Gorgeous out there

Rita Eberle-Wessner (Flickr photostream)

I didn't take this picture, Rita Eberle-Wessner in Germany did. I have linked to her Flickr photostream, where I found this lovely shot. It's caused me to revisit and linger over it enough times that I felt moved to share it with my friends here. Although I tried (and failed) to find out where to contact her for permission, I am hoping that this will suffice. Isn't it a beautiful picture? It makes me almost (almost!) want to upgrade my iPhone camera for one like hers. This was taken with a Canon EOS Mark IV, which costs many thousands of dollars, enough to cause me to quickly reconsider.

However, if you would like a feast for your eyes, take a look at her photostream. The pictures require not only an expensive camera, but also a great eye for beauty, which Rita definitely has. I am also a Flickr Pro member, but I hardly ever put up new pictures, not being particularly interested in photography for its own sake. I just want to revisit the scenes that evoke peace and tranquility, and others, like Rita, do it so much better than I.

Somehow, my days pass quickly by and are over before I notice, and therefore I am relegated to spending my time doing whatever catches my fancy. But I do try very hard to keep myself to the schedule I've set of three blog posts a week. This is my Tuesday offering, and since I didn't actually take any wonderful shots of my own, I figured I'd go back to visit Rita's photostream. And just like that, another morning went by without my permission! Time flies when you're having fun, right?

:-)

There's a fungi for you

Taken on a winter hike somewhere near Mt Erie

My friend Deb Shuka has challenged me to put up a nature picture on Facebook each day this week, part of someone else's challenge to her, and I agreed to do it. This got me going back through pictures taken in years past, and when I saw this one, I was really surprised. I'd stopped taking pictures of fungi because I thought I had never gotten a good one. Somehow this one didn't measure up before, but today I am thrilled to have found it.

I've also learned that my old Canon PowerShot that was stolen from me four years ago took some really good pictures, like this one and the one below. And I was reminded once again that the iPhone 6 might take good pictures, but it doesn't have salient features like a real zoom. I suppose I could check out add-ons that might give me that ability, but I'll probably just start carrying my camera along in my backpack so that I can take advantage of other options.

Mt Rainier captured from the top of Mt Erie

When I took this picture, I was standing atop Mt. Erie, the highest point on Fidalgo Island, where you can see Mt Rainier on a clear day, or on a day like this one. But I had to use my telephoto all the way out to make it look bigger than a teeny little mound, since it's more than a hundred miles away (118 to be exact). It's been fun going back and perusing my old pictures, and I realize that there is a real benefit to keeping these pictures handy.

So this little exercise that Deb challenged me to has got me all excited about photography again. Maybe I might find a little camera that does it all. Technology changes all the time, and I don't usually have any reason to keep up. It's Christmas, after all, and there are likely to be some deals out there. Right?
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We got a little rain

The sunrise yesterday morning

We were all excited around here yesterday, when we finally got a forecast of rain. After so many days (weeks, months) of dry weather, nobody minded much. When I opened the front door, right at sunrise, I saw the above scene. Although the sky was cloudy, there was a small opening between the clouds, and within a minute or two after this picture was taken, it was dark again. This was one of the first pictures I've taken with my camera lately, because I needed to use the zoom and my cellphone was not going to capture this. Maybe I should carry the camera around with me; who knows when another wonderful shot like this one might be missed?

Anyway, we only received a bit more than a tenth of an inch of rain here in Bellingham, although it was cloudy all day and spit some rain now and then. Only once all day did it really rain, and that was when I was getting ready to head out to the movies with my friend Judy. We saw Tangerine, an art type movie filmed completely on the iPhone5s. It has gotten great reviews and is billed as a comedy, but it's not. It's about the rather tragic lives of transgender women of color, pimps and prostitution. That is not to say I'm sorry I saw the movie, but it definitely left me feeling sad for these people I ended up liking and caring about. Afterwards, I read several articles on the internet about the dangerous and precarious lives of these women.

Today or tomorrow we'll go see Ricki and the Flash with Meryl Streep. Although the reviews are not good for this one, I suspect I'll leave the theater with a smile. After all, who can resist thinking of Meryl as a rock star guitarist? Her real-life daughter also stars in the movie. Now I'm off to the library to pick up some books I put on hold. They always seem to show up at the same time.
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One movie review and some pictures

John's new bionic knees

I went up to see John in the nursing home on Sunday and took this picture of his knees. Friday those stitches will come out, but he's already able to walk around with help from his walker, and for quite a distance, too. So I'm hopeful he'll be out of that place soon. He said he thought it could be up to six weeks in there, but I don't think it will take that long. He's doing really well.

