Recent books by other people

 In no particular order, for no particular reason.

One of the things I've always been mildly curious about, and have become much more so as I got older is, how long has something lasted. Everything has a lifespan. People. Plants. Even things eventually reach a point where they are beyond economical repair.

It's the things I'm thinking of just now. Some things last a long time. My family gave us a set of nice dishes as a wedding present just over 39 years ago, (39 years!!! and that's probably a blog topic) and much of it is in daily use, still going strong. When I moved from Ontario to Calgary in the summer of 1980, essentially everything I owned fit into a 78 Pontiac LeMans. The only one of those things that is still in daily use (as far as I can remember) is a little key fob connector thingie. 

It lets me easily separate the car keys from the rest of the keys, which is handy when the car is being serviced, or I need the house key but don't want to shut off the car for whatever reason. The keys involved are the car key, our house key, a friend's house key, the bike U lock key, the mailbox key (we were forced into the horrid community mailbox system) and a small key that I don't know what it unlocks. It might be the garage door lock from the garage door that was replaced about 12 years ago.

Which reminds me of another thing. The garage door opener reliably worked from in front of our neighbour's driveway across the street. Reliably, every time. But would it shut the door after backing out of the garage, while we were RIGHT THERE!!!??? No. Or rarely. My thinking was that it couldn't be the battery so I was looking for other causes. It turns out that if you put an LED bulb into your garage door opener motor box, that might interfere with the remote. But I still have a normal bulb. Then the guy how installed the door, who happens to live in the cul de sac behind us was walking by and asked what was up. We talked about a few things, then he asked when I'd last changed the battery. I told him I remembered putting a 9 volt square battery in it a few years ago. He gave me a funny look, and said, that wouldn't fit into this box. It takes one of those dime sized ones. I happened to have one, and we put it in. Now it works all the time. Go figure.

One of the things that broke recently was the glass part of the French Press in daily use. It slipped a bit in my hands as I was washing it, and the bottom cracked against the edge of the sink. Oops. Well, we had another in the cupboard, and when I opened it up I found a receipt for it, dated almost exactly 3 years ago. That means the one I broke has been in daily use for more than 3 years. Pretty good for something made of glass.

I had to go out anyways, so I made a point of going back to the same store to get another. After all, morning coffee is a serious business. I'm pretty sure if I break the next one without a replacement, it will be at a time that's really awkward, perhaps with guests waiting for coffee. That store is the kitchen store in Britannia, a wonderful shopping centre off Elbow drive and 50th Ave. Near it is one of my favourite bookstores, Owl's Nest, a small independent store that is somehow still in business. Calgary used to have a ton of bookstores, new and used, and I'm pretty sure that Chapters and Amazon has driven most of them out of business. I picked up two books, this one, and a new Robert J Sawyer book I'm part way through.

This is how you lose the Time War by Max Gladstone is an amazing read! It's almost like prose poetry. I'm seriously thinking about reading it again, but reading it aloud, slowly, savouring the words, the images. It's the most unconventional love story I've ever read.

Secret Knowledge by David Hockney. He has done a bunch of research into how painters did their work. He shows how paintings evolved between the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance. His point is that it appears that some painters used optical aids to create their work.

While he gives lots of examples, and it tends a bit towards the scholarly end of things, it's quite readable, and it's fascinating to see the portraits change. I'd look at a portrait, then read about it, and was amazed at all the things he saw in it. Only after he pointed it out did I see them. Clearly there is work to be done in my brain about seeing and thinking about what's before me.

Extraordinary Light by Sherman Hines This was a gift from friends. He's a Canadian photographer I'd never heard of, who has captured amazing images. What's more, they're on film, which further increases the skill involved. I've been to a few of the places he has photos of, although mine aren't even remotely in the same league. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Flower

And a flowery serendipity from 2017.

Yukon

I'd love to have been able to spend more time watching the shadows move across the mountain sides.

Film (new)

I can't help but think this would make a brutally hard jigsaw puzzle.

Film (old)

There's a story about that pickaxe. This is probably the summer of 1991. At the time I was working at the bunker (the old Nova Gas Transmission building off 14th st). Linda was working at City Hall. Ribtor Hardware was just a few blocks away for her. She picked up the pickaxe and walked to meet me since I didn't get off till 5. She said the drivers were very respectful as she crossed the streets. She says it was the pickaxe over her shoulder, but I think it was the determined glint in her eyes.

And a found image of Linda from early 2023.

Comments Commentary

The timeline on this is getting stretched out. I started about the time I was making the selections for IotY, when one of my regular commenters got caught up and sent in several thoughtful comments, and I commented about them in a letter. Then the other of my regular commenters sent lots of comments, as he got caught up on blog reading. He's been distracted with some of his own projects for a while.

And since I was writing while the Christmas tree was up, here's a photo of it. We'll be taking it down today.

That will make Celina unhappy, because she thinks we put it up so she has a comfortable little cave.

Oh, and now that I'm reviewing and not writing, this got long. Take a moment and get your favourite tipple.

