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.

Warmest Christmas in Dallas...Ever!

Yesterday, my youngest brother and I had lunch at Twisted Root. If you never have been there, it's a fun place to get a burger for sure. Our order-taker made mention that they actually had buffalo meat in house yesterday. I replied that I really preferred by buffalo in National Parks. For that, our order card was the "Charlie Brown" card. It's kind of like the old Jerry Seinfeld soup Nazi episode in real life. And yes, I mentioned the word potato at Spring Creek BBQ a time or two, also. You never want to do that. Luckily, for me, that kind of  humor is just as much fun as the themed restaurants can be and I like that atmosphere. 

Speaking of atmosphere, the low temperature in Dallas Christmas Eve broke the old low temperature reading by 14 degrees. That low temperature was 69 degrees. But, the surprise came today when the old high temperature for Christmas Day was 78 and at 2:53 P.M at DFW International (the official reporting station and hourly reporting) the temperature hit 80 degrees. That is the highest temperature ever, in Dallas, for a Christmas Day.

It was obvious too!. People were out in numbers riding new bikes, playing with new remote controlled cars. BBQ grills in the parks were all smoking as families spread picnics out on picnic tables. There was a strong and gusty south wind blowing, too! Cormorants were flapping their wings and flying sideways rather than moving forward. Pelicans were making double approaches landing and suburban main streets Christmas decorations were swinging in the wind.

Places in the Sierra Nevada mountains were covered in snow and looked a lot like a Norman Rockwell painting. Watching the snow plows move the mountain- elevation snows while I cooked the turkey this morning was that romantic-type Christmas for sure. Seeing  the White Rock Airforce coming in for a landing in strong gusty winds was also amazing. In fact, just as smooth as a A-380 landing in cross-winds at DFW Nature is so amazing.

White Rock Air Force

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays.

It's a blue and silver Cowboy Christmas this year!

Go Cowboys!

Perseption Is Everything, But ......

Sometimes, images are just waiting to happen. For more than a decade, I have not gone anywhere without my camera riding  next to me on the passenger seat. It's an old trick that I learned from a friend of mine who was an AP photographer for many years. In fact, he was the same guy that would shimmy thirty feet out on an I-beam that was seven-hundred feet up on a job site just to get a shot of  several iron workers eating their lunch on that same I-beam.  Steve was patient (and a bit crazy) for sure.

At this time of year, I make my rounds to include a few cemetery visits of people that I have known and worked with in the past. While doing that yesterday, a rare moment began to unfold right before my eyes. Instinctively, I reached for the camera. While the opportunity presented itself, it did not present itself in ideal conditions but none-the-less, I got the shot through my dirty windshield and being on the wrong side of the truck. All that aside, afterwords, my thinking was---how many people have ever seen the particular setup?  That's what makes it one of those rare shots.

Cemetery Delivery

My question: on-line purchase?

Wait! I'm Not Done With 2016 Yet!

Yes, we have all heard the old adage that, "time waits for no man"; brilliant statement since time always moves forward, but I get the jest of its  meaning. The problem with that also is that I don't always work at most efficient speeds and creating imagery tends to cause me to slow down even more.

The local weathermen had been advertising for nearly a week that the coldest weather of the past two years was about to invade north Texas on Saturday.The past week had already been a roller coaster of temperatures with one day in the 60s and one day in the 30s and so on and so on during the course of the week. But, Saturday was to be the cherry on the banana split, sprinkles on the ice cream, the marsh mellow floating in the hot cocoa. It was going to be in the upper 70s.

The thing about that was also the yippee dippie weatherman advertised a 52 degree drop in temperatures with an immediate shift in winds to the north as the cold front passed. No, it was not going to be one of those frontal passages and the next morning you feel a little chill. This one was going to strike and strike quickly. Within less than a couple of hours of the passage of the front. It did give cause to pause. Might want to think about this before you head out, I though. Take the jacket. Add the scarf. Run the errands before being creative with the camera. It was kind of fun to start to go into blizzard mode again (if you ever lived up north during a severe winter, you know that mode well).

It was amazing to see people in tank tops and shorts and sweating in mid December. Amazing because some of these would no doubt be surprised to be shivering before their chosen activity was over that day. People just do not listen or pay much attention to weather that is negative. They only listen and pay attention to weather that is favorable to their cause. In other words: people only half listen today (have you noticed all the white ear buds growing out of every ones ears?)  Just look at one of them in direct eye contact and just move your lips. The face look you get as they pop one ear bud out of their ear is how cartoon animators got that "look" in some of the best cartoons of the 50s. Sure, ear buds were not even an ideal then, but there were ways to produce that same look of being highly annoyed. There it is---that word that I was looking for. Annoyed. Yes. That is it for sure.

