What A Way To End The Year!!

During the course of the year, I have tried to present some of the fun and unusual things that jump off in North Dallas. Heavens only knows that there is enough bad news channels already. So to present that oddity to make you chuckle or laugh out loud or to say that passionate---AHHHHH! has been a goal of mine.

This year, it seems that yard decorations have gone with a more dangling mode that is made of unusual things. I have passed up many more that were so "complicated" to sort it out would have been not worth the time because while you were making up your mind what it was, the element of  comedy delay that always works, would have passed. But, there were some that just had that little tickler that would make sour lemon drops smile.

Today, while making my last round of the lake for 2016. It was rather mundane of sorts. Even I was a bit surprised how people were kind of not themselves for some reason. So as I headed out for home, I wanted to head out on the highest overview of the lake and downtown. As I turned onto the street that would provide those views, I caught a glimpse out of the corner of my eye that made the turn around and come back for a second look. I cracked up!! If I was having a contest for the most original humor decorations, this would have won thumbs down. See what you think. Everybody have a good and safe New Years and come on back in 2017. I post especially for Y'all.

Suspended  from tree branches, a lantern, table lamps with shades is not your average decoration.

It can't be said that it isn't original!!!

Accomplished A Lot Today

Just A Pretty Duck

Black Ring Bill Gulls Resting

A couple of days to New Years and the past week has seen two record breaking days. One at 81 degrees and one at 83 degrees.

With the tic-toc ticking, somehow, a lot of year-end task were accomplished today; even got in a 45-minute power nap. In the process, many images got listed with a handful of agencies. Every year, I try to go back through my images because for one reason or another, I miss one here and there. My thinking at the time could have been that I didn't want to list that particular image.  Some times it's as simple as whether I can list it as stock or as an editorial only image. Those can be the easy choices---sometimes---and at other times it can be a major debate of mind reasoning. There has even been times that I have prayed over an image here and there. Plus, there are projects to plan for shoots and editorial stuff happening that one needs to stay on top if the event changes. Frankly, with the degree of hate in the world today, I think about those projects with extra special care. Mom called that, "loss prevention with maximum realization".

On our website under the last tab, some of our images portfolios can be viewed via links. But, of course, there are a couple that do not give us that advantage to include every image so that you can check them out. For that reason,  I have exempted those two sites so that images are not listed there unless they are on all the links.In other words, if you can not check it out, then I don't list images on those sites, but will list them on sites that allow us to link our portfolios.

There should be one final post before the New Years. Hopefully, I'll still have time to get it written .  

Sometimes, Best Waits For The Last Minute

Here it is the end of another year! Where does that time go? Well, from a scientific point of view, it only moves forward so at least we know what direction to look for it each year. There is always a rush to finish projects or start looking for tax information,too. It's also a time to reflect and to make those New Years resolutions. A year in review seems to be the moniker that hangs for this kind of stuff. Although, for me, my annual review is always in July. That's when I sit down and comb through all the services that I use and figure out if I am getting my value out of them. If not, then they are cut or terminated. I've already got a heads up on one for July 2017. AT&T forced me to go to U-Verse and now since they purchased Direct TV, they have figured out that it cost them $17 more per customer to stay on U-Verse and are planning to switch customers  (I call it forced) to Direct TV. So, 2016 hasn't settled in the dust and a dust bowl is on the horizon for 2017 already.

Image Creators have that "forever stamp" in their indexes. Using a picture taken 5-years ago is just as timely as using that same image taken yesterday. There are exceptions, of course, but generally, stock images don't need to be updated as much as some think that they do. When bottom-line economics first appeared as a game-changer, I wasn't all that impressed. Now, today, all I hear is that no one listens to them anymore when they shop and certainly don't listen to them if they have an issue with something from a retailer to a bank to the phone company or even at times--- health care providers.

The big new thing that is really going to be the icing on the cake is all the talk about AI (artificial intelligence). Just  yesterday the police want  Amazon to turn over information from their Echo device in a murder investigation in Arkansas. It appears that even when not in use, the AI is still listening and recording that information. In my own home, why would I ever want something like that?

