Trips DPP, no driftwood

Once upon a time I started a contract with a well known oil and gas company. You don't want the details of what I was actually doing. There were a couple people I'd worked with before, which is always fun, and that part was good. In the short term it didn't end well, since they wouldn't repress a complete non-team player, and I fired them for it. Later on they found out for themselves how much of a non-team player he was, and walked him out the door. I cheered when I heard the story, and felt totally vindicated. The potential of working there again was presented, and I said I'd be happy to discuss it. Later on, I got rehired by them to do something different, and that worked out well for all involved, at least I think so. (There are a few stories involved in this that are unsanitary enough they can't be shared here.)

During the first episode I happened to go past the cubicle of a new hire, and loved the photos posted in the cubicle. Turns out she was quite a good photographer. We chatted, and I ended up buying a lens from her. We did a couple photo rambles, then I got in on a trip she organized to Dinosaur Provincial Park, in the restricted area where you need a tour guide. That's where these photos were taken.

For whatever reason, I don't think I've blogged many photos from that. Mainly because right after that I went to Jasper for a ton of photos, then did some community association stuff, and then was sick.  I did some on film, thinking the landscape and sunset colours would be nice. You'll have to decide.

As I look at them now, there's far more than will fit in one blog. Or even 2 or 3. Now I have to think about how to organize them. More coffee is needed. (Slurp. This was a Fazenda Rio Brilhante, from Coromandel, Minais Gerais, Brazil. Delivered by Crickle Creek coffee.) OK, lets not overthink this, and just do them in time order. If Blogger doesn't screw it up. (It didn't.)

These are extremely undworldly landscapes. It's easy to see the inspiration for the roadrunner cartoons. They look like someone sculpted them, but it's really water eroding materials of different densities. The slanting sunlight of the early evening made for some dramatic contrasts. Stay tuned for more!

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5. Rain gradually erodes the hard clay, leaving the harder rocks perched precariously on increasingly slender pedestals.

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8. Yes, there's cactus and sage everywhere. 

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12. This is an actual dinosaur bone in situ. A vertebrae, but I don't know from what. 13 is a close up of it. This wasn't a new discovery. Our guide pointed towards this area and said walk carefully, this is just one of the bones. Don't step on it.

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16. This qualifies as the Of the Day, film (new)

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Flower

And the three serendipities. A macro photo of a lily pistil. At least I think that's what it is. Linda might be laughing at me.

Part of the viewing room at the top of the Bow Tower.

A film photo of a burl near bridge 1 in Fish Creek. I've taken many photos of it, but have never really been happy with any of them. A work in progress.

Yukon

Fans of the Dempster will know exactly where this is, as the clouds rolled in.

Film (old)

A social media update

Hi!

I've never known quite what to make of the readership "statistics" that Blogger provides. Part of the problem was that I never really knew what they were measuring. For a while I had a Google thingie that purported to provide readership numbers, sliced and diced and mangled and stirred and who knows what else. I could never make sense of it. One of my co-workers at the time launched into an explanation that started, "It's a great tool!!" and it proceeded almost instantly into words that seemed like English but conveyed no meaning. They updated it, but I didn't. I just made the assumption that like almost every other software upgrade, the replacement would be worse than the current version. I don't miss it.

Blogging used to be much more popular than it is now, but I'm not doing this for popularity. I suspect that my readership has levelled off to a small group of people that know me personally, and are interested in either what I have to say, or in the photos I show. I was looking over the list of people on my blog notification email list, and there's only two that I have not met in person. (Hi Sue and Pete, hope you're still with me!) For some of the others, it's been a moment. Or two, or many. Lots of them do not live in Alberta anymore, if they ever did. Thank you all for continuing to read, and the periodic emails or comments. Love to hear from my readers!

So the blog will continue as it has been. Probably a little more often than weekly, but almost certainly not daily, except maybe in really short bursts. As always, you'll never know what you're going to get till you open it and look. I wouldn't want to bore you. 

Those that have been following along know I deleted the Twitter account years ago. It's nothing but a rage machine designed to annoy every reader. Instagram is purported to be a platform to share photos, but it was never good at it. I stopped posting to it a long time ago, though I haven't actually deleted it. My thinking is that if I meet another photographer in the wild, it's a good way to share tentative contact info.

I've been on VERO for photo sharing for a little over a year, posting one photo a day. If I've counted and done the math right, I've shared 415 photos there. I know a few people on VERO in person, but they have chosen to not post many photos. I've met one new photographer, but I don't know if he follows the blog. (Hi Ray, just in case.) There's a few in Calgary that I'd be willing to meet up with, and have hinted, but no response.

Tik Tok is a strange thing that baffles me. I suspect that some of the short videos I've watched via Facebook originate in Tik Tok. 

