Good day, everyone! First, I want you to know about something before I do it. As I hope you remember, I have recently moved this site from wordpress.com to a new server. When I did that, lots of stuff I took for granted changed. Things like automatically sending you a notification when I write a new post, or a place to comment that disappeared for most users, and I needed to get a new e-mail address (jim@jimbellomo.com). I will still be using my old one as well. I now have seven, I think ?.
At any rate, one of the big things I found out is that my “theme” is no longer being supported by WordPress. It is a VERY old theme, so I need to update it. When I do this, you are really going to notice it. It will look like a complete redesign. I have about three weeks to get a new design before it stops working altogether. (FYI: A theme is what makes this website look the way it does.) So watch for that here in just a few short weeks…I hope.
Random thoughts
A couple of things I have seen in the past few weeks. Here’s the first one. It comes from an article in the Seattle Times, and it both cracked me up and saddened me. It was in an article about the lack of WiFi on the Washington State ferry system. They used to offer somewhat decent WiFi, which you could buy from a company called Boingo. But about three or four years ago, they went out of business and since then, no WiFi. Here’s the last couple of paragraphs of that article that just killed me. I highlighted the part I want you to see.
OMG! People might actually have to…” be bored, have to read, look out a window or (heaven forbid) talk to strangers.” Does that just say it all about the state of people today? And it’s not like there is nothing to look at. If you have ever been on a Washington State ferry, you don’t go to ugly places. There is ALWAYS something interesting to look at out every window. But heaven forbid you might have to actually read something (instead of scrolling through videos). Or talk to a stranger. 99% of my friends were strangers when I first met them. Okay, old man rant is over now. You may return to your regularly scheduled programming.
Television
I am not sure I have ever mentioned it, but we are TV people. We just like a lot of great shows. We especially love British television. We often exchange ideas about what to watch with friends. I just want to tell you about a superb show we just finished watching, the first season of, and another we just started.
The first is a wonderful British mystery series, now available on PBS, called Bookish. It stars Mark Gatis, who created it. You might know him from the Benedict Cumberbatch show Sherlock, where he played Sherlock’s brother Mycroft. The best thing I can say about this show is that it reads like a script written by both Arthur Conan Doyle and Noel Coward. The mysteries (six shows, each story is two episodes) are excellent, and the writing is as witty as I have heard in years. Give it a try if you love British shows as we do.
The other show is on Britbox. It is so good, it is almost worth subscribing to Britbox just to see it. It’s called Riot Women. It’s about a group of middle-aged women who are going through a lot and decide to form an all-female punk rock band. It is hilarious, poignant, and so much more. We have seen the first two episodes, and we can’t wait to see the rest. If you watch a lot of British TV, you will recognize many of the people in this show. It’s outstanding! Oops, I forgot to mention that it is filmed in Yorkshire, where our good friends Paul and Gail live and that we have visited twice. This part of Great Britain is absolutely beautiful. And Paul and Gail were the first to tell us about this show—thanks, guys.
That’s about it. Watch for changes coming soon, and if you get an announcement from me that doesn’t have my caricature smiling and waving at you, it’s just a mistake. Sorry.
If we don’t change, we don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we aren’t really living. – Gail Sheehy
Just a quick note. This is the first post I have made from my new server. I need to test it out. I hope you get the e-mail to announce this post. And if you could, please help me find out if the comments work. So if you get this post, either comment or send me a quick e-mail or text and let me know you got the notification and that you could see the post…
Now on to the reason for celebration today. Today is Keeley’s Gotcha Day. If you don’t know what that is, (I didn’t until about two months ago) that is the day we Got her or in the case of talking to her, it’s her Gotcha Day.
A year ago today we woke up expecting to rehome this wonderful dog. But that almost didn’t happen. We woke up fully expecting to pick her up at 2:00 that afternoon. Around noon, while we were eating lunch, my phone rang. We knew it was bad news. It was her original owner, calling to say that they had thought it over and they just couldn’t part with her. We were crushed. We had met her earlier in the week and fallen in love at first sight.
