Showing posts with label 365 project.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 365 project.. Show all posts
Thursday, 3 March 2011
Tuesday, 22 February 2011
Obsessed with Tulips
the 365 prompt this week was 'texture'. I became obsessed with photographing a pot of tulips (see prior post) but I did play around with other textures as well.
201/365 Back lighting. That should have been plenty of light for the plantcam, you would think.
203/365 Birch bark
204/365 Everything was covered with a sprinkling of dry snow.
205/365 Hoar frost plus snow.
206/365 Satin smooth tulip petal
207/365 More backlighting, just at dusk. The composition sucks, but I like the colour values.
202/365 Our chimney wall in late afternoon sun.
Recording Things
A few days ago JG cut out a very tall and bushy (open grown) dead white pine. He tractored away the main part of the trunk but left a huge pile of dead pine branches across the back of the field behind the house . I suggested that we build a pile off the maintained grass and set fire to it before the end of the free fire period.This worked so well (photo #3) that he has since cut down two more moribund trees and made lovely bonfires of the lot.
The house has a lot of flowers in it today. A Christmas gift to me was a thing called a 'plantcam'. I was also given an amaryllis, and tried out my new toy with it, only to find that the wretched thing moved about so much on its stalk through the day, seeking light, that it bobbed in and out of camera range. What I needed, I thought, was a pot of tulip bulbs. Unfortunately, at this point the temperature dropped into the -20ยบ C range and stayed there. I was afraid to try to get a flower from the store to the car to the house. Last week the temperature moderated, I got a pot of fine, deep pink budded tulips, and set up shop.
Only to set the camera wrong somehow. Instead of a 15 minute time lapse video, I got a series of 15 second videos. If I can figure out how to combine them, the result might be interesting. In the meantime, I am enjoying the stills. Somewhat grainy, though, and I am not sure why as I had the plant in front of the big front window facing south west. Ah well, back to the drawing board.
Snarl.
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Sigh
Okay, I got the whole boiling of those jobs done and emailed them off, the second one without its attachments, about 11:00 pm. Crawled out of bed this morning and when I got around to checking the email, this lack was pointed out to me. Re sent. With the wrong attachment as I found out after I got home from not one but two sessions in the dentist's chair and feebly punched up the email. I have now resent with the right attachment (checked it this time) but have not had the energy to tackle the next set of jobs. One has to be done by noon tomorrow. Oh, dear.
I do, however, have photos. One thing about driving an hour in to the city to the dentist and sitting in the chair for two hours is that you have lots of time to brood about what you are going to do with a prompt like 'black and white and red all over'. Hilarious and inane variations present themselves, distracting you from the fact that the hygienist has just stuck a sharp probe into your tongue.
So,
197/365 Green and white and reeds all over.
198/365 Black and white and tromped all over.
You should ignore me when I whine. It was a fantastically beautiful day today and when I left this morning, every twig and branch and needle was covered with a lovely layer of hoar frost and a sprinkle of snow diamonds. Photos coming later. Must get Letter to the Editor emailed. Now! Just recalled I have a 9:00 am appt tomorrow.
I'm getting too old for this.
I do, however, have photos. One thing about driving an hour in to the city to the dentist and sitting in the chair for two hours is that you have lots of time to brood about what you are going to do with a prompt like 'black and white and red all over'. Hilarious and inane variations present themselves, distracting you from the fact that the hygienist has just stuck a sharp probe into your tongue.
So,
197/365 Green and white and reeds all over.
198/365 Black and white and tromped all over.
You should ignore me when I whine. It was a fantastically beautiful day today and when I left this morning, every twig and branch and needle was covered with a lovely layer of hoar frost and a sprinkle of snow diamonds. Photos coming later. Must get Letter to the Editor emailed. Now! Just recalled I have a 9:00 am appt tomorrow.
I'm getting too old for this.
Wednesday, 9 February 2011
Quickly
I'm sitting here in a massive mess of paper and jobs and ... why can't I learn to say no?
But being disinclined to attack the job of editing a ByLaw or reaming out my freezer, I'm sneaking a few minutes to post a few well edited shots of the highlands in February. Edited a lot. In fact, pretty close to black and white and blue all over.
093/365 Paul's barn from the road.
094/365 Paul's gate
095/365 The hay bales.
