For Janice

I was asked about my strong feelings about the Olympics. That was one of my very first rants, almost exactly 8 years ago. In that time I haven't seen much reason to change my mind. Yes, call me a curmudgeon if you feel that it's right. I envy the athletes their hard won abilities and skills, but this display of their prowess is obsolete, and should be consigned to the history bin.

Calgary's games are estimated to cost 4.6 Billion dollars. Money we don't have. The odds of making money on the games are trivial. It's not quite fair to play the 'what could we spend the money on if it wasn't on the Olympics?' game, when we probably wouldn't have the money anyways. None the less, it would be another substantial chunk of the Green LRT line, and is about what we are spending on the SW portion of the ring road. One might argue if either of those projects is absolutely the best value we could have had for big dollars, but we know they will be used daily by many people for at least the next several decades, maybe more.

The economists are arguing about what the return is for that money. Mostly I think they end up with whatever opinion the people who are paying them want. Not that they're corrupt, oh no! They just deem certain things to be externalities, and not relevant to the calculation, and so it gets 'overlooked'. They are happy to argue with anyone about it, and will do so until you give up.

To happier topics. Whenever I see local water, I think of my Nova Scotia buddies Janice and Janet. They are close to some of the loveliest beaches and seafront in all of Canada. And a killer good bakery, let's not forget that. But we have nice bakeries here too, and I'd be happy to take them on a tour.

But we don't have nice seafront. Not even close. We have some private lakes that have small private beaches. The closest Calgary comes to a public beach, other than Sikome pond, is some of the gravel bars on the Bow River, the Elbow, and Fish Creek. In the winter, today for example, they look like this.

This is bridge 15 in Fish Creek, at the very north east end of the park. In nice weather it would take me 45 minutes to ride my bike through the park to this bridge from my place. A little further along there are footprints out onto the that big white flat space, that's why I'm pretty sure it's a gravel bar. I don't think anyone would be stupid enough to walk on it if it were ice. I'd like to think that.

So there we were, driving along

When all of a sudden...

Except I don't like that all of a sudden thing. For a while I was in a job where I had to read incident reports and plug them into a database. While I didn't have formal root cause analysis training, the essence of it is to keep asking why something happened, and why the events leading up to that happened, and you keep doing that at least 5 times. One investigator said the major clue for him was the word "suddenly". It meant that the poor sod involved had not been paying attention to the task at hand, and it got away from them. So then you have to think about why their attention was drifting.

It's almost never just one thing anymore. Our world is sufficiently complex that people have already built systems and mechanisms to cope with a thing going wrong. Think about all the safety interlocks on power tools, for example. In modern cars you can't put it in gear unless your foot is on the brake. There are many examples, but there is an old saying in the auto industry; "the most dangerous part is the nut behind the wheel." Great article here, btw.

So there we were, driving along, looking for nice landscapes. We found some, but we also found something else. It's been snowing a lot here lately, and one of the side effects is people demonstrating their incompetence at driving a motor vehicle. They had to close Deerfoot Trail a week ago because of the number of collision. A few days after that Stoney trail was closed because about 40 cars were involved in a pile up. We saw several cars sitting forlornly in the ditch, awaiting the tow truck. Some mangled, some not.

Now, keep in mind that we don't build roads slap-dash make it up as we go along. It's not like you drive along and there is a 90 degree curve cambered the wrong way. Modern roads are highly engineered, with standards that describe exactly how to build them to be safe. There are fleets of equipment and people to maintain the roads. Yes, weather happens. But it rarely happens "suddenly." Weather forecasting is remarkably accurate in the short term. It's not like winter driving conditions are a surprise to anyone in much of Canada. We know it could be slippery. The first thing that gets said on the news and weather after an announcement of snow, is to take your time and leave lots of space between you and the car in front.

And yet, what I said about the nut behind the wheel? Yeah. Don't get me started.

We were headed to Red Deer via a scenic route, and while the light wasn't the best, it was pretty darned good. I got a number of photos that I'm pleased with, in a white on white austere sort of way, but some nice mountainous landscapes as well, especially once I removed the power lines. I couldn't believe how much better they were with the lines gone. Here's a few of them, all shot quite closely together.