We sat and were sad for about 20 minutes and then the phone rang again. It was her owner. He said, “Please come and get her. We want to keep her but we just can’t and we know she will have a wonderful home with you. But please get her fast before we change our mind again.” We have never driven so fast to North Seattle as we did that day. We grabbed her and all her stuff and she has been ours ever since. I took the photo above on that day when we got her home and took her out to run in the backyard.
Since that day it has been one of the best experiences of our lives. We had both always been dog people but somehow, at our age, it is different. We have more time with her because we are home all the time. It has been tough finding a dog sitter and we were lucky enough that our daughters were willing to take her when we went to Africa and later on our Columbia River cruise. Other than that, we have been with her every day.
She is quite the dog. Kathleen ran her DNA and found that she is about 30% pit bull terrier, 20% Chow, 20% American eskimo. The rest is what they call “super mutt.” We don’t care what she is, we just love her. She was briefly trained to be an emotional support dog and we can see the results of that. If there is ever any tension in the house (me getting mad at my computer, etc.) she is right there in my face to give me kisses and calm me down. She even has four unprintable words you can say to her at any time that will get her to jump into your lap and comfort you.
She has developed a wonderful daily routine. She gets up with me at 4:30, sleeps on the couch while I ride my bike, helps me wake up her “mommy” and then it’s breakfast, playing, lunch, naps. walk, treats, dinner and finally bedtime snack before jumping up on my bed for a good night talk. Then she is off to her own bed for a good night’s sleep.
Just for fun, I ran up a Photos movie of all the videos and pics we have taken of her this year. One of those videos that Apple’s Photos app, just creates. And here it is, just for you. You might have to watch it on YouTube until I can figure out why it won’t show up here. Just click the link below or here.
There is nothing like owning a dog. They are the best.
A dog is the only thing on earth that loves you more than he loves himself. – Josh Billings
Having just finished a 365 project, I had more than my usual number of photos to choose from this year. Usually, I end up choosing only from my travel photos. That’s when I take my camera with me. But this year, between my project to take a photo a day, family pictures, our trips to Southern Africa, up the Columbia River and a few other random shots, I think I had more than 2,000 photos to choose from.
I am going to start with my eight honorable mentions and then count down from 10 to 1—my best shot of the year…in my estimation. But I would love to hear what you think of my choices in the comments.
Don’t forget: if you click the first shot, you can scroll through using your arrow keys or by swiping. And PLEASE… don’t look at my photography on a phone. Please…
Haystack Rock at Cannon Beach, Oregon was peaking out of the fog when I took this shot. I was going to take out all the people but when I did that in Photoshop, it just looked terrible—there was no scale. This one I like more and more every time I see it.
Number 10—Dawn on the Chobe River
I took this one while out in a small boat with just myself and the amazing Gibson who insisted on taking me out on a pre-dawn bird watching cruise even though I was the only one who had gotten up and been ready. A number of the photos you are about to see in this top ten came from that two hour cruise on the Chobe between Botswana and Namibia. I took a lot of sunrise and sunset photos in Africa. They are almost always great. This was my best because I had the boat (which is kind of a river taxi starting it’s run) as a focal point.
Number 9—Hippos in the Chobe
There were two major wildlife highlights of our Africa trip. First, we spent five days on the Chobe River, then four days in the Kruger Park area of South Africa. Many of the folks we were traveling with preferred the Kruger part of the trip to the Chobe part. I (as a photographer) liked the Chobe better. This is a great illustration of why. Almost all of my Kruger-area photos are monochrome, basically brown on brown. On the Chobe, we saw that brown along the river’s shores and in Chobe National Park, but there was also the blue of the river and the green of the grass on the islands that dotted it. This shot of four hippos surfacing behind our boat just worked for me. And I learned something about hippos during our days at Chobe. Did you know they don’t swim? They walk on the bottom. They are also very dangerous. Gibson did not want to be too close to them, because they could easily slip down and up under the boat we were in.
