Snow and sun

Still snow today, but sun too. Very nice day.

Black, White, and Red all over

Black, White, and Red
You ought to see this one in a big print. All those thin red branches, lovely. (Remember you'll get at least a bigger version of my images by clicking on the picture.)
Unlike most I do, these snow pics need adjusting, for the light was really, really dull. They look like mud from the camera. But with a solid boost to contrast, nice.

snow today

And just as we thought spring was neigh, on comes snow today. I like playing with the visual effects of snow. (Or anything.)

Cloud and Building

This is taken on the wide-angle setting of the lens I talked about, Nikkor 18-200mm VR. It is the ideal walk-about lens. Vibration reduction for handheld use, long range zoom. It has very acceptable sharpness wide open, and stopped down a little it is amazingly crisp.

Jet stream

Another one from yesterday.

New Stobblehouse home page photo

There is a new photo on my home page. (This one also from today.)
I only noticed after I put it up how it matches the design colors!
(It is clickable.)

Long lens

I finally got my Nikkor 18-200mm zoom. This is an awesome lens. It is as sharp as any reasonable priced lens, but it has an 11X reach, and image stabilization!
I was working very fast and nimble in a trip around town today, and yet almost all the images are pin sharp. This one was taken in a space of around two seconds. Very nice picture too, donchathink?

Spam Arrest

OK, I finally got royally fed up with spam. I counted that I had over a THOUSAND caring, personal messages informing me about "The Ultimate Online Pharmaceutical". Barf.
And I was using maybe ten minutes daily sorting spam, even after two different spam filters had been applied. And at my earnings, that is around $40. :)
Not to mention the sheer irritiation. Not good for my digestion.
I had hesitated long though, because I really love getting e-mails, and I'd hate to miss any communications. But there is a slight risk to anything. So I signed up for SpamArrest.com. It is a challenge system, a sender sending to me for the first time will get a mail asking him to go to a web site and writing in a word shown in a graphic, thus proving that he is human and that he cares enough that he will use thirty seconds extra.
O what a relief it is to get up in the morning and seeing only the thirty mails I want, instead of a hundred, must of which I must sort out. And not to have to wonder if I really don't want a longer Dick Tracy, bigger eja... celebrations, more medicines, fake Rolexes...
UPDATE: I wanted to extract all the addresses from the mails I have received in the last four months (that is how big my current mail archive is. When the file gets too big I make back-archives) in order to white-list them. I used address-extracting software, and lo: it amounts to 9.250 addresses... I got almost twenty thousand legit emails from over NINE THOUSAND different people in four months! (And this does not include the spam...) Now, most of this is business mail. I am not that popular. :)

View from Winter Hill

Ace photog Laurie Jeffery visited me today, we had a nice lunch, and then we decided to go to Winter Hill to take a few shots. Laurie needed some clouds, and it was a great day for that. Very cold though, the wind cut right through you.
This is taken with a Tamron 11-18mm super-wideangle lens. (17-27mm 35mm equivalent.) And it's a combination in Photoshop of two exposures, otherwise the ground would be too dark or the sky too light.
The falling-down walls and fences of the UK (not seen much in Denmark) may be due to economics, but visually they are more interesting than more modern stuff.

Preconceiving art photos, or not

"When I was starting out -- the first, oh, twenty-five years -- I would have a preconceived idea of what I wanted to photograph. I would get in the car and start looking for it, and never find it. Now I just go out, and let things happen. Because... preconceiving, you miss a lot." -- Clyde Butcher
... As interviewed on the Luminous Landscape DVD Journal.
(You must see this man's enlarger. It is the size of a car and more expensive.)
(And he prints inkjet too. He has a 44-inch (112cm) Epson printer.)

When I was most active in a photo club almost thirty years ago, one of the members (whose pictures I can't really recall now) chided me a little for taking pictures of "accidental" things that just happened where I was. Apparently it was not serious art. Well, photography is a unique sort of art, in that it is a collaboration with the Universe. You go out there and you Dance with the world. If you wish to impose your will totally on it, I think painting or writing is more for you.

How to be rich today

This is the last get-rich-quick scheme you'll ever need.
Who is rich?
That is the person who has more than he needs.
Ah, but how much does he need? You'll notice that changes enormously according to who you ask, and when. A lawyer will give you a different answer from a vagabond.
The big tragedy is that mostly you'll hear an answer which is about twice as much as the person currently has.
What if you changed your ideas and feelings about it? What if what you "need" is about HALF as much as you currently have? Then no matter what you have, you'll always be rich.
And this is not just a semantic trick, on the contrary this is the ONLY way you'll ever be rich. There are billionaires in this world who still are poor, because they still don't have enough.
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PS: Don't choose to "need" exactly what you have. Choose half as much.
PPS: The best way I have found of changing your feelings is EFT.