When I voted this past election, I ask my precinct foreman if my voting machine left a paper trail. He didn't know. But after I voted he came up to me and said, " no it doesn't." I had been observing each time that I voted for a few years that the election volunteer after checking the information inserted a smart drive into the machine before turning it over to me. I had already assumed that he was down loading the last persons vote and that after I left the machine, my vote remained in the machine until the next person voted, repeating what he had done before I used the machine. So when the Donald said that there was a great potential for voter fraud, I was not surprised. Now, this morning, the voter machines that I have been using have been declared not fit for election use because of the fraud issue. Why am I not surprised about that, either?

Yesterday, I started going back through my images from the first of 2016 and reviewing those that I have submitted, those that have been sold, and those that have been used by magazines, newspapers and as still shots on television. That is one class. The second class are those that have a WOW factor. They fulfill my mission statement : "A project to enhance the mind, stir the emotions and  quench a thirsty soul." All the others I begin to delete. According to my camera numbering system, 2016 will be a bit off. As with the images from yesterday, 2016 saw the shutter click shut just shy of 50,000 clicks. That's about one tenth of one percent that end up earmarked as keepers. A good shot can still be good but for submission purposes, someone's arm or elbo in the shot pretty much marks that image for the delete button. It's the old adage: you create the beast, the beast wants fed. In this case, my beast is eating about 50,000 shots a year. As long as I am still having fun doing it, then the beast doesn't get hunger pains. When I have to put the camera down, for me, it's going to be a sad day.

So, in this last week of the year 2016, the unusual appeared. In searching back, my most amazing image came from a pigeon earlier in the year. Both were of animals. I'm thankful for that. Their brains may be smaller than ours, but they have more intelligence than we give them credit and their hearts beat just like our, too.

Layla--a pure white German Shepard from Germany.

Muscle is still Muscle

Dragon Boat on White Rock Lake. One team trains here.The annual race is at Las Colinas in May each year.

End of the First Half

It does not seem like the first half of 2016 is getting ready to slam the door shut in just under three hours from where I sit. So, as this first half of the year ends, we can say about the same thing Queen Elizabeth II said to the PM of Ireland: "Well, I'm still alive,anyway.Ha", the Queen said.

 In 1952, I remember watching the Queen's coronation on television. It was in black and white and I am trying to recall, but I think it was a delayed broadcast because of the time difference. Technology was not up to our speed then, but of course, then, it was the latest gig. So, The Queen has had two birthdays and I'm only going to have one. "We've been quite busy. There's been quite a lot going on." she continued. Hear, Hear! I'll second that. I broke in thee new doctors and here I though I was only going to have one new doctor!

The past couple of days  have been spent lining up work that I can do while the heat hits Texas right on schedule. One of the weather quiz questions today was: what was the lowest daytime temperature  ever recorded on July 4th in Dallas? Well, as it turned out, it was 63 degrees F in 1924. That was 92 years ago. Mom would have been only a few days old. Then, tonight, I read an article about the sun spots going away and what that means. First it starts with no sun spots for a couple of days, then none for a couple of weeks and then none for several months. According to NASA, its the beginning of, or could be the start of a "mini ice age". It's called a Minimum sun vs. a Maximum sun. It's cyclical. Sun spots run a 11-year cycle more-or-less, give-or- take a year or two or thee, here or there.

It is to be hoped that you had a good first half of 2016 and the second half will be equal or even better than the first half.

This is a little different . Usually the American Flag is displayed. However, there has been so much going on this year that I have really been looking for new material that doesn't repeat a lot of what has been said. My admiration for the Queen has been a long running admiration and passing up the parallel on so many fronts, it had to be included.

Looking Back Over March

Sometimes, even with good intentions, things get missed. So, this serves as a sweep of things that did get missed. However, outside of the President and Air Force One being here (which are archived on the Live News Feed) the one central topic seemed to be the weather.

