Metal and moss

During our picnic at 40 Mile on the Yukon River, I found some remains of mining equipment, gradually getting overgrown with moss and grass. I was up early and looking over photos, and realized these would go together. 

Of the Day

Also at 40 Mile, River Reflections

A 40 Mile Landscape

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Fox. We were also allowed inside the fox enclosure, but there was only one fox. 

Lynx

Film

Wordle kicked my butt, again

I was doing so well, with a 57 games winning streak. That ended a few days ago. And then again today. I am crushed. Here I thought I was good at words. Sigh.

But thinking about words has me thinking about the blog. To be honest, I'm finding it harder to have anything to say that might be of interest to my readers. I call my readers a small but loyal band, and thank you for showing up to read. But you deserve a quality blog, and it's been a bit of a struggle lately. Note, I'm happy to get comments or thoughts about this, either in comments, or more private correspondence.

I don't really believe the stats that Blogger serves up, and I've never really understood the ones that Google gave me. But both agree that readership is trending down. Now Google is updating to a new stats thingie, and I keep getting notices to sign up and the old one is getting turned off. But considering I go many months between looking at it, I don't think I'll miss it when it goes away.

But even the numbers that I do know are down, and that's on me. The number of blogs published peaked in 2019, with a trip to New Zealand and the resulting zillion photos driving publication more than once a day over the year. You'd think during COVID I'd be able to write more, but was involved in a complicated work contract that sucked up a lot of energy from mid 2020 to mid 2021. Then output went down dramatically in 2021 to a bit less than every other day. Then 2022 output, projected to the end of the year, is a bit lower again.

Another related thread is photography. I want to take better photos, and have been reading lots about that. There is the technical angle, get better gear, get better at using that gear, follow these "rules" to create better photos, use software editors to edit the photo out of all resemblance to the original scene, or use these new AI tools to sharpen the photo. Bah! Cameras now are amazing, and they've been amazing for more than a decade. Many of the most famous historical photos were done on gear that is now considered primitive. Equipment limitations are not the problem.

But to elicit a response beyond "it's nice" or "very pretty", you need to show a photo that has meaning. It must trigger an emotional response in the viewer. So there's two hurdles to overcome there. One is to produce such a photo, and that's on the photographer. Even experienced pro photographers admit it's a  difficult task. One of the general rules is to produce fewer photos, but spend more time thinking about each, and curate ruthlessly. That's one path I'm trying to take.

The other hurdle is for the viewer to find the time to actually look at the photo and think about it, rather than mindlessly scrolling onto the next one, and the next one, frantically trying to avoid the advertising served up in the feed. That's on the viewer, but in many ways they are the victim of social media conditioning. TLDR is a real thing, and I've heard people say that tweets are too long. There's days I despair over the future of literacy.

A test for you. Ask someone that just scrolled through their Instagram (or any other social media) feed, which of the photos they saw was the best. In fact, ask them to describe any of the photos they saw, even in general terms. Well, more detail than a face, or a landscape. Odds are they won't be able to, unless one of the photos happens to either be of a person related to them, or by pure happenstance there was a remarkable photo in the feed that caught their attention.

So back to the blog. I'm still noodling through possible changes, trying to decide what changes I should make. The fundamental question is, why am I doing this? What is this blog for, and the related photoblog? Perhaps some clarity there will drive the content. At the least, I should let my readers know what to expect. Or, like I said, you could let me know what you want to expect, or what you don't want.

Of the Day

Just so you know, I've been thinking about this feature. It started with driftwood, because I had a zillion photos of driftwood, and I know that most of my readership is mostly not interested, but several are, and I am. So I figured posting such a photo every blog, down at the bottom, would be a fine thing. Those interested could scroll, and those not interested could stop when they got there. 

Then more things got added. Flower photos. The cats. Landscape photos from trips. Other photos. The check list I made, which indicates if there's so many things I need a list to remember, there's probably too many things, is: Driftwood, Flower, Peony, Lily, Landscape, Green Fools, Film, Celina, Bee, Tombstone, Caribou (and soon it will become Fox), Lynx, and River Reflections. 

