Catching up with with autumn -- in July. Ahem.

Is anyone else finding this winter way colder than usual? It's ... interesting. Trying to keep busy, I'm -- at last! -- unpacking the photos I took a couple of months ago (with the Lumix; this predates the Canon by months), and this little photo essay, I'll call "Wine Country Autumn." Poem and images are dated March 9, and this is July 3. Where did time go?!

Wine Country Autumn

Gold lies strewn to the horizon and beyond

As if some careless godling

Turned out the divine pockets and

Let the doubloons tumble where they may.

Fields of gold burn, lustrous in the westering sun

As evening settles ― but not for long.

In just a week or three, the next rapacious wind

Will gambol among these vines and loot the hoard

Till bare wood alone remains,

Enduring winter’s ire with never a hint

Of the transient splendour that was

These fields of gold.

 

...Dave and I were at Myponga the other day, and I field tested the 18-45mm lens on the new Canon. Nice. I have the images in Photoshop at this time. Its *not* that the photos look much (if any) better, just as they come out of the camera, than the shots I was getting from the Lumix, BUT -- when you come to enhance them, you find there is a zillion times more information in the Canon image than there would have been in the same picture off the FZ-80 Superzoom bridge. This means the image can be "driven" far, far further, and at the end of the process, the picture will have the characteristics you expect from a professional camera. Mmmm. It's all about a synergy between the camera and the software, and both elements have to be in place, to get the results. I Have a lot still to learn, but I'm getting there!

Merrie Yuletide ... and remembering Mom

 
A Yuletide Blessing

Long is the night and the stars are bright;
Cold is the wind, and sighing.
Bare are the trees -- there's snow in the breeze;
Silent, the land... but not dying:
Sleep is the cure when one must endure --
Lord, knight, lady and fool:
Here is the night when back comes the light:
Blessed be all, upon Yule.

ooOOooOOooOOooOOooOOoo

Merrie Yuletide to all!

This is such a bittersweet festival to me, because the Winter Solstice also marks the anniversary of Mom's passing. And this year, it's more significant than ever. I can't believe that it's been seven years since she passed over. Seven years. She was born just short of the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere, and she passed on the very eve of Yule, in the south. I told her story here, so in this post I'll just say that I miss her, and always will. Wherever you are, Mom, I hope you're happy.

This year, we decided to celebrate the festival properly, with a small tree and some little gifts, and a midwinter feast. Nothing vastly elaborate, but something to break up the winter, which is turning out to be very cold indeed. Most of the continent is in the grip of an acutely chilly snap -- temperatures well below zero in the early morning, as far north as Queensland --

Not my photo!!! Borrowed from ABC News, to make my point, because (duh) I don't live in Qld. 

 --a nd there's really no answer to that, is there? Well, actually, there are several answers, but most of them involve jokes and the practise of banana bending, and there's not especially appropriate. So.

It's been a very long time indeed since I posted to this blog, or to any of them. Life has been a bit rough, but I'll set down enough here to at least patch the gap a little. March and April saw me insanely busy, reworking my old art blog. I did a stupendous amount of work there, and as a consequence neglected this one. It still isn't 100% complete, so I'm not (yet) going to link to it. Then in May, Dave and I got Covid a second time ... and everything sort of ran off the rails. Long Covid is no joke, and there is no other explanation for what's going on with my health. I'm just exhausted, achy and confoozelated, most of the time. What can you say? I have eight tonnes of projects waiting to be tackled, and I don't have the energy, inspiration or creative zeal to sink my teeth into anything. No gumption. I hope this will change soon, but right now I'd have to say that the last four months or so have zipped past in a blur. It's not just this blog I've neglected ... I haven't posted a line to Facebook in almost as long!

In fact, Facebook is rather a sore spot for me at the moment. The AI driving it rubbed me the wrong way just once too often. I was getting time bans (which I believe they call Facebook Jail) for NOTHING I had done, including a lifetime ban from something they call the "FB Marketplace," for "contravening their community standards" -- which was a bloody good trick, because I have never in my life even SEEN the FB Marketplace, much less clicked a mouse on/in it. Huh. The last time, FB banned me for a day for something I did "yesterday," when I hadn't even looked at a ruddy computer for a week!!! I saw that cheerful little message when I turned on my phone to get the time at 7:05am, one morning in March ... and I walked away from Facebook. Should I go back? Maybe. Will I? Possibly. If I have a good enough reason

Actually, the good enough reason is probably sitting under the Yuletree right now, in wrapping paper. A new camera. Canon. Mirrorless, pro-level, with two lenses -- a digital revamp of the old SLR tech of yesteryear. This time, as a new chapter in my patchwork career as a photographer opens up, I intend to go out there as a landscape photographer, because I'll be able to capture wide shots in the equivalent of 4K resolution. The Lumix superzoom bridge cameras I've been using for the last five or six years are dandy for what they are -- I wanted to go birding at the time, and did -- but they have their limitations. I actually quit photographing landscapes, because the 1200mm zoom generally yields wide shots of such low resolution, in poor-light conditions, the work looks more like finger-painting than photography!