Number 8—A dark street in Bellingham
We had gone north to Bellingham, Washington, to meet our friends Jayesh and Lisa and see an anniversary presentation of mine and Jayesh’s favorite movie, “The Princess Bride.” There was even a live question-and-answer period with one of the stars, Cary Elwes. We stayed at an excellent Airbnb on a very dark street in Bellingham, and when I went out to walk Keeley, I saw this shot. So I ran back in to get my Nikon and came out and got this shot. This is a really good example of a shot I never could have gotten with my phone. It takes a manual setting to be able to get this kind of photo.
Number 7—Birds in the trees on the Chobe
This is another shot from my pre-dawn cruise up the Chobe with Gibson on our last day on the river. He took me near Victoria Falls (just on the other side of these trees) and asked me where I would like to be. He was just awesome and got me right to wear I could get this shot—so many birds.
Number 6—My best product shot ever
I know some of you will wonder why I included this photo of my phone, watch, and AirPods. I have taken hundreds of product photos over the years for business. I have never been able to get the lighting the way I wanted, and on this one, I think it’s perfect. It was kind of a fluke because I had forgotten to take a photo that day and got this at the last minute. If Apple needs a new photographer, I am available ?.
Number 5—A sentimental favorite portrait
Every other Thursday morning, we have to leave the house while our housekeeping service comes in to clean. We could stay, but then we would have to pen Keeley up in our guest room, and she barks the entire time. So we go out and run around. Keeley loves to go for rides. For this shot (which I took on our 26th wedding anniversary), we were in the library parking lot, and I had just come back from grabbing a book when I saw this scene. The love of my life and my furry girl. My favorite portrait of the year.
Number 4—My best lighting
This shot of my granddaughter’s school play is one of the things I love about photography—light. Real photography is all about light. There is a great quote from (I believe) Ansel Adams that says, “New photographers obsess about gear—what lens to use, what camera to buy. Once you have a little more experience, you start talking about composition, color, and clarity. But a true photographer only cares about one thing…light.” This light blew me away.
Number 3—Cheetah
It’s kind of funny that my last three photos are all of animals. We start with this shot, which I was worried about cropping so tightly. But it’s the cheetah’s eyes that make this shot better than any of the rest of the wildlife photos I took in Africa (except one). Just in case you are wondering, I was about 10 feet from this guy when I took this shot.
Number 2—Our Girl
This was the day we got her, and it’s the best action shot I took in 2025 I keep coming back to it again and again, making it my favorite shot of her all year. She changed our lives. She made them so much better. We can’t imagine not having her.
Number 1—The mighty buffalo
On that early morning bird-watching cruise with Gibson, where I shot photos seven and ten, I got this photo. We were cruising back to the Zambezi Queen when we saw this gigantic water buffalo. He was standing on the bank of the Chobe, and Gibson turned the boat and put it right in front of him. Gibson told me the guides consider these majestic animals the most dangerous in Africa, not because they are so big but because they are so erratic. Lions, elephants, and hippos might be stronger or more fearsome, but the guides know what they will do. If they are eating on the side of the river, they will keep eating, but a water buffalo will attack you at the drop of a hat. This guy moved, and we moved away pretty damn quick. But what a shot. Pure power.
The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it! – Ansel Adams.
Here it is. The last post of my 365 project in 2025. I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to not taking a photo today. Not a single one ?. But you know I will probably be taking some in the not-too-distant future. I love photography. For all of you who have been following along faithfully, all I can say is thank you for your words of encouragement. I will be back to do another 365 in 2035. See you then…or the next time I travel.
Actually, there will be a post tomorrow. I always end a year and start a new one with my top 10 photos from that year. So far, I have it narrowed down to 18. So you might get eight honorable mentions and the top ten.
Whew! I almost blew it. I almost forgot to take a photo yesterday. I had planned to take a photo of the front of our house, the one I had tried to take earlier in the month and never got back to. But since I had to wait until it got dark, I forgot all about it. As I was putting my laptop on to charge before we went to bed, I just happened to notice my camera sitting there. YIKES! With only three days to go, I had almost missed it. But I grabbed my shoes and a sweatshirt (it’s been pretty cold at night) and got the shot.
