Happy New Years

This is yet another shot of the Kettle river, taken on Friday the 13th of Octobre 2006. I set up my tripod on a small (minuscule) bit of beach in city park, within perhaps five feet of the water (probably a bit less). Almost all the light was coming from the Pope & Talbot yard, just beyond the top of the far bank.

I know the three big things ($ wise) that I'm going to be working towards next year. A 35mm f2 Zeiss ZF lens, a spot metre (which will be particularly indispensable since the combination of the the Zeiss lens with my heavily computerised Nikon camera body knocks out TTL metring), and a 13 inch pigment based printer.

I'll also continue working on my generic and expansive pocket-portfolio, and I still have a backlog of 20+ old rolls of film to scan (don't expect to get too much of use out of the oldest rolls, but I do know that there are one or two gems back there).

Since I don't know if I'm gonna manage another post before the arbitrarily set cosmic odometre rolls over, Happy New Years, and I see U in 2007.

Trestle Over the Kettle River

Well, merry Consumersmas and all that.

I'm really looking forward to next year, I figure I'll manage to get both a new lens and a new printer (something 13 inch and pigment based).

All in all, things are pretty slow right now. I've started work on a pocket portfolio, and there's still that huge backlog of scanning to do from a time before I had a film scanner. But other than that it's just so quiet.


This old rail trestle hasn't been used in a long time. It hasn't seen any restoration, like the other on in town, but this one isn't on the Trans Canada Trail. I guess they figured it wasn't a good idea to run a hiking trail through the middle of a saw mill. Go figure.

Well, I've managed to scan a total of six rolls of film since I got my scanner, and I've figured out its operation pretty well (well enough for the moment). I'm looking forward to the next two rolls I have to scanned (working backwards from recent to earlier stuff, with a priority to anything new that comes in) because I haven't scanned any B&W yet. I have an understanding of how my current chosen colour film lays down grain under various shooting situations, and I've been wanting to see how the Kodak C-41 process (for those of U without a clue, it's the same chemistry as the colour negative used at every One-Hour-Photo lab in North America) B&W film that I've used looks up close and personal, because I do enjoy B&W and have plans to shoot quite a bit of it in the future. I do plan, eventually, to shoot traditional B&W films and do my own developing (control freak that I am), but that's still a ways off, and even then there will be times where the convenience factor with C-41 comes into play.

Anyway, the shot is once again the Kettle river, about two minutes later, 10 feet, and about 160 degrees off from the one shown in my previous post.

Kettle River & a Cold

I'm just starting to get over the worst cold that I've had in more than a year. Thursday started out with a case of the sniffles and a bit of a sore throat, but by that evening things were beginning to feel worse.

Friday was utter hell, and naturally enough we had to install a furnace in a 95 year old lady's house. Fortunately by about 4 o'clock we had completed everything that really requires two people to do (I figure about 70% of a typical install could be done by one person, it would just take longer and be a bit more difficult), so I was able to go home to bed before my sinuses exploded.

I slept from about 6:30 to about midnight, got up, ate a little, and then went back to bed until about 2pm Saturday. By then I was feeling like death warmed over, a definite improvement from the day before, although not much of an improvement. Either way I was in bed by about ten that night.

Today wasn't too bad, got up around noon, felt well enough to walk the dog. Just a ticklish throat and the joy of draining sinuses (still, it's better than the alternative). I expect to either be recovered by tomorrow, or to have one hell of a cough.

The photo is of the Kettle river, shot back in Octobre. At the bend, and behind the trees on the left is where the Granby river joins it. This is probably where Grand Forks gets its name, I can't be sure but I'd put money on it (especially since City Hall is maybe 1/8 mile from where I was standing).

Yesterday, New Years, and last August

I went down to Chewelah Wa. yesterday, with my grandparents, to the casino there. I didn't take my camera, mainly because it was a spur of the moment type trip and we didn't leave here until 2pm. Still, I did see some pretty country on the way down, and one or two interesting things that would have been worth the film to shoot (even in the overcast dusk).

We only spent about an hour in the casino, because we had to get back to the dog. The Fuzzbutt's day is loaded kinda heavily in the late afternoon/evening; with a walk, her supper, and her evening treats. If we had left closer to noon, we could have stayed longer, and if the weather was nice and temperate we would've taken Hound with us, but... Anyway, I didn't do too well at the casino, but between my grandparents we came out ahead around US$120.

For New Years, we've reserved rooms at the Lakeside Hotel & Casino in Penticton, with $100 spending money each (sort of a trade off for a quite Christmas). And yes, Furball's coming with us.

The photo was shot last August, in GF of course.

Right Side of the Tracks

Just spent the past two-and-a-half hours scanning the month old roll of film that I finally got developed yesterday. Scanned a total of 16 out the 24 images as having some potential, but I'll probably only wind up using six or seven, even just to show them here.

The photo shows the tracks that I have to cross each time I go into town, and also part to the Pope & Talbot yard. Shot as I was walking home from the bar one August midnight.

Took this back in early August of this year (won't be able to say that much longer, damn where does the time go). There were a number of forest fires around that time, and I know it quite smokey when I took this, not too too bad at ground level but even a couple hundred feet up... Anyway, I had noticed this spot a few days/week earlier and thought that I could do something with the power lines. It wasn't too long afterwards that we got a line upgrade that changed the flow of poles and lines through this particular piece of scenery, in fact, if U look at the full size image U can just make out one of the new poles that they put up, laying on the other side of the road, before the stop sign.