When I am not looking for birds, or trees with that special look of fall, I am usually looking to see what the City Park workers are doing. They do a super job at keeping the lake in amazing shape on a daily basis. Sometimes, they have extended projects that can or cannot turn into something special. But, to ignore them or blow by them like there is a 5-alarm blaze somewhere else is a great disservice to them as individuals, their jobs that go unappreciated with every bottle cap or plastic bottle that I see floating and bobbing in the water, or the crews that keep the grass cut as the seasons progress and the prairie grasses turn golden or wildflowers come up and they mow around the wildflowers. That is not to mention the loss of all the tree limbs from age, disease, rot, storms, wind, or what may come next.

When the city takes down one of those magnificent trees, the stumps get painted red. There is a crew that comes along and drills out those massive stumps into sawdust mulch. Saturday, I had stopped and gotten out of the car to look at a recent drilling. It wasn't that long ago that I had shot that tree because it was one of those top 25 trees with character that grow at the lake. Now, I'm looking at the place where it had stood watch over the north shore of the lake for years older than I am at this writing. What that tree witnessed over the years would be an amazing time capsule of humans on earth, most likely.

Any who, I stopped to talk to a man that walks the lake daily with his dog and holds a like interest in those amazing trees that grow around the lake. In fact, there are more people that hold an interest in the trees there than those that cut themselves off from everything around them but some birds. Don't get me wrong here. I like birds. I'm just not obsessed with them so much as to get somewhat hostile when a family comes along with a bag a bread to feed those birds under the sign that says, "don't feed the birds" and then explains why you should not feed the birds. In a way, to me that is...it is... karma at its finest! I have to chuckle and turn away. Imagine a grown man or woman with a three-thousand dollar camera and glass foiled by a young family, kids and a couple of loaves of bread and sees that family as an invading army. Share the lake, people. Life is to short!

The lake walker and I walked together to one of the new trail benches overlooking the lake and sat down and talked for nearly an hour. I could not help but notice that the sky was filling in with clouds and I also had in mind the ETA of the cold front. Long story short, Us 'ole

The astonishing color

The cold front nears and a 50-degree drop (after the fact) hit within two hours of this shot. 

 

 

 

 72 degrees at 12:53. At 23:53 it was 22-degrees.

The paved trail is to the left. The short cut path has long been here.

tree hugger  parted and went in opposite directions. There was still some time to get some great creations focused onto the mirror before the Polar Vortex struck.  But, time waits for no man.

The Physics of Seasons

Basically, I enjoy all four seasons and cannot imagine life without them. In other words, I could not live somewhere where the seasons never changed. Admittedly, Texas falls could not be pushed any closer to winter than they are. Our trees are just now dropping the leaves and the colors are mid peak and a little beyond. Winter begins in approximately 9 days--not looking to see the actual day this year for winters official start.

However, fall has always been my most favorite time of the year, followed by spring, then winter. Summer drops to the end of the list because of the heat, because it just does not  behave here like the summers in the Great Lakes, the mountains, or New England. When I say behave, it is fundamentally because of climatology. Every area of the country has there little idiosyncrasy(s)

Halloween Replay

Just an absolute fire-pot of color

A more traditional look for the second week of December, yet it was in the 70s today.

that if you live in that place, you expect, or accept without grumbling. For example, in the Great Lakes, about 60 miles south of the lakes, there is more cloud cover surrounding the areas. It's the moisture from such a large body of water that causes the cloud cover--stratus--if I remember correctly. As the sun gets higher in the sky, the clouds burn off. You see this more readily if you fly a lot. Here in Texas, the Gulf is as big an influence as the Great Lakes. In reverse. On a larger scale. Controlled by prevailing winds from the south, Then, about Dallas, latitude wise, the mixing bowl takes all those factors and mixes them up and then we get  the big hail storms, tornadoes and winter mix of sleet, ice pellets and those fun things.

Today, I was thinking. Spring goes into summer and that is about all you get. But Fall, gives you color, cooler temps, Halloween, Thanksgiving, and then you get winter with Christmas and  New Years, Valentines  kind of all mixed up in one big snow cone. It's like having you cake and eating it, too. It's everything except Spring and Summer. But sometimes, we get a lot of that too! 
Today I was reminded of that fact with some things that presented themselves unexpectedly. See what  you think. And as always, a quick reminder that if you click on one of the images, the total package will enlarge with a thumbnail at the bottom. When the first opens, then click on the little thumbnails and they too, will enlarge.

Finally, A Return To Editorial Stock

It's been a long two months. Why? Because Nikon and Olympus both upgraded their software and it contained the part that I use to submit editorial images to the Live New Feeds. Without it, the editors don't have the time to pick through images. Their submission rules are a little different than just plain stock. For that, you need that software.

A couple of weeks ago, I was able to get through to the Nikon Service Rep. Then, after receiving the upgrade, I had to familiarize myself with the software and then how to export the images from Olympus to the Nikon software. It was a nightmare, but while I was housebound it was a perfect time to be able to figure it all out. After a couple of test runs, it became clear that things were going to be alright.

Long story short, tonight, images are running on the live news feed once again.

As usual, don't forget to click on the image to enlarge all three.

Fresh Honey

He is so good.His laugh is infectious.

Garlic Mike is also amazing!