Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve really been feeling the pain of the short zoom. Living in Alaska, I’m constantly surrounded by huge mountains. On the east end of town, they loom over you, feeling huge.
But when your maximum zoom is 50mm? The background shrinks, the foreground grows, and the effect is diminished.
Thus the other day’s image wasn’t quite what I wanted. Sure, it imparts information about the contrasts and how bright it was, but you lose the effect of the mountains looming.
Today
It’s beautiful out, and the grass is just starting to turn green finally.
That is, where there isn’t any snow…
Snowing, Again
Look closely at the trees (click for a closer view) and you’ll see that snow was falling. Hard. This was me, on a jog. And this is a lake still frozen over.
Winter will never end.
Holy crap, I just realized: we’re well past the one-year mark for this blog! March 30, 2009 was the first post, in fact. So, um… happy birthday to us?
Looking back, I realize that most of my posts were fairly introductory. Basic, aimed at beginners. There was some good info back then, but much of it doesn’t apply to my life anymore. The sd500? Toasted while scuba diving last fall, shortly after the pic in this post. Talk about the CHDK project? I’ve pretty much abandoned it now that I’m shooting the LX3.
Things pretty quickly moved on to slightly more advanced topics, with the occasional relapse. May started working more towards looking at light (I still love the contrasts in the mountain, fence, and tree shots), with pretty decent observations of the world around me. I’m thinking of the spring (contrast this with yesterday’s April Trail shot – it’s the exact same location!), abstract, and moon shots. A year later, and I’m thinking that my work back then was better than it is today.
As the year progressed, there was more individual work involving abstracts, technique trials, and a variety of landscapes. Strobing took a larger importance for me (gotta get back to that!), and I started going for obvious (if not colorful) nature photos. Then, inexplicably, all work took a nosedive towards the end of the year. Shortly after the holidays, in fact.
I’m still trying to figure that out. The only thing I can think of is that I purchased Topaz at that time, and I’m wondering if maybe I turned off some of my creative juices in favor of easy out-of-the-box editing.
Some people have noticed that we recently had a dump of snow in mid-April, and it appears that they think that this is late in the year for such antics. It isn’t late: it’s not all that unusual, in fact. The subject did cause me to think back, wondering what it was like last year at this time.
In retrospect, I suppose it’s not that different from now. We still have snow on the same trails, but only slightly more. The streets are about as bare as last year, perhaps slightly less. Click to continue »
Skiing is officially over for the year:
Skiing is over
Finally.
Edit: technically, not really. I checked out the trails & they’re actually passable, if barely. You just have to walk back a ways. It’s raining right now though, so it’ll probably be toast by tomorrow. I should also point out: if you go higher up in elevation, you can definitely still ski.
Up there near the top of my list right now is multi-level marketing. Just a hair of a step below pyramid schemes and just this side of being illegal. Usually. Let’s start by getting on the same page – or better yet, Wikipedia’s page.
The main things to take away:
[Distributors] are awarded a commission based upon the volume of product sold through their own sales efforts as well as that of their downline organization.
and
Independent distributors develop their organizations by either building an active customer base, who buy direct from the company, or by recruiting a downline of independent distributors who also build a customer base, thereby expanding the overall organization
If there’s one phrase I hate coming from *anyone*, it’s the title to this post. No one ever changes how they do things to serve you better – they do it to serve themselves better.
That’s it. Period. Click to continue »
If I complain, gripe, or criticize anyone on this blog, it is purely my opinion. Nothing else.
Further, if I comment on anyone or complain about anyone’s actions, do not expect me to post their names or give links. It’s not a matter of fearing lawsuits (although some might consider it stupid *not* to). Rather, I wouldn’t do them the favor of giving them the free advertising.
Don’t fear the Tax Man. Fearing his auditors? That’s OK.
In a couple of days, those of us with U.S. Citizenshipt (and U.S. residents) we will get the privilege of paying for the service that government provides. It is traditional for most of us to bitterly complain about this, for it always hurts to see one’s money wasted away on the bureaucracy.
Every year, I think of a man. I do not know this man, mind you. My father spoke of him (OK, fine, I don’t remember who he said it about). That man always paid his full amount of taxes. Never a deduction, never a credit. Full amount, always.
He considered it a privilege to pay his taxes. A privilege to live in this country, to pay for roads, and schools, and police, and fire departments, and libraries, and emergency services.
Yes, it could be argued that we’re also blowing wads of money on two wars and Obamacare (sorry, you’re already paying for the uninsured – just ask Mitt Romney, he admits it. He just doesn’t like *how* the new Health Care bill covers the people). But we’ve always blown giant wads of cash on meaningless endeavors. Today is no different.
Given a choice, I’d rather that we all thought just a little bit more like the man in my memory.