096/365 Footsteps in the snow.
But being disinclined to attack the job of editing a ByLaw or reaming out my freezer, I'm sneaking a few minutes to post a few well edited shots of the highlands in February. Edited a lot. In fact, pretty close to black and white and blue all over.
Tuesday, 1 February 2011
Ezekiel saw a wheel a'rollin'
Yesterday I drove into the village for a meeting, running just slightly late as is my (blush) frequent habit. The sun was blazing away on the clean, white snow, necessitating both dark glasses and a lowered visor. But through all this dazzle I could see a big sweep of sky to the north east. There was a bit of wispy cloud and contrail after contrail, some older and spreading, some knife blade new. There must have been close to a dozen in total and one tiny wink of a jet drawing yet another on its route west. I had my camera in my purse. And the title popped into my mind - 'way in the middle of the air'. But I was already so late that I had no time to stop and try to capture what I could see. And, of course, by the time I got out of my meeting it was past noon and whatever atmospheric conditions had preserved so many contrails had changed.
My mother used to fix me with a cold gray eye and quote 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.' This, usually, when she caught me with my homework undone, the yard not raked or some other task waiting and found me with my nose in a book instead. Although far more diligent than I, she could frequently be caught nose in book herself and so she never really did train me into methodical behaviour. And living for coming on fifty years with a chronic procrastinator has not helped. So it is that nine months after we got home, I am finally getting around to editing and ordering the photographs from our west coast US trip last May.
188/365 Oregon coast at Astoria
Thinking about clouds and horizons, I started in to edit the Oregon coast photos and picked this one for the 365 project's post today. I had no idea that there was so much sand beach in Oregon - I somehow had the idea that the coast there was rocky. But that's California, or at least the part of it that we drove. This photo was taken at Astoria on one of the sand bars that frame the mouth of the Columbia river. And it makes a nice contrast to the thought of the 15 cm of snow forecast for tomorrow.
I love the ocean. Stuck as I am in the middle of the continent, I don't get to the ocean all that often, but when I do I am enchanted. The beat of the breaking sea on rocks, the long hiss of an incoming roller on sand, the indescribable scent of salt water, the wind off the waves streaming over my face, the light on the waves and the sand, all of these are a glory and a wonder to me. Swimming in salt water is dreamlike - the denser salt water is a support and a caress. I learned to scuba dive off the Florida keys and will sometimes dream that I am flying through the water there, dancing with silvery swirls of fish, watching the corals and sea plants sway. I would love to dive in the west coast kelp forests someday.
And here I sit, nose in the computer, with the morning cleanup undone, an agenda to set and various other tasks waiting. Almost I can sense a cold gray eye behind me.
Here's a nice redition of the song.
My mother used to fix me with a cold gray eye and quote 'the road to hell is paved with good intentions.' This, usually, when she caught me with my homework undone, the yard not raked or some other task waiting and found me with my nose in a book instead. Although far more diligent than I, she could frequently be caught nose in book herself and so she never really did train me into methodical behaviour. And living for coming on fifty years with a chronic procrastinator has not helped. So it is that nine months after we got home, I am finally getting around to editing and ordering the photographs from our west coast US trip last May.
Thinking about clouds and horizons, I started in to edit the Oregon coast photos and picked this one for the 365 project's post today. I had no idea that there was so much sand beach in Oregon - I somehow had the idea that the coast there was rocky. But that's California, or at least the part of it that we drove. This photo was taken at Astoria on one of the sand bars that frame the mouth of the Columbia river. And it makes a nice contrast to the thought of the 15 cm of snow forecast for tomorrow.
I love the ocean. Stuck as I am in the middle of the continent, I don't get to the ocean all that often, but when I do I am enchanted. The beat of the breaking sea on rocks, the long hiss of an incoming roller on sand, the indescribable scent of salt water, the wind off the waves streaming over my face, the light on the waves and the sand, all of these are a glory and a wonder to me. Swimming in salt water is dreamlike - the denser salt water is a support and a caress. I learned to scuba dive off the Florida keys and will sometimes dream that I am flying through the water there, dancing with silvery swirls of fish, watching the corals and sea plants sway. I would love to dive in the west coast kelp forests someday.