Plus, I don't know about you, but hanging out in a nursing home is not good for one's mental health, if you ask me. He seems to have plenty of help, and he's also getting two physical therapy sessions a day, so there are good things about it. But frankly, I can hardly wait to get out of there, and I'm only visiting. It's something about the looks on the inmates' faces: blank and hopeless. I could never volunteer in a place like that, or I would be depressed in no time at all.

Yesterday Judy and I went to see Unbroken at the theater, and I now understand why the reviews are mixed. Although it is a wonderfully well-made movie, it focuses on the time spent at sea (47 days) before he and another guy were "rescued" by the Japanese. And then it goes into the time he spent as a prisoner of war, with plenty of brutality by one guard in particular. The part of Lou Zamperini is played by Jack O'Connell, someone I had never seen before. He was great, but the guy who played the prison guard (Miyavi) was simply incredible. But if you read the book and wanted to see how he turned his life around after the war ended, it is summed up by a short picture at the end. The movie is good, but it could have been spectacular. I would give it a B. But go, see it and let me know what YOU think of it.

I just spent a couple of hours getting my Trailblazer pictures for 2014 up on my Flickr site. I haven't been doing it quarterly, like I did for so long before, because frankly, my pictures are just not as good as they used to be. You can find them here, if you want to see the 40 pictures I chose from all the ones I took during the year. I figure my fellow Trailblazers will go there to see if there are any really good ones (or really bad ones) of themselves. Anyway, I'm finally caught up to date!
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My October present

This morning from the fourth floor of the YMCA

Well, yesterday evening about 7:00pm, the UPS truck FINALLY rolled into the parking lot and the delivery man brought my much-anticipated package: my new iPad Air 2. I took it out and admired it for awhile before turning it on. The first thing I did was to activate the Touch ID feature, by taking an imprint of my thumb so I can turn it on without having to enter the four-digit passcode. This is such a cool feature and it seems to work well even with my aged thumbprint. It will take up to five different fingers, so I'll probably also enter my first finger, just in case I cut my thumb or do something that will make it hard to read.

On Tuesdays, I don't spend much time at the coffee shop first thing in the morning, since I have a class at 8:00am and another at 9:00am right afterwards. I did take the time to connect my new iPad to the free wifi before heading off. I went into my class and took the picture above with the iPad camera, using the "pinch out" method to focus on what I wanted to capture, a little like a zoom lens. It's taken through the window on the fourth floor of the Y. In comparing it with the picture from my last post, there's not much difference to be seen in quality, partly because I must always save these in lower resolution for the web. But I was pleased.

I took a picture of my MacBook Air (isn't it totally appropriate that all my favorite gadgets have the word "air" in them?) while I was sitting in the recliner, and it shows my wallpaper picture, which was taken with my regular camera, very well, don't you think?

The screen picture is of Whatcom Falls last month

There is so much to learn, and I need to figure out the best way to use all the fancy features that I now have available to me. The speed is much faster, and once I plugged my new iPad into my Mac and restored all apps and pictures that I had on my old one, it seems like the only thing that has changed is that I've not a lighter, faster, prettier iPad to play with! I feel like a kid at Christmas who got just what she wanted.
:-)

What an aurora

From Astronomy Picture of the Day

Part of my morning routine is to read my blogging friends' latest posts, make a quick check of the news of the day, read a few of my favorite comics, and check out the Astronomy Picture of the Day. This is today's picture, and I was simply amazed when I looked at it. I've never before even seen a picture of an auroral corona. Taken last month in Norway by Harald Albrigtsen, the page gives more information about it:

Somewhat uncommon, an auroral corona appears as a center point for a surrounding display and may occur when an aurora develops directly overhead, or when auroral rays are pointed nearly toward the observer. This picturesque but brief green and purple aurora exhibition occurred last month high above Kvaløya, Tromsø, Norway. The Sessøyfjorden fjord runs through the foreground, while numerous stars are visible far in the distance.

