April 2016

Escalator Abstract
Victoria, British Columbia
2016

This image was taken in the Hudson’s Bay Company store in Victoria. Whenever I hear the name Hudson’s Bay Company, I think of the early company and it’s role in the exploration and settlement of much of the North American continent. I see fur trappers, explorers, trading posts, and of course the famous Hudson’s Bay point blankets. So, even though I know better, I’m surprised to see a Hudson’s Bay store these days is to a large degree indistinguishable from Macy’s, J.C. Pennies, The Bon, or the like. And I’m sure none of those old trading posts based on the fur trade never had an escalator.

Ultraportable
Victoria, British Columbia
2016

The desire (a.k.a. need) to have a portable means of communication besides pen and paper has been around a long time. This is the ultimate in portable typewriters, “practical” I think only in the sense that it is indeed quite portable. As far as I could tell, you use it by sticking a piece of paper in this thing, rotating the dial to the first letter you want to type and pressing down, then repeat after rotating to each additional letter in turn.

Typing with your thumbs on a phone keypad may seem slow but using this device must have been excruciatingly so. I’d lose my train of thought before I could get a sentence typed out on this thing.

Sandhill #1
Bozeman, Montana
2016

As far as bird photography goes, I am primarily interested in crows, ravens, and magpies. But I am not adverse to pointing my camera at other species if the opportunity presents itself. I was out cruising for corvids east of town the other day. I had no luck finding any but came across six sandhill cranes in a field.

Interestingly, these sandhills were much less skittish than are the crows and ravens I come across out in the country. I suspect that is due to the corvids often being the targets of yahoos with guns who view them as trash species. The sandhills must get more respect as these let me stand there at the fence and photograph them from less than 100 feet away for quite a while before flying off. In this particular case though it was the few good shots of them flying that were the most picturesque. It was the so-called magic hour for photography, which helped create the dramatic lighting in this image.

Gustave in Yellowstone
Bozeman, Montana
2016

The result of too much free time on a lazy Sunday afternoon. It’s free admission all this week in Yellowstone National Park so perhaps Mr. Klimt will be there again.

The Kiss
Gustave Klimt
1908

Early Laptop
Victoria, British Columbia
2016

Not a laptop per se, but definitely built to be ultra-portable. It seems to predate the QWERTY keyboard. See how long it takes you to even find the QWERTY keys visually; it took me longer than I thought it would.

Oxymoronic Songbook
Victoria, British Columbia
2016

I don’t know how well this sold back when first published (1940) but I’m pretty sure it would not make any music bestseller list today. I see there is a used copy of it on Amazon for $35 bucks, which would be a decent return on the initial 75 cent investment were it to sell.

Wasted Words
Victoria, British Columbia
2016

This is the setting for the typewriter photo from the other day (see it here). The wadded up paper in and around the wastebasket brought to my mind an image of someone working and on one draft after another of an important missive, only to get frustrated and start over once again.

Tire Man
Idaho Falls, Idaho
2013

First Crow on the Moon
Bozeman, Montana
2016

Just fooling around with composite images again. The title of this post might not make much sense unless you’ve seen the earlier POTD image here. (Granted, even then it might not make much sense!)

Caravan
Bozeman, Montana
2016

The background of this composite image is a close-up shot from a couple of years ago of part of a sculpture at the Seattle Art Museum. It was the pyramid shape that lead me to create the image and call it Caravan. (At first glance, the Fashion Queen thought she was looking at camels.)

Staying with the pyramid interpretation, I see the fading shadow and the darker marks in the upper left quadrant of the image as an approaching sandstorm. That made me think perhaps the caravan ought to be disappearing into the storm. That led to the version of the image below. If you care to, let me know in the comments which you prefer. I’m quite torn between the two myself.