And here I sit, nose in the computer, with the morning cleanup undone, an agenda to set and various other tasks waiting. Almost I can sense a cold gray eye behind me.
Here's a nice redition of the song.
Sunday, 30 January 2011
Stuck in the Middle of Winter
Friday, 28 January 2011
Playing In the Middle
184/365.
This is one of the shots I took for the 365 project a while back. it was bland and uninteresting but has become a lot more fun with the contrast enhanced and the gamma twiddled. (How professional I do sound, I don't think.) It was, though, supposed to be shot right down the gap between the red wine glasses and I blew that. So, 'not in the middle' might be the better title.
I use Corel's PhotoPaint to edit photographs. It is an immensely complicated program and I have never mastered all of its features, but it is a lot of fun. The rose I have just put in as the blog title photo has been altered with one of the 'Effect' choices in PP.... it's called 'ZigZag', for obvious reasons. You can also choose to apply the effect of a contรฉ crayon or watercolour or many other artistic choices, or make the surface look like bubbles or stained glass, and on and on. I can play for hours, alas.
A while back I was whinging about organizing my photos. I picked up a copy of Corel PaintShop Photo 2010, but I'm not impressed with it. Too complicated and some of the features are not obvious (like applying tags. Ggggrrrrr). A couple of days later I was poking around in Blogger where I was offered a free download of Version 3.8.0 of Picassa 3. The download only took a few minutes and when I activated it I found the best picture sorter I have ever seen - at least, for my purposes. Unlike PaintShop Photo, you are not stuck with using trays (although you can), the red eye fixer is stellar and, best of all, the program organizes photo folders by date taken but also retaining the label I gave to the folder when I created it. This mirrors the way I think, unlike the Adobe organization tree that doesn't, and I find it fantastically easy to use.
It also cranked up all on its own (a bit disconcerting) and did face recognition on all my photos, with an easy to use labelling system for the faces. Excellent quality recognition, best I have ever seen. Once this was finished, the result gave me a good indication of how many doubles (and triples and quadruples) I have among my picture folders. And what a lot of photos of my grand daughter's smiling face I do have. Best of all, if you double click on any thumbnail, an option comes up that allows you to identify the exact folder where the thumbnail originated.
This software is so easy to use that I am now gearing up and sorting and cleaning up all (almost 1000) photos I took on our trip out west last spring. I am doing the flowers first, and am going to use some of the edited shots as 365 material, since editing and labelling can be a big part of photography.
185/365 This is a shot of a bunch of California poppies taken last May not in California (although we were there) but in a park along the Columbia River in Oregon. The flowers were ubiquious throughout our drive along the coast and they are spectacular. This one was in the middle of an island in the road into the park. The rest of the grass had not greened up around them but there they were and aren't they glorious. Contrast enhanced and cropped.
Wednesday, 19 January 2011
Making tracks - a somewhat confusing description of where I live.
There was a youngish buck at the feeding station this morning before we had put any feed out - a four or six pointer at most. This afternoon it has all been does and I think they've pretty well finished the batch of feed that JG put out after lunch. We don't have a lot of snow yet - the skiers are complaining - and it is easy for the deer to get around. There are deer tracks everwhere around the field. The low snow load also means that they're out and about on the roads and I am driving very, very carefully these days. A cautious speed won't help with the crazies that leap out of nowhere directly in front of you, but it does mean that you can miss the youngsters who wander onto the road and stand, knock-kneed in that peculiar puzzled deer stance, to stare at your oncoming headlights.
I drive a lot. The price of gasoline is giving me acute snarling spells every time I have to fill up, and I have a vehicle that gives pretty good mileage (kilometerage?) for a utility vehicle. But we live far from anything else at all and if I need groceries, or have to go to a meeting or even want to visit with friends, I drive, at the least, eight kilometres to my nearest Scrabble partner and fifty-four to the nearest comprehensive grocery store. Over 100 km to the city. I have walked to my friend's place in spring or fall but between the snow and the industrial strength local biting bugs, I don't do it very often.
