Landscape Brain Kicks In

6FPS V5#2: January 13, 2023

chuqvr@gmail.com • @chuqvr@fosstodon.org • chuq.me
Glass • GoodReads • Photography

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Welcome to the new issue of 6FPS.

Somehow it’s February already. As I get closer to that magic age of 65, I see that the onslaught of Medicare Supplement offerings mail has started. Most of it goes into the blue bin, since I already know what I plan to do.

I decided in January to put some effort into the birding, and am happy with the results. It got me out of the house more, never bad, and I’ve exited January with 68 species seen, vs 22 in January last year. I’m enjoying the exploring. Bird photography has been slow, mostly due to poor light — I’ve come home, reviewed, and tossed four different outings of images as not worth processing.

I ended 2022 with 123 species, which for the birding I did in the year wasn’t bad, but I don’t think it’s a great number. This start, if I continue birding regularly, will get me to a more respectable count for the year. Over the last week or so I’ve been chasing reports of Trumpeter Swans being seen here in Kitsap (including a lake about 3 miles from here), but they seem to move around a lot and I’ve missed them every time. One of these trips….

I’ve also decided it’s time to start exploring Olympic National Park, so I’ve reserved a room at Lake Crescent Lodge after it opens for a couple of nights, just to do a quick unplug and explore, and at some point this year I’ll do the same at Sol Duc. These are all about 2.5 hour drives from my house, do-able as a day trip but stretching it, so when I can grab a couple of days in a room, it’s a lot less tiring and stressful.

Also 2.5 hours from the house is Ridgefield NWR, my best shot for Sandhill Cranes around here in winter, and sometime in Febuary, I’m going to get an early start on a Friday and head out there for a few hours on the refuge.

New Yankee Workshop and This Old House on YouTube

Something I discovered this month: two classic “maker” shows from PBS, Norm Abram’s The NewYankee Workshop and This Old House have both joined YouTube and are publishing full episodes of classic seasons online. The entire library of NYW is being put online, and it looks like YouTube is getting TOH episodes from a few years back. Ask This Old House is also available.

If you were a woodworker back as I was growing up, these were destination television. New Yankee ended a number of years ago, but TOH is still going strong, and it was nice to connect back in and start revisiting the show after many years — for me, the challenge of PBS in a streaming TV universe just wasn’t worth it.

I’ve binged a couple of seasons of TOH, and started a slow binge from season 1 #1 of New Yankee, and that’s filling up my evenings right now, and I’m loving it. Fascinating even in the first couple of seasons to see how the show matured and how the technology is changing — Norm has air nailers now, even. Just a fad, I’m sure.

I think it also says something about the economics that both of these shows decided the best revenue path for classic content was to put them on YouTube for the advertising inserts. But it’s a lot better than these things just disappearing forever.

But I wonder… Will we eventually see Steve Thomas seasons posted? Bob Vila? How would season 2 of TOH hold up today?

Shop update

Quick woodshop update for you this month: progress continues. The shop seems to be in good shape overall, since I have hit that point in the build out that I’m starting to second guess some of my decisions. I spent more time in January with the camera and binoculars than the saws, but that’s just life with many things going on at once…

New Wallpapers

As you will see below, I’ve released a new set of wallpapers to the public, which implies that there is also now a new set of secret wallpapers just for all of you, my faithful subscribers. See the end of the newsletter for more details on this.

There’s very much a “blue” theme and a “bird” theme to them, which I swear wasn’t intentional and I didn’t notice until after I had finalized the images and set up the downloads. But perhaps that’s not a bad thing for the mid-winter times, no?

On the free Print Offer

A few issues ago, I started offering free prints to subscribers if they requested it (see the offer below, it continues). To date, I’ve been averaging 2-3 requests a month, which for me is enough to see there’s interest but not so many I start worrying about the cost of doing it, so the offer will continue and we’ll see how things go. If it starts getting too popular I might limit it to some number of prints per month, but I don’t see cancelling it at this point.