This is my second-to-last shot of 2025. I took it, just to prove to everyone who does not live in the Seattle/Puget Sound region that we have BEAUTIFUL days all year long, even in December. The sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid-40s (just where I like it), and Keeley and I went for a walk in the forest.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls…this is it. As of today, I have taken a single photo (sometimes more) every day of 2025. This is it. The last one, and it features me, the love of my life, and our forever neighbors (Jayesh and Lisa—neither of us lives where we were neighbors). A few years back, we started going out to dinner on New Year’s Eve because we lived across the street from a great restaurant. We missed last year after Lisa’s mom passed, but now we live on Redmond Ridge, and they have moved to Camano Island (about an hour and a half north of us). We decided to get together, with me doing dinner and them doing appetizers, and we will switch for next year. These people are two of our best friends in the world, and we hope to be able to celebrate many more New Year’s Eves with them. Next year, we go to their place.
Big News for this website
One more piece of big news (that I hope you never actually see happen) is that I am moving this blog to a new server. I have been with WordPress.com since I started it in December 2018, but they recently raised their prices. I also host other URLs I own with the web hosting company Bluehost. I have now moved the entire blog over to Bluehost. That means that right now, as you are reading this on WordPress.com, there is a duplicate version on Bluehost. All I have to do, sometime between now and January 14, is click a switch, and it will move my URLs over to the new service. You shouldn’t have to do a thing, and I hope all my current subscribers will still receive their notifications. More about this just before it happens. If we somehow lose you, go to www.jimbellomo.com
So, here’s my final three photos for 2025. My favorite of these is last night’s dinner when we were joined by our forever neighbors, Jayesh and Lisa, to resume our annual New Year’s Eve tradition.
You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved. ? Ansel Adams
Just three photos left. I can’t believe it. This has been a fun week (except maybe Christmas Day). Kathleen woke up sick after our rich Christmas Eve meal and didn’t make the trip with me to Olympia to see my daughter and her incredible family. My grandkids are awesome, my son-in-law is awesome, and I loved being there, but it was a lot of driving all by myself. The rest of the week was great. I am very happy that on Wednesday, I will take my last shot of the year, having done the entire 365 without missing a day.
I told Kathleen this morning that I have decided to do another 365 project . The last one I did was in 2015, so here we are in 2025, and I think I will start my next one in 2035. Of course, I will be 83 then, but I hope to still be taking pictures.
Here’s the group from this week. If you want to see all the Halloween costumes mentioned in the Christmas Day caption, go to the 365 page (in the menu above) and scroll down to the slideshow for December 25. I think the shot of Keeley is my favorite.
Took Keeley on a 3-mile walk today, and we went to Duck Lake. It’s about 1.5 miles from our house. I have taken photos of this lake before, but never with this much water. Usually, it’s a big swamp or bog, but with all our recent rains, it’s a lake again.
I spent most of today doing one of my favorite things…cooking. I love to braise. It might be my favorite cooking method. Just the idea of something cooking at a simmer for a very long time (in this case, three hours) is appealing. This is for our Christmas Eve dinner. If you have the time, when you braise, do it early in the week and let the meat sit in the refrigerator in the cooking liquid. Then I take it out about three hours before dinner and let it warm slowly. For the last few years, our menu has been this dish as the entrée…Balsamic Short Ribs. Accompanied by a very rich Potato Gatto, a large green salad, and whatever wonder Michelle brings for dessert. As you can see, I make a bunch of the ribs. Lots of balsamic vinegar, beef stock, a ton of onions and garlic, and plenty of oregano.
Out for a walk with Keeley again today, I crossed a walkway over water that you have seen before, so I turned around and shot the babbling brook behind me. I always recommend looking behind you when you take a photo. You sometimes find hidden gems.