Wow! It's such a beautiful picture I figured I'd share it with you, along with perhaps get you in the habit of looking at some fabulous part of our universe each morning. I am always bedazzled by spiral galaxies, mostly, but this... just wow!
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The art of photography

Unfurling fern

On Sunday, I went to see a documentary at our local independent theater about Vivian Maier. She was an unknown street photographer who lived and worked in Chicago as a nanny and died in 2009 at the age of 83, penniless. She was a prolific photographer, but she never showed anybody her pictures. When she died, several storage lockers of her stuff were about to be destroyed, when John Maloof, a Chicago historian and collector, purchased them. Earlier, he had discovered a trunk filled with her photographs and hoped that the contents of the lockers would lead to some information about her.

The documentary tells the tale of the curious person that Vivian was. She is now internationally known as a talented street photographer, and exhibitions of her work are currently in high demand. I can see why: if you visit that link, you'll see some of the amazing pictures she took. There were also thousands upon thousands of undeveloped film canisters in those boxes, which are still being developed and archived.

I didn't actually realize, until I saw this documentary, that "street photography" is such an art form. I love to take pictures myself, looking for the perfect unfurling fern or landscape as I travel in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. I tend to add people to my pictures only for interest, but not to document them in the way that she did. And I'm learning that having a really good camera can make a huge difference in the quality of a picture. If I had one, I could have changed the depth of field for that fern picture and made it stand out against a fuzzy background. Some of my fellow bloggers, (The Smitten Image, for one) take such breathtaking pictures that I've recently become interested in photography in a new way.

I can feel a possible new passion burgeoning: photography. Not that I haven't always enjoyed taking pictures, but if I had just the right camera, why, who knows where it might lead? I'm interested in taking a peek down that garden path... and seeing if I can capture it perfectly.
:-)

Tulip Festival 2014

RoozenGaarde display

Every year since I first moved here, my friend Judy and I have gone to the Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley together. This year, however, she's traveling and was unable to go with me. I planned to go on Monday, but since it was such a beautiful day this past Sunday, I decided to drive down there myself. It was also Palm Sunday, and I figured if I started early, maybe lots of people would be in church. No such luck.

Don't they look like fireworks?

The traffic was horrendous. For more than a mile before I arrived at the RoozenGaarde display, I was in a long line creeping to the gardens. I was pleased, once I got there, to see that there would be plenty of parking for all of us, provided free, which was nice. However, it cost $5 to enter the gardens, but it was sure worth it. The clear blue skies allowed me to take wonderful pictures, and the shadows of the trees gave me some wonderful light play.

It was difficult to get pictures without people in them, but in some cases they didn't detract. I heard what seemed to be dozens of different languages from passersby, and everyone was in a very good mood, me included. I found that I got the best photos by letting the strong sunlight illuminate the flowers.

These fields stretched out for miles

I then left the gardens and walked across the street to the amazing fields of flowers, tulips as far as the eye could see. They were right at their peak on Sunday, and I had a hard time trying to decide which pictures to post.

Lots and lots of people

This photo shows you how many people were visiting these gardens on Sunday. I also noticed that the red tulips, when the light catches them, were so brilliant they seemed to be on fire.  After about an hour of walking all over the place and taking more than fifty pictures, I got in my car and headed home. It was a wonderful way to spend Sunday morning.

Me amongst the tulips

A nice woman saw me taking pictures and asked if I'd like one of me, and I was very pleased with this one. I am very fortunate to live in such a place. Before I moved to the Pacific Northwest, I had never heard of anything like this outside of Holland. This festival continues through April, but you'd better hurry if you want to see them like this!
:-)

Thanks to the Internet

Hadas Yaron in Fill the Void

I was just minding my own business this morning when I read a couple of things in my e-mailbox that changed the course of my day. I subscribe to the Pickford independent theater here in Bellingham, and they sent me a plea to go and see a movie that is playing at the Limelight (their old venue) that will be here through Thursday and then gone forever. Only a few people have shown up to see it every day, and the information they sent me about the movie made me decide to go and see it myself this afternoon, alone.

It's a new movie made in Israel that is set in the world of the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Tel Aviv: Fill the Void. The writer and director, Rama Burshtein, is herself a member of this community, and she transported me into this world that is so foreign to my own. But while I was there, I identified with the young protagonist, 18-year-old Shira played by Hadas Yaron, and wanted only the best for her. By the end of the movie, I wasn't sure that what finally played out was right, but I walked out of the theater happy that I had seen it. And glad that I don't live in a community like that! See it if you get a chance, though; you won't be sorry. It's beautifully written and produced.

