The state of the garden

Even more little plants are optimists. I was out with the camera looking at the growth coming up in between everything left over from last year. Linda has begun to cautiously clean it up, but wants to be considerate of any little critters that might still think it's winter. We've seen a few bees buzzing around, but there isn't much for them to nibble on.

For readers new to the blog, I like to take photos of the garden throughout the year. I've got some ideas about getting a better red from the peony, and other interesting things to try. While the film camera is decidedly not a macro, I might try some photos with it as well. I am not a gardener, and typically don't even know the common name for the plants, let alone the latin. I know peony, rose, lily, and after that I'm on shaky ground. I'm told I goofed in the blog previous to this one. If you want to know what something is, or any details about it, leave a comment and I'll refer it to the gardening expert, Linda.

1. The green netting is to discourage the rabbits and deer from snacking on the tender plants.

2.

3.

4.

5. I always think of these as the fractal plants. As you zoom in, there is ever more detail.

6.

7.

There was also a little blue thing, but I didn't like the shot. I'll try again.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony. This is an example of what I'm trying to avoid. The digital sensors really don't like this particular red. There will certainly be a film photo of this peony, perhaps several with different film stocks. Stay tuned.

Lily

Michelle and Antje, digital outtakes from our recent photoshoot.

Film, taken during a +15 wander after lunch with a buddy.

A non film walk

The weather here has been thoroughly spring. In Calgary that means nice days and snowy days, alternating at various intervals. Yesterday was a nice day, so I was out for a walk looking for film photographs. I took along colour and B&W film, but as you might have guessed from the blog title, I didn't find anything worth putting film in the camera.

Some of my long time readers will remember that in 2016 Michelle (BRBE!) and I did our weekend runs along the various rivers as we trained for a marathon. I was in charge of routes, and tracked them on an old bike path map marked up with highlighter. Over the year we ran along Fish Creek, Elbow River, most of the Bow river, most of Nose Creek, and some of the Wester Irrigation District Canal. What with construction, flood damage repairs, and other activities, sometimes what even the up to date map said disagreed with reality. One run in particular turned out to be somewhat longer than expected because of unexpected path closures.

One of the places we didn't get to run was on the west bank of the Bow river between Glenmore trail and Ogden Road. Earlier this year I had done a walk on the bluff above the Bow River near  Lynnwood, and saw people riding and running on that section of the path. Yesterday was the day to check it out. It's about a 6 K walk from parking under Glenmore Trail, to just north of the Calf Robe bridge, and back again. There is nearby construction happening for flood mitigation, and Bonnybrook Wastewater Treatment Plant expansion, so be careful if you walk or ride it.

They had put a tunnel under the railroad tracks, which was entirely new to me. I'd just made the assumption they had built the path to curve under the rail bridge near the river. So now you could travel along the west side of the river from south of highway 22x all the way through the city out to Edworthy park at least. I know there's some paths going further west but I don't think they connect up to anything. Maybe I should take the cameras for a walk there and find out. 

What amused me about such walks is that normally I'm nearly invisible, even when carrying two cameras. Few people say say hi, unless they're also photographers, and mostly those are bird watchers. But yesterday lots of people said hi, including cyclists. One cyclist actually stopped and chatted; he turned out to be a bird watcher and was wondering about the shot he had seen me get. (see below). The only difference is that I was wearing my spiffy black hat, rather than the usual grayish wool felt hat. Does it make me look more friendly or what?

We start with serendipity from a late 2016 walk in Fish Creek, with two edit versions.

1A.

1B.

2. Yesterday's walk. Railway bridge reflections.

3. B&W.

4. Reflections.

5. Tunnel. There are not many bike path pedestrian tunnels in Calgary. There's a couple on 37 street path under Southland and 90th Ave, and there may have been a few others installed. The only other one I know of off-hand is under MacLeod trail near Glenmore, and I think someone told me it's since been closed. There's a few sidewalks beside roads that go under the railway tracks downtown, but I'm not counting them. 

6. Emergency outflow channels in B&W.

7. Train and bike path tunnel.

8. Bird.

Of the Day

Driftwood and Serendipity

Peony

Lily

Linda and Celina on 6x9 film

Double Exposure, not the CBC

Long weekends don't mean so much when you're retired. For most working people it's a bit of a chance to catch up on all the other stuff going on in life, or to sleep in. Lots of people don't get enough sleep, and maybe that's why there's so much crankiness happening these days. Trivial things blowing up to major incidents. 

Part of the adjustment to being retired is a routine. So far swimming 3 times a week, usually in the morning, is the most regular part of the routine. Some people start sleeping in once they don't have to get up and go to work, but that isn't the case for me. After I got off shift work and had my circadian rhythms settled down again, I found I was a morning person. Even when we were waking up at 5 to be at work for 7, I typically didn't need an alarm clock. And this was before we had Celina the alarm clock cat.