I do love it here, though. I love the deer and the cheerful chickadees on the suet ball in the kitchen window, and tracing the tracks of coyotes and other small animals through our back trails. And the wolves. Big pawprints. The wolf tracks usually go pretty straight, but the coyotes wander from side to side, probably trail marking and sniffing at other coyotes' liquid responses. I love the silence and equally love it when the stillness is broken by the chuckly of an owl or the yelping of the coyotes on a hunting trail. I love the sound of the wind in barren tree branches, the tick of ice pellets on the skylight, the scrunch of cold, cold snow as I treck down the laneway to get the papers in the morning.
133/365. An arial view of our land taken a couple of years ago. The green patch in the centre of the photo is our field. The house is at the lower, left side almost hidden by trees and you can see the roof of the garage to the right and of the barn and drive shed in the trees to the right. Our nearest house is a hunt camp that is only occupied a few weeks a year. You can see it as a whitish blob at the very bottom of this photo, left hand side.
We live on what was, a century ago, a subsistance farm, complete with orchard, barns and a stone fence along the roadway. This land is at the end of three kilometres of dirt road that twists and turns around the rock outcroppings and precariously crosses a big marsh on a causeway. Our house is set where the homestead orchard once stood, at the edge of the only field still open when we bought the land in the mid seventies. We have labouriously cleaned and opened out this field and the deer are fed on a rock by a gap in what was once a fencerow. There is a big outcropping of bedrock in the middle of the field, and huge rockpiles all around the edges and off along our trails through the scrub bush that has grown up where one the farm fields lay.
134/365 This is a composite photo of the whole field area in the spring. The rock pile shows just to the right of the satellite dish. The big dish provides television: the small dish is a satellite receiver for the internet.
A few years after we bought the first one hundred acre piece we were fortunate to be able to acquire two more lots of the same size, one to the west of the original and one to the south. The western one has the maple trees we tapped for many years and the southern one has two huge beaver ponds at the back and on the west opens out onto a big marsh with a small river running through it. (see top of aerial photo.)
135/365 This is a view facing north west across the large back beaver pond, looking southwest.
136/365 Standing at the deer feeding station rocks looking toward the back of the house. My screen porch haven is at the far right hand end of the house and the start of the bed rock outcroping at the far left where the ground rises.
137/365 A summer close up of the rocks where the feed goes. It took us days of labour to haul rocks out of this back piece of land and get grass to grow on it. The feed goes on the bed rock so that if turkeys find it they will not rip up the grass scratching for the seeds.
138/365 This is the one apple tree left in what was the orchard. It is over 100 years old and the trunk is quite hollow but it still bears. And attracts bears.
139/365 Another view of the big back beaver pond looking due south. This is where Grandpa rows Little Stuff around in the punt. The blob on the tree just right of centre is a heron's nest.
It's a long way from anywhere else but our neighbours although not close are wonderful and the community is one I love. A grand place to retire. JG does his woodlot things and I do ... what I do.
It's peaceful here, howling canids and all. It's home.
I drive a lot. The price of gasoline is giving me acute snarling spells every time I have to fill up, and I have a vehicle that gives pretty good mileage (kilometerage?) for a utility vehicle. But we live far from anything else at all and if I need groceries, or have to go to a meeting or even want to visit with friends, I drive, at the least, eight kilometres to my nearest Scrabble partner and fifty-four to the nearest comprehensive grocery store. Over 100 km to the city. I have walked to my friend's place in spring or fall but between the snow and the industrial strength local biting bugs, I don't do it very often.
I do love it here, though. I love the deer and the cheerful chickadees on the suet ball in the kitchen window, and tracing the tracks of coyotes and other small animals through our back trails. And the wolves. Big pawprints. The wolf tracks usually go pretty straight, but the coyotes wander from side to side, probably trail marking and sniffing at other coyotes' liquid responses. I love the silence and equally love it when the stillness is broken by the chuckly of an owl or the yelping of the coyotes on a hunting trail. I love the sound of the wind in barren tree branches, the tick of ice pellets on the skylight, the scrunch of cold, cold snow as I treck down the laneway to get the papers in the morning.
133/365. An arial view of our land taken a couple of years ago. The green patch in the centre of the photo is our field. The house is at the lower, left side almost hidden by trees and you can see the roof of the garage to the right and of the barn and drive shed in the trees to the right. Our nearest house is a hunt camp that is only occupied a few weeks a year. You can see it as a whitish blob at the very bottom of this photo, left hand side.
