Looking out from a secret

More of the photos from the secret tour last week. You should all know what this building is. We had just come from there.

I can almost see an office window I used to look out of.

There were a few more shots from this secret location in Get High, and The Secret.

Rock of the Day
Gives you a sense of the size of these rocks. Sean is a little over 6' or so.

Driftwood of the Day
I could not resist the curving lines of the wood contrasting with the graceful placement of the pebbles.

Comments revisited

In a previous post about comments, and commenters, I went back to several comments and discussed further. I was thinking of doing the same again. As mentioned, I don't get as many comments as I used to, but I'm really liking the ones I get. Some of them would be great conversation starters over coffee or wine, if only one of the commenters didn't live so far away. Thank you so much for taking the time, and don't be afraid to send comments via Facebook, text, or email. All are appreciated.

Then my buddy Sean mentioned he was sending in an omnibus comment, which is fine. Once I saw it, the idea for this blog gelled. I've taken the individual comments below and parsed them out to the blog where the comment belongs. That way any future readers can easily match them up.

For Sean's comments below, I've turned the text into a link just in case you want to go back and refresh your memory or (gasp) read it for the first time because you (horrors!) missed it. Then I added any of my comments within parenthesis (like this).

(He has an intro and everything. For the record, these are the first comments with an intro. I await with burning anticipations comments with appendixes.) Here goes.

Well I'm not a fan of omnibus bills - they hide multiple ills. I hope this comment is more appealing than those. Cheers, Sean (It is!)

http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/nz-murals.html
• As a photo I really like the fish in the parking lot. The bushes can nearly be read as seaweed and there is a very pleasing diagonal from building to fish mouth or eye to car.
• As murals, I am drawn to Albert and the bird. They both invite longer looks.
(I was quite taken with Albert. Remember the one on 14 St that has what looks like dribbles of paint, even though I'm sure it was deliberate? For a time I wondered if the Albert painter had part of the work 'ruined' by rain and then made the best of it.)

http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/abstractions.html
• I like the first one for its painterly qualities.
(Me too! I'd done the photos I wanted, and was just playing at that point. I was astonished how it came out. Then I wished I had played more, but it was the end of a long day.)
• Speaking of painterly, I’m not as sold on the rock Pollocks.
• The one I keep returning too is “cooling chocolate”. I think it is the one that is the most successful and achieving an alternate landscape. Lizard skin and rock shards also comes close, especially the bottom left 80%.
(The beach one was almost accidental. I'd walked past that patch a few steps when I realized it was the only part of the beach that looked like that, so I went back.
• The dates remind of Morocco and Mary Pratt (painter)
(I had never heard of Mary Pratt before now. It seems that I am trying to do some of the same things with my photos that she did as paintings.)
• Nicely done.

http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/get-high-get-low.html
http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/edges.html
• Petal edges are quite wonderful, and I find the images with minimal background the more successful ones.
• PS I did notice that your choice of rock and wood compliment the theme.
• As a set I like that the these one as that line marks the boundary ey
(Yes, in fact the choice of rock and wood was done deliberately.)

http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/you-have-to-console-yourself-w-wet.html
• Ah wet flowers – so sensual – nicely done!
(I try. There's been so much rain that it's been easy to do, especially since several of the peonies and roses are blooming. No lilies yet.)

http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-secret-tour-was-so-much-fun.html
• The secret tour looks like it was a great kaleidoscope of opportunities.
(It certainly was! I was hooked when Neil said it was going to places he had never taken people before on a tour, and knowing Neil has been almost everywhere that one can get interesting photos, I had to get in on the action. I was not disappointed.)
• I like the two rock views and it leads me to thoughts of a longer study.
(I am certainly thinking of another trip there, and getting out into the area that I used for that really wide panorama.)

http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/shhhh-its-secret.html
• Excellent petal
• Speaking of petals, I like the first of the 3 rocks for the same reason I like petals – it’s for the edge.
(I was thinking about you as I took the photos. Not because you were there, but rather your previous comment that many of my photos are at a middle distance, and hence lose something. Too close to be a landscape, too far away to truly make the subject the centre of focus. So I tried three specific distances, trying for a closeup, and two landscapes with different foreground attributes.)

http://keithsodyssey.blogspot.com/2019/07/1946-vs-1978.html
• The first photo is a really good beginning. The black and white helps to accentuate how our landscape is stacked and that is mirrored in the geology of the mountains.
(The colour version was so blue! So blue it was gross. I'm a big fan of layers in photographs, and look for them. Always nice when they actually show up in the photo, instead of being just in our vision. Several times I've seen the layers, but the camera didn't.)
• I’m sure you saw a polar bear. I see a great sky fish changing direction.

--Sean's omnibus commenting ends.

In the B&W Extravaganza, Janice commented "It's very neat how the rocks and shells are nestled into the driftwood - not something I've seen before. I like a few of the B&Ws but generally prefer the warmth of the course versions, I think." I'm pretty sure she means 'colour' rather than 'course'.

Several of my buddies enjoy doing photos in various wavelengths of infrared. This leads to odd looking images that aren't at the top of my appealing list. B&W is sort of like that. Where there is colour I like to see it. It's only where there isn't colour, and there is strong lines or patterns that I like B&W.

