A new visitor

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I’ve been walking the dog around the lake for about four years now and until recently I’d never seen a rabbit. Now I see them every day including this one today in our garden.

I was excited to see a new visitor and also felt a kind of “Aw – how cute” sensation – particularly since one of our granddaughters spotted him first and was particularly excited. My wife shared our enthusiasm but I’m sure her feelings will change shortly when she realizes that she/he will probably start eating her flowers soon.

Donkey and Foal

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In a recent post: Soul/Creativity on his Photos and Stuff blog, Andrew Molitor provides the following quote (which he attributes to Ansel Adams):

The final image you achieve will, to quote Alfred Stieglitz, reveal what you saw and felt. If it were not for this element of felt, the term creative photography would have no meaning.

For many years I had difficulty with the first part of this quote: revealing what I saw. My failure to do this almost led me to abandon photography. I didn’t develop or print my own film so my options were limited. This changed (although it took me a while to realize it) with the advent of digital photography and now, with a little help from Lightroom and even less from Photoshop I’m able to get an image, which is much closer to what I thought I would get when I pressed the shutter button.

The second part of the quote suggests that I should also try to reveal what I felt when I took the picture. I hadn’t thought much about this aspect. My first reaction was to think that I didn’t really feel much at all. But then it occurred to me that I’m not, I hope, some kind of psychopath who doesn’t feel anything at all. I must be feeling something. I just have to try harder to articulate what it is.

Unfortunately, I often look back on old photographs and rework them. This particular picture was taken in 2013 so my memory of what I felt at the time is a bit vague. I imagine, however, that it was something along the lines of “Aw how cute! The little one is trying to hide behind the other one”. Ok, maybe not the deepest, or most thought provoking feeling, but that’s probably it.

Squirrel-proof birdfeeder – Ha!!

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Not a stunning picture. It was taken quickly and at a fairly long (250mm) focal length through one of our windows. At first I didn’t know what to do about this. There were two options depending on how the squirrel got there. If it jumped from the Japanese Maple behind then the solution would be to move the feeder far enough away from any tree that it wasn’t possible for the squirrel to jump so far. If, on the other hand, it was climbing up the pole then moving it wouldn’t help. In this case I’d have to buy a baffle to put on the pole or above the feeder (or maybe both?). I’ve been observing the situation closely and I’ve determined that the squirrel climbs straight up the pole so it looks like I’ll have the look into getting a baffle(s).

Picture appropriated

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While I’ve heard of such things happening it’s never happened to me – although to be honest I don’t usually check.

This time I could hardly miss it though. Our lakeside community has its own Facebook group. I was looking at it the other day when I saw the above picture posted by someone with the caption “Visitors”. I’d taken the picture in October, 2015 and didn’t like all that much, so I didn’t post it to this blog (or if I did I can’t find it), but I did post to the Facebook group. I pointed out to my wife that this was my picture and she immediately posted a comment:

“This looks identical to my husband Howard Dale ‘s photo posted here on Oct.13,2015!”

Being a bit less direct than she is I instead sent a personal message to the offending person:

“This is actually a picture I took and posted to the … group on October, 13 2015. It even has the border that I put around all of my pictures. At the time you commented on it saying ‘nice’. Could you please either give me credit for the picture or remove it. Thanks.”

Before he even read my message he, in reaction to my wife’s comment, immediately added an appropriate credit. I later got a response to my message:

“I added credit. It was in my …file without attribution. Sorry for the oversight.”

So it all worked out ok in the end.