We live on what was, a century ago, a subsistance farm, complete with orchard, barns and a stone fence along the roadway. This land is at the end of three kilometres of dirt road that twists and turns around the rock outcroppings and precariously crosses a big marsh on a causeway. Our house is set where the homestead orchard once stood, at the edge of the only field still open when we bought the land in the mid seventies. We have labouriously cleaned and opened out this field and the deer are fed on a rock by a gap in what was once a fencerow. There is a big outcropping of bedrock in the middle of the field, and huge rockpiles all around the edges and off along our trails through the scrub bush that has grown up where one the farm fields lay.
134/365 This is a composite photo of the whole field area in the spring. The rock pile shows just to the right of the satellite dish. The big dish provides television: the small dish is a satellite receiver for the internet.
A few years after we bought the first one hundred acre piece we were fortunate to be able to acquire two more lots of the same size, one to the west of the original and one to the south. The western one has the maple trees we tapped for many years and the southern one has two huge beaver ponds at the back and on the west opens out onto a big marsh with a small river running through it. (see top of aerial photo.)
135/365 This is a view facing north west across the large back beaver pond, looking southwest.
136/365 Standing at the deer feeding station rocks looking toward the back of the house. My screen porch haven is at the far right hand end of the house and the start of the bed rock outcroping at the far left where the ground rises.
137/365 A summer close up of the rocks where the feed goes. It took us days of labour to haul rocks out of this back piece of land and get grass to grow on it. The feed goes on the bed rock so that if turkeys find it they will not rip up the grass scratching for the seeds.
138/365 This is the one apple tree left in what was the orchard. It is over 100 years old and the trunk is quite hollow but it still bears. And attracts bears.
139/365 Another view of the big back beaver pond looking due south. This is where Grandpa rows Little Stuff around in the punt. The blob on the tree just right of centre is a heron's nest.
It's a long way from anywhere else but our neighbours although not close are wonderful and the community is one I love. A grand place to retire. JG does his woodlot things and I do ... what I do.
It's peaceful here, howling canids and all. It's home.
Tuesday, 18 January 2011
Feeding the Deer
We put out MNR deer ration and corn on some rocks near the back of our field behind the house, hoping to see deer and turkeys. We've had no turkeys lately, but we have a lot of deer. These photos are all taken from one angle because the deer can't see me there. Sometimes they won't spook if I go out on the deck, but mostly they run. This is at the outer limit of my telephoto and ability to hand-hold. Lots of fun!
129/365 Taken on January 9th. I increased the contrast a bit because it was a misty afternoon. Taken about 3:30 pm. They will turn their rumps to the camera, drat them.
130/365 Taken Monday morning, January 17th. The doe on the left does not belong to this group and is being driven back if she approaches any closer. There's also one big doe (doing the chasing) a mid sized doe and two fawns, tails to camera.
131/365. This is Mr One Horn. He dropped the other antler right beside the feeding rocks and we have it stored in the barn. I have seen what I think is this deer, hornless, but we had a snowfall. I will do an antler search in the spring. Taken very late afternoon, cloudy day.
129/365 Taken on January 9th. I increased the contrast a bit because it was a misty afternoon. Taken about 3:30 pm. They will turn their rumps to the camera, drat them.
130/365 Taken Monday morning, January 17th. The doe on the left does not belong to this group and is being driven back if she approaches any closer. There's also one big doe (doing the chasing) a mid sized doe and two fawns, tails to camera.
131/365. This is Mr One Horn. He dropped the other antler right beside the feeding rocks and we have it stored in the barn. I have seen what I think is this deer, hornless, but we had a snowfall. I will do an antler search in the spring. Taken very late afternoon, cloudy day.
132/365 This is the biggest group we have had. I took this one on Sunday. There
were actually nine deer but only eight show in this shot - they were two different groups that did not co-exist well. Number one is tail to the camera left of the cedar, two is looking over three's back, four and five are trying to sneak up on the corn, six and seven are guzzling and eight is the fawn at far right. Often the fawns get chased off, but this one belongs, I think, to the biggest doe.
Thursday, 13 January 2011
Playing
When I need to learn or refresh my mind on how a program works, I play. Here I am playing in Corel Photopaint.
126/365 This is a preset effect called 'zigzag', set at normal.