Last night was our Christmas Eve celebration with my son, Kathleen’s daughter and her husband, and two good friends. I got to cook for three days (which made me very happy), and later, while we were just sitting around as Michelle got the desserts out (she always brings dessert), I snapped some photos. Yup, they are officially snapshots. But I will think of them as candid portraits. I am really sorry that the ones I took of our friend Carrie and Michelle didn’t come out. They either had their eyes closed or were moving around so quickly that their faces were a big blur. Merry Christmas, everyone. We are heading south to see the other daughter, her husband, and our grandkids.
Kathleen’s son-in-law Brian and one of my best friends.
My son Joshua
Our good friend Jocelyn.
The Love of my Life
Of course, today is Christmas, and sadly, Kathleen was not feeling well, so I made the trip to Olympia myself. This is the biggest reason. I have always loved fooling my kids on Christmas. I am that guy who wraps a ton of stuff and puts it inside bigger boxes that I wrap as well. Once, I even built the world’s worst dollhouse for my daughter as a joke. The real one she had wanted was out in the garage. This year, I decided to give her and her husband some photos to put on the blank walls in their guest room, where we stay. I started with a box containing a picture-hanging kit and a note saying she needed stuff on the walls and that I had taken the liberty of giving her some of my best shots, all printed on canvas. 14 in total. I could tell by the look on her face after she read that note that she was worried she was just getting some of my travel photos, which meant nothing to their family. But that was not to be. You see, since my grandson was born, she had become the master of group Halloween costumes. So I ran big and small canvas prints of all 14 of them. I figured that once you see them opening them, you might want to actually see the prints, so they are on this post as well. Merry Christmas!
Well, no white Christmas for us. The snow arrived a day late. It’s not too much, and it didn’t show up until almost 7:00 pm on Boxing Day, but we still have some white. Let’s hope it’s all gone in the morning…or worse, that there’s more of it.
There is little to say. Snow, sun, blue sky, pond, reflection, beauty, nature. It all makes me happy, one more time, that I live in Trilogy. Our trails are wonderful.
Strangely enough, I took this photo a couple of days ago but didn’t use it. To keep myself honest, I took it again today. I liked it a lot when I took it on the 26th, but then it snowed, so I decided to use that shot. So here it is again. We have a collection of Santas from all over the world. You saw one of them at the start of the month. This one has lights on it, which makes it even better.
Creativity is a wild mind and a disciplined eye – Dorothy Parker
This was one of my favorite weeks of the entire year. My birthday, a concert in Olympia at Capitol High School where my grandson plays the clarinet, an almost full day with my family, making pizza with my granddaughter and playing games with the whole bunch. I bet you know which one is my favorite this week…it has to be my daughter, grandkids and Keeley from Saturday. It’s a total winner.
Continuing our Christmas theme, yesterday we featured a Christmas dog, and today we have a Christmas moose with his little boy. I enjoy taking bokeh shots with the lights shimmering in the background. This guy has lights on him, so it looks even better. Using a 50mm f1.4 lens with a very shallow depth of field really helps.
The young man on the left is my grandson Mason. Tonight, we attended his high school orchestra’s Christmas concert. It was very nice, and it’s great that he is finally in high school, so we no longer have to go to concerts in the gymnasium and sit on hard bleachers. His school has a beautiful concert hall venue. Sadly, it was POURING tonight, and I didn’t want to take my Nikon out in the rain, so I had to shoot this with my phone. I still am okay with it, but it would have been so much better with a camera and a longer lens.
Today was wrapping day. We have finished all our Christmas shopping, and I have to say I have never been so excited about what we got for everybody on our list. I can’t wait to see if they all like it as much as we enjoyed getting it for them. So today, I spent wrapping. This is the rest of today.
For the last three weeks, I have stopped at the Bellevue branch of the King County Library to take a photo of their wall of license plates. Each week, I have found a better photo, so today I went back and got another one. (I now have three weeks of license plates.) They are not real plates but are made from words. Most of them are black and white, so I converted the entire photo to grayscale. I like it better that way.