Plus there are periodic private comments coming in by email. I make the assumption these are generally not for public consumption, otherwise they would have commented that way. Then again, maybe Blogger gives them a hard time about commenting. I know commenting doesn't work from mobile platforms, or hasn't in the past. I've given up on using Safari for anything blog related, so Chrome is pretty well my go to browser these days. If you're burning to join the commenting crowd, because you have things to say and want to say it right then, and you'll lose it if you don't do so, might I suggest you try Chrome. Has anyone tried to comment on my blog via Chrome on their mobile device?

I love hearing comments from my readers, a small but loyal group. Thank you all for your comments, keep those cards and letters coming!

What I think I'll do is start somewhere, and respond to some of the comments. Where to start? Which has led me to quite a bit of a digression, scrolling back through comments and posts. Oh, and the 2023 IotY is now published, in case you missed it. 

January a year ago, Jan said "What on earth is the first "oddball" image? I can't figure it out. Really like them all - but especially #8 for some reason (I can't explain - the light maybe?) Another wonderful Tombstone image! And the shot of the plane is great fun too! That's a lovely portrait of Michelle but think it might have been more effective if she'd been gazing towards the light in order to highlight her face."

It's actually a close up photo of my favourite glass paperweight. I was taking a glass blowing course, and the specific concept was to take a blob of hot glass, roll it into a bar, roll the bar in coloured crushed glass, heat it up, work the bar into a knot, then cover it with another layer of glass, roll that into a sphere, detach from the punty and put it in the kiln to slowly cool down. It all went really well till I got to the roll into a sphere part. Spherical is really hard, and it got all elongated and I had to squooge it down again, then taper it to get it off the punty. It's sort of an oblong shape, and the knot of coloured glass turned to marmalade. 

Michelle and I were walking in Fish Creek when we found that patch of grass. I wanted a photo of her emerging from the grass but it didn't work out, even though I was on my tummy trying to get low enough for the grass to be more prominent. I'm always mindful that she poses because I ask nice, and I think it interests her to see how the photos turn out, but she is not a paid model, so I respect her time and patience.

February Sean said "I miss the sea. I kept returning to 7 as there is much to like about. I wonder though if there was a slightly different angle that would have placed the long pointy finger a little further to the right, which would have put the image more in balance. 12 - wonderful location. 13 - I like the amount of movement here. These is some in the sky and clouds, and the house lights add a nice touch."

I often wonder why I don't live closer to the ocean. That could easily lead into a discussion of real estate values, the trials of moving and establishing new roots in another community, but that would be a massive digression. 

Composition is a tricky thing and I'm certainly not an expert. Someone looking at a photo can only see what is in the photo. They don't know what is outside the photo, although sometimes it's pretty obvious. There have been many occasions where something has intruded into the frame of my desired photo that was not in my view finder. My choices are then to live with it, use a tool to remove the intrusion, which might or might not be easy or produce acceptable results, or to crop in, which sometimes does not work. I went back to look at the original, and it turns out this is an uncropped image. For whatever reason I chose that vantage point and composition. I no longer remember what was to the left of that driftwood, or why I didn't angle more to the left. I suspect I was thinking about leading lines from the bottom of the photo going up and to the right expansive space.

June Jan said "I'm glad you're still blogging, albeit less frequently. I'm going to try to write one today for the first time in a long while. I think it gets harder when you write less often. How do you pick just a topic or two when you've had so many floating around in your head over weeks or months? Lots of great photos here. I especially like the aurora, the second driftwood, and the long exposure. Your technical skills have really improved overtime. It's hard to imagine you were ever satisfied with just using a cell phone camera. Are you still using an iPhone?"

I think writing is like many other things. The more you do it, the easier it is. Part of it is the technical skill of typing. The faster you type, the quicker you can catch the words and get on to the next thing. More importantly, I think there's something to the idea of being on a roll. You get in the groove of doing something, and it can become easier to keep doing it than to stop. 

As for the multitude of topics the advice is simple. Pick one, and write. Make a note of the other topics and promise you'll get to them. And then when you're done writing the first topic, pick a second. Repeat. I believe that the idea fairy brings ideas to those who use the earlier ideas. Don't use them, and they stop coming.

I still use the iphone camera, mainly for taking a photo that I need to send to someone, like a document. Or if it's the camera to hand when the photo is right now, like a cute cat lap photo. But the problem is that while in many ways the cell phone cameras are getting better, it's at the price of producing actual photographs. It used to be that light bounced off things, went through a simple lens system, and was captured on a sensor of some kind, which until recently was film. It was further edited during the developing and printing process, of course. 

But now the light goes onto the cell phone sensor, and the computer decides what is being photographed, applying computations to make it "better". Except it's no longer a photograph. It might or might not be digital art. It might or might not represent reality. Then there's whatever filters the user applies, and whatever compressions the hosting software applies when it's posted on line.  

I used to like Apple's photo software, but it's become a monster. I can no longer tell if I have the actual bits and bytes that make up the photo on my hard drive, or if they are on the cloud somewhere and what I have are directions to get there. There are several different version of old iphone photo collections taking up space, and I can't tell how they overlap or not, and what will happen if I delete them. I fear that deleting the photos folder off one computer will apply that deletion to all the other computers this one is connected to. 

