What can I say about loyalty except …
Bonnie
Duke
Gibbs
Loyal. Honest, usually. Faithful, for the most part. Ours … absolutely!
LOYALTY, THY NAME IS DOG
Category Archives: Photography
OCTOBER IN THE VALLEY
We didn’t go out today or yesterday. It was gray yesterday and even grayer today, with dribbles of rain too. Garry still doesn’t feel well. He’s got the thing that’s going around. I had it before, so I hope I don’t get it again.
It has gotten quite chilly. The chill goes well with the damp. This is going to be one of those years when we go seamlessly from air-conditioning to heating with nary a weekend in between.
Interesting the ways in which the light changes with the seasons. Remarkable how these relatively subtle lighting changes affect our pictures. This time of year, at this latitude, the sunlight — especially in late afternoon — is amber. It is at its most amber at around 4:30, just before it starts to get dark.
Everything changes color. I know that those leaves are yellow, with the golden light, the camera says they are closer to gold or orange. I can’t make the leaves yellow without making the colors in the rest of the picture change too … so they have remained as close as I could keep them to the way I — and my camera — saw them.
This is the absolutely best time of year for color portraits. Anyone with a hint of skin pigment looks amazing in that amber light. The rest of us don’t look half bad either.
Home again.
SHAPES AND LINES – BLACK & WHITE
BLACK & WHITE SUNDAY: SHAPE
Only the shape, only the form. Thank you Paula for another great week of challenges!
AUTUMN AT THE BLACKSTONE – GARRY ARMSTRONG
Photo: Garry Armstrong
I wasn’t feeling well, but Marilyn was insistent. “Autumn is short,” she pointed out and urged me to take a couple of hours and come out. Autumn is a flash of color and then, it’s gone.
Photo: Garry Armstrong
After all, tomorrow, it might rain. I agreed.
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
We both took pictures — enough to last a while. Autumn will be longer on Serendipity than this brief season will be in New England.
Photo: Garry Armstrong
Photo: Garry Armstrong
THROUGH THE GLASS A BIT DARKLY
A Photo a Week: Under Glass
I’m pretty sure Nancy really wanted a picture of something shot through glass, and I suppose I could have gone down the hall and shot a picture of my dolls in their glass cabinet. Of, for that matter, the glass cabinet in this room. Some of them are more accurately … through glass. Sunglasses. And a little amber bottle.
Quincy Harbor from the 7th floor …
Past the tools through the glass table
Glass on glass
BONNIE – THE DAY AFTER HER SPA
Usually we take pictures of Bonnie and Gibbs at the groomers, but their new place is much smaller and doesn’t have that big front room. So we waited until we got home … and then we waited until the next day when hopefully, we’d have better light.
We had good light. Too much light — with a lot of very sharp shadows that make it hard to take pictures at all, much less pictures of a black dog with dark eyes and a black nose. I got a few more in the house, later. I took about 30 pictures outside, of which 4 (maybe?) were sharp and the rest were various shades of blurry. A few more of the 40 more pictures I took in the living room came out, too.
Also, a great truth has come to me: it’s a lot easier to shoot the Scotties in black & white. Duh. I know. Obvious. But I wanted to get Garry in the pictures (I didn’t) and he looks good in color. No matter. We have a gallery of Bonnie, the short, plump, and entirely cute. Also, note that Bonnie has developed the best beard I’ve ever seen on a Scottie. It’s bigger and fully than Gibbs’ — and he’s a boy!
WILL WORK FOR FOOD
There is a rumor, perpetuated by television shows, that bloggers earn a living. By blogging. Someone in Hollywood seriously thinks people like me make money doing this. I am depressed to admit it, but not one cent have I ever made from this site — not counting the occasional free book for review.
I don’t advertise on this site. In fact, I pay WordPress to not put their advertisements here. My dream is not to monetize my site, but be such an incredible writer that the world will shower me with money — just because I’m me. I won’t have to ask, and I will owe nothing to anybody. And I could … pay the bills! Yes!
Money for nothing. It brings tears to my eyes.
Somewhere, some blogger must be making money on his or her site, but I don’t know them. I’ve been around the world, blog-wise. I have yet to see a single blogger bringing in the big bucks. A few people have tried to at least keep even by putting advertisements on their sites, but the amount of money this earns them wouldn’t add up to a good meal in a mediocre restaurant. Moreover, advertising annoys readers. Sites with spammy ads and weird pop-ups make me want to go somewhere else. Since the Internet remains one of the last, free places on earth, that’s what I do. I go elsewhere.
I don’t do this for money. I don’t even do it in the hopes that someday it might make money. I don’t run advertisements, have no connections to any organization who will pay me for anything. I get offers for free applications for an “honest review,” but between the lines I read “positive, glowing review.”
I turn them down. “Money for nothing” is a delightful dream … and that is all it is.
If for some obscure reason, you want to buy me off? You’ll have to do a lot better than any offer I’ve gotten to date. I’m sure everyone has a price, so I probably have one too. No one has come close to meeting whatever my price turns out to be. But — please, feel free to keep trying!
Meanwhile, there will be no succumbing on this blog. Not without one humongous payoff.