Today was a REALLY special day for me. My family (kids and grandkids) came to celebrate my birthday. They asked what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted them to come to our house so I could make pizza for them. It has been so long since I have been able to cook a real meal for them, so that’s what I wanted to do. They drove up, and we played games. I got to assemble pizzas with my granddaughter, and I got to spend the entire day with my son, my daughter, my grandkids, my son-in-law, Kathleen and Keeley. It was glorious. My granddaughter, my daughter and my grandson were on the couch with Keeley, and this was the most fun photo I took all day.
Took Keeley on a 3-mile walk today, and we went to Duck Lake. It’s about 1.5 miles from our house. I have taken photos of this lake before, but never with this much water. Usually, it’s a big swamp or bog, but with all our recent rains, it’s a lake again.
As you have probably heard, we here in the Pacific Northwest have had a lot of rain this week and last night’s wind. I wanted to walk one of our Trilogy trails today to see if there was any damage. There were a few trees down, but when I went to take a shot of Cari’s Bog, the biggest impact of the storm was that the bog was full of water. The most I have seen in the three years we have lived here.
I never knew what I was doing until I was done. – Man Ray
Only two and a half weeks until New Year’s! YEE HAW! Here are another seven shots, with my favorite being today’s weekly (or should I say Christmas) Keeley. I hope your holiday season is going well, and we look forward to a busy time ahead—starting with my birthday dinner at Brian and Michelle’s tonight, Mason’s Christmas concert in Olympia on Tuesday, my birthday on Thursday, the kids coming over next Saturday, and Christmas soon after.
Come on, you kind of knew this was coming—Keeley’s Christmas photo. We just think it’s adorable. She has a small underbite that shows perfectly in this picture. She was a really good girl to sit still while I took the photo. You can tell by where she’s looking that Kathleen was behind me holding a treat.
I have many of these in my office. I call them protectors because they keep me safe from bad things that can happen while you’re in your office, like losing clients or having your computer crash. These two guys have been with me forever—at least 25 years. They’ve moved to every office I’ve had during that time. If you’re not my age, you might not recognize them, but the squirrel’s official name is Rocket J. Squirrel. His lifelong buddy is the infamous Bullwinkle Moose. Have they actually worked? Have they protected me from tech problems and business failures? Hell no. But they’re fun to have around. There are others, too, including Ted Lasso, Fernando Valenzuela, Ken Griffey Jr., Julio Rodriguez, and the Sheeeeit guy from The Wire.
This one is totally out of character for me, an abstract. I can’t remember the last time I shot something like this, but today, while walking several miles in our Trilogy gym (we have an indoor track—not very big, a mile is 21 laps), I noticed these interesting shadows on the ground each time I walked around. So I took this shot. Then, when I processed it, I thought it looked better in grayscale. Sure enough, I like it.
Today was glorious. The sun rose and shone all day long. Keeley and I went for a very long walk (for her), and it was beautiful, especially after the terrible rains and flooding we’ve been going through. The worst might be over, but we are expecting two more days of heavy rain in the coming days.
Well, the weather forecast said we would have five days of rain this week. Doesn’t look like it, does it? Actually, I went for a long walk today in the sun and light clouds. I love it when weather predictions get it wrong.
This photo (taken outside Trilogy’s clubhouse says it all about our weather today and expected for the rest of the week. Straight-out flags, wind gusting into the 30 mph. Temps in the low 50s or high 40s and buckets of rain. We are expected to have more than four inches of rain this week. We get constant warnings on our phones and watches about coming winds, rains, and flooding in the lowlands.
Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location. – Joe McNally
Being only three weeks away from finishing this project is quite a relief. If you are one of my few readers who are not yet retired, just know that if you think that once you retire, you will have a lot of “spare time,” that’s a fallacy. At least I don’t. When I started this project, my thought was, “I’m retired, I will have plenty of time.” But to be honest, I have never been so busy. I am constantly asking myself how I managed to do this project the other three times and run a business. I still don’t know.
