Category: Blitherings

Lallygagging

Spring break, and various family members have left Wisconsin and Colorado and traveled to SoCal to enjoy our unusually chilly weather – 42 F!  It’s been party time, catch up time, fun time.  Here and there, some time to do other things, time to get out, veg out, eat out, cook and play.  Tonight, Josh has class . . . and I am home alone!

I’ve gotten so used to being warm that 42 F seems pretty cold, but it really isn’t.  And it is not especially damp.  It is kind of like going into the pool – toe first, then slow immersion, or just that shocking dive into the deep end.  Once outside, though, I am just fine!  So, today, with time alone, I went out to the local botanical gardens, camera and tripod in hand.  Flowers and trees in bloom, bunnies running around, and lizards basking in the sun.  I met local people, and people from Canada and Japan.  Nice way to spend a morning.

Tonight . . . I could learn a few things, like read a book on some technical element of Photoshop, but what I really want to do is pull out a brush and paper . . .

Explosion!

My computer blew up!  Well, not quite, but it sure got itself fried.  The main CPU went.  I went shopping.  Just now getting everything settled in where I want it.  Played a bit while things installed themselves, and in between tweaking the new beast.

 

Discernment

Well . . . I think I am past the point where every picture I take has to be trotted out and uploaded.  Yesterday the Photo Troupe went out to the beach behind the Ventura Marina, late in the afternoon (3:30 pm to be specific), parked itself at a jetty, and got to work.  I took gobs of photos, but only a few were any good, or worth editing.  Some pictures I edited in different ways, from subtle color movement, to dramatic HDR, and finally black and white.  My main focus was composition of ocean and rocks; for the birds, I just ran around chasing them with a long lens.

My first attempts at really long exposures on water, using an ND10 filter, ended with my camera toppling into the sand – luckily not the ocean! – and getting a lot of sand on the filter.  The filter was saved, set aside, gently brushed off, and cleaned with lens cleaner.  However, the one picture I did get, while not particularly dramatic in contrast with the roughness of the rocks and the smoothness of the sea, was worth saving.  The lens I used was the Tokina 11-16mm, which is wonderful for taking dramatic shots – but hard to use with refinement, simply because it is so wide.

One thing I totally forgot was I can change my iso settings on the Nikon!  It does a really good jobs at high iso, so as the sun went down, I pushed the iso from the 100 I used earlier in the day, to 1600 toward sunset, and using a Tamron 70-300mm lens at that – but it was a grrr moment that made me remember that, when all my pictures were horribly dark.

Although I live in Southern California, the coast is damp and chilly, oftentimes very windy.  The salt air clings to everything, and I end up feeling sticky and damp, even if I am not.  All of us were shivery, with fingers capable of doing very little.  Luckily, there is a rather nice cafe that serves excellent hot chocolate, so we ended up there before returning to our lives elsewhere.

Connections

There is nothing like good friends and family to keep one sane.  People who love you will take you with all your faults and warts.  There are people I love, and who love me.  However, though this love may seem boundless, it needs to also be respected – everyone has their limits, and when those limits are pushed too far, that love can end, and it can be painful to both sides.  The question occurs as to whether or not that love can be restored.

Years ago I once read that love grows out of pity.  While I did not, and still do not, like that idea, it does have a certain element of truth. Pity can induce compassion, which can lead to connection, which can lead to love.  Love, though, is quite intangible and hard to define.  And you can love someone, and not like them.  Or love them, and hate what they have done.  Somewhere, though, is that limit which, once lost, is hard or impossible to retrieve.

Trespasses occur everyday.  Manners help assuage the incursion.  But when is it okay to lay into someone?  When is it okay to tell someone off in no uncertain terms?  I think for most of us, it can be very difficult to do, but others seem to spend their lives simply telling people off.  Routinely vexatious people are to be avoided – but sometimes the ones you love are also vexatious, out of thoughtlessness, need, whatever.  And they need to be told . . .