In fact, there's been several blogs where the Of the Day photos were the main feature, and one where it was the only thing. I wonder if if I've been overdoing it. Maybe I should curate harder, and say that instead of lots of nice peony photos spread over a year, I should boil it down to a few remarkably good photos and show those. When I say that's hard, some photographers would hear "I'm lazy." Or, as a hint, if you want just the best photos and very little story, check out my VERO feed. Note that to see the big version in all it's glory, you need to actually create an account (free!) and log in.

And yes, some of this snow is still here.

So enough blither.

Driftwood

Flower 

Peony

Lilies are all done now, see you next year!

River Reflections

Tombstone

Film

Caribou (the last one, stay tuned for a cute fox)

Lynx

The start of a return to normal?

I used to be a news junkie. That got pared back when I saw that newsmakers were more often trying to inflame emotions to hide what they were up to, than trying to act responsibly. I don't like people trying to push my buttons, which explains why I bailed on Twitter years ago. As far as I'm concerned Musk can burn it down and it's just dandy if he loses multiple billions of dollars along the way. Or if he carries on down the road he's on so far, the regulators will shut it down, just like they shut down other hate sites.

There is a huge difference between trying to put the best face on an issue, or to present your proposals in the best light, and actually lying. A simple example. In both Canada and USA elections are done via an established process. Voters are checked against a list, there is a process to deal with legitimate voters not on the list for some reason, they are given a ballot or ballots along with the instructions to fill it out properly, the ballots are counted and recounted, the whole decentralized process is supervised by people appointed by the relevant authority, carried out by numerous volunteers, there are provisions for partisan oversight, and there is a process to resolve a close or disputed vote count. There are any number of cases where the loser of a close count asks for a recount or judicial review. There is a process for that as well, and it's a completely legitimate request. 

And then there is outright election denialism, to say that an election was stolen or fraudulent, sometimes even before the election. We're seeing that a lot in USA in recent years and it's bullshit from end to end. There are a small (tiny) number of illegitimate ballots cast by honest mistake, and an even smaller number that are actually cast fraudulently. Out of millions upon millions of ballots cast, we're talking a few dozen cases at most.  

As a digression, for the purposes of this discussion, I'm not considering gerrymandering to be voting fraud, though it is, in a sense.

There were a variety of methods employed to overturn the election results. One of them was to say that because the other side had protested the results, it was fine for them to do so as well, equating a legitimate recount process with an illegal attempt to substitute fraudulent electors into the process, all the way to advocating a violent overthrow of the entire process. The two processes are not remotely equivalent.

Before any candidate is allowed to run for any office, they should be required to read the existing voting process and associated dispute resolution process, and then sign off that they understand it and will abide by the election results, and to publicly state the same. Anyone saying they won't accept the results of the election should be removed from the ballot. Such people have no place in our democratic process. That ought to be easy to enact, and would help us avoid the circus train wreck happening in USA.

It's not so easy to enact a formal fact checking mechanism, with an associated hook to drag the liar off stage. After all, it's a long and slippery slope between obvious verifiable facts, through probabilities, incomplete truths, lack of context, faulty reasoning, honest mistakes, slips of the tongue, attack dog gotchas, dog whistling, retail lies for immediate gain, to wholesale lies intended to denigrate the entire process. 

We could use such a process. We have a variety of carpet bagging politicians that are using such tactics to appeal to their base. The question is how big that base is, and how much the base can be expanded. In the USA it's clear the Trump poison quickly spread from a small rabid base, to almost half the electorate. It seems there is no lie so stupid that it will turn off a partisan believer.

Here in Alberta we have a new premier in Danielle Smith. She is a former politician who betrayed her party by crossing the floor in a crass attempt to gain power. She and the other followers were all voted out at the next opportunity, and rightly so. She's spent her political exile as a shock jock radio announcer pandering to a base that feels ostracized from the mainstream. Every day, such a person has to come up with new red meat for the audience, to keep them agitated. It leads you to saying stupid, sensational things, or audience goes elsewhere.

This is no way to run a province. She's already had to walk back a statement that the unvaccinated were the most discriminated group in history. Bah! The unvaccinated are merely living the consequences of a decision they made on their own.

There is hope, though. Smith recently won a by-election, though the numbers are hardly overwhelming. But let's start with her selection as party leader. It took 6 ballots and barely more than 50% of the vote, from a pool of 112,000 UCP members, who already skew to the conservative side of the spectrum. In the by election she got about 54% of the votes cast, which is about 21% of the eligible voters. Not what I'd call a ringing endorsement. 