Here’s this week’s batch of photos. I think the last sunny day was my favorite of this week. We’re about to experience a whole week of rain, which they’re now calling an atmospheric river. You know those. It used to be just a storm, but now it moves so slowly and dumps so much water, it’s like a river.
Yesterday, we decorated the inside of the house. We have quite a collection of Santas that we’ve gathered over the years. This guy is one of my favorites just because he’s a little quirky—and he makes me smile. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Santa, having played him numerous times over the years. I even used to own my own suit.
Here’s a landscape for you. I went out for my long walk today (6.7 miles), and this was the best view I saw. It’s not way out in the country; it’s across the street from a very busy elementary school. It was a great day, but it was cold and foggy in the morning, finally clearing up in the afternoon.
Saw this “monster” tree in Bellevue today. Took some other shots, but Kathleen and I decided this one was the most interesting. If you look at it for a while, you’ll see all kinds of funny stuff. Maybe the one on top looks like a monkey? Not sure, but I like it.
A good photograph is knowing where to stand. – Ansel Adams
December is finally here. And I have 31 photos to go!!! These last seven aren’t bad. Just not amazing. It seems I only get those kinds of shots when I am traveling, and since we aren’t traveling again until we go to NYC in April, it’s going to be a long spring. Currently, I am NOT planning on continuing the 365 for 2026. I am considering a 7/52. That’s where, instead of taking one photo every day, I can take seven photos in a week. Here are this week’s photos. My favorite is probably the one from my mid-week walk with Keeley. The light was just about perfect.
A food shot today of a new recipe I tried for the first time—Chermoula Potato and Fish Stew. It had a wonderful blend of spices, herbs, and harissa on top. It turned out amazing. As soon as I saw it, I knew Kathleen would like it because it includes potatoes, one of her favorite foods.
This picture I took tonight of a little house that sits in our living room isn’t the problem. I mentioned earlier in the week that I had to take my Nikon to my local camera shop for cleaning. The sensor had dust on it, which caused dots on my photos. I had to remove those in Photoshop before I could post them. I got the camera back two days ago, but today was the first time I shot with my macro lens. It turns out that when they clean the camera, they reset all the settings back to factory defaults. So, when I processed this photo tonight, I found that it was saved by my camera as a JPEG. It should have been in Camera RAW format, which allows me to do much more with it since RAW creates a digital negative. Oh, well, I guess I have to reset everything.
A little abstract for you tonight. Shot a piece of glass we had in the house with a great pattern. Stuck it in front of a nice light source and got some pretty colors.
I am sure you know what happened here. I forgot to take any other photos yesterday besides this one, and I almost didn’t take this one either. I spent the entire day cooking something—actually, I spent three days cooking, or at least prepping for cooking. And I had an AWESOME time doing it. Since retiring, I love cooking so much more because now I have the time. Before I retired, I would do everything on Thanksgiving Day itself. Now I do all my chopping, cutting, and mixing a day or two before, and on the day, I just assemble and cook. If anything, yesterday was too easy. I kept thinking, “There must be something I am forgetting.” But there wasn’t.
A glorious afternoon walk with Keeley gave me this shot. This is the entrance to a nearby trail that I have taken many photos of. This is just the way in. We had a wonderful walk, much better than I expected. It was a beautiful fall day.
Today, the weekly Keeley is the subject of the photo I took this evening of my project for the day—putting up our outdoor Christmas lights. I took a photo of the lights, actually about 10, and I hated every one of them. I used to have no trouble shooting holiday lights, but somehow these just didn’t work. I’ll try again another night. Meanwhile, here’s Keeley looking her best. We’ve been posting her pictures on Reddit, and she received more than 800 upvotes on r/sonarears. We also post her on r/fluffypits, where she is quite popular.
Well, I tried once more to take a photo of our holiday lights. This time, a string (that’s right in the middle of everything) decided to go out just before I took the shot, so I skipped capturing the overall scene and instead focused on some zoom special effects. It’s a line of lights shot with a slow shutter speed and a high f-stop. Then you click the shutter and zoom your lens. This is what you get.