So ... if this pans out (and I'll soon know), I shall be able to go back to signing off and watermarking as "Jen Downes Photography," which is a luxury/arrogance I haven't permitted myself in years now. We'll see. But one thing is for sure: this is going to be fun.

So ... Merrie Yuletide to all!

And for myself, I should be making resolutions for the new year that begins as we pass the midwinter solstice. Get past the Covid blues ... be more creative ... write my own stories, as well as "just" editing for Mike (which is also tremendously gratifying, and a lot of fun) ... try and find some genuine optimism for the future ... get out there with the new Canon mirrorless camera, and capture this state in Ultra HD. 

There. Goals to strive for as we go forward.  

EDIT: Parcels were opened this morning, and here it is:

Suffice to say, I have high hopes. It took about an hour to go through the different system of doing this and that, but the similarities between Canon and Panasonic (ie., EOS and Lumix) outweigh the differences, and I should be quite at home with this little beauty in a few weeks. Sooner, if I can get out and about, and practise. Canon was good enough to supply a battery charger in-the-box ...now,  need a 2TB external hard drive to store a massive amount of data (this camera is shooting 25MP, not the 18MP I've been used to for years now, and the file sizes are consequently much larger). I'll also get a second battery. Dave got me a camera bag that will take both this and the Lumix (yay!), and in all the world, all I need now is a fixed 400mm lens and some teleconverters, and I could even go birding with this! Happy, happy, joy joy! That 400mm lens is another thousand bucks, so ... it'll take a wee while. Doesn't matter. this is going to be fun!

Playing Catch-up With Myself: September. BC (Before Covid) -- Magnolias in the Rain

 A not-so-perfect winter's day at Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens, very early in September...

Before the pandemic became utterly real and unavoidable for us -- in other words, Dave caught the virus at work, brought it home, and we all got it -- we managed to do a few very nice trips. Each September and October, Mount Lofty Botanic Gardens comes alive with the scores of Magnolias ... but this year I thought we wouldn't get anything, photo-wise, because the weather was horrible. That's too mild a word. The third consecutive La Nina winter was so grey, cold, meh, I came down with a terrible case of SAD even before I had the vaccine that made me so ill, in August. 

(Note to self: I should have blogged all this as it was happening. What's a blog, if not a journal? Dang. Insert eye roll emoji.)

So, when the weather halfway cleared right at the beginning of September, since I was mostly recovered from the vaccination, we thought ... why not? Pack up the cameras and head for the hills. By that time, even Mike was fed up enough of the weather to come along. 

It was actually raining when many of these images were captured. I've learned to carry wads of kitchen paper in the coat pockets, and thoroughly dry the zoom barrel before letting it retract back into the camera -- which keeps the inside of the camera dry and preserves your lens. Duh. You only get caught that way once.

So -- magnolias, rain, cockatoos, a good walk (though I was soooo breathless on the hills: the vaccine had already done a number on me before I got Covid proper). One survives...

Playing Catch-up With Myself: July 15 -- "The Colours of Winter, 2022"

The Colours of Winter, 2022 

... it's actually extremely beautiful. It's just c-c-c-cold. Noticing the price of electricity tends to put the mockers on the beauties of winter somewhat. Ahem. There's a story running this morning about the likelihood of another La Nin summer! Brace yourselves ... 

Actually, levity aside, my heart goes out to the flood victims in the east. How this can be happening beats the heck out of me (and I can put it in stronger language, if you like. Picture this: 12,000 cries for help from State and Federal authorities, yet after about five months, just 25 homes have been completed and tenanted. Say, what, now? That's the nitty-gritty face of winter, and it ain't so pretty). 

But ... for what it's worth, here's winter's lovelier face.  Dave, Mike and I get out there as often as we can. Winter! What can you say? Well you could say plenty (about frozen fingers, mud, trying to get good photos at Goolwa, when it's practically dark at three in the afternoon), but after seeing the conditions in Europe and England, I admit, I'm grateful for our chilly conditions.). 

So -- a few recent images, celebrating the season, while I send all my sympathies, best wishes and "positive waves" to friends in the UK. (We don't have family left there -- or at least, not that we're in touch with). 

And I have a little good news.

I'm going to be in ANALOG magazine again! It's the SF market leader, so I'm thrilled to bits. Last year, they bought "The Way Home," which was published in the Jan/Feb '22 issue (I blogged about it), and they've just accepted "Collateral Damage," which will be in an issue next year. I'll let you know know when it comes out, of course. 😀 If you want to get the specific issue, you need to be a bit quick. I haven't been able to find permanent links to individual issues, just links to the magazine itself, where you can take out a year's subscription. This is marvellous news for me! 

Now, some more of those winter photos...