The rocks pounded into the driftwood quickly became fascinating for me. I'd never really thought about it before. In some cases the rocks are on top and one can sense the transience of it. But in some cases the rocks aren't just nestled, they are pounded in and aren't coming out again without tools. The violence of the log being tossed around in the waves is obvious.

Sean loved the storm image here, quibbling about the amount of foreground. Sean and I often disagree about where the horizon ought to go, which is fine. I think this is one of the images where what I see in Lightroom is not what is seen in the web version. The lines left by the big grass mower are an arc outside the ball diamond. The arc leads to the storm, and I get a sense that diamond and arc mirror the arc of the clouds. I thought there was already enough cloud, and needed some grass to balance it. But that's just me.

Sean had wondered what caught the attention of the ducks on the log in Ducks and assumed it was not a bask of crocodiles. Which reminded me of a video I'd seen, where a guy made or bought a radio controlled boat with a top that looked like an alligator. This was in southern USA where such thingss exist. The video shows him using it to terrify river users. That's my sort of prank.

Here's three similar images from the Sheep River tour. I loved this viewpoint, and played with different lenses and composition.

Rock of the Day

Driftwood of the Day

NZ murals

Murals can be fun, and frustrating. Often it's hard to get far enough away from them to capture the whole thing at once, or there are cars in the way. I love seeing what artists can do with a blank wall. Here's a bunch of murals from various places in New Zealand.

Omaru

Dunedin
There was actually a mural walk with an ambiguous map. Like in Calgary, we'd get to the indicated place, and have to look around. You'd think something so big would be easy to find, but no. Sometimes they're down the alley or around the corner.

There was more to this one, but I couldn't get it.

I really liked this one.

This was a difficult one, trying to deal with the various angles, and extremely tricky footing. Yes, it was mostly a parking lot, but with ramps, and curbs, and railings, and other buildings.

Greymouth

Wellington

We passed this many times on the way up and down the hill and I smiled every time. It's a (surprise) fish and chip place that got recommended in our house book, but we never had the yearning for fish and chip while there.

Napier Aquarium
I've blogged these before, but let's put them with their kin. I don't think you'll mind seeing them again. They are the ones I liked best of all.

How about you, which did you like?

Rock of the Day

Driftwood of the Day

Abstractions

When you are solving a problem it's essential to understand the scale of your problem. Big or little? How many people affected by how much? Cost of equipment damaged or destroyed? Lots of people get all wrapped up in an issue without understanding the problem is not worth solving in any real sense. The person might get a sense of satisfaction about dealing with it, but maybe they should have been dealing with something else that really needed doing. 

At the other end are problems so big we have trouble coming to grips with it. Climate change is a current example. We mostly understand that it's a real problem and getting worse, and that humans have largely contributed to it. (There are still some dinosaurs fighting back against this, mainly because they perceive the solutions as goring their pet ox, if you don't mind me mixing metaphors.) We are struggling to understand what we (both we as a species and we as individuals) can do about it. 

Often it's useful to look at the problem in an abstract way, hopefully before it becomes a real problem with real personalities attached to it. My experience tells me it's the personalities that are usually the problem. As long as you understand the level or granularity of your abstractions, so you know what is or is not being considered, you should be fine. If someone walks into the conversation, they could easily get lost because they don't know where they are.

Photographs can be like that. Often they are of a thing, or a person, and people can readily recognize that. But play with it a bit, looking really close, or really distant, or where scale is ambiguous, or change the colour balance, and people can become really interested, or really turned off. I like images that do this, as I try to find interesting photographs of ordinary things.

So here's a bunch of photographs from the last year or so. Some work, some don't. Some are more abstract than others. None of them are driftwood, if you're sick of them and stop scrolling down at that point, and are worried about me sneaking one into the body of the blog. In contrast to my usual practice, I'm going to make you look at the photo first, then I'll talk about it. Don't expect to be told what it is, or how I did it. If you're that curious I'll oblige you; think good coffee, awesome treats, that sort of thing. 

This was shot in a forest at dusk. Some special editing, but not as much as you might think.

Those two are similar things from a field near Medicine Hat.

These two aren't abstracts, technically speaking, because it's easily recognizable what they are. Mostly. 

A January sunrise.

This is part of a much bigger object that a Maori would recognize instantly, but won't be familiar to many Canadians.

There's a tiny bit of background to give you a clue.

Tree bark. I think it's a eucalyptus tree.

On a beach. But is it from a drone I borrowed, or a close up of the top of a rock?

A piece of a wine diamond.

I'd meant to include this with the edges blog the other day, but I missed it. You've seen other photos of this in the blog a while back.

A ranch rock. Well, two different rocks not far from each other. They give their rocks special feed.

Would you believe lizard skin? I thought not.

I suppose these are more a still life than an abstract. Maybe if I zoomed in a bit more. Then again, I don't know when I would have blogged these if not today.

This has had drastic manipulation of the photo to disguise what it is. This isn't ever this beautiful colour, especially after all the rain we've had lately.

I love reflection shots.

Am I standing back looking at a huge wall, or am I right up close?

To bring you full circle, this was shot in the same place as the first one, a few minutes earlier.

Rock of the Day

Driftwood of the Day