I have been interested in which images are being requested, and the results were not at all what I expected. Here is the most popular image requested to date:

It is a sea otter and her baby, taken in 2017 in Morro Bay harbor at dawn. It is actually the second time I’ve taken this shot — I originally took an image of a sea otter in the golden dawn waters at Morro Bay in 2009, but while I loved the image, it was technically really flawed, so about 2014 I started working to take it again and get a better version of it, and it wasn’t until 2017 that I finally succeeded.

I love this shot; it’s one of my personal all time favorites. If you asked me what my ten favorite shots I’ve ever done are, this would be in it. (that. now that I think about it, might be an interesting intellectual exercise to play with). The thing is, though, this shot has never done well online, because to a good degree it’s an image that relies on detail and subtlety for it’s impact to hit you, and it doesn’t “thumbnail” well at all.

And yet, when I asked you all what prints you wanted from me, this one’s been asked for more than any other.

There’s something about that which makes me really happy. I think it also confirms that what gets a lot of reaction in online environments really has little to do with the quality of the thing; The online “social” environments create attention biases against “subtle” in favor of loud and vibrant, and I think that’s an important thing to remember when we find ourselves thinking that “lots of likes” implies “that’s really good”. It might well be good, but there’s a lot of good photography that just doesn’t play well online these days.

Free Prints to Subscribers

Anyone who’s interested in a free 8x10 print of one of my images si welcome to it. All you need to do is check out the images in one of the four portfolio galleries on my photography page, and then send me an email with the request, including the title of the image (or URL to the image), your name and a mailing address. My only requirement is that the email the request comes from must be a subscriber to 6FPS when I get the request. I will mail these out at no charge worldwide for any request I get during November, as quickly as I can make the prints and get them packaged up.

What do you want to hear about?

Since I’m done with the e-book projects, I expect to put more time on writing for the blog again, and while I have a number of topics in the to-do list, are there things you want me to talk about and write about? I have been asked recently about how I produce the e-books, and that’s on the list, but what else do you want me to cover? Drop me an email and let me know.

And with that, see you next issue!

What's New from Chuq?

Landscape Brain Kicks In

So, where do I go from here?

I’ve been pondering where I want to take my photography moving forward. Much of 2022 was more about finding time in and around everything else and just going out and shooting. I find I’m ready to get more serious about it again.

That said, I’m finding landscape type work really difficult because of limited time, and not knowing where to find good compositions; I need to put in the time learning this region and I haven’t yet. I did, though, find a nice new birding location out in Suqamish, and I’ve visited it a few times. The area near the dock also happens to really nice views of both Mt. Baker and Mt. Ranier (with weather permitting). So I was out there sitting on a bench and enjoying the views and the birds, and suddenly I found myself wondering when there’s be good light and how best to plan for getting a great shot in this location.

Landscape brain kicked in, for the first time in a long time.

There’s a nice composition here, and I love that cloud over Ranier, but the light’s wrong. It’s the first time in a long time I spent time pondering and researching “when should I be here to grab the light”, and for what it’s worth, the sun seems to almost always be on the back side of the mountain, which means — maybe dawn, but more likely golden and blue hours.

I do plan on heading out here during those times soon to see if I’m right. But it’s kinda nice to have my brain starting to think about landscape compositional challenges, where for the last couple of years I’ve been in “that looks interesting <click>” mode.

Some of that is that for the last few years photography has been more of an escape tool than a creative tool, and working to find good compositions and how to capture them well is… work. And when I’m breaking away from the other parts of my life that require work, what I haven’t really wanted to do is more work.

That’s one reason I’ve put more focus on the bird photography; it really is something where I can unplug and play and get good results. Now, I think, I’m ready to “get serious” again, at least to some degree, and see if I can increase my productivity at the quality I want out of my images.

We will see what happens as I work on that composition, and if I get something I really like, I’m sure I’ll put it up on my wall.

A New Project

Another thing I’ve been thinking about a lot is a new project. I feel like I want something to work on that’s more longer term and which will focus my photography to accomplish something, rather than just be a random set of places and shots. Two topics keep coming back into mind: one is “my new home”, which allows me to explore and document this region I’ve moved to, and the other is “birding Kitsap”, which would have me creating a set of articles on the birding locations I visit, with images.

