It's been a minute. Or two. Many

Today is a bit of a roundup, it being so long since the last blog post. I almost don't know where to start. 

Let's start with books. I've been working on a novel for decades now, and it keeps growing in the telling. It's up to 5 inter related works of various lengths. Don't hold your breath waiting for it. Photo books are another thing. Starting late August and throughout September I've been working on photo books. A couple of them are test books, done to see how my photos look in print. The advantage of calling it a test book is that you aren't under the pressure of perfection. Nobody else need see it.

A couple are big lay flat books from travels to Yukon and New Zealand. All who have seen them have complimented me on the quality of the photos and the books. During our recent pre-Thanksgiving trip to visit Linda's sisters we distributed a book of family photos, and that went over very well. During our trip another book got delivered, and it's due to be passed on to the recipient at the next opportunity. 

I'm not sure what the next book will be. There's some ideas percolating. There's a couple considerations here. One is to have the photos that will make up a coherent collection. The photos might relate to a trip, a person, or a particular subject. The other is the discount. Blurb sometimes offers discounts, and that might affect what I work on. The New Zealand book had a fabulous discount that applied to the book and shipping. That very much encouraged me to go big. But a 10% discount on a $20 book doesn't make much difference. My thinking is to have a book or two in the pipeline, ready to go when they have a promotion.

Over the first bunch of years for the blog photos were pretty rare. Then about this time of year in 2010 I got an iPhone and photos started showing up a bit more often. Then a 'real' camera in 2016, and the photos began to pick up, in both quantity and quality. Somewhere along the way I started a second blog that's more oriented to photography, with tabs for races and community events, plus the Image of the Month feature.

Which, as you've probably noticed, is not today's blog, even though it's October. I'm still going through the nearly 1000 photos from the trip. One of them will almost certainly be IotM. I just don't know which one yet. Hang tough, it might be a couple more days. The problem isn't the actual editing, it's the selection of which photo to edit, out of any number of similar photos. For example, I've never photographed a lake freighter cargo ship before, and Linda's sister lives in a house with a great view of the St. Lawrence Seaway. There's several photos of ships, but I'm not sure I've figured out the best way to go about it. I'm pretty sure I could become a boat nerd, hanging out on their dock waiting for ships, trying different ideas, waiting for the light. I'd probably learn to start drinking margaritas, and things might go downhill fast.

I'd like to welcome some new subscribers to the blog, and hope you enjoy the experience. I've been thinking about the decline in blogging overall, and the decline my my blogging. For most of the blog I put out a new blog post every day and a half or so on average. In 2019 I peaked out at a new blog published slightly more often than once a day, with 367 over the year. Going to New Zealand for nearly 2 months, and Yukon will do that. Both are amazingly photogenic places. 

Blogging in the 2020's has been tough, and it averages out to a blog every 2.5 days or so. I'd like to blame COVID, but that dog won't hunt. It seems I don't have as much to say as I once did. When I was doing regular workouts and working for a living the blogs almost wrote themselves.

But I'm going to continue. I'm not sure exactly where it's going to go. I think this blog will be more day to day, topical depending on my moods. I'm sort of thinking the blog might be a way to group photos and do some trial writing in prep for a book. The photoblog will be for the IotM, community and race events, and a bit of a portfolio of my better photos, plus talking more about film photography or more technical digital photography topics. The Loungecat site is designed to be a portfolio of my very best work, and it needs to be updated a bit.

Some photos from a July road trip south east of Calgary. Look back in the blog roll to July to see more from this trip. For new readers you missed a steam locomotive in the wild and the owl.

I like getting photos that nobody else on the trip gets. So the one right above this, I'm pretty sure everybody else got it. But this one, by definition, nobody else got.

I can't now understand why this one didn't end up on the podium for July IotM.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Linda

Peony

Flower

Celina

We had some friends taking care of Celina in our absence. There were several videos of her happily purring away on the fuzzy blanket she loves. On our return she of course simultaneously claimed to be the most abandoned cat in the history of cats, and that we're the most rotten humans ever and where are the good humans that took care of her. I don't think we're quite forgiven yet.