127/365 I made this into a duotone, returned the colour to it (RGB) , on one colour plane and then turned it back into a .jpg. Not sure I could get the same effects again. She is a flaming red-head, though.
128/365 Playing with the light values in gray scale and then scrubbing the background.
Okay, playtime is over. Must read minutes and meeting notes now. Snivel!
Okay, playtime is over. Must read minutes and meeting notes now. Snivel!
Reports from a Pack Rat
When we were down south visiting my in-laws over the holiday, I found my brother-in-law in custody of a tin box full of old and battered photographs, a range that had belonged to my sister-in-law and one or more of her aunts. I sorted some of these out, that portrayed family that I recognized, and am now in the process of trying to do some restoration on them. Some are of my SIL, some of my MIL's family, taken during WWII and shortly thereafter, some of my husband as a boy. Nice memories, since I find myself as a preserver of family history for Little Stuff, someday.
125/365
Above is a photo of JG's father taken in 1933: he would have been in his late teens or very early twenties. (Must find out for sure - can't remember his birth year off the top of my head.) The second 'cleaned' version has had the tonal balance changed and some of the creases and blots removed from the face and figure. I still have a lot to do on this one. Unfortunately the tonal values in the face and in the stains on the background are so close that playing with the colour of the stains makes the face lose definition. There are other avenues left to explore, though.
I have a lot of family data. My father's cousin is and has been an indefatigable delver into their family history. My family name is Holden, and Bob has traced the Windsor scions of that name right back to Elizabethan England, found a coat of arms, and put together a fat loose-leaf book of information. He and some of the other cousins of that generation also found the money and will to have the original Holden log house restored and moved to an historical park in Essex County.
My mother' family is one I have done a lot of work on: I did a seminar course in social anthropology a long time ago and was given the assignment of studying my family. I ended up with a huge genological table, a short write up on most of my immediate ancestors, and a lot of other neat stuff, most of it winkled out of my grandmother by my mother. I have a tape of my grandmother talking about raising her babies with sound effects from my baby interspersed. Lovely.
And, for the last seven years, I have been building this blog as a record of her grandparents for Little Stuff. As well, on the computer and now backed up to separate storage are large files of family photos, and other records. I recently read a post in which the writer described how she is archiving her child's art work on line and so I am doing some of that as well. (Because I can't store it all!) I have my two girls' work plus Little Stuffs. I have Commencement programs and University graduation programs and newspaper clippings. And once they are scanned and safely stored, I can Throw. It. Out.! Or, at least, some of it.
My grandfather Holden was a keeper, of clippings and pages from newspapers among other things. The YD has two posters made from the front page of the newspaper on the day Edward VIII abdicated and the day WWII ended. She also has my father's service medals and a fine photograph of him in uniform, all of which we intend to mount into a shadow frame.
I have a braid of my own and one from each of my daughters, mounted in a frame by my mother. I have at least one bronzed baby shoe and there used to be more. I found a nasty little envelope among my mother's things with all of my baby teeth in it. Pack rat and collecter of Stuff that I am, I hope someone knocks me on the head before I get that bad.
Must get back to playing with the old photos. More later. I love this stuff. And I am counting it for 365, okay?
Above is a photo of JG's father taken in 1933: he would have been in his late teens or very early twenties. (Must find out for sure - can't remember his birth year off the top of my head.) The second 'cleaned' version has had the tonal balance changed and some of the creases and blots removed from the face and figure. I still have a lot to do on this one. Unfortunately the tonal values in the face and in the stains on the background are so close that playing with the colour of the stains makes the face lose definition. There are other avenues left to explore, though.
I have a lot of family data. My father's cousin is and has been an indefatigable delver into their family history. My family name is Holden, and Bob has traced the Windsor scions of that name right back to Elizabethan England, found a coat of arms, and put together a fat loose-leaf book of information. He and some of the other cousins of that generation also found the money and will to have the original Holden log house restored and moved to an historical park in Essex County.
My mother' family is one I have done a lot of work on: I did a seminar course in social anthropology a long time ago and was given the assignment of studying my family. I ended up with a huge genological table, a short write up on most of my immediate ancestors, and a lot of other neat stuff, most of it winkled out of my grandmother by my mother. I have a tape of my grandmother talking about raising her babies with sound effects from my baby interspersed. Lovely.
