I find the best time to photograph things in the garden is just after the rain. The overcast light is consistent with no distracting shadows. The raindrops clinging to the flowers and foliage add a lush look impossible to capture on a brighter, sunbaked day.
Colours look more intense and vibrant in the shade. Even better, this tulip has more graphic appeal closed. When it is open in the bright sunshine, the petals are open and flopping about willy-nilly. Closed up, the delicate red edging provides a nice highlight.
This is an experiment to see how size and quality change after using PhotoShop to optimize a file for web format. This is a third try and I think I have the specs of the WP theme worked out finally. Getting all these different software programs to work together is interesting, to say the least. The file size is better than the 400K I tried yesterday and the quality of this 40K image is just fine for web viewing.
More homework…
This photo was taken while snowshoeing along the banks of the Bow River, near Lake Louise Alberta.
Okay, so a friend invited me to join Twitter today. I will give it a try: what’s one more tech thing to try out? I’ve been resisting this for a while now, wondering how much time it will take to get the hang of it and admittedly not too sure about what the benefits are. If it becomes an easier way to stay in touch with quick blurbs with a friend who has moved away, that’s pretty good for a start. Some freelance writing job leads would be fabulous. I’m not sure about Tweeting from a cell phone and will have to investigate things like Tweetdeck, one more Adobe application I’ll add to my learning list (Dreamweaver and Acrobat okay, Photoshop in progress and InDesign and Flash after that…)
I like that Simon Whitfield calls his microblog entries Sqwitter, so I’m thinking I should hurry to corner the market on Jitter.
Soon, very soon I will figure out how to add the Twitter info to this blog or another blog I am considering.
This is the incredible view from the top of Gros Morne Mountain. The James Callaghan Trail takes 8 hours to hike 15 km and is billed as both cruel and grueling in the trail guide map. Nothing can compare to the view, the fresh air, or the raw beauty of nature after climbing to the top of Gros Morne.
It is very disappointing that the Newfoundland provincial government is considering Nalcor Energy’s hydro proposal to run transmission lines right through the park. Pursuing renewable, clean energy is one thing: ruining a UNESCO World Heritage Site in a Canadian National Park to do so is quite another. According to the Globe and Mail, another route bypassing the park was cleared 35 years ago and has never been used. I hope that Nalcor’s proposal is turned down and another route is found. I agree with Newfoundland and Labrador Tourism that “the natural beauty of this place surrounds you at every turn, largely untouched and unspoiled.” I hope it can stay that way for all Canadians to enjoy.
When the location and the weather are gorgeous, it’s tempting to just shoot scenic landscape shots. Far better to put some people in the shot though, especially if you can take the photo before they notice you and ruin the shot with a cliche pose. If you catch them doing something natural, the end result is a photo that tells a story, rather than a static postcard.
The balance works well here. The people are not overpowering or distracting from the scene, nor vice versa. The soft evening light was lucky too.
One of the best ways to combat the February blahs is to dig out some travel photos and remember that nice weather is happening somewhere, even if it’s on the other side of the world. I took this photo almost 2 years ago at the Cathedral Cove Marine Reserve on the North Island of New Zealand. This is a remote patch of paradise, only accessible by foot on a coastal trail that weaves up and down hilly cliffs through subtropical rainforest to the most incredible beach. TeHoHo Rock, an iconic limestone monolith marks the spot where we ate Eta’s Roasted Lamb & Mint flavoured potato chips, snorkelled with stingrays, watched octopus hunt green crabs and watched a movie crew shoot a scene for Disney’s last Chronicles of Narnia movie, Prince Caspian. As I look at the photo, I remember instantly the sound of cicadas ratcheting in the summer air.
Thanks to the folks at WordPress, the upgrade process is now a single click on the dashboard compared to the previously clunky manual process. I forgot to deactivate one plugin known as “Hello Dolly”, so I re-edited the code text to the lyrics of my favourite song to appear rather than Matt Mullenweg‘s favourite. Inspiration is a personal thing: Annie Lennox‘s “Ghosts in My Machine” just works better for me than “Hello Dolly” and was in part a factor in naming this blog. If you look at the lyrics, at face value they look quite pessimistic. However to hear her sing this, there is a triumphant determination to identify and then refuse to be victimized by the dark side.
Oh yes, and time to deactivate the snow plugin, enough with winter already.
The new Feb-Mar 2009 issue of More is on newsstands this week. My article, “The guts to go grey” which was published in the Dec 08-Jan 09 issue struck a chord with some readers who responded with complimentary letters to the editor. I agree with Anne Brown, who writes that “grey hair can not only be distinguished but sexy” and Angele Marion who says she is not letting herself go, but rather is simply “no longer colouring” her hair. Bravo!
Thanks again to the kind editor at More for the cover mention and allowing me to post the article on my site after the issue moved off the newstands. Click here and enjoy – “The guts to go grey” . Better yet, subscribe to More and join the confident women who celebrate being 40+.
I just got my Momentum M1 watch back from the fabulous service department at the St. Moritz Watch company in Vancouver. This dive watch is a dependable timepiece, part of my gear for any outdoor adventure. It has been 60 feet underwater at the Poor Knights Islands in New Zealand, 40 feet under off Quadra Island in British Columbia, and paddled with me in a sea kayak through hundreds of jellyfish in Newfoundland. St. Moritz offers a great service to renew the warrranty: every two years for a nominal fee, they give my watch a full service, check the watertight seals and replace the battery. If this watch ever dies, I will simply go out and buy another one right away.
What is a freelance writer supposed to do in a dismal economy? Magazines and newspapers are face continuing cutbacks due to declining ad revenue and readership/distribution erosion to the web. In this environment, it’s increasingly difficult to sell a piece of writing. However, when the going gets tough, and the lemons a.k.a. rejection letters are staring at me, it’s time to make some serious lemonade with lots of sugar.
Only humour can reconcile the paradox of The Globe and Mail offering voluntary severance packages to staff and increasing subscription rates again (home delivery costs are now 40% greater than they were 8 years ago) while at the same time advertising for readers to pony up between $10-$31K apiece to accompany “some of the best minds on their editorial team” on a Mediterranean Odyssey cruise. Blogging about this in my earlier post, Dear Phillip Crawley, was the only way to reconcile the polar opposite of Chicken Little’s nightmare coming true and the fantasy world of an extravagant voyage. And in case you’re wondering, nobody from The Globe and Mail has responded to my reciprocal invitation to a blissful yet frugal retreat yet. Perhaps as those severance packages are cashed in, there may be a few takers…
Seth Godin asks “When newspapers are gone, what will you miss?” I will miss a hard copy of well researched news to enjoy over breakfast and a market to sell my writing. But now it’s time to make some serious lemonade and write web content or find corporate clients. It’s also high time to consider canceling my subscription or scaling it back to just a hard copy edition on Saturday, and catch up on the news online instead.