In some ways I've come to dislike the Apple ecosystem, and have considered the idea of buying a Windows box. I have seriously thought about the project of creating another Lightroom catalogue and migrating photos from the Apple photo software into it. At some point I'll run into the format issue and I'll have to figure out how to cope with that. Then when I'm done, deleting the Apple app photos where ever they might be. I think there's only something like 13,000 photos to consider, so how bad could it be? Hmmmm, as it happens Adobe has actual instructions for migrating to Lightroom, so I suppose it's possible. It looks like there's a lot of prep work though. Maybe that's a project for the long cold dark Alberta winter.

Three related comments on the same post. (My 2023 books)

December Jan said "I'm super impressed with how quickly you got the books done. I promised myself I'd have two done this fall but haven't managed even one. sigh. A project for January."

And Sean said "I appreciate your experimental approach to book making. Do it quickly - learn - move on to the next. My various real and imagined neuroses sometimes gets in my way. Cheers, Sean"

And Janet said "Very nice, Keith. My cousin has been doing a yearly photo 'album' with Blurb for a long time and I love the idea - a yearbook of the best photos of family, friends, holidays, etc. The spine has the year on it, so if she wants to reminisce, she just pulls that book. I also did 2 photo books for my mom, on our trips to Scotland, and she loves them."

Plus a private comment asking for clarification between photo size and container size.

In one sense, the books are like writing, the more you do the easier it is. The first one was a bit of a struggle, figuring out the finer points of the interface, and trying to decide which photos to use. I kept telling myself, "it's a test book. A TEST!" 

For the next ones I had already figured out some stuff so the dithering was more about which photos and where they went. The second and third lay flat books were easy because I used exactly the same layout. Typography is an arcane art unto itself, and I ignored it. I pick a readable font and move along. Nobody, and I mean nobody at all, will care what font I used.

BookWright offers many page layouts for photos, text, and both. Some don't seem practical to me, but you don't have to use them. I spent some time playing with layouts and dropping photos into them. That part is really easy, but there are two related complications.

1. If the photo isn't the same aspect ratio as the container, the beautiful layout you selected will look odd in the preview, because you'll only see the photo, not the container. So, an example. Coming out of Lightroom, many of my photos will be a multiple of 3 wide x 2 high. (Because 35mm cameras frame size is 36mm wide by 24mm high.) Mine will be 6240 x 4160 pixels. 

Now imagine you have drawn a container that is 10 wide x 8 high to be the perfect design for that particular page, and you drop one of those photos into it. It doesn't fit evenly. There's a button that lets you fit to frame, which will leave extra space around two sides of the photo, or fill to frame, which will chop off some of your photo. In either case, that probably isn't the result you want.

My solution is to ignore the containers, making the assumption I edited the photo to a particular aspect ratio for whatever reasons seemed good to me at the time. I just drag the photo onto the BookWright page. It automatically creates a container for it that is exactly the right size. Now you can grab a corner and tweak the size and drag it to where you want it on the page. Which leads to complication 2.

But before we get there, a slight digression. There have been several times I needed to consider photos as a group, and how they fit together on a page. I've gone back into Lightroom, created a virtual copy of the photo, and cropped it to the size or aspect ratio I needed for that page. There's an example of that in my 2023 image of the year post. 

2. Original photo resolution. Modern cameras and lenses are amazingly sharp. For every square mm on my camera sensor, it captures about 173 by 173 pixels of information. That's why camera files are so big, it has to define what colour each one of those tiny little spots is. (It's more technical than that, but bear with me.) Now think about leaving the number of pixels the same, but making the size of the frame bigger. Each pixel has to get bigger. At first that isn't a problem. Human vision isn't good enough to see the individual pixels, so they still all blend together. But as the pixels get bigger we can start to see the square edges. Diagonal lines start to look jagged. 

BookWright will tell you if you're trying to stretch a photo to be too big. The general rule of thumb for print is 300 dpi. So for my camera, that image could be printed out almost 21 inches wide (6420 / 300 = 20.8) and almost 14 inches high, and still look good (from a technical print perspective). That's more than big enough for most books, although not the ginormous layflat books I sometimes get. If I try to make the photo bigger than that, I'll get jagged lines and a warning. It will fix that for you by resizing at the click of a button. 

So in the book I did for Michelle, I knew there was a photo of our first meeting in a coffee shop after a race. I wanted to include it, but I didn't take the photo. It was a 2013 or earlier era cell phone in the selfie mode. Then the photo went onto Facebook, which does further compression. By the time I was trying to fit that photo into BookWright, it was about 1.5 inches square. I included it anyway for the historical record.

Generally I export photos from Lightroom going to BookWright by selecting 300 dpi, and the long edge being the full width or height of a single page. It makes for a bigger file, but who cares. Once the photo is in the book you can delete that exported file. Then when I drop it into BookWright, it takes up most of the whole page, which is fine. I can make it smaller and BookWright tweaks the image. The rule is you can make things smaller by removing what is essentially invisible information, but you can't make things bigger by adding information that wasn't there. Yes, there are apps that claim to be able to do that, but I am dubious about the results. 

Of course, all that has been from the perspective of someone working with digital camera files in Lightroom, on a fairly capable computer. BookWright can accept JPG, JPEG, or PNG files, but not the new iphone file format HEIC or HEIF. Converting those adds another step, and watch your sizing.