Here is Sean hard at work having discovered a photogenic little shed. I was mainly looking at the mountains, but visited the shed later.

The mountains are a bit of a tricky subject, trying to get nice light on them, and making them look their real size. All too often in photos they are a bumpy line across the middle of the photo.

I mentioned earlier I liked the play of the sun and shadows on snow.

Here's the shed. I was quite enchanted by this scene, with the texture in the snow, and how the wood is weathered, and the shadows.

In other news, I'm not missing Facebook at all. I read somewhere a stat that world wide, there was umpteen bazillion person-hours/days/weeks/whatever of useful human time wasted on Facebook on an hourly basis. Some of those interactions are perfectly nice, such as families and friends staying in touch. Some of them are like my buddy Jayne, who shares things I find interesting, and is likely to be the thing I miss most. There are several photo-related groups I enjoy.

There are cat videos, of course, which provide amusement and comic relief for brutal lives, but one need not get them through Facebook. Then it quickly slides into shite, advertising, trolls posting hateful and stupid crap, those damned stupid which bucket will fill first quizzes, copy and share if you x, and all sorts of other annoying stuff like the Olympics. That was the particular trigger for this vacation, and it also means I'm skipping my usual news sources; they are all polluted just now. Don't even get me started on the Facebook games, but I've trained my system to ignore the very mention of them. I can feel my blood pressure going up just writing about it. Enough.

My solution for whenever I feel tempted to check Facebook, is to think of what else I could be doing at any random moment at home. Those things include:

• Getting back to work on my novels.
• Capturing more photos.
• Editing those photos.
• Writing blog.
• Reading the current book on the go, which happens to be Leviathan Awakes, by James S. A. Corry, which is the first book in The Expanse series. Loving it so far.
• Going for a walk, or a run if the footing is good, or doing some core/stretching/spin workout.
• Cat cuddling/combing/affection.
• A nap. Naps are good. People don't do enough naps, and I might try to bring up the average.

First time for a second try

Generally I don't have much trouble deciding how to crop my photos, if I do it at all. One reason to crop is that what you see in the viewfinder or on the camera LCD screen isn't quite what you see on the computer screen when editing the photo. There might be a tree branch poking in, or a part of a building you don't want, or you want to fix the proportions to better suit the photo. Sometimes on macro shots it's a way of zooming in even more, and I generally try not to do that.

The other thing I generally don't do is obsess about my work. I do what seems right to me at the time and move on. I don't fuss with the settings much because if the only place it will be seen is on the blog, you won't see the difference. If it's one of my better photos, one I might print, or where the settings matter, I'll work on those more.

Still, I'm trying to learn. The other day I put up some night shots taken during a short walk during a snowfall. I'm referring specifically to the second last photo, the one of the sidewalk. When two photographers I respect suggest that I had too much tree on the left, and that a tighter cropping would suit it better, I took another look at it.

They were right, though it took a bit of playing to find a crop I liked. I'm not convinced this on is perfect, with the amount of truck showing on the right, but it's balanced a bit with the truck on the left. Plus if I crop too much, the tree starts looking like a funny dividing line. Anyways, here's the revised photo.

Today was a lovely photo shoot with my buddy Sean, taking the scenic route to Red Deer for me to pick up wine kits. I've got about 2 dozen photos worth another look, and I hope to get a few nice ones out of it. At the very least I learned a new Lightroom trick that fixed one of the photos. (Power lines be gone!)

In other news, I've decided to take a break from social media. Which I suppose blogging is, but I'm not counting that. What I'm talking about is Facebook and Instagram. I'm not going to look at either for the rest of February. You'll still see my "Blogged" notices come up, but I can do them from Blogger, so I'm not counting that either. But I'm not going to notice likes, or comments or whatever else facebook might come up with. I'm going old school. Comments on the blog, email, or texts.

I'm going to try to do something useful with that time.

Susi's measurements: 122+-69-60

I was chatting with my buddy Susi last night, and while she knew it had been snowing here, wanted to know how much. She's an engineer, and wanted measurements. This is a lot of snow for Calgary, but at least it's a dry powdery snow that shovels easily, though it doesn't pile up so well. My neighbour's idiot shovelling service insists on piling it up on top, and lots of it comes down on my side, like where the level is in the second last photo.