Which leads me to the social media behemoth. Or Leviathan, or Kraken. Whatever you want to call the monster. I've been bad lately, scrolling endlessly, trying to figure out why I was being shown stuff. The best part of it was discovering Walter the Catt, who could be a clone of Curtis, with a human that has interesting conversations with him. I was thinking that maybe I missed a bet there. Curtis was easily the star of the blog, and maybe with a bit of effort he could have become famous. He was certainly photogenic enough on camera and I'm pretty sure he would have been on video. Is videogenic a word?

I realized again yesterday that the scrolling didn't make me happy. Nothing in the scroll was from anyone that I knew. Why should I care about it? 

The reading just lately has been re-reads of Malcolm Gladwell. He's got lots of interesting things to say, and interesting takes on the human condition. Outliers was the one that was striking home just now, looking at people that are out at the extreme end of the bell curve in one way or another, and not necessarily for the reasons you might think. That and conversations with a friend who is not, shall we say, in the middle of the bell curve.

But it made me think about what I'm doing, and why I'm doing it. I had several books churning through my brain just lately, and I couldn't focus on any of them. Part of that was not feeling well, but the other part was realizing I need to focus on one thing at a time. I've never been particularly good at flitting between tasks, but for a long time I had the energy to do it. Not any more. 

As I was thinking about a book, which photos, which order, what text to go with them, who the audience was, what the why of it was, I was getting distracted by the other books clamoring for my attention, and by the endless Facebook doom scroll. Yes, I was procrastinating, and it was carrying over into other parts of my life. Not good.

So starting today, a new Facebook rule. Look once a day. Start at the top, and scroll till I see the first post from Facebook wanting me to follow it, or one too many sponsored ads. Look at the notifications button and check out people that I actually know. Respond as might be appropriate for any of all that. Deal with any of the private messages. Close the screen and do something else. 

The important words there are "do something". Get up off my butt, mostly likely incurring complaints from Celina, but needs must and all, and actually do something. Go for a walk, which I haven't been doing much of. Pick a house project and work on that. Pick a photo book and work on that so it's ready to go when the next good sale comes along. 

I realize there are tools that purport to tame Facebook, and I've looked into that a bit. But that takes some management as well, and I'd just as soon learn to do without. Facebook isn't that valuable to me. I want to try to spend more time doing things that are important to me for whatever reason. Spend more time with friends, whether that's going for coffee/lunch, going for a walk, doing photo rambles or other photo related projects, or whatever. Just about anything in the real world is better than scrolling through Facebook.

VERO, I'm not so sure about it just now. It's a much better platform for sharing photos, but the key question for me is why? Why share photos there and not Instagram? Why share photos at all? To some extent the exercise of looking a my photos and thinking about which are good and why, is a good one. 

But some of the responses on VERO baffle me. Several I've put up just to put something up for the day. They're ok, but nothing special, and they get lots of likes. One that I thought was kind of ordinary turns out to be the most popular thing I've posted. Some that I think will be popular get a so-so response. My guess is that my photographic taste is quite different from lots of other people. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with VERO, but since there is essentially zero overlap between it and the blog, you guys probably don't care how that ends up.

From the Dinosaur Provincial Park trip. There's a bunch from there. Maybe they'll get featured in the next blog. Stay tuned!

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Driftwood (Jasper)

This is the last of the Jasper driftwood. 

Flower

Yukon

Film (new)

Film (old)

Flowery Friday 7

 Yes, there are still flower photos in the locker. We start July 24, and end with July 24. That was a Monday, if you were wondering. I must have been in the mood for wet lilies. They were wet from dew, and Linda was watering.

Yesterday I was already working on the next book when Blurb announced a 50% off sale. These sales come and go quickly, and that's the best discount I've seen so far. That gave us the incentive to finish it and upload it. I'd like to get a couple more books done and ready to go, so when another good sale comes along I can push the upload button right away. Doing the books is fun, but the final bits of making sure everything is aligned, and the text is right is a bit of a painstaking process. Trying to do it under the pressure of a deadline isn't much fun.

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10. Not a posed photo. I'd come around the corner of the garage while Linda was watering. Good thing the camera settings were right.

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Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Driftwood (Jasper)

The Jasper driftwood feature has been from this log, so I thought I'd show a bigger view of it, as I was working a landscape composition. Which is one of the arguments for carrying multiple lenses. The previous close up photos were taken with the 100mm macro. I was surprised to find these two were taken using the 70-200mm. Just looking I thought I'd used the 24-105mm. Which is why old school photographers took lots of notes between photos.

Yukon

Film (new)

More Dinosaur Provincial Park.

Film (old)

Early 1996, given that's the 95 caravan in the garage.