Doing the books is fun! Not least is the opportunity to look at older photos again, and contemplate your growth as a photographer. Some of the writing advice also applies to creating a book. Writing is different than editing. When writing you barf everything out onto the page. Don't stop to fix spelling mistakes, grammar, plot holes, whatever. Write it all out. Write alternative scenes. Put your characters into a stalled cable car high above the ground; what do they talk about? Do they await escape, or do they undress and tie all their clothing together to make a rope long enough to get into the top of a tree and escape that way? Once you have written, you edit. That's where you fix things, but the important concept is that you cannot edit till you have words to work with. I trust that translating that concept to a photo book is not difficult.

Oh, and a bonus secret. If you have an obvious cover image that goes with your title, then do it first. But if you don't, leave the cover till last. Edit the contents and find out what book you have actually done, as opposed to whatever your ideas were before starting. Once you know what the book is, it's much easier to pick a cover. For many authors, that opening paragraph is the last thing they write.

July Sean said "I find bookmaking another journey of learning, experimenting, and refining. Welcome to the road. Speaking of refinement, as we have discussed before photography is hard. Though as I wrote the other day, I think a better phrase is photography is slow. The 1/125th of a second is only a part of the process."

Ah, the deep mysteries of shutter speed. Photography the way we are doing it, or trying to do it, is hard and slow. Thinking about what makes a good image, and setting the camera to capture that is usually not a fast process. I always knew that the camera and human eyes "see" the world quite differently. The difficulty is seeing the world the way the camera does, or can. A 1/125 second exposure will almost certainly look quite different than a 1 second exposure. 

Which is why I I have to repress my annoyance when I hear anyone beyond a brand new photographer learning to use the M setting on their camera, ask, "What settings should I use?" There are usually a number of settings that will produce nearly indistinguishable results. Knowing what the settings were when looking at a photo typically won't tell you anything interesting about the photo. 

My usual advice is to tell them, "You have a digital camera. Take a photo with the settings you have now, then look at the back of the camera. There are only 3 variables, so if the photo doesn't look right, tweak the settings accordingly. Repeat till you get an image you're happy with. Then look at something else and do it again. Do it 100 times and you ought to get the hang of it."

I think I've only taken a few photos in aperture or shutter priority modes, mainly to see how it worked. There's been a bunch in bulb mode, like doing dark sky photos, but the overwhelming majority have been in manual mode. My camera mode dial has B, M, Av, Tv, P, A+, CA, SCN, C2, and C1. To be honest I don't have a clue what anything after the Tv is, what it does, or how it works. It's almost certainly in the manual, and I could reach out and touch that manual right now, but I don't care enough to look. I'd be happy to buy a camera that had only M and B modes. 

Even walking into a triathlon in challenging early dawn light, the first photo will be nearly right. ISO 800, aperture wide open or nearly so, and shutter is probably around 1/500. Tweak shutter as required for each photo depending on the exact lighting conditions. Shutter speed will gradually be getting faster as the day gets brighter. Drop ISO accordingly. Sometimes the day gets so bright I need to close down the aperture a bit to keep the shutter slower than 1/4000, which is the fastest that camera can work. This all sounds more complicated than it is. I don't even think about it any more.

July Sean said "No surprise on the IoTM. The 1st runner up is one that grows on me, even if there has been some detail loss in the screen version.. The top left corner appears a little hot, and might benefit from being dialed back with a linear gradient. Cheers, Sean"

No surprise that the owl was a finalist for IotY indeed. That's one where a digital camera has it hands down over a film camera. I probably wouldn't have had any photos if I'd had the medium format camera in hand. I might have one if I'd had the Canon 7 in my hands. 

The top left corner is a white gravel beach in strong sun. I never really thought about trying to dial it down. Maybe I don't have the right touch, but I don't think I've ever done a linear gradient where I liked the results. Even using a brush to select the area and playing with the settings usually makes things worse, in my eyes.

November Jan said "Shooting water is hard, and doing it handheld is ever harder. Well done! I can see why you put #8 on Vero. It's mesmerizing."

Water is another example of where our eyes see the world very differently than a camera. Many photographers have spent lots of time working on settings for moving water to get the image they want, in the lighting they have. I'm not a fan of the river of milk school of water photography, but I love the mist over water and rocks effect. Which explains IotY. It's much easier using a tripod, or putting the camera on a stable surface, but carrying around a tripod is a pain in the shoulder.

December Sean said "Most of my images don't merit much editing, but there are some though that say "I have good bones" and "I could be much better with a bit of TLC". So when inanimate objects and artifacts start talking, I am inclined to listen.

The digital world sometimes feels a lot like an addictive drug, and therefore controlling consumption is difficult. I like the idea of deciding on consumption based on values. In truth though, my behaviour is rarely that considered. Cheers, Sean"

I've never really had that experience of an image saying "I could be better with some TLC." I think I come from a more documentary perspective, where the image is the image. As we have discussed, there is no such thing as an unedited image. The question is, how much editing and what is the intent behind the editing? Where is the line between a photographic image, and digital art? Most people would say that removing sensor or lens spots is fair game, but what about that distracting white rock off to the side, or the pop can someone dropped? 

Some people say that removing distracting things from a photograph is fine, but adding things that weren't there is not. Except I think a photograph is a balance between the subject and the background that gives meaning or context to the subject. 

