm pretty sure you could buy a TV and pay someone to build a custom frame and it would be much cheaper.

I might blog again this year. I might not. I don't know. If I don't, just remember my seasonal chant.
Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, HoHoHo, Bah Humbug.

This is what we got after our Christmas Day bus ride, and returned home. Some days they are so impressed with us.

Don't forget the Ask Me Anything. Really anything. It can't possibly be worse that what I might dream up and attribute to you.

Deadwood of the Day

Merry Christmas to one and all!

I wasn't thinking about blogging today, but we have a brief interlude between our two bits of excitement today. Three if you count opening presents, and four if you count great Sumatran dark (DARK!) coffee.

The new Max Yellow Bus Rapid Transit route between our neighbourhood and downtown fired up a couple days ago. We wanted to ride to see where some of the stops were, and how long it takes to get downtown. Not that getting downtown to work is a thing, but we do have appointments there sometimes, and stuff along the way.

Here is Linda, giddy with excitement at the approaching bus.

It was pretty quick, and there were half a dozen other riders, which was a bit of a surprise. Then again, there was essentially no traffic. I'm guessing that in regular traffic it would be about the same transit time as the LRT and the old 56 route or maybe a bit quicker, though I've a bit more of a walk at the end. The big advantage is not having to think about which LRT station to get off at to avoid seeing the bus zooming off in triumph.

The excitement later is dinner with friends and catching up on their family drama.

Speaking of drama, the AMA (Ask Me Anything) is now open. Limited time offer. Keep those cards and letters coming. I may well make up questions and attribute them as I see fit.

Deadwood of the Day
There was a black and white version of this published some time along the way. I think the tree is smiling at me.