I try not to get too caught up in Facebook, but since so many of my friends post there on almost a daily basis, I check the news feed once a day or so to make sure I'm not missing anything important in the lives of my distant friends and family. One of the women I worked with at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder put up a link to the 2013 National Geographic Photo Contest, and I was mesmerized by the fantastic pictures displayed there. The link will take you to the site on The Atlantic. Just scroll down to see dozens of fantastic pictures.

And of course the other major event of the day was the birth of the latest royal, Kate and William's baby boy! I wasn't one of those watching every minute, but I was so pleased when I heard that the baby had been born. A new possible King. What a great day, huh?
:-)

A little this and that

There's Al, where did he go?

Diane took the first picture of me with my camera and I thought it was wonderful, until I discovered that Al was behind me taking pictures. Although it wasn't a huge thing, I have a program I bought for the Mac called Pixelmator, which gives me the ability to edit pictures. I think it was Al who told me about it. Having become accustomed to the magic of PhotoShop when I was working, which is very expensive, I was dubious about how a program that costs less than a fraction of the cost of PhotoShop might work, but I bought it anyhow. I used the clone tool to pick up a bit of the brush in the foreground and simply painted it over Al.

I suspect if you are really proficient at PhotoShop, this might look amateurish to you, but I was quite impressed with the result, since I was never very good at photo manipulation while using Photoshop during my working days. You be the judge.

Today I spent the entire day at the Drop Zone at Skydive Snohomish making four skydives with my friend Linny and others and packing up my parachute after each one. I came home at 6:00pm with my ass a-draggin' and I'm supposed to be raring to go in the morning, to head to the High Country with my Trailblazer buddies. After a good night's sleep I might be fine, but right now I feel like heading to bed and taking it easy tomorrow. However, I'm worried my friends might have a good time without me.  I just can't allow that to happen, so I'll be there.

The 4-page Owner's Manual

Some of you asked what in heaven's name could be in the Owner's Manual for the Tilley Hat, so I put a picture of it here. It's mostly about how to fit it, that they will replace it if you wear it out, and how to take care of it. Tomorrow the hat will be used again in full sun, along with my strap-on YakTrax to give my boots traction in the snow. Not sure where we are going exactly, but I'll be there, hoping for more fun in the sun!
:-)

Back to my regular schedule

Flag at Ski to Sea finish line

There's something a little annoying about holidays when you're retired. That's the way it's been for me, at least. I follow a weekly schedule that I enjoy, but when a holiday for the still-working crowd comes up, like Memorial Day, I am a little bit at a loss. No buses, no gym, no library; everything is closed down so others can take a much-deserved break.

Saturday I worked in the burgeoning garden, and Sunday I went to check out the Ski to Sea finish line festivities. The 90-some-mile relay race went almost as planned, with no rain but plenty of wind. The race officials shortened the final section, kayaking, by a few miles and kept all the participants hugging the shore instead of going around buoys in the open water. The waves were less of a problem that way. I missed the first finishers but saw a few of the kayakers coming into Marine Park on their way to ring the bell at the end.

Here comes the 11th place finisher (out of 500!) up the final chute. He's supposed to ring one of those bells signaling the official finish time for his team. Last year I entered the Beer Garden and enjoyed a beer after watching the finishers for awhile, but Sunday was cool and breezy, making a beer sound much less enticing. The entire downtown Fairhaven area was wall-to-wall people, with a street fair, vendors, teams and spectators celebrating the event. I paid $3 to ride a shuttle from downtown Bellingham so I wouldn't need to drive, although I did find the city buses were indeed running and I could have used my bus pass to get to Fairhaven. This is a big event in Bellingham, and other than a glitch in one of the relays (the timer's battery was dead), everything went as planned.

For me, it was interesting to be a spectator, and it gave me something to do with the day. I have been a bit at odds without being able to follow my old routine. There is no doubt about it: I am a bit set in my ways. I enjoy my normal schedule, since it is MY schedule designed for ME. When I was working, that wasn't the case. How well I remember those days I looked forward to a holiday when I could do something interesting outside the confines of my office. Yesterday, Memorial Day, was spent quietly at home remembering my own departed ones and finishing up a good book.