Dealing with the digital world is an ongoing struggle. It's proving harder than I thought to look at Facebook only once a day. My thinking was that whenever I was minded to look, I'd ask myself what else I could be doing that would be more productive. Since just about anything is more productive than looking at Facebook, that means I continue doing what I was doing, which might be being a fuzzy blanket substrate for Celina. Or getting up off my butt and actually doing something. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Plus another woody serendipity.

Flower and Film (new)

This is the last of that specific sequence.

Yukon

Film (old)

While it snowed the other day, it wasn't this much. But it could have been.

2023 Image of the Year

It's December 30 as I start writing this, down to a short list of 5 images from 2023. That was surprisingly easy. It's going to be difficult to get down to the final three, and I haven't even begun to think about their order. 

To backtrack a bit, I actually ended up with 14 images with 5 stars this year, although there's two versions of one photo, for book related reasons. Similar to previous years, I could tell a story about any of these.

I've decided not to get into the stats of how many photos taken, how many edited and such like. I'm coming to realize editing is more about choosing which photos to show people, than about manipulating an image. It doesn't really matter how many raw photos I took. 

My photography has typically been about generating more images. I was out with a camera regularly, seeing new things I wanted to photograph. The decision was which lens or lenses to take with me. Now there's three quite different cameras to choose from, which makes the selection even more difficult. I'm tending to take one of the film cameras for my rambles as I look for interesting images. I'm mostly trying to get away from the blah 'there I was and this is what I saw' kind of images, or at least make such a thing look interesting.

There were two somewhat related goals for 2023. One was to work on making better images. Even for the races and community events I'm trying to get better images of the people involved. Images that tell a story or capture a moment, not just documentary. I take a digital camera to the events, mainly because the organizers want to see the images quickly. The other version of better images revolves around learning about film, trying to find images that play to the strengths of film.

The other has been to choose images for books, and towards the end of the year, start to think about making images for books. Like I've done an Image of the Year, I'm thinking about doing a book of the year. That would be 7 books now, counting 2016 and 2017 as one year, if I were to begin at the beginning and go forward. 

As it turns out, for me at least, images for books are quite different than images for a blog. I've got one more book project on the go for a client, and then I can start to think about the year books. I'd like to build them in my head so there's a consistency from one year to the next.

So noodling about criteria. I've talked in previous blogs about what makes an image "the best." It's easy to go back through previous IofY posts so I won't put links here. Yes there are flukes or luck, and I'll cheerfully admit I was fortunate to have my camera in hand with the right lens, already pointing at the garden when the humming bird showed up for about 10 seconds. We see lots of other birds, especially since Linda has been putting out a food bell on the front patio lattice. That attracts lots of small birds, no idea what they are. I'm not good at birds, for all that two bird images show up in the finals.

The others are all a matter of choices deciding where to point the camera and figuring out the settings for the image I want. That includes the barn owl photo. I saw it flying towards the barn, tracked it in, changed settings on the fly for the dark interior and kept clicking. The two long exposure film photos of waterfalls had me thinking about where to set the tripod, carefully measuring the light, and setting up the camera.  The sunrise mountain photo was mainly a matter of waiting as more and more of the mountain was exposed to the rising sun. At some point I realized that the neon hotel sign could be part of the composition and I moved to include it. The hard part was getting the exposure right so there was just a hint of the hotel. I'll see that image in print in a few days, and I can't wait to see how it turns out.

One of the questions I ask myself when thinking about which of my images is good and why, is 'Is this image of something, or about the idea of something?' Or as Sean might ask, "Does it have heart?"

Here's the 5 I got down to. All of these made the image of the month podium, which isn't really a surprise. I knew as I was doing the photos that the potential was there, and as soon as I saw the images for the first time I knew they'd be in the running for IotM, and probably for IofY. 

In a way, I guess, even though I'm not saying it, the other two are like an honourable mention. 

2nd Runner Up

I talked about this one here and here. I have to thank whoever made those footprints. 

1st Runner up

It should be no surprise to find I'm fascinated by water flowing over rocks, and trying to resolve the differences between what our eyes see, and what the camera sees. I'd put my camera bag on top of the waist high rock with the idea of using it as a stable place for long exposures. The rock at the bottom of the photo is the next rock over. I ended up climbing on the rock to keep my feet dry, with barely enough space for me and camera gear. I was happily settled in working different compositions and exposure settings when I realized the top of the rock was periodically under water and the tide was coming in. The rocks I had walked on to get here with dry feet were now under water. It was worth getting wet feet. I talked a lot about getting this image here.

Image of 2023

Sean and I were exploring upstream of Elbow Falls to avoid the crowds. I found this little waterfall and spent a long time working the composition by hunching over to squint into the rangefinder to find focus and figure out the settings. This is part of the fun challenge of film, to get everything right before the shutter button is pressed. At the time I wanted to see how the foamy glacier blue water would show up on the Kodak Gold 200 film. I knew I wanted the water colours and shadows to softly blend together and contrast the hard texture of the rocks. There's a bit more about this image here.

Lastly, a plug for the blog. If you want to follow along to see what I get up to next, ask to get on my blog notification list. I won't use it for anything else. Leave your email in a comment here (use Chrome) or send an email to keith@nucleus.com. People on that list sometimes get little extras.

December Image of the Month

Here we are in 2024. But let's put the photographic 2023 to bed first. Yes, I'm actively dithering about 2023 Image of the Year. I'm down to 5.

