Contrails Sunrise

About 4 days ago I was awake before 6:00 A.M. This is like the middle of the nite for me, as I am a nite person. What must have woke me up was this fantastic contrails (jet trails) sunrise. It was spectacular. I was out on the deck shooting it as soon as I noticed it. The shot with the big lines and fat trail was taken with the wide angle converter attached. Any of this series with a time in the EXIF at 6:10 are with the Wide angle converter and the size set to 'wide'.

In the last week I have managed to get my vegetable garden weeded and watered. Got the lawn mowed and pond topped up. Did some dead heading today. Met the new neighbors over the back fence. Gerald spoke of replacing the fence between our place. Said I would be on for paying for my share. Also spoke of having my hedge looked at by some experts. I asked him if we could wait until after the winter, as it might get storm damaged, at which time we might have to take it down to 6 or 8 feet or some manable size. But if we do that we lose the screening of the hedge for our bedroom window. Its still open to discussion, so we will see. I lent him my long pole pruner to whack off a leaning over branch and said if he needed it again do not hesitate to ask. He is renovating and going after cleaning up the little space on his side of the hedge. Yeaaaaa Gerald and Shawna. At last that whole side of my lot is going to looking much much better. Pat and I whacked down the nasty rose bush that was growing between our properties on about the day they moved in... talk about timely. :)) I see the rose bush is sprouting again. I will have to keep after it or dig out the root sometime when I am feeling energetic.

Got my blue glass collection washed and put back in place. To do that I had to clean up the guest room (including windows) and clean the kitchen window. I have to sit next to the sinks to manage to clean that window so its a real PITA.

Glorious Sunset

Another glorious sunset last night. By the time I noticed the light it was too late to go over by the jail to try catch our 'castle' with this sunset. I really wish I had been out at Elk Lake to catch these colors.

The Bay

I am working on the Look Up Victoria photos from July 31 for loading to Flickr. I still have quite a few really good ones from June to do yet, also. I mentioned to Glen Alan that I had these and so its time I loaded them to his historic victoria group.

There have been several phone calls from car guys today. Lyn re the Malahat Challenge registration. A. Gouyet re his coils. Pat phoned. They have the car and some extra parts he needs and they are in the Ridgeway area. It will probably be more than 3 days before they are home.

Lipizzan Stallion Show rework

I am starting over with the clean up of my very noisy photos from the Lipizzan Stallions show on June 23. The first ones I did turned out very soft. I was trying to sharpen in Neat Image. This time I just hit the auto everything. Then took it to photoshop and adjusted levels, size and sharpening. Any cropping, etc was done before and after, if needed. This looks not too bad on Flickr white background. I really like the black background here, so ...

Sunsets

Last evening there was a bit of color in the sky. I went up the road to the Jail and tried to capture it against the sunset. Almost all of the sun was gone from the sky by the time I got there.

This evening when I noticed the color I put my plant up on the deck railing and shot it against the sky. When I did not use flash I only got silhouettes. This is the one using flash. The distant tree is in silhouette. I had about 5 minutes to shoot and all the color was gone. You can see the top part of the photo has no sunset colors left in it.

I finished loading my photos to the Flickr Victoria Grid Project. It was in the Town and Country Mall area. I loaded 32 to the pool. The limit, at the moment is 50 per person per month. I think that is a bit high. I am going to see if I can stick to the 30 limit... like one per day. There are 83 people in the Grid, but not everyone shots and loads to the pool. Some of them have not been heard from this month. The meeting to decide next month's grid is on Tuesday at Boston Pizza. I don't know if I will go.... probably not.

One of the guys did up a YouTube video for last month and one for this month. He used a couple of my shots as stills. yea me. and yea him. I have no idea how they make those videos.. video camera I suppose.

Still working at the uploads For the Victoria Grid

I spent a few hours today, tweaking photos for the Flickr group... Victoria Grid Project. More people are loading their photos so I don't appear to be a big hog of the uploading space. These photos are not changed, except for cropping, downsizing and some curves or levels, so they should be good for the Grid.

More for the Victoria Grid Project on Flickr

More photos for the Victoria Grid Project on Flickr. There have not been any of the others in the group loading any photos after mine. But I shall keep loading mine anyway. A couple of the group got back to my photos to comment, and I returned comments on their stuff.

I did a walk around the perimeter of the Town and Country Mall, where there are going to be some big renovations happening. Fairway grocery store is closed. I actually have more shots from this part of the Mall to upload, but two of the shots are from Saanich City Hall. I wanted to end this post with another person, so that I have a row of people on my VFXY account. Click the button on the side panel to see my VFXY account. Its a nice little blogging community. Very quiet and peaceful.

Victoria Grid Project H28 July

More for the Victoria Grid Project for July on Map H28 on Flickr.