This swallow was busy coming and going from feeding what must be her babies inside the nesting box. One of the pastimes I enjoy very much is taking pictures, although I go back and forth between wanting an expensive camera with cool photographic capabilities and the point-and-shoot I have now. The picture above was taken with the 12x optical zoom on my PowerShot all the way out. The following picture, taken by Joe Meche and distributed on the Whatcom Birders list, always makes me consider getting into photography a little more deeply.

Bewick's Wren, 15 May 12 by Joe Meche

Definitely a difference in quality. And expense, not to mention time spent out in the park with a tripod and binoculars. Becoming a real birdwatcher and photographer would take up quite a bit of time and energy... and might be just the thing to do with myself on holidays. I'll give that some more thought!
:-)

Another photo safari

Yesterday morning on our walk twice around Lake Padden, the lake was as still as I've ever seen it. (Don't forget that you can enlarge these pictures to get the full effect.) And you can see that it wasn't raining, although it rained all the previous night and started up again just as we finished our walk. Whatever the reason that I've been so fortunate to be catching only a few raindrops, I'll take it! You can also see that there is no sunshine, but I'm used to that. One person was grumbling about the fact that it was the last day of March and here we were, all bundled up, hats and gloves and rain gear, with no end to the gloomy weather in sight.

Towards the end of our walk, we spied this cute little face that someone had created (affixing the eyes above the "nose"), and we added a bit of hair to complete the whimsical creature that will cause a few people who walk around the lake to smile, I'm sure. You had to be looking up at just the right moment to see it; we missed it the first time around. A few of us decided to head to the Avenue Bread coffee shop in Fairhaven to warm up a bit after the walk, and we had to walk around this determined but very lovely dog who wouldn't take his eyes off the door.

I learned from a nearby patron that the dog (and his owner) are regulars at the coffee shop. This is a familiar scene to many Fairhaven coffee drinkers. He's awfully pretty, too. (He might be a she, I didn't actually take note, but the devotion is unmistakeable.) And, of course I have to add in the photo safari a picture taken at MY local coffee shop (Avellino's in downtown Bellingham) of Leo and his dad Robert. It's interesting to see that their expression is exactly the same; only a few decades separate one from the other.

When Leo looks at pictures of himself, he tells me the story of each t-shirt he's wearing. I am always happy to get to spend time with him, since our visits are now interrupted by preschool. Dad brings him most mornings to the coffee shop to give Mom a break and for Leo to have breakfast. His current project is to move away from diapers. Now that he is in preschool it's not much fun (according to Leo) to wear them and he's anxious to be a big boy now.

Last week when I began these photo safaris, I was surprised by how many of my readers seem to enjoy them as much as I do, so it might become a weekly or biweekly event. I took this picture last Thursday and I couldn't work it into my post about the hike. It was so nice to hear the crashing of the waves on the beach as we walked close by; we planned to walk along the beach on the way back, but it was raining too hard by then to be very inviting.

I was a little morose this morning as I wrote my morning's blog post for Eye on the Edge, so this post gives me a chance to be more upbeat, talking about my pictures and my beautiful home town. It's true that I do get a little depressed by current events, but the beauty that surrounds me is always uplifting. One person sent me a private email and relayed to me that she wakes up and names five things to be thankful for. I think it's a great idea and if I had done that, my post would have taken on a much different flavor. I'll start tomorrow morning, right when I wake up. Thank you, PK!
:-)

A photo safari

When I was working, my boss would often suggest we go on a "photo safari" after the day's work, in order to capture the feelings and culture of the exotic places where we traveled. I went on my own photo safari not long ago to capture the same thing here in the Pacific Northwest. I walked out the door last week to catch the bus, sun coming up, and I saw this lovely heart that the flickers had created out of suet. It was a quick capture; now the right-hand side of the heart has been consumed. But here we go on a journey of exploration!

Sitting in the back of Al's car on our way to hike the British Army Trail, I saw Lake Samish through the window and thought perhaps I might be able to capture a bit of the feeling of the day. The car was on the highway, moving at a normal speed, but the raindrops on the window stood still. Although we arrived in the rain, it stopped just in time for us to enjoy an almost rain-free trek.