That first one isn’t really well defined yet. Is it more travel photography, or landscape? or street? or all? I don’t know. But it’s something that gets me exploring and starting to create images that will, I hope, help define it out over time. I have found myself attracted to some of the interesting farming buildings and other structures I see as I wander around, and there are some towns (Poulsbo and Port Gamble, for instance) that I think could be quite pretty when shot carefully. This one I am just going to have to experiment with and see if anything interesting comes out of it.

Birding Kitsap is better defined in my head, and inspired by Eric Scouten’s 146 Parks blog. Eric lives in this area and started it as a pandemic project, and I like the depth and simplicity of the idea. Doing something similar to the places I bird more than once will, I think, over time create a set of knowledge that can be interesting and of use to other birders in the area. I will probably expand it to the greater region, not just Kitsap County, so the name may change. When I start it, it’ll become a new category of posts in my main blog.

However these finally turn out, at least it’s nice to be starting to think about more than “take the camera?” when I head out the door.

Recent Photography

As I create new images and re-process older ones, I post them on my site in the Recent Work area. Additionally, every Wednesday is Photo Wednesday on the blog, where I post one of my non-bird images, and the bird images are posted on the blog each week as part of Feathery Friday.

January was a slow month with the camera, but I’ve started getting out a bit more and the weather is improving, so here’s hoping things pick up. Until then, please enjoy this first Bald Eagle photo of 2023

For Your Consideration

Photography

Birds and Birding

Science and Technology

Interesting Stuff

  • Floods, landslides, sinkholes: See the devastation of heavy rain in California - I’m stunned just how bad the winter storms in California were. I saw pictures of storm channels a few blocks from my old house right at the brim of flooding, when even in normal winter storms, a foot of water in them was surprising. Here in Washington, we have seen some nasty stuff as well, and Point No Point Lighthouse area is closed due to king tide damage. Closer to home, the nearest store to our house, the Seabeck General Store, is closed for now because the king tides and storm surge got into the building and damaged all of the freezer. Historic, unprecedented things going on here. Not good.

  • What’s new in intermittent fasting research? More not-so-good news

  • Splash Mountain has closed. Here are 7 other rides Disney fans miss - as it turns out, an old college buddy was one of the Imagineers for Splash Mountain, and way back in the ancient of days, I interviewed to do ride control programming for Disneyland Tokyo, but didn’t get the job. All of the animated figures in Splash Mountain were repurposed from American Sings when that ride was shut down, and I always wondered why Disney chose to build a ride around a film (“Song of the South”) that Disney has refused to re-release in any form. About a year ago, I finally got around to getting a bootleg copy of the movie to watch, and yeah, Disney is right to not release it, folks — it’s interesting and not a badly done film (mostly) but boy howdy, it’s not interesting in a way that makes it something to offer to a general audience these days…I think Disney is making the right choice to close this down and revamp it’s story into something — else.

  • That dreamy haze in Monet’s impressionist paintings? Air pollution, study says.

Recommendations

This month let me recommend to you an IOS app: if you, like many of us, have shifted from using Twitter to Mastodon, the fine folks at Tapbots (makers of the now dead Twitterific) have come out with a new app, Ivory. If you ever used a third party app for Twitter, you’ll find this interface quite nice and very familiar, and I think it’s a real improvement over using Mastodon via the web interface.

About 6FPS

And with that, I'll see you in the next issue. I'd love feedback on this, what you like, what you want more of, what you want less of. And if you have something interesting you think I might want to talk about, please pass it along. Until then, take care, and have fun.

Chuq

6FPS (Six Frames Per Second) is a newsletter of interesting things and commentary from Chuq Von Rospach (chuqvr@gmail.com).

Coming out monthly on the 2nd Monday of the month, I will place in your inbox a few things I hope will inform and delight you. There is too much mediocre, forgettable stuff attacking your eyeballs every day you're online; this is my little way to help you cut through the noise to some interesting things you might otherwise not find.

Some links in this newsletter may point to products at Amazon; these are affiliate links and if you use them to buy a product, I get a small cut of the sale. This doesn't make me rich, but it does help pay my web site bills. If you use the link to buy something, thank you. If you prefer not to, that's perfectly okay, also.

Know someone who might want to subscribe? Send them here. You'll also find the archives there if you want to look at previous issues.