And, for the last seven years, I have been building this blog as a record of her grandparents for Little Stuff. As well, on the computer and now backed up to separate storage are large files of family photos, and other records. I recently read a post in which the writer described how she is archiving her child's art work on line and so I am doing some of that as well. (Because I can't store it all!) I have my two girls' work plus Little Stuffs. I have Commencement programs and University graduation programs and newspaper clippings. And once they are scanned and safely stored, I can Throw. It. Out.! Or, at least, some of it.
My grandfather Holden was a keeper, of clippings and pages from newspapers among other things. The YD has two posters made from the front page of the newspaper on the day Edward VIII abdicated and the day WWII ended. She also has my father's service medals and a fine photograph of him in uniform, all of which we intend to mount into a shadow frame.
I have a braid of my own and one from each of my daughters, mounted in a frame by my mother. I have at least one bronzed baby shoe and there used to be more. I found a nasty little envelope among my mother's things with all of my baby teeth in it. Pack rat and collecter of Stuff that I am, I hope someone knocks me on the head before I get that bad.
Must get back to playing with the old photos. More later. I love this stuff. And I am counting it for 365, okay?
Sunday, 9 January 2011
A Little Order, Please
My photo storage is A Mess. At one time I had a fairly reasonable filing system. Then I got a new Nikon that came with all sorts of software and I started downloading using Nikon Transfer. Then I decided to learn to use Photoshop. All of these programs store the photos differently and when I start to look for something, reverting to my own filing system, I find things all mixed up. Photos have been added to folders that they don't belong in, huge folders have been created by date, sitting next to folders with one or two photos in them, and I can't find anything.
I got a lovely back-up drive for Christmas and have copied my whole 'Pictures' file onto it, in its confused and unwieldy whole. Next, I am going to take the first file apart, throw out (shudder, sob) a lot of losers, and rationalize the wretched thing. If I don't get this done, may the next bird I photograph shit in my eye!
While plotting out what I am going to do, I actually found three photos that I wanted to use for the 365 project some time ago -- before I lost them.
115/365 Walking the YD's dog in a November sunset.
116/365 Bark. Not the dog, though. From the same afternoon.
117/365. Snow. I have played with this one a lot, and it is quite pixilated, if you enlarge it any more than this. But I like the colour contrast.
I got a lovely back-up drive for Christmas and have copied my whole 'Pictures' file onto it, in its confused and unwieldy whole. Next, I am going to take the first file apart, throw out (shudder, sob) a lot of losers, and rationalize the wretched thing. If I don't get this done, may the next bird I photograph shit in my eye!
While plotting out what I am going to do, I actually found three photos that I wanted to use for the 365 project some time ago -- before I lost them.
Wednesday, 5 January 2011
01/01/11 was a few days ago, and we are rapidly approaching 11/01/11 (or we are if we are Canadian; I think Americans are heading for 01/11/11.) Before I know it, it will be 11/11/11 in all of North America and I will be even farther behind than I am now. Why is it that I struggle with date order, Roman numerals and the Greek alphabet. It seems as if, mostly, my mind echoes with ear worms, snatches of poetry, bits of whatever I am reading and the grocery list, and no thinking is getting done at all. this is not good, and it is making my list of posts look pretty anaemic. I will try to do better in 2011. Now, is that 'twenty-eleven'? Do we all agree? And is there a name for this decade?
I just finished mopping down the hardwood floors after the Festive Season incursions had covered them with shrimp juice, bits of icing and drippings from the YD's dog's chin. There were a few miniature foot prints as well. It would not have surprised me to find reindeer tracks. I have the downstairs room where I do laundry and crafts restored to an unusual cleansiness since it was the Christmas present wrapping station for two weeks and the floor there was a morass of bits of tape, ribbon and plastic. I have all the Christmas gift bags sorted by size and stored (yeah, I'm a bit strange.) JG's Christmas gifts are all still stacked on the bedroom bureau top, but I have a plan for that, too.