Now, I'm usually still up early, though Celina often helps. The morning routine of coffee and breakfast, reading news and social media goes quick. I've talked about how there aren't as many blogs to follow as there used to be, and there's lots less comments. Sometimes I'm writing or editing. Sometimes out for a photoramble if the light is nice. Today, for example, I had a film and digital shoot with some friends.

I'm on a bit of break between wine kits, since the first 4 are now bottled, and the store is still waiting for the last kit to arrive of the 3 remaining. There's been some supply chain issues, transportation snarls, and for a while they lost an entire pallet of wine kits. It will arrive sooner or later, and I'm planning a bit of a photo road trip when I get them.

Much of yesterday I was experimenting with negatives, looking for double exposure possibilities, and seeing how much I could zoom in on the negative to see how much detail is there. Lots. Part of the fun of photography is double exposures, where two images are overlaid to see both at once. Done right it makes for a rich and layered image. Done wrong it's a mess. 

Generally it's assumed the photographer does not want a double exposure, and the various camera manufacturers deal with this in different ways. Some of them have no controls and if you forget to wind on, the camera will happily expose the same square of film again and again. Most force you to wind on, and there's a procedure to do a double exposure. My GW690 makes it essentially impossible to take a double exposure. The only way is to finish a roll, rewind it in the dark back onto the original spool, load it into the camera again being very careful to start in exactly the same place, and shoot the roll again. This will produce 8 double exposures, and it's up to you to keep track of what each exposure was. As you might imagine, this is not terribly practical.

There is another way of cheating, and we tried that during the film shoot today. I won't know how it turned out till I get the negatives back. It involved low light, complicated timing, a hat, and cooperative models. The photographers reading this have probably already figured it out. 

Much simpler to overlay the negatives as desired and take a photo of that. My first experiment with that looks like this. One image is Michelle and Ken, the other is a shot of some fir trees in South Glenmore park that didn't work out the way I thought, but is perfect for this. I'm going to be doing more of this as I accumulate more negatives.

I like this version of it better.

Our latest TV binge is Castle, starring Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic. We're part way through season 2, and enjoying it so far. The actual murder of the week is typically easy to solve, though we've been stumped on a couple of them. We're more interested in the overall season arc, watching the interplay between the characters. It's good to see competent female characters in a leading role.

Relating to the double exposure idea, I've been thinking of a mashup combining Castle and Elementary, thinking of a New York with both casts interacting, perhaps as competitive precincts vying for top ranks in closing cases.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

Celina

Film. This is the last 35mm shot,  done during a winter walk. I struggled with the composition on this, since the bridge and background lined up. I mainly like the colours and mood. 

The flowers think it's spring

The rule here used to be that gardening before the May long weekend was an act of futility, and perhaps actual hubris sure to bring down the wrath of the weather gods. One year we planned on going to Vancouver Island specifically for an early dose of spring. Except that spring had already happened here, and the island was well into summer.

Day before yesterday was the first day of summer here, and yesterday it snowed a bit while I was taking photos at a kid's easter event. (Hint, check out the Woodcreek page on my photo blog if you like.) Today, for what it's worth, the weather page says a high of 4 and a 60% chance of flurries. Your guess is as good as mine.

Our front garden faces south, and even though we heap snow on it, it's the first to melt, and where the first flowers come up. But even the sheltered area in the patio has flowers coming up, almost buried beneath winter debris. We don't want to remove that just yet so as not to disturb nesting creatures.

Linda has already put up some green netting to protect the young plants from the marauding bunnies and deer. 

It's only early April. We are almost certain to get at least one more big dump of snow. I hope the little plants are up for it.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

Film (35mm last two winter shots because I'm tired of winter.)

It's been a year or so

Time flies when you're having fun! It was not quite a year ago that my contract with Alta Gas finished up. As I recall there were a few hours here and there in April, none in May, and then the contract ended. I suppose I could go dig out my timesheet and see, but I don't want to. 

So what's happened in the last year? COVID was still an issue, and we kept a low profile for a while yet. Over the summer we gradually started being more in person social. I started swimming regularly in late August and have made great progress. Linda has been walking every day, even during the coldest days with the howling wind and risk of polar bears.

I did have some recruiters sniffing around to rope me in, but those were easy to say no to. There was one serious job offer, though. In previous times I'd have snapped it up, but I've retired 5 times already. Surely that's enough. Both Linda and my financial advisor are pleased I said no. Detailed retirement income calculations are underway now that we know there will be no further infusions of corporate cash to complicate calculations. This is mainly to determine the most tax efficient sources for that income. I haven't applied for CPP yet, but will probably start that in January, which is kind of a surreal thought. I have shut down the corporation, and the final paperwork is being processed.