At the coffee shop (Avellino's) that I frequent before heading to my exercise class, I observed little Leo playing with a slinky. I don't get to see him nearly as often as I once did, since he is now in preschool several days a week. Instead of asking me to read to him these days, he asks me to pull out my iPad and he scrolls through either mountain pictures or flower pictures. He doesn't need me to show him how to work it. He is also at the age (three) where he can either play quietly like this or be a little terror when he doesn't get his way.

Also at Avellino's, I spied my fisherman friend Gene with his new lady friend Paula. They hang out together most days, although I've learned from Gene that she isn't naturally an early morning person like he is, so when I see him without her, it's because she didn't want to be hustled out of her morning routine in order to hang out at the coffee shop.

Last Thursday when I visited the Seattle Art Museum, I took pictures of many pieces in the permanent collection, including this very interesting clock. You don't see things like this any more, with all those moving parts. Everything is digital these days. I didn't take a picture of the explanation of this clock, unfortunately, so I guess I'll have to go back and visit the museum again. Happily.

And all over the entire city, the flowers are beginning to bloom, the birds are singing earlier as the days get longer, on their way to summer. Three months of spring, my favorite time of the year. My nose is also beginning to notice that everything is blooming. Well, I hope you enjoyed our photo safari as much as I did. Until the next time, I hope you will be well.
:-)

Old dogs and new tricks

Snagged from Pixelmator

I got an email from Picnik this week, letting me know that it is being discontinued. Picnik is the editing tool I've been using ever since I began writing my blogs to make headers and to add text, show two side-by-side pictures, and whatnot. It's actually not going completely away, but it's moving some of its most popular features to Google+. Now, I'm a member of Google+ but am still not sure I truly want to get involved in yet another social networking site. My friends who post over there keep me entertained when I visit it, but Facebook is just about all I can handle after keeping up with the blogs I follow (almost a hundred), which are way more interesting to me because of their variety and immediacy. I might end up feeling differently about Google+ in a while, but for now I was sorry to hear that Picnik is leaving me in April.

And just by chance, my friend Al mentioned (during Thursday's hike) that he recently bought Pixelmator, a Mac photo editing tool, and was having fun with it. So I of course went to the Apple app store and took a look. Since Picnik is returning the annual $25 I pay for a pro account, and when I saw that this app costs $30, I bought it. The first attempt I've made with it is the new header on this blog. I don't yet know how to make a nice border, but I wasn't unhappy with my first attempt. It helped that years and years ago I learned (I'm using that term loosely) how to use PhotoShop. I took a beginning class with my very capable assistant, Ann.

It was a two-day-long introduction to what you could do with PhotoShop. In some ways, Pixelmator is similar, using layers and tools to cut out pictures and slap them onto others, such as the above picture. Fortunately, Pixelmator has plenty of tutorials for me to watch over and over until I can duplicate the sample pictures. I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered a trick I had learned years ago. While I struggled with PhotoShop, Ann took to it like a duck to water. This meant I didn't have to get proficient myself, just ask HER to create what I needed. She was so creative that she kept the entire office agog with her work. I ended up having to take another beginning class a few years later, because she moved on to another position and I no longer had her to hold my hand.

But now it's years later and I'm having to teach myself some new tricks. I knew quite a bit of theory but I didn't have much hands-on experience with photo editing. Picnik knew just what I wanted to do and made it possible to work within their framework. Now, if I can just get proficient with this program, I might actually come up with some new and creative ideas myself. I'm hoping so, anyway.

This morning the Oscar nominations came out, and I was happy to see that Judy and I have seen all but two of the nine movies that were nominated. Tomorrow we will go to see "War Horse" and later "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close." Judy reminded me today that Meryl Streep has now been nominated 17 times for an Oscar, but she hasn't won since 1982 (for Sophie's Choice). I do hope she will win this time. I haven't yet seen Michelle Williams in "Marilyn," but I cannot see how she could have been better than Meryl. But then again, I'm really rooting for Meryl to win. What do you think?
:-)

Kodak moments

Marijka (sp?) and Marjan

I'm always looking to capture what we used to call a "Kodak moment" on film. We had a new hiker who joined us last week, another woman from Holland. She and Marjan immediately connected and I got to eavesdrop on some Dutch banter. The picture was taken with the "low light" setting and I wasn't happy with how washed out the two ladies look, compared with the red of Linda's hat and the green of the trees. I'm going to use that setting sparingly.