The May Report

 

Well ... I promised myself some time ago that I wouldn't blog here until I had good news. Not bad news. Not no news at all, but good news ... and here's another month gone by, while I wait for something to blog about! So the addendum to that decision is: I'll blog once at the end of each month, with a roundup of what's been going on, though not in any depth. Yes, autumn has been and gone, all in the space of May! We caught the fall colours at Stirling and Belair NP, fleetingly ... by the end of the month, there was frost on the car yesterday, and we just put the heavy duvet on the bed. Safe to say, it's winter!

The high point in the month was the first week -- vacation week! -- and we headed north to the Flinders and Remarkable Ranges. Ports Wakefield, Germain, Pirie and Augusta, and then north to Wilpena, and east to Alligator Gorge, Bundaleer Forest, and so on. Four wonderful days, staying in a huge caravan named Sundancer, at Port Augusta -- an Airbnb, which worked out marvellously, after an initial hiccup in connecting with the owner. Things were all smoothed out and resolved in no time, which is a credit to Roseanne, when one remembers everything going on in her personal life at the time. We saw and did some amazing things ... even managed to get some decent bird photos --

...though the little beggars didn't make it easy for me, and in fact there weren't very many birds at all in any of the places I could get to. (I'm very lame just now, with problems in both feet, knees, hips and lumbar ... disability is a bummer, but we do what we can). In fact --

That just about says it all! I also didn't see any wildlife, other than a couple of grey kangaroo does, which are a hundred times more commonplace down south here, an absolute plague of locusts at Telowie Gorge, a tiny lizard on a tree at Wilpena -- and ferals. Wild goats, deer, sheep. Nothing else moving in the landscape, which made me sad. So I photographed said landscapes, until --

In closeup, you can actually see how dusty the camera is. Was. The dust got into the lens and jammed it comprehensively. It died on me at Bundaleer Forest, and didn't work for the rest of the trip. Even though I was able to physically pull to lens out and unjam it, now the whole zoom mechanism grinds and growls. The camera isn't 100% dead, but it's close to it. So I spent weeks researching replacements, blew hours on this ... chose the Nikon P900, which I expected to get for ~$850, which is double the price of a new Lumix, and would have given me an 85x zoom! Got to the point of ordering it, only to discover that it's been discontinued. All the stores are now pushing the P950 which is $1200, give or take. Nope. Not right now. In the future, maybe, but the pennies are too tight at the moment, and I can't rationalize spending that much on a camera. Soooo, another Lumix is on the way: the FZ-80, which will give me a 60x zoom, and Leica lenses, and an f/2.8 to f/8 aperture, and a touch screen, and UHD video, and an articulated LCD, all for ~$400, which beats hands-down the nearest competitor, which is the Canon Powershot SX70, at almost double the price. Uh huh. In fact, Australia Post just sent Dave an SMS ... the new camera will be delivered sometime today! Now...

...the spice of life at the time of this writing is actually art! I confess, I'm spending a little too much on 3D goodies to put in front of my virtual camera. But, but, but ... this is my hobby, it's keeping my brain working, and I enjoy art as much or more than anything else at this moment. These are my rationalizations for spending more than I should, funds ripped out of my so-called Dental Fund, that stash of cash that's guarded to pay for dentistry as my teeth go bung one (or two) at a time, as they will, given how ancient I'm becoming! Art?

This is where my mind is at this moment. Images. I can handle images, and I can crunch the numbers to make them go, and digitally paint them in Photohop etc. after they've rendered up on a system that's fast enough to do the work. This PC is amazing. Must remember to give Dave a hug for organizing it for me, six months ago! Art is keeping my brain healthy, although I have to admit, I have "word block." Not traditional Writers' Block, because I can write, no problem (to wit, this blog post!) ... but I can't even edit at this moment. Not in the zone, and can't get into the zone, even though I have ideas galore. Sigh. It'll come back. I have a short story -- Ignis Fatuus -- to tackle, then The Hesperides to finish editing, then Pet Shop Dragons to write, before I get into collaborative projects with Mike. All I need is for my brain, or maybe my muse, to cooperate. In the meantime ... art. While I wait for a my new camera. And in the garden --

...the seasons are so confused, the Monarch caterpillars are starting to cocoon just as winter comes in. It's going to be too cold for the butterflies to manage, I think, when they hatch out. At the same time, the north is having a locust plague, NSW is having a mouse plague, and Victoria is struggling with a new Covid-19 crisis. It's not a happy country, or a happy world. My thoughts have turned inward; I've been looking deeply into Buddhism as I search for "spiritual solace," and discovering how much I disagree with the critical 20% of Buddhism. All spiritual paths, bar none, agree on the broad points (love thy neighbour, including -- or especially! -- one's enemies, do unto others, be kind, always be kind, never cowardly or mean). Those points are just common decency which we share with many animals; there's nothing spiritual or pure about them: just decent. It's when you get into the nitty gritty, the "what's it all for, what does it all mean, isn't there more than this, where am I going next?" stuff ... I've found that I'm at odds with Buddhism as surely as I'm at odds with every path I've looked at, barring one ... Gaia. Safe to say, "I know what I believe," and that'll have to be enough. 

I'll write a proper blog post when something actually happens! For now ... this is the May Report, signing out.