Let's see, what else?

Have I finished any of the several novels I'm working? No. Do not hold your breath.

Have I made any progress on the 50 project? Some, getting started again. If you're in Calgary or nearby and are interested, reach out to me and we'll chat.

Have I made any progress on the hands project? No, though some people have expressed an interest.

Have I finished a major house reorganization, a place for everything and everything in its place? No, but there have been selective improvements.

Have we finished the great Grey's Anatomy binge? No. We bailed out near the end of season 15. A story line got too silly for us.

Any other notable binges? The Good Place was fun. Recently working through Brokenwood as discs come available through the library. Linda did Bridgerton and a show on Tiny Houses. Killing Eve was awesome! Foundation was ok. Blow Away, and a cool vacation home show were fun. There was a chocolate show that made us drool. Then again, there's been lots of shows and movies where we get started, and shortly after, get stopped.

Any major photo expeditions? Depends on how you define major. There was a multi-day trip to southern Alberta, but any others have been day trips here and there. I'm signed up for a September Yukon trip.

Any other photo news? Yes! If you haven't seen it, check out my portfolio at Loungecat Productions. Read about it here. Once I get a few really good film images, I'll add another section for them. I've been musing about updates and tweaks to the photoblog, but like so many other things, it hasn't happened yet.

Am I enjoying retirement? HELL YES!!!!

It's nice to be able to (mostly) get out of bed when I want to, rather than some arbitrary time. Some days there's an early rise for a specific purpose, but that's my choice. Most mornings I make coffee, enjoy that first cup will looking over some social media, and have a second with breakfast. Some days I'll head off for a swim. Some days there's a project around the house I'm working on. Or maybe there will be a photo ramble, alone or with buddies. A few times I've had an afternoon nap. The BBQ gets fired up occasionally to cook a Linda marinaded meat. I've been trying to read more, and not just photography books, but it's a work in progress. 

I've started to learn to shoot photographs with film, do the DSLR scanning to convert them to digital, and edit them. Part of this in the journey to get away from the nearly technically perfect images produced by a good camera that just about does everything but press the shutter button. By going back to film using a completely mechanical camera, I'm getting better at learning how to read the light so as to dial in the settings on the camera to produce the image I want. There are no batteries to go dead at the wrong time. I'm looking forward to see how flower photos turn out on film. I'm quite sure they will look very different. Stay tuned!

Some reflection shots in the Bow river during a walk last week.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Just to amuse you, here's a current peony shot from last week.

Lily

Celina

Film (35mm) A winter scene from mid February.

March Image of the Month

 Here we are again, into another spring. We've had several so far, and I expect a few more. Even though a few plants are coming up in the garden now, some only a foot away from a mound of ice and snow, I don't think winter is done with us. The little plants are optimists. It's no surprise here to see tulips bravely poking up through some snow.

Shooting on film is well underway, though most of the info about that is over on my photoblog page. None the less, film photographs are in the running for image of the month, and why not? In fact, given that I have to think about the film images even more, I'm not going to be surprised if film ends up on the podium a lot.

After I wrote that I dithered for a while, looking and thinking about images. Big surprise, huh. I'm reading the most thoughtful book on photography yet, which slowed and richened the process. I'll be blogging about that book, so stay tuned.

2nd Runner Up

This old shed was mainly shot as an exposure exercise, to thread the needle between the bright snow, and the dark shadows. After a while the texture of the wood and the setting drew me in.

1st Runner Up

Sophia was doing a 12 or 13 K point to point run. I got there early enough to capture the end, and that great big smile of happiness. I took her to our place, we plied her with herbal tea and treats, her husband showed up, I fired up the BBQ for lamb, and we had a wonderful afternoon chatting.

Image of the Month

One of the things I've been trying to work on is photographing ideas, rather than things. It's a work in progress. I found the tree growing out of the middle of a parking lot during a ramble, framed by a building. I liked the juxtaposition, and had done a similar idea back in October 2019.

 One of the fun things about film photography is being able to look at the negative image, and try to picture how the final image will look. We don't think of the negative image that much, especially not black and white negatives. And with digital, of course, the negative image doesn't even exist, unless you really know what you're doing during the edit process.

There is a magic moment during DSLR scanning. The images have been loaded into Lightroom, you've corrected the white balance, and click the button for Negative Lab Pro to do it's thing. Suddenly you see the positive and know if all the care and attention that went into the photo has paid off.

I did that for this image, and was somewhat disappointed in the positive, even after editing. It is just a parking lot, after all, framed by buildings. A bit of a hellish statement on the working life. In the positive the cars dominate the image, the background trees almost disappear, and the interesting reflections in the buildings are hard to see.

