Quiet, after busy, plus lots of green

There is nothing on the calendar for me to do today. So can I sleep in? Of course not! It's been a busy several days and I went to bed early. Naturally enough I woke up early. And of course I thought of you guys and decided to blog.

Coffee. (duh!)

Quick browse for news.

No Facebook so far, maybe not at all today.

Mostly junk email.

Except.

An email from my brother and I'm jealous AF. Really. Totally.

He's in New Zealand just now, having dodged cyclones and atmospheric rivers and flight cancellations, and who knows what else. He's sent us several photos, and today was a lovely beach, complete with nice sand, reflective water, a nice looking cliff. Typically beautiful NZ. Sigh. It's probably 20 C with a cloudless sky. Taken with an iphone, which means he's probably still ACTUALLY ON THE BEACH! Lots of NZ  beaches have good cell service. At least one has WIFI.

His wife's family is from New Zealand and they're visiting her parents, or so they say. Apparently via the beaches, which is totally fine, and I'd do the same. We'd thought about NZ again this year, but we probably would have been caught in that cyclone, since that's the part of the island we haven't been to, and that's about when we would have gone. Just as well. I do not aspire to be star of a news story titled, 'Canadian tourists rescued.'

As I was telling someone last night, this retirement gig is busier than I thought it would be. Especially since (and there's some major caveats here) COVID has receded somewhat from public consciousness. Don't get me started. One of my friends tested positive and advised me since we'd gone to places together. Since I was volunteering at a casino for my community association I tested myself, just in case. Negative. The staff said the casino was long since back to normal.

I've never tested positive, but I'm pretty sure I've probably had it in my system. Being vaccinated and generally healthy I've been able to fight it off.

Traffic is back to pre-COVID insanity. Even when the roads are shite or in the many construction zones, some people are still driving like idiots. The upside down car off in the the snow covered weeds doesn't seem like a cautionary tale to them. The emergency vehicles on the road nearby are an inconvenience to be dodged. I saw a flag person have to jump off the road.

I'm not in many stores besides the local Co-op grocery store and the Farmer's Market we like, though I was in an actual mall yesterday. That's where my eye doctor is. You'll all be pleased to know my eyeballs are in tip top condition. She says the photos of the back of my eye could go in the textbooks as an example of what they should look like. Pity about the astigmatism and being really short sighted. No even a hint of cataracts yet, though she says when (not if) they come along they'll be able to correct a lot of my vision. I'll probably still need to wear glasses, but the prescription will be much simpler and (surprise) probably cheaper. My next appointment is only a year out now.

When you turn 65 they want to see you more often. I'm not there yet, but later this year. It also means we have to look at heath insurance stuff, and Good Lord is that complicated! Trying to figure out the various options, while thinking about what we've actually used in the past and what might be used in the future, and wondering what's already covered by the basic plan you get because you're 65 and an Albertan. 

Then again, this might be a dementia test. If you can't figure it out then you're likely to die from some other less expensive condition, as opposed to slowly dwindling away in a care facility. There's an assisted living facility beside an art gallery I went to a little while ago. They promise a concierge experience, and it appears to start at $50K a year for a tiny suite, and I don't know what all isn included in that price. We all know it only gets more expensive from there.

Although I'm minded of paying car insurance when I was young and and full of teenage stupidity hormones. I got told my insurance would get cheaper as I got older, but that wasn't true. I don't think I've ever paid less than that. The actual rate might have gone down, but I started driving newer and more expensive cars. The insurance companies started getting even more mercenary about their profits. Don't get me started.

But back to the point. There weren't a lot of people in the mall, but then again, it was a Friday just after lunch, at the end of a branch corridor. I don't know what the baseline is. I didn't get as far as the food court. 

Photography is getting busier. I'm delivering a print tomorrow, first time since before COVID. I'm in the middle of a photo gig for a paying client, and I've got tentative proposals for a couple more. I'm not hustling for photo work because I don't want it to become something I do only because someone is paying me. I want to do it because it's fun, or interesting. Even if I ended up working a lot, and getting paid for it, the rate is only a fraction of my oil and gas rate, so it wouldn't affect my life much.