Other than a race and a community event, December was a pretty quiet photo month for me. I've spent quite a bit of time looking at existing photos, thinking about books, and starting to think about image of the year.

2nd Runner Up

Light trails are normally all about the colour; the splashy red of brake lights, and if you're lucky the flashing lights of an emergency vehicle. I had a few frames left to finish a roll of Acros II 35mm film. This is an interesting situation for film photographers. We simultaneously want to finish the roll so we can see that one photo earlier in the roll, and yet we don't want to waste the film with nothing photos.

Fog or mist is one way of changing the look of a photo. I hadn't had a chance to see how that looks on film, so when I saw a foggy morning I left my coffee and grabbed the camera. I had no idea how light trails would look on black and white film, and the passing vehicles were the obvious subject. I saw the bus coming, but the driver taunted me by stopping for a coffee at the 7-11. I'm really pleased at the subtle tones between light and shadow.

1st Runner Up

A walk in Fish Creek at Mallard Point. The light was nice, and something about this composition just grabbed me. Film is FP4+.

Image of the Month

Linda needed a photo to go with a presentation she was making to her Master Gardener buddies. The light was a bit harsh and I didn't want her looking into the sun. If I'd had an assistant I'd have used the shade thingie to soften the light. Still it was a fun exercise in doing a quick portrait.

Maybe the last post of the year?

I think this is the last blog post of the year, but one never knows these things in advance. Maybe tomorrow I'll wake up with a rant boiling out of me. As I write this I've got two draft posts started, December IotM, and the 2023 IotY. Yes, the dithering has started.

Both of those are looking back sort of posts. This one might be that as well, looking at the 2023 that disappeared in a blur. The project that started the year was digitizing the many negatives that had been living in a box in the basement. You know. The envelop of prints from Blacks with the negatives tucked in the flap. You've probably got one as well. The prints probably scattered to albums and frames. Like the one ad says, a surprise in every handful.

I was surprised that I couldn't reliably date most of them. But it was fun going through, looking at the prints and negatives. Surprisingly often the two things bore no relationship to each other because they had been shuffled around. I suppose if I was really on the ball, or we were famous and I was doing it for a biographer, or we had kids that cared about what their adults were up to in the 'pre-crustacean era' as a the kid of a friend of ours puts it, I'd organize the prints and negatives sequentially, name the people, and add the date. Do not hold your breath waiting for that.

The biggest surprise was discovering a trove of negatives from the late 1940's to early 1960's time frame. I wrote about that here. I've been gradually publishing our old photos in the Of the Day section of my blog.  Several of my readers have been amused/interested at seeing photos of our younger selves.

The biggest project has been the books. Since the summary here, I've sent another book off to the printer. That one isn't for me, it's a commission. My client gave me an extravagant budget, and a really clear description of what they wanted. They supplied several photos to be included, that gave me a sense of the light they were looking for. It was fun going through my photos and thinking about them from another person's perspective. There were any number of photos that both of us think are "good" photos, but they didn't fit the criteria of the light. If Blurb is to be believed, and they've been right on so far, I'll have it Jan 9.

This was a big year for trips and photo events! They include:

• Any number of rambles in various places around Calgary alone or with various friends, carrying various cameras. I could go through Lightroom and develop a detailed list of where and with who, but I'm not going to.
• Vancouver Island in February. We stayed near Sooke, and had a wonderful time exploring the coastline up to Port Renfrew. We have several friends that live in the Comox area, and thought about visiting, but sorry guys, it was a long drive. We'd rather come out and stay in Comox, and get a much better visit in. 
• Mid June day trip out to the Lake Louise area. 
• Sean and I did two separate day trips exploring the Sheep and Elbow Rivers. 
• There was a mid July road trip SE of Calgary that turned into a bit of a steam train chase that was lots of fun. 
• A September trip to Dinosaur Provincial park. 
• A late September trip to Ontario to visit Linda's family and for me to see a cousin in Montreal. (Hi SC!) 
• An October trip to Jasper spread over several days and nights.
• A paid corporate photo session that was lots of fun for all involved.
• Several races for Rose and Richelle.
• Many events for the Community Association. 

There's photos from most of those published on my blogs, and the dates give you some clues for the blog roll, if you really want to see them and somehow missed them along the way. All that added up to just under 20,000 photos so far this year. I don't know if I'll be out enough over the next few days to tick over the counter, but it's not important. I'd rather get a few really good photos, than some arbitrary number of poor ones.

Linda also had any number of projects this year; always on the go with something. This is a happy photo of her that she sent into her Master Gardener's Association. 

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Flower and Film (new)

Plus a serendipity Yukon from 2017.

Film (old)

More of the construction of the front flower bed. I don't know what the orange line is.

A serendipity from 2017 of downtown reflected in the Elbow River.

Another serendipity of the sky. No idea why I took this photo.

No, I'm not ready

I'm never ready for Christmas. It always sneaks up on me and takes me by surprise. And yet it's the 22nd as I write this. We've had a really mild winter, barely worthy of the name. The ice rink crew worked really hard to get the pleasure rink in for the Skate with Santa event the community association puts on. (Those photos are over in the photoblog if you're interested.) But it's well above zero during the day lately, and today is forecast to be double digits. The odds of a white Christmas seem really small. Yes, I barbecued yesterday, and might again today. I didn't even have to wear a jacket.