This guy hit me up for some money to catch the bus out to Sooke ($3.00) He showed me his dirty, worn clothes and said he was a laborer making $9.00 per hour. I believed him, but since he reeked of alcohol I thought he had probably spent all his cash in a bar drinking and could not get home to Sooke. I gave him a $1.00 so as to not encourage him to be spending his last dollar on booze. He would have had to pan handle for the rest. I asked to take his photo and he was quite pleased to pose. Said he was could be a good looking dude when he got cleaned up.

The photo I like best of this bunch is the puddle reflection.

The best is yet to come...

Grey Matters

Excerpts from the Times Colonist

Census Highlights

• Greater Victoria has the highest proportion of very elderly people in the country – those over 80 – at 6.4 per cent of the population.
• B.C. saw a 16.2 per cent increase in the number of centenarians since 2001 – up to 610 from 525.
• Despite B.C.’s reputation as a retirement mecca, the province is actually only the fifth oldest. Saskatchewan, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick all have a higher proportion of seniors. Oddly, Saskatchewan also has the highest percentage of people under 15, making it the oldest and youngest province.
• The graying population means that there are more than four million Canadians over the age of 65 – that’s one in every seven people. Conversely, there are just 5.6 million Canadians under 15, and projections suggest they’ll be outnumbered by seniors by 2011.
• Compared to other countries in the G8, Canada has one of the lowest proportions of seniors: 13.7 per cent of Canadians are 65 and older compared to 20.8 per cent in Japan for the same age category.
• Sidney has more women as a percentage of the total population than any other town in Canada, followed by Saint Lambert, Que., and Yarmouth, N.S., while Rockwood, Man., Wood Buffalo, Alta., and Whistler, B.C., are the manliest towns.

. . . The top three grayest towns in Canada are on the Island – Qualicum, Sidney and Parksville. Around 4 out of every 10 people in Qualicum are older than 65, while 3 out of every 10 people in Parksville and Sidney qualify as seniors.

. . . One in seven Canadians is now a senior citizen, says the Statistics of Canada report…

. . . Women living average of 82.5 years and men 77.7 . . .

. . . Analysts say the rapidly aging population has major implications for the economy and society in general, ranging from worker shortages to rising health-care costs and increasing demands on pension systems. On a more positive note for society, it promises to creat a larger pool of volunteers, given the tendency of older people to donate their time to worthy causes.. . .

The article included many more interesting tidbits of information. Not the least of which was noting that the Baby Boomers are just now becoming seniors. The one in seven ratio will most probably increase in the future.

The Antique Autos 25th Anniversary Meet

The Speedster photo is from the Club photographer's CD photos of each individual of the whole group. The shot of Active Pass is from the outside deck of the Ferry while trailering the car to the meet at Chilliwack. The train is on the way out to Chilliwack, shot through the window of the moving Van. The hotel shot, is of course the hotel we stayed at. The Hotel had just changed ownership. The service, the rooms, the food, everything about this hotel was dismal.

The tours on Friday and Saturday were very well thought out with directions that were easy to follow. We had some excellent stops. We were rained upon a bit on Friday, and Saturday was quite hot. I have the usual 'speedster nose' sun and wind burn on all exposed body parts. The little car ran fairly well, except for something in the coils cause a bit of a hiccup. Pat fixed it, but there are some other parts that need replacement.

It rained a bit today, but I really should get out and water the garden.

I had intended to go shoot the Victoria Grid Project today, but the rain kinda dampened my enthusiasm.

Glorious Sunset

There was a glorious sunset tonite. Too bad I did not have a good foreground. This is shooting from off my deck with a tree and a chimney for silhouettes.

Flares with the CS filter

We are having record breaking high temperatures this week. My thermometer is at 36 Celcius.

The neighbors moving truck is parked almost all the way across the front of our driveway with sun glinting off its white cab. So, I thought I would attach my CS filter and try to get some flares. Also took a couple of pictures of the yellow water lily. Now I see that the lily is finished. It sure doesn't last very long. The color on my lily was terrible, but I kept this one for the tiny flares on the right. The big flare is from the truck cab. Decreased brightness and increased contrast. I could not get any diamond shaped flares from shooting at a few degrees from directly into the sun. Hmmmm, my old Canon Powershot A50 did gorgeous colored diamond flares. I might have to revive that camera for the RAW, the Flares, and the sharper better color. Todays shots have a lot of noise too.

The brown beetle

I found this beetle on my gardening shoe. I tried to make it stay on some colorful paper for a better shot. I zoomed it and I used the macro and the super macro settings. I have to learn to hold my camera very very still when doing these macros. I took the beetle outside to the patio table and finally to the deck from where I let it go, unharmed, but probably quite tired. It had a terrible time getting upright again when I would flip it on its back to slow it down a bit. It was not very fast, though. I think it was an old beetle. It has very long antenna and a black spot on either side, midway down its back part. It was about and inch, inch and a quarter long.

Yesterday I mowed the lawn and dumped the clippings on the garden. It is very hot. We are having a heat wave. It is suppose to last about a week. It was up to 28 yesterday, and as I type this the thermometer sits at 34 celcius. Its not too bad in the house though. We have curtains closed and fans running. That skylight sure lets in a lot of hot.