Now, where was I? There were some blog thoughts before I opened that email. Gone, digressed away.

So let's give you some Vancouver Island green. Much of this was on a walk to or from a beach, and that was as nice as being on the beach, in a different way. 

1. Linda on the way to a beach. 

2. New growth from old.

3.

4.

5. Someone went to a lot of trouble to cart these stones up from the beach, and we don't know why.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10. Pretty sure this is the path to Mystic Beach.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.

16.

17.

18. The suspension bridge that is variously 1/3, half, or about 3/4 of the way to the beach, depending on what guide you're reading. It was a tough slog, and we bailed out on the other side of the bridge.

19.

20.

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

26.

27

28. There was a lot of this, sometimes with puddles.

29.

30.

31.

32.

33.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Film (new)

Film (old)

Linda, Nefertitti, and Amelia, with 2 of the three ignoring the camera.

And a serendipity.

More long exposure

 I've shown the one tidal rocky long exposure a couple of times now. But just for interest and a bit of a 'the making of a long exposure feature', here's several photos that I wouldn't normally show.

1. Working on composition. This is the view looking out towards the ocean, but behind me is much the same for a ways till the actual beach. You may be assured I was paying very careful attention to my footing as I walked from rock to rock to get to this point.

2. 15 seconds, playing with exposure settings. 

3. A 20 second exposure. You don't see the full extent of the lighting changes because I've tweaked that in Lightroom. The 15 seconds was kind of dark. Went to 20 to get more light onto the sensor. 

4. Dialed into 10 seconds and letting the camera run. I'd bumped the ISO to get enough light at the shorter shutter time. This gave me a better effect of flowing water and misty appearance, and gave the clouds a bit of better definition.

5. 

6. Just to remind you, this is the one I picked for Image of the Month. Yes, it was a tough selection between this one, and 4 and 5. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Film (new)

Film (old)

I've no idea when or where this is. Perhaps Vancouver Island during the trip to Tofino.

February Image of the Month

Long time readers know I have a system for rating my photos. It's imperfect, subject to revision, idiosyncratic, and highly subjective, but better than nothing. To sum up, for personal photos (as opposed to ones taken for the community association, or a client) 3 stars means I've edited it, 4 stars means it's quite a bit better than average, and 5 stars means I said wow!

In all of 2022 I had only 16 five star photos, and of those 11 happened during the Yukon trip in September. That wasn't my talent, such as it is, it was the amazing scenery. I've come to accept that my really good photos happen in a bunch. Thus it is so with last month. Three of the photos ended up with 5 stars, and they are featured below.

That was the easy part, knowing which 3. The order, however, was a dither.

First Runner Up

This was a struggle to capture because the edges of the rock are really sharp and I wanted to get low. At first I didn't think much of it, and edited it almost as a oh what the heck. But then there was a quiet wow as the sky, water, and rock detail came in, plus the gentle light on the green of the tree.

Second Runner Up

I told the story about the canyon here. 

Image of the Month

I've wanted to do more long exposures for a while, but they're hard to get right. There has to be an element that moves. This is normally water or clouds. There has to be an element that doesn't move, which can be almost anything. Then there's tweaking the settings, which typically means trial and error. 

So I got excited when I saw the waves coming and going between the rocks. I wandered between them for a while looking for composition, stepping from rock to rock because there was usually some water in between. Eventually I found this, parked my camera bag on top of the big rock, ever so carefully got the ND filter on, and started trial settings. After a few tries, I knew that 10 seconds gave a nice image. Rather than trying to time the waves, I just let the camera run, taking exposure after exposure. There were several others I quite liked, and I'll blog them soon.

I ended up perching on the rock with the camera bag as the tide was coming in.  I'd hoped to be able to replicate the settings and get some long exposure on film, but no. The tide was coming in quicker than expected, and I didn't want to get stranded. Even so, I got my feet wet before getting back to the beach itself.