You would think that a glow of virtue would be illuminating my leisurely post-cleaning rest. Ha. I still have to tackle the office (where the boxes from some of my gifts are still stacked, blush). And all of the secretary and board stuff that I have been either bookmarking or printing and stacking since mid December. There is one review due tomorrow. There is a big pile of loose minutes, some of which are signed final copies, to get into the minute book. Meanwhile I am losing at Scrabble, as is my usual fate. Does anyone know a word that has 'toy' in the middle and with either two more letters following or three preceding? I need that triple very badly. And Spell-Checker does not like 'cleansiness'. Too bad, you boring, anal retentive program, it's staying.
Oh, yea, the procrastination queen is at her best this afternoon. It's been a nice day for a change with the sun popping out of the clouds and the wind whooshing the loose snow off all the tree branches and making our wind chime sing. (The sun does show up the mess on the floors!) I may get around to making the odd New Year's resolution in February. (Hmm, not to let the minutes pile up again? Wash the damn windows before the winter sun shows every bug spot and smear? Do things on time? I've broken that one lots of times.) How about - stop using so many parentheses. Can I actually keep that one?
Speaking of putting it off, I'm about two months behind on the 365 project. I have a ream of stuff to put up on Flicker, but there it sits in a nasty, sneering folder on my desktop. What I have to post here are two from 'memory' - if I recall the prompt correctly - and one from the new camera. Extreme telephoto on this one and I overcompensated on the white dial, a bit. But I love it, and what is more, so does the YD. That's her new coat, chosen to make her visible when she walks the dog. I think that last week's prompt was 'resolution', and that is what the new camera and I are discussing at the moment.
107/365 - someone's baby shoe, bronzed. Might be mine, might be one of my girls'.
108/365 - the YD with the colour balance uncorrected.
109/365. My mother's cherished pickle dish.
I hate manuals. Maybe I will book myself into a digital camera course. It can't be worse.
I just finished mopping down the hardwood floors after the Festive Season incursions had covered them with shrimp juice, bits of icing and drippings from the YD's dog's chin. There were a few miniature foot prints as well. It would not have surprised me to find reindeer tracks. I have the downstairs room where I do laundry and crafts restored to an unusual cleansiness since it was the Christmas present wrapping station for two weeks and the floor there was a morass of bits of tape, ribbon and plastic. I have all the Christmas gift bags sorted by size and stored (yeah, I'm a bit strange.) JG's Christmas gifts are all still stacked on the bedroom bureau top, but I have a plan for that, too.
You would think that a glow of virtue would be illuminating my leisurely post-cleaning rest. Ha. I still have to tackle the office (where the boxes from some of my gifts are still stacked, blush). And all of the secretary and board stuff that I have been either bookmarking or printing and stacking since mid December. There is one review due tomorrow. There is a big pile of loose minutes, some of which are signed final copies, to get into the minute book. Meanwhile I am losing at Scrabble, as is my usual fate. Does anyone know a word that has 'toy' in the middle and with either two more letters following or three preceding? I need that triple very badly. And Spell-Checker does not like 'cleansiness'. Too bad, you boring, anal retentive program, it's staying.
Oh, yea, the procrastination queen is at her best this afternoon. It's been a nice day for a change with the sun popping out of the clouds and the wind whooshing the loose snow off all the tree branches and making our wind chime sing. (The sun does show up the mess on the floors!) I may get around to making the odd New Year's resolution in February. (Hmm, not to let the minutes pile up again? Wash the damn windows before the winter sun shows every bug spot and smear? Do things on time? I've broken that one lots of times.) How about - stop using so many parentheses. Can I actually keep that one?
Speaking of putting it off, I'm about two months behind on the 365 project. I have a ream of stuff to put up on Flicker, but there it sits in a nasty, sneering folder on my desktop. What I have to post here are two from 'memory' - if I recall the prompt correctly - and one from the new camera. Extreme telephoto on this one and I overcompensated on the white dial, a bit. But I love it, and what is more, so does the YD. That's her new coat, chosen to make her visible when she walks the dog. I think that last week's prompt was 'resolution', and that is what the new camera and I are discussing at the moment.
107/365 - someone's baby shoe, bronzed. Might be mine, might be one of my girls'.
108/365 - the YD with the colour balance uncorrected.
109/365. My mother's cherished pickle dish.
I hate manuals. Maybe I will book myself into a digital camera course. It can't be worse.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
The Eleventh Hour of the Eleventh Day
I really wish that we wore poppies year round, or had regular days when we were grown up and open-handed and, yes, open hearted in support...