When you acquire an understanding of the science behind light and what governs it, then you can predict its behavior and control the lighting in photographs.” – Roberto Valenzuela
This 365 project has been fun, but I am ready for it to be over. I am thankful that I have been able to hold up my end of the deal and haven’t missed a day. This week photos bring me up to 328 straight days of taking and posting. I think my shot of the wetlands from Saturday is my favorite. It really shows how we change seasons here in Western Washington.
We have had an amazing summer and a beautiful autumn, but it is definitely nearly winter now. This is the last blue hydrangea I know of. It’s in front of our branch library, a place I often visit. You can’t go there to read books; we just order them online and then pick them up there. It’s small, about the size of our living room, with nothing but shelves and a computer for self-checkout. But it’s a great setup, and we can order almost any book or video you want.
The sun returned! It didn’t rain! I was able to walk 6.5 miles! It was fantastic.
It’s interesting that despite all the tariffs on Canada, their Air Force still stops here whenever they feel like it. My Canadian friend and I always joke about two things—the exchange rate ($100 Canadian is 45¢ US ?) and the Canadian Air Force. Of course, if they are floating in a lake or pond, they instantly become the Canadian Navy ?.
Here’s your weekly update on Keeley. She loves every other Thursday—that’s the day our housekeepers come for a couple of hours and make our house look great. That means we leave while they’re here and go run errands that we’ve saved up until then. But first, we take Keeley to the local dog park to play for about half an hour because she LOVES our every other Thursday outings. Today, we dropped off my Nikon for cleaning. After Africa, it developed spots on my photos that I had to spend time removing in Photoshop, so I just went ahead and dropped it off today.
Yesterday was an incredibly busy day, and this was my view for most of it. I believe I drove about four hours total, but covered less than 25 miles. First, I did the Thanksgiving grocery shopping (15 miles), then took a good friend to her radiation appointment (another 15 miles), went to pick up my Nikon from cleaning (30 miles), got my injection in Bellevue, and finally picked up dinner at Ooba and drove home (12 miles)… whew! I have to tell you, it was a VERY LONG DAY! But I got everything done. And no, I didn’t take this while driving. I shot it while sitting in my car, waiting for our friend to finish her week of radiation treatments.
One of my favorite things about living here in the Northwest is that we experience all four seasons. Growing up in Palm Springs, CA, we only had two—nice and hell. Some people who only have two or three seasons don’t realize how much things change when you actually get an autumn. It’s not just the colors (those are gone now), but once the leaves fall, you can see so much more. This wetland area is a perfect example. As Keeley and I walked today, we noticed so many things we couldn’t see just a month ago. I really do love my seasons.
Long walk again today, heading in a different direction. This shot is along the Tolt Pipeline, a water pipeline that supplies a significant part of Seattle’s water. It runs from the Tolt River, east of us, to Lake Forest Park, north of Seattle. It’s a nice 5.8-mile walk from our house.
The pictures are there, and you just take them. – Robert Capa
The other show is on Britbox. It is so good, it is almost worth subscribing to Britbox just to see it. It’s called Riot Women. It’s about a group of middle-aged women who are going through a lot and decide to form an all-female punk rock band. It is hilarious, poignant, and so much more. We have seen the first two episodes, and we can’t wait to see the rest. If you watch a lot of British TV, you will recognize many of the people in this show. It’s outstanding! Oops, I forgot to mention that it is filmed in Yorkshire, where our good friends Paul and Gail live and that we have visited twice. This part of Great Britain is absolutely beautiful. And Paul and Gail were the first to tell us about this show—thanks, guys.
Just a quick note. This is the first post I have made from my new server. I need to test it out. I hope you get the e-mail to announce this post. And if you could, please help me find out if the comments work. So if you get this post, either comment or send me a quick e-mail or text and let me know you got the notification and that you could see the post…
. The last one I did was in 2015, so here we are in 2025, and I think I will start my next one in 2035. Of course, I will be 83 then, but I hope to still be taking pictures.