So if it's Christmas, that means the year is almost done. I'm having a hard time processing that. Maybe it's because I'm enjoying life that it seems to be going by so quickly. What with community association activities, photography, some travel, a semblance of a social life, and regular day to day activities, the days zoom by.

The latest project is two book commissions. I'd known about one of them as a possibility for a while, but we recently nailed down the specifics. The client is providing some images, and I'll be providing a selection of Alberta landscapes. I'm building that one in my head as I write this.

Then there was a surprise commission. It took a few days to build it in my head, but then the images went together quite quickly to come up with a first draft. The client is reviewing over the weekend, and I'll add or subtract images, tune the groups and sequences as indicated, and make a pass through doing the fussy step of making sure all the photos are aligned with each other. 

The selection process for image of 2023 has started. There are 148 images that have 4 or 5 stars, and I'm thinking a few of those ratings will change. There's about 2200 photos with 3 stars to review, meaning I edited them, out of about 19000 photos taken this year. Of course, some of those are photos of old negatives, but I've decided they still count and a few of them are in the running for image of the year.

Maybe what I'll do over next week or two is share some of the 4 and 5 star photos that haven't been blogged for whatever reason, and are probably not in the running for the podium. Sort of an honourable mention, if you will. 

So this one is one of my all time favourite photos of Linda. It's from our film point and shoot camera days, so probably late 80's. This is also the Film (old) Of the Day image.

And a couple tranquil sunrise over the St. Lawrence from the deck at Linda's sister's place, as I waited for ships to emerge from the mist.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

and a downtown night ramble from 2016.

Driftwood (BC)

Flower and Film (new)

Yukon

Plus a NZ driftwood serendipity that sort of reminds me of an octopus.

My 2023 books, or self indulgence writ large

Mostly my photos exist digitally. If you're reading this, you've probably seen many hundreds, perhaps thousands of my photos in passing over the years. Except digitally isn't the best way to display photos. One needs complicated technology to see the photos at all, to say nothing of the problems of finding them. And that's before thinking about storage. Digital photos (data in general, really) live a precarious existence. A hard drive crash or a forgotten password, and they're gone. Yes, I know, backups, cloud technologies, blah blah blah.

I have a few of my photos printed and framed. No technology needed to see them, once you're inside our house. Those will last the remainder of my life, at least. If whoever is cleaning up after me likes them, they could live another generation or two on someone else's wall. The problem is that some of the photos want to exist bigger than a screen, and yearn to take up lots of wall space. That one panorama is 10 feet wide. We do have more wall space, but it is limited. And the bigger problem is money. The printing part is actually quite reasonable, but it's the framing and glass that makes me wince, big time.

For a while I was thinking about getting one of those poster display things, and putting my prints in a sleeve of some kind. Some of you might remember flipping through them in a record store. But those take up space too, and the metal framework is ugly.

Or maybe decide on a maximum size for most prints, get them done, and put them in a box for storage. Except then looking at them is difficult.

Then I started thinking about books. Photo books in particular. Books have been around several hundred years in their current format (cover and sequential pages) and for thousands of years if you consider a scroll to be a book. Books need no technology to be be enjoyed. With a bit of care they can last hundreds of years. There are several books about 100 years old in our library, and even though they were printed on cheap paper that is yellowing, they are still perfectly readable. Whoever is going through our stuff after I'm gone is probably going to trash almost all the books, but a few might catch their eye. (Don't get me started on digital books/movies/songs and digital rights management!)

I've taken lots of photo books out of the library, and have bought a few. I could never get "a book deal" to have my work published in the traditional publishing industry. I'm not famous, and while I like to think my photography is pretty good, once I'm in the book market I'm competing against the very best photographers, some of whom are famous. 

Vanity publishing where I buy a print run of books and try to sell them doesn't appeal to me even a little bit. I'd have better luck trying to give away the early 80's edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica that's living on our basement book shelves. (Anybody? I'll even deliver them anywhere in Calgary. I liked the sign in one used book store, "Don't even THINK about asking us if we take old encyclopedias!) 

But then I started hearing about Blurb books, and how I could insert my photos directly from Lightroom into their book printing process, and get a book delivered for a reasonable price. I somehow stumbled on a video talking about the process of making a book through Blurb and was excited by how easy it looked. The technology actually is pretty easy. I tried the Book module in Lightroom but didn't like the interface. The Book Wright software from Blurb is free and much easier to work with. Other software packages work as well.

The hard part becomes deciding what goes in a book, in what order, with what text. I was paralyzed with indecision at first. Then the video guy said the magic words. Test book. Make the first book a test book, put in a variety of images, and a variety of text fonts in different sizes. Learn the software. Print something, and see how it looks. Scribble your learnings in the book itself.  Nobody but you ever needs to see it. That takes all the pressure off. Have fun with it.

It's not expensive. That first one has some extra pages so I think it was about $30, plus shipping. That's not a big price to pay to find out what your photos look like in print. And yes, they really do look different in print compared to digital. Prices vary by the style of book, the size, the cover options, the kind of paper, and how many extra pages you want. The big layflat books sound expensive if I told you how much one is. How much is that, you ask? I don't expect to ever sell any, but I suppose if there was someone you loved a lot and you knew they'd be interested, it would make a really nice gift. But really, my consideration was the comparison to getting them printed and framed. Doing that could easily be 25 times the price of the book. Even just printing  one of the bigger ones on really nice paper could be the price of the book.