But looking at the negative changes all that. In the negative the cars almost almost disappear. The life-giving tree is in white to catch our attention, outlined by the gray building, itself outlined by the dark sky. The background trees form an interface between the parking lot and the buildings, and the buildings themselves are more interesting to look at.

We're so used to looking at things a certain way that changing our perspective can be difficult. Looking at film images is changing my perspective of what I like in a photograph. Yes, film is a lot more work and is much slower. Yes, there's lots of times and places I'll still be shooting digital. But the images I'm getting make me happy, and I'm still really new at this. I'm looking forward to learn how to create even more interesting images.

I didn't have the digital camera with me on this walk, but even if I had, I wouldn't have captured this image. I never would have seen it, and never had the chance to think about the alternative perspective on a a tree in a parking lot. You can toggle back and forth between the negative and positive here. Did seeing the negative change your perspective?

100 K, or the tyranny of the drawstring

Triathletes are typically obsessed with their numbers. How far, how fast, how often, totals, averages, fastest, slowest. There is technology that enables this fetish, and they are avid consumers. I did some of that, but never really tracked the swim, other than keeping track of fastest sprint 100 m, and typical times for 100 m, and for 1000 m. But I don't think I could ever have said how far I'd swum in any given month.

Now I can. 35 Km in March, and today is 100 Km this year so far. I missed swimming during COVID. That was maybe the hardest thing, knowing that swim fitness was inexorably slipping away, every day a little more. I kept notes as I started, wanting to track how long it took for the swim fitness to come back. 

Once COVID was mostly vaccinated and the pools opened without having to book a lane in advance, I was happy to get back in the pool. It was brutal at first. The first "swim" was at Repsol with Katie on August 4. This was sort of fitting, because the swim previous to that was in Feb 2020 in Auckland, NZ. I put swim in quotes because my notes from that said my arms fell off after 100 m, and mostly it was a water run to chat and catch up.

At the end of August I started back at Canyon Meadows pool. OMG. My notes indicate lots of short bits adding up to 1 K. I remember being absolutely bagged after these. September 15 I note 1K all at once in (covers face) 21:30. By October 18 that 1K was down to 20:07, and I was a bit cranky that I had missed it by THAT much, knowing my stroke had fallen apart and I blew a couple flip turns. But on the 25th that 1K was 19:35. 

That mirrors the last time I started swimming again after a long break. This was back in the early 2000 or so, even before triathlon training. I was aiming for a 20 minute 1000 m, which I remembered being easy. It took a long time to get there, and the first time I beat that I nearly puked in the pool gutter from the effort. The very next swim was 19:30 relaxed and happy.

It's been gradually getting longer and faster. Typically now I'm swimming 3 K, 3 times a week. Usually 2 K is straight up front crawl, trying to reliably break 38 minutes. I've done it a few times but it doesn't take much to make me miss by a few seconds. Then the other K is a mix of fins kick, pull, and backstroke. It sort of depends on what the other people in the lane are doing. In chatting with one of my regular lane mates earlier this week, she suggested I do another K to take up the space in the lane so the creep we all hate sharing a lane with would swim elsewhere. I could have, but didn't. She managed to finish before he showed up.

What I really need to be working on is intervals, but that's a problem in this pool. You never know when someone else is going to join the lane, and there are several people that are jerks about it. They don't get that some of us are watching the clock and one guy just does not believe that I actually swim faster than him. Typically at Repsol there's lots of other lanes so doing intervals isn't a problem. Plus there I can easily see the pace clock. 

Oddly enough, my weight hasn't changed. It cycles up and down over a 4 pound range. I need to dial back on the sweets a bit, and get more regular about walking on the days I'm not in the pool. I do some walks, of course, but typically these are photo rambles that average about 2 Kph as opposed to my regular walk of about 5 or 6 Kph. 

After beach walking about 15 K a day in New Zealand, I thought it would be easy to get back into running when I got home. Not so. My legs were quite cranky about running, even really short and really slow, so I gave that up. During some of the better walks I dream of running again, but I'm pretty sure that's what it is, a dream. I have to think about how long it takes to recover from injury now, and I'm at an age where a full recovery doesn't happen at all. I'd rather be walking for decades more, than injure myself running and have walking become a problem. Even doing kick with fins in the pool I have to be careful. I've given myself some hamstring cramps a few times and had one of my knees talking to me.

The orange pattern shorts that I'd been wearing for years and years finally died. It had got to the point I was inspecting them before putting them on, and last week I noticed one of the seams had a slight tear. Bye bye! On to another pair. Probably just as well, the drawstring was showing signs of wear as well, which isn't a surprise either. Years of tugging hard to cinch in the gut took their toll. Trust me when I say the drawstring is an essential part of the suit.

I don't have any swimming related photos handy.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Peony

Lily

Celina

Film (35mm)