Yukon

It was fun watching the pilots and passengers loading up a plane for a trip to somewhere out in the bush. 

Film (new) Fish Creek.

Film (old)

Linda, from the trove of B&W negatives. It was fun to look at them with Linda's aunts. They remembered the photos of them as young women, and were able to identify some of the people in the photos. 

Flowery Friday 3

Starting June 12, and going to June 17.  Even though most of the perennials have packed it in for the season, there's a couple of rose buds I'm keeping my eye on. But never fear, there's lots of flower photos in the pipeline to cheer you up when winter sets in.

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Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

With a serendipity Celina. She is no doubt reflecting on the rotten humans that don't let her out, even though she contributes to the household economy by catching mice and voles. She is cranky these days because it's getting colder in the mornings.

Driftwood (BC)

Yukon

Plants clinging to the rock wall of Miles Canyon. At least they don't have to worry about being stepped on.

Film (new)

FIlm (old)

Amelia.

A September garden tour

There's lots of flower photos in the folder, but I haven't done many blogs to put them in. I was thinking about that, and also realized I haven't done an around the garden tour for a while. So you get a Sept 5 garden tour, starting in front of the garage and going around the house.

Things are mostly done for the year, and Linda has started to clean up for the fall. However, a couple of the roses are still chugging along, and one of the Lady of Chalottes has put out a couple tiny blooms. We'll have to wait and see if they are going to beat winter. You never know, much of last week was fall, today is summer again. Maybe they'll be another version of the two bud-dies. 

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The sad part of this photo is the lack of trees. We started with 3, one in each corner. The closest to the corner of the fence died pretty quickly. The cherry tree off to the left had been dwindling for a bit, then year before last only half the branches had blossoms and only a few cherries, then nothing last year or this. The plum tree closest to me in this photo had done really well for years, being a nice shape and producing pretty blossoms. However, it didn't survive the winter for whatever reason, and Linda has removed it.

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Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Peony

Flower

Yukon

I can't believe it's been a year since I was in Yukon! 

Film (new)

An abstract that isn't likely to appeal to many people, but I saw it and ran for the camera.

Film (old)

The last photo of Nefertitti.

August Image of the Month

Doing things slightly differently this month. It was a slow month in the taking photos department, with most of the image related work going into several photo books. I just had one arrive yesterday, a small test trade book with Alberta landscapes. There's a big lay flat arriving early next week, more details then.

Not all photos I take are up for Image of the Month consideration. Then there were a few portraits at an event, where people loved the portraits, but don't want them made public here. Fully two thirds of the images were on one day, as I covered the recent Wild Rose triathlon. This worked out very well for all involved. Those who want to can see the photos on the Races tab of my photoblog page.

The remaining images are my normal photos. You know, the garden, bees, Fish Creek. Some film, some digital. Nothing that tips over to 4 stars. But there are two really similar images I like, and thought I'd show them both, being about 3.5 stars each. They look like comparison images, but not so. I just was fortunate to be in the same viewpoint on two different days without any wind. I don't think I was standing in exactly the same spot, and there are two different focal lengths to consider. Which do you prefer?

Honourable Mentions

From a walk in Fish Creek on August 2

And this one from August 20. Film is AcrosII on 35mm.

Image of the Month

In one sense the image of the month isn't a technically difficult photo, or particularly artistic, or wow in any sense of the word. It isn't anything else that has been considered in the monthly selection. But it has tremendous meaning for me, in that it's my first public photo book, and I'm enormously proud of the photos and how they turned out in the book. So far nothing but rave reviews from those that have seen it, though only one person has raved enough to buy it. You can preview the first 15 pages here. One person has already asked how I would feel if they bought the book, and cut it apart so they could frame the panorama photos. My thinking is, if you've bought it, the book is yours. Just respect the image and text copyright.