Soon she is going to face the general public, many (most?) of whom are to the political left of people who hold UCP memberships. No wonder the NDP is looking good in the polls. For the past several years Notley had the easiest job in Canadian politics, opposing the clown show that was the Kenney government. So far, Smith hasn't made Notley's job any harder. I'm sure there are staffers in the NDP that have been documenting every stupid thing the UCP politicians have said, and will bring it up in the next election.

In other signs of hope in the USA, Trump and MAGA-ism seem to be on the ebb. The Democrats did extraordinarily well in the midterms, holding the senate, and it remains to be seen where the house will end up. Considering the Republicans were expecting a red tidal wave, and historically an unpopular president loses seats in both houses, maybe the pendulum is swinging back to the middle, back to normalcy. We can but hope.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape, but could be river reflections.

River reflection (Yukon)

Tombstone

Green Fools Clown wedding

Celina, apricating

Caribou

Lynx. It's less than 10 feet from me at this point.

Film, the beaver pond beside the Dempster.

The promised book review

The Art of Photography, A Personal Approach to Artistic Expression, by Bruce Barnbaum.

Let's start by remembering my difficulty with many instructional books. They exist on a spectrum, ranging from utterly simplistic, such as the various "X for Dummies", up to tomes written by experts containing extraordinary amounts of detail on everything that is known about that topic. One needs to be nearly an expert to read them. It seems to be difficult to find books in the sweet spot between those extremes.

This book is well towards the detailed side of that spectrum, and there's lots of room for details. This is a big book, 25 x 25 cm, and 388 pages. It's actually too heavy to hold up and read. I usually propped the spine on the arm of the chair. 

But the main good point is that it's not about gear, and it's (mostly) not about software, and it's not about the so-called 'rules' to produce a good photograph. It's about finding your artistic expression through photography. Finding subjects that you related to, and can express that in a photograph.

He makes it clear that he's all about B&W film in a 4x5 camera printed in a darkroom, and digital for colour work. He makes that point several times, so I'm wondering a bit if the chapters were assembled from other work. No real matter, it's just a bit more detail along the way, and it's his way of ensuring you know where he's coming from.

As a digression, even in my limited time in photography, I've seen that too many people seem to be more interested in tearing down the work of other photographers, or getting hung up on minutia of gear, than getting out to take their own photos and find what works for them. Barnbaum is unapologetically clear what his interests are, and how he goes about it, and if the reader does something different, that's fine. 

The how he goes about it, is the important part of the book, and there's lots of detail. Oh my goodness there is detail. Anyone interested in fine art done old school on B&W film printed in a darkroom needs to go and buy this book. Stop reading me for a moment and go order it. The publisher is Rocky Nook, and it was $61.95 in Canada. Just do it, you can thank me later.

If you're a digital colour photographer, which so many of us are, the purchase decision is a little more nuanced. Absolutely get it out of the library. Go put a hold on it now. If you see it in a book store, give it a really good browse. It's probably worth buying, knowing that you can probably re-sell it to Fair's Fair.

He goes into a lot of detail about editing images intended as artistic fine art. His artistic vision, which will almost certainly be different than yours, or mine, or any other photographer. The whole process starts in his head as he is looking at the scene, envisioning the final print. That drives the details around exposure, (and yes he goes into the zone system in detail), and development, and then editing, both old school and in software.

The overall process will be applied differently to every scene and every image, and thus driving specific decisions that affect the final image. And no, he's not all about pushing the sliders around willy nilly for dramatic effect. Subtle is the name of the game, and how the various controls interact with each other. I'm paraphrasing here, "If the viewer can tell how and where you edited the image, then you did too much." There's some re-reading I need to do there, and make some notes. 

Before I forget, a Curtis serendipity.

A mountainous serendipity, though I think I've blogged it before.

Of the Day

Driftwood

Flower

Peony

Lily

Landscape

The beautiful golden rolling landscape of SW Alberta, totally overshadowed by an inversion layer. 

Tombstone, but first an artsy serendipity that I had somehow overlooked from our last trip to New Zealand.

It occurred to me as I was doing a final read over before hitting the publish button, that this photo would work better if I swapped it horizontally, so the lines lead down and right.

Celina

The clicking of the camera woke her up.

Caribou

Lynx

River Reflections

Film