My very first camera was a Kodak Brownie, similar to this one, I think. It was so long ago I can only remember that it had 127 film and had to be put into the camera in the dark. I pushed that little white button to take a picture and then wind the dial until it stopped, so I wouldn't end up with two pictures on the same film. Kodak, I see, is filing for bankruptcy, since nobody ever uses film any more. They tried to make the transition to digital but nobody bought their cameras. I loved my little Brownie but I don't know where any of the pictures are that I took way back when.

I have several pictures in my possession that were taken with a Polaroid. Judging by the way the pictures look and the time this camera was manufactured, it was probably a Polaroid 800. I was around fifteen or sixteen at the time, I think. I even took a few myself, my old Brownie by then part of the distant past. I've never been very good at keeping possessions in pristine condition, or even in any condition. They just fade into oblivion. What amazes me is that when I looked at the picture of the Polaroid, I could still remember the smell of the developer as we stood around waiting impatiently for the magic picture to appear. How far we have come from those days!

I had another little point-and-shoot camera during the time I lived in Boulder and went to Peru (that was 1981), but I've no idea what it looked like or what kind it was. I do have a drawer full of old negatives that I cannot bring myself to throw out. But it does seem that all those old slides and negatives will never be used again. I wonder if those old slides can be converted to a digital format. I am unwilling to toss them, so maybe I'll find some way to preserve those old memories. When I hold them up to the light and look at the images, many of them take me back to bygone days.

Today, however, I am totally converted to digital cameras. All my pictures that were on my stolen iPad are safe on my home computer, and the most important of them I have backed up in the "cloud." Before too long I'll have even more of my treasures stored there. Who would have guessed a decade ago that Kodak moments would no longer be captured by Kodak? Or on film at all. The company will soon join Studebaker, Pan Am, and even Pontiac, the last of which was built in 2009. The times are definitely changing. Digital cameras are one change that I love!
:-)

November scenery

Yesterday as I was walking back to catch the bus home, I saw these rocks covered with autumn leaves and a spattering of raindrops. Although I will never be able to duplicate the artistry of some of my favorite blogging friends, especially Hilary over at The Smitten Image, it will not be for lack of trying. If you visit her post (I've linked it), you'll see what I mean. No false modesty here.

Today I walked by the same stones. The leaves turned brown overnight and the scene in the picture is simply gone. I'm glad I caught it when I did. Sometimes you need to take the shot, no matter how inconvenient it might be, since life just keeps right on going by. Photography, however, is one of my favorite things these days: both my own and that of others. The hikes that the Trailblazers made in the High Country this past summer and fall are all preserved in my pictures and posts, and the Chuckanuts now beckon. (Not really; the Low Country hikes are nowhere near as stupendous, but possibilities for arty shots are just as good.) I always have my camera on my backpack's waistband so it's right where I can get at it. My fellow seniors don't like to stop and admire the scenery much; they are out for the exercise.

You know you can click to enlarge, right? :-)

Yesterday I also saw this black squirrel in the blackberry bushes right off the deck of my front porch. The bushes are at least as high as I am, covered with thorns, and extend deep into the vacant lot to the south. I have no idea how he got up on top of the thicket, but there he was, snacking away on the berries. He's not a very big guy, but he's persistent. The five squirrels that sometimes are all on my porch at once (three black, two grey) fight over the scraps dropped by the birds onto the deck, and they will sometimes chase each other away. It's a regular squirrel rumble out here at times.

At the bird store the other day, where I spent too much of my money, I asked the owner what she thinks about feeding the squirrels. She's got squirrel food (corn cobs, peanuts in the shell, etc.) offered for those who want to buy it, but according to her, the squirrels propagate all too often and don't seem to need any help from humans. There would only be more of them, and neither of these varieties are native, I learned. They are immigrants from the Northeast. The only native squirrel around these parts is the Douglas squirrel, which I don't think I've ever seen. They are small and aren't necessarily urban dwellers, and they would be at a real disadvantage around here in competition with the larger squirrels.

But I was happy to capture these two pictures. I'm feeling much better, almost completely over my cold and ready to brave Thursday's Low Country hike that has, according to today's forecast, a 70% chance of rain.
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The photographic triangle

From Hoot Photography

Boy, this whole exposure business is a LOT more complicated than I expected it to be. No wonder people wimp out and use the point-and-shoot feature on the camera most of the time. At first I thought I wanted to learn how to use all the settings on my camera, but it turns out I have a pretty cool camera that gives me a "creative zone" allowing me to change the shutter speed or aperture value and the camera will figure out the rest of the settings.