In cleaning up March-- as everyone already knows-- it was a windy little end to the first quarter of 2016 with storms, hail, tornadoes (again). Luckily, only about 20,000 were without power at any one given time in the Metroplex. The hail damage was bad--to say the least-- on cars and roofs. Some of those 12,000 new residents that arrive here every month got that old fashioned Texas Spring Hail Storm initiation. Welcome, to Texas!

At the end of the first ten days of the month, a young fisherman calls it quits as the wind and rain move in. A very wise young man, indeed.

Near the end of the month with about a week to go, the wind was still howling. The low-level stratus had lifted to clearing skies,however.

Yep! even the ducks were bobbing on the rolling waves and white caps.

It's Election Time Once Again

Yes, it is election time once again. There are all sorts of  issues, array of candidates and  even tax and bond issues that will come to event time this November. Already I'm getting phone calls and surveys and polls about how my voting will be done. Democrat? Republican? Green Party? Libertarian? . The interesting thing is not how my vote will be cast, but what kind of call will this call be? Is it a real person? A robot call? It becomes a game of amusement so answering them always happens.

My attitude at one time was that voting was my business and not something for anyone else to be concerned with. Then, it came to me that it really made no difference if my answers were confusing or cluttered with weeds on purpose. It was no different than our government developing stealth finishes for our air force. Why couldn't my answers about voting or religion preferences be like a weed patch or a jungle? If someone wanted to find that out, make them work for it rather than just giving them the refined answer. Since that eureka point arrived, it's just been fun to answer the phone. When it comes to religion, being main-stream is important to me and being a good ole Presbyterian is where you will find me, cut grass, weeded flower beds and edged sidewalks. There might even be a white picket fence in there somewhere being main stream Presbyterian.  Politics?  Well, it is back to having fun again! If you use a drone to look into my weed garden of politics, you are going to find a well-entrenched Republican who votes Democratic when I'm mad! Or is it a Die-hard Democrat who votes Republican when I'm mad?Oh, well, I've got until November to remember.

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Questions of the New Year

The new year is barely underway and already two questions are knocking on my skull. Two days, two questions. The new year is already setting the course of the rest of the year. My dread was that this year was going to be a somewhat confused year.  A political mess to be sorted out by November just didn't seem possible and yet...somehow, it will be sorted out come November.

Tonight watching Charlie Rose, Neil De Grasse Tyson was giving an educate interviewed. Charlie Rose ask him what would be his most important question to ask about the universe and his answer was something that has been answered much the same way already by a photographer. Tyson said his question would be the question that has not yet been ask because we are not smart enough to ask it yet. The photographer had been ask what is his best picture and his reply was the one that had not yet been taken.

The first question that came to me in reverse order here would be one that is a more powerful one on all fronts. The story behind the question has been tested for more than a few days now and only yesterday did the actual question form and begin pounding on my skull.

The story that formed the base of this question is:  A grad student at UCLA has been going to the San Diego Zoo every day for more than a year as part of his research for his doctorate. He had, in the beginning, ask such a simple question: how does a monkey peel a banana? The results has proven almost everyone has been doing it wrong. These past few days as I ate my daily banana, I peeled the banana the way the monkey peeled his. As a result of the grad students research, my first question of the year came about.

There is no question that after having tried it myself for several days the monkey has a winner. But, that still does not answer my question that all this fuss generated. In fact, now, a second part to the original question has come into play. So before I can ask the perplexing question, there is now a second part to be answered to the original question. That answer will just have to wait. The only way that I can get the answer that I need will require going to the Dallas Zoo and maybe even the Ft. Worth Zoo. You see, part of the answer is a visual answer. The only way that I can get that visual answer is go to the zoo. My best picture is one that hasn't been taken yet and I have a project and a plan! It is a once-in-a-lifetime shot. It will take some planning. Seeing an orangutan (on YouTube  Orangutan) fall to the floor and roll in laughter when he watched a magician do a magic trick that fooled him was priceless. This might be the only project on my agenda this year. But if I get the shot that I am hoping to get, it will have been a very good year.