This level is 1.22 m long.  This is beside the driveway on the lawn, and I'm pretty sure it's not jammed all the way down to the grass. It's been piled up a bit, but the major pile is further back. I can't reach that far.

This is down at the bottom of the driveway. I'd lose the level if I jammed it in at the top, if I could reach the top. This is just stuck into the overflow, and I tried to shoot the camera level. It's maybe 1.3 or 1.4 m deep. If the neighbourhood kids try to play king of the castle on top of it, I'll totally be that grumpy old geezer running out of the house shouting, "Hey you kids get off my pile of snow!"

This is on the front lawn, and has very little shovelled on. I try to push the snow a bit further along and cover up the south end of the side flowerbed. That's probably a metre deep.

Much of the lawn is a similar depth.

And it's still snowing hard. The driving will be major league crappy today. Retired life is wonderful on days like this. I'm sorry, does that sound like gloating?

This is what my morning has been, in between shovelling. Life is good, snow and all. Maybe I'll go photo snowshoeing a bit later.

Mostly we stand at the top

Every photographer in Calgary knows these stairs.

Some of the iconic shots of the downtown skyline are to be had from up there, for some distance either way from the stairs. Any random evening you'll some of the photographer community up there, especially when the light is promising. Many of the runners in Calgary know these stairs too. They, and the sloped path up the hill are a fixture in the running community. There is a reason runners mutter "hills are speed work in disguise." Or maybe they're swearing.

One morning as I was shooting sunrise, I was watching some of the runners. Up, down, up, down. I think I've run the path, but I don't recall running the stairs. Then again, there are documented cases where my memory is faulty.

The most extreme example of running the stairs is better termed hopping. A female rugby team was training by hopping up the stairs. At each landing they'd switch legs. I was impressed. I'm breathing pretty hard at the top of the stairs, and that's taking my time.

I was downtown having coffee with a buddy, and delivering a hand made hat for another buddy, plus looking for photos. This was the first time I'd actually looked at the stairs and the hillside as a scene. One of the many suggestions for photographers is to be looking in the other direction from what is assumed to be the main attraction. I've often seen that with sunrises and sunsets. I took some shots of the buildings, but the light was nothing special.

Here's two shots that haven't made it into the blog for whatever reason. Linda thinks the first is a lemon meringue pie, and has no idea about the second. You?

I'm not sure how I overlooked this one. Lately I've been liking the shadows on snow thing. No shortage of those.

A sunrise to lure you in.

It's still winter in Calgary. Really winter. Cold, snow, the whole works. At least we get nice sunrises. This is from a few days ago. I'm told that today's was nice too, but I was still in the pool.

Now that you're here, lured in, (Linda is laughing!) here's winter at night. We've been getting lots of snow. I was all set to shovel, when I was struck by the pattern of tracks in the snow, and a bit of house light reflecting off the snow.

This is the tail end of lots more snow. I shovelled first, as it was tapering, then still liked the snow against the streetlights. Yes, I'm standing in the middle of the road for this shot. I was thinking of trying to get the brake lights as the cars go around the curve, but the first several drivers didn't cooperate, and I wasn't inclined to stand there all night. The snow is light and fine, and swirls like dust.

Maybe it's the green lighting around the tennis courts and ice rink, but this shot makes me think of Christmas.

This shot amazes me. I stood there a moment in real life, liking the darkness of the shadows and the light from the streetlight, and the nice colour of the sky. I took the shot figuring lets see if the camera captures the magic of the sidewalk. Call me surprised. Maybe you had to be there, but this totally draws me in. You?

One of the roses, struggling to keep branches above the snow. I think it's completely buried now.

Macro Monday 20: a study in amber

Today is another paperweight, this time with amber swirls and lots of air bubbles in it.

This is really a mass of bubbles, but it sort of looks like some primordial creature leaping up from the ooze.

Re-entry in amber! I've got this lighted up with a red laser pointer.

 Here's what it looks like in real life during the shoot. Much of the time I had the camera lens right up against the glass. There is quite a bit of distance between the surface of the clear glass, and the swirl of amber glass. The camera doesn't really see the clear glass and so about 4 x mag without extension tubes was about the most I could get.