But then, I'm not doing them with the idea of selling them. I do them for me and a small group of friends, though if you still wanted to buy one after recovering from fainting about the price, come talk to me. It might work out with a sale and you'd save a bit of money.

The first book I was thinking about was my "This is 50" project, and it's still a work in progress. But since those were portraits, I thought the first test book ought to be pictures of people, portraits or not. I chose the softcover 8x10 size with standard paper, and started playing. 

The hardest part about the whole thing was coming to grips with the difference between the container size, and the photo size. If the photo is exported in the same aspect ratio as the container, life is good. Except many of mine are cropped to a variety of sizes for a variety of reasons and it's not a problem because they are viewed alone. That leads to problems in print, where images often are in groups, and are considered in relation to one another. This is a new world for me.

I like to be able to sleep on a book, then review and revise. This process can repeat a great many times if you let it. If a book is ready to go, then it's easy when a sale comes along. A final review then press the publish button. It's harder when you have several book ideas milling around, and then you find out there is a sale with a short window. That's stressful.

So here's the books done in 2023. I was thinking about one more, but couldn't quite come to grips with it, and rather than stress about it, decided to let it ferment for a while yet. After all, there will likely be another version of this for the 2024 books. Doing this is fun.

Clockwise from top left. 

1- My first book, portraits of various people, various times, various events. Some posed, some not. I was thrilled when I unwrapped the book!

2- A book of digitized film photos from the late 80's to mid 90's featuring Linda's mom and family. I got a deal there, and printed enough for her sisters and aunts. One of the sisters broke down in tears looking  through it. 

3- A hard cover test book of Alberta landscapes for a private client. 

4- A book of photos of Michelle in honour of our 10 year friend-aversary. I cannot say enough about what her patience and willingness to pose has done for me as a photographer.

5- A book of photos of Linda's family during an impromptu family reunion, at least one of which is still in transit.

The three big layflat books showing how thick they are.

The first big layflat. I knew some of the photos wanted to be big, and I was channeling an old work buddy who's rule for life was 'go big or go home.' The question, "what is the narrative" or "what story are the photos telling" was easy in this case. I knew I wanted to open the book with the bridge at the start of the Dempster highway, and finish with the same bridge at the end of the trip. The middle was the Arctic Circle. This is the second edition because a person I consult professionally wanted to buy it for their waiting room. That copy, right then, emailed cash, please and thank you. I tweaked a thing I had noticed and got another for myself. I can't remember if my mom got the first or second edition. You can see the first 15 pages as a preview here. 

There is no narrative here. Just beach photos for me to look at during winter here. If I had the opportunity, I'm pretty sure I could sell almost everything here, move to NZ and become a photo beach bum. I have sometimes wondered what would happen if I overstayed my visa, going from beach to beach, keeping a low profile. Bicycle from beach to beach, sleep in a ditch along the way. How long before they found me? Would they jail me or deport me? You can see the first 15 pages as a preview here. 

I'd been musing about the next book, with several possibilities milling around in my brain. Then Blurb  offered a huge discount, and I couldn't say no. I wanted to see more of the Yukon photos in print, so I splurged and put in lots of extra pages. By the time I finished the discount itself was $160! I'm told one reader was drooling as she looked over the photos. That makes me happy. I haven't set this one up for selling yet, so there is no preview. The only way to see it is visit me, or find my mom and sweet talk her into letting you look at her copy.

I was thinking about another book for another year end sale. Sort of the top of the list was a book oriented to the film photos I've done in the last year or so. The problem of narrative is a big one for this. Is it a story of me learning to use film? Some of the first photos are dreadful. Plus, one of the things with photography is that it doesn't matter what brand of camera or lens was used to capture the image. Most people don't even notice if it was film or digital, and even fewer care. So is there any point of a book of film images just because they're film? Hmmmm.

The bookshelf above my computer, from left to right. The magazines are the community association newsletters, starting March 2018 when I became their "official photographer." Most of the covers are my photos. It's sometimes handy to look back and see what I've done for previous covers for a particular month. 

Next is the current photo notebook. I try to stay on top of the rambles with a camera, with varying success. The small books, then the big books in the lovely presentation box. The old photo notebook. The two calendar books we used to keep track of stuff in New Zealand. So if someone was desperate to know which beach a particular photo was from, I could probably tell them. Camera manuals. 

Then purchased commercial books, starting with macro technique ideas I want to try this winter. My buddy Neil Zeller's COVID portraits book, which is full of posing ideas, though it wasn't intended that way. Helmut Hirler's New Zealand book was the most expensive I'd bought till my own layflat books came along. Peter Turnley's COVID portraits. The one on top is unused, and I'm thinking about starting it for medium format film project photos in particular. There are ideas milling around in my head.

Of the Day

Driftwood (NZ)

Driftwood (BC)

Flower and Film (new) (Kodak Gold 200. I'm not so sure I like how the dark red of the peonies turned out.)

Yukon More empty tundra.

Film (old)

Linda and her mom during the Ottawa tulip festival.