Shutter speed 1/30, ISO on auto

In this picture taken last week of my friend Judy, I used the flash in order to light up her face, and the camera changed the f-stop to 2.8. Then I asked Judy to take a picture of me, using the same shutter speed but with light behind me.

With the light behind me and using the flash, the f-stop was changed to 4.5. Both of these pictures are perfectly acceptable to me (except for that goggle eyed guy over my shoulder). However, I will now try to figure out how to blur the background when taking these kind of portrait pictures. That is called "bokeh" (a very strange word, methinks) and it would have looked totally cool to have just a blur behind each of us instead of all the detail in the restaurant. But if I had just used the automatic setting, the flash would have washed out our faces, so I haven't used it much. The camera has a portrait setting, but I haven't gotten great results from it, either.

I have messed with the ISO, which is explained by remembering how film cameras used to require you to buy film with different ISOs -- I would always buy 100 ISO because I wasn't ever sure where I'd be taking the pictures. That would work for pictures in full sun (which Colorado has plenty of, when I was using film), but it wasn't great for pictures taken indoors. I would buy a film at 400 for low light pictures, but you couldn't change out the film once it was in the camera. Today's cameras allow me to make changes whenever I feel like it. However, it's not easy to understand the relationships between the elements in the Photographic Triangle. But I am just beginning to get a teensy little bit of a hold on it.

When I am wanting to be sure I get a good picture, I revert back to the auto setting and then usually need to clean up the picture in iPhoto, usually having to lighten it, and sometimes fix the contrast. Although it's a lot of work to understand all this, I'm actually enjoying myself... at least sometimes. When something works and everything clicks, when it comes together to make a good shot, I am pretty pleased with myself. But I've got a LONG way to go. Good thing I'm retired!
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Projects and possibilities

As many of you who have followed this blog for awhile might realize, I love to take pictures. I am an enthusiastic picture-taker who knows little about photography, aware that point-and-shoot cameras and iPhoto's ability to enhance pictures where I've made little mistakes can allow me to elicit some ooohs and aaahs with pictures like the one above.

But the time is coming when I want to know how to take REAL pictures. I've been inspired by many of the bloggers I follow, but none quite so much as Hilary on The Smitten Image. Sometimes I will fall into one of her pictures in appreciation of an emotion her pictures elicit in me. So I sent her an email and asked for advice, what kind of camera does she use, etc., etc. She sent me a very detailed and explicit response, with the admonition to explore the possibilities of the camera I own at the moment. Fortunately for me, Hilary believes that Canon PowerShot cameras are the way to go (unless I want to get really fancy and go to a digital SLR), which just happens to be the camera I own right now!

I bought a camera with a 10X optical zoom so I could take some bird pictures, which I have done. It's a Canon PowerShot SX110IS and I have occasionally taken it off the "auto" feature to explore some of the things it can do, but I almost always drift back to the auto button because I really don't know what the difference is between the aperture and shutter speed. Why should I bother if I can fix the little mistakes after the fact? Well, the reason I'd like to take on this project is to be able to create a mood and evoke an emotional response in the viewer, much like Hilary's pictures do for me. It's my latest project and I suspect I can become a passionate photographer without spending a dime!

Yesterday, Memorial Day, Smart Guy and I took a nice walk around Lake Padden, one of the excellent local parks in the area. In fact, just last week that is where the Senior Trailblazers went, and I snapped pictures with enthusiasm, as usual. Check them out here. The picture above was taken yesterday, brought home and cropped to show the lovely whorl of the unfurling fern. There is a 2.6-mile gentle trail around the lake, with benches placed in strategic spots for R&R. I saw this bench and noticed something had been placed on the platform.

Upon closer inspection, I realized that someone had brought a bouquet on this day to remember a young man who died in 2003, in his early thirties. It made me think of my son Chris, who died just a year earlier at the age of forty, and it seemed very fitting that I would see it on Memorial Day. The family of this young man has placed a bench at Lake Padden with a plaque for those, like me, to ponder his life.

The day was cloudy in the morning with a little rain, but by the time we were getting in the car to return home, the sun was beginning to break through and lift my spirits. And then I saw a mother and her brood out having breakfast, pointing me toward realizing the perfection of life's continuing bounty.

:-)