Category: awesome!

Log, Log, It’s Big, It’s Heavy, It’s Wood

The photography club I attend monthly has been going through a lot of flux over the past year. A few of the main members have left (retired, mostly) and new folks have joined. We have a new leader and he’s got a lot of ideas. It’s a lot of change. For the good, I’m sure, but change anyway.

I’ve talked a bit about this group. It’s made up of both scientists and engineers and is overwhelmingly male. These guys are very much tech head photographers who are all about gear and photographic perfection. Their photos are technically precise but in my opinion lack emotion…which suits them just fine.

It’s a debate we have a lot in the meetings. Art vs Technical. Let’s just say, my storytelling approach to photographs is in the way, way minority. I can often actually *hear* eyes rolling as one of my photos rolls across the screen during critiques.

I have learned a lot from this group. I work hard to make my photos better. To improve. To get technically cleaner. That said, in some ways, I also like to goad them. Poke the tiger with a stick.

One of the things we seem to struggle with as a group is our monthly theme. It’s hard to come up with jazzy ideas every thirty days. This year’s themes are some good and some weird. All are great in my opinion. I love being challenged.

A few of the more rigid photographers aren’t having as much fun with the themes as I am.

For March, our theme was “wood.” Seems easy, doesn’t it? But it’s harder than you’d think to come up with a good, unique, and well crafted photo of wood. It’s almost too broad.

We get two entries each month. I did one that was a bit more “clean” though it still could use some technical work. And I did one storytelling photo.

Neither were very well received.

Presented for your perusal:


Palm, Pine, Maple, and Telephone


Copyright ©2016, Karen Fayeth


I presented this as a study of the wood types found in my neighborhood, each pattern more interesting than the last.

Ok, the image has a joke there at the end. And with the title I was yanking their chains, as these nature photographers get quite sniffy about the precise genus and species of flora and fauna they photograph.

This photo garnered four votes in our monthly contest. Not terrible, but not close to winning either.

Here is my other shot. I very much enjoy the story in this one. It got one vote. (At least it got one?)


Log


Copyright ©2016, Karen Fayeth


When faced with the conundrum of properly conveying the feeling of “random log in parking garage,” I chose to go with moody.

This photograph was not subjected to Instagram filters. A color photo of this wooden beauty was lightly desaturated then pulled into Photoshop for burn and dodge to bring out those beautiful loggy highlights.

The squarish shape is due to cropping out surrounding cars.

I really love this photo. I mean…why the hell is there a log in the parking garage at work?

Also, could this BE any more perfect for the theme of wood? Nailed it!

One vote. At least one other photography club member gets it. It’s something to build on.





Both photos are Copyright ©2016, Karen Fayeth. All taken with an iPhone6 and the Camera+ app. First photo also utilized the free photojoiner.net site to combine the photos. Subject to the Creative Commons license in the right column of this page.





Too Much Time On My Hands

Perfect posting for a Friday…

On Monday I had an early morning video call with a company in London. Oh those pesky time zones. Did you know that the US and the UK go to Daylight Savings Time (British Summer Time) about three weeks apart, and the US goes first? Monday was the first workday after the US moving ahead an hour, while the UK didn’t.

Yeah, I remembered that in the small hours of the morning and quickly dashed off an email to sort out the timing. Thankfully everything worked out.

To prepare for the video conference, I got up extra early and came into the office to set up and test all of my video gear. I just moved into an office a couple weeks ago and my video gear was in a heap in a drawer. Great.

I was able to quickly get it set up and tested and then ten minutes before the call, I was ready to go.

Ten minutes. That is a funny amount of time. Not enough time to really get anything going with work. I mean, I could have dived into email but then I just knew I would get engaged in something and would lose track of time.

But ten minutes is also kind of a long time to sit around and do nothing.

So I did what any adult professional in my situation would do. To “test” my video camera set up, I fired up PhotoBooth on my Mac and played with the effects.

I tried the one with hearts around the head, then the birds around the head. I tried the one that gave me frog eyes and one that produced a disturbing cartoonlike square jaw.

But none were quite as impressive as this. Let’s call it Alien Accounts Receivable Clerk. And your payment is overdue.



“Please remit payment or I will be forced to terminate your account”


So yeah, when the top of the hour finally rolled around, I entered the video conference still giggling.

A little too jolly for a fairly serious meeting with stoic Brits. *Ahem*

But I cleaned up my act, greeted the others on the call and then behaved like a grown up for a WHOLE HOUR!

Amazing. (hee, hee)





Photo ©2016 Karen Fayeth, taken with the PhotoBook App on my Mac and ten minutes of downtime plus post Daylight Savings Time exhaustion on my hands. Subject to the Creative Commons License in the right corner of this page.





Simply Daffy for Spring!

I’m incredibly in love with that harbinger of Spring, the yellow daffodil.

Sunshine on a stem.


©2016 Karen Fayeth


I adore going to Trader Joe’s to pick up a bunch of tightly closed buds then later at home snipping the ends, placing the stems in water and watching a fireworks display.

Yesterday we sat at the table where this vase is placed and I swear these buds were busting open right before our eyes.



©2016 Karen Fayeth

I took a big bunch to work today and have enjoyed so many of my coworkers (and my boss) coming by to ooh and aah.

“They are just so sunshiny” is the general consensus.

And they are.

Unless I’m being all moody and arty and stuff and go for the black and white on the desk of my brand new office (yay me!). Then they are regal and proud and still very beautiful.



©2016 Karen Fayeth



And because I’m goofy for the daffydils, here is a Kaleida Cam shot:



©2016 Karen Fayeth


Ok, well, I’ve about exhausted the topic of daffodils. Love ’em!

Don’t even get me started on tulips. Oh sigh, how I love Spring.

Even in the middle of this gray rainy Northern California day, I look at tulips and daffodils and feel entirely optimistic.





All photos ©2016 Karen Fayeth, taken with an iPhone6 using the Camera+ app, the Lenka app (for black and white) and the KaleidaCam app. All photos subject to the Creative Commons in the right column of this page.





Just Plug The Number, It’ll Be Okay

A leap day is observed because a complete revolution around the Sun takes slightly longer than 365 days. It compensates for this lag, realigning the calendar with the Earth’s position in the solar system; otherwise, seasons would occur in a different time than intended in the calendar year. — Wikipedia





On my way into work today, I was listening to whatever morning radio station was not running commercials and landed on a crew of three djs discussing facts and trivia about today, February 29th. Better known as Leap Day.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we all know the deal. The Gregorian calendar is nice and all, but doesn’t *quite* work. Close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades, as the saying goes. And, apparently, calendars.

While I have a degree in finance, I am not a finance person. Humorously, the work I do is slotted under the Finance organization, so I can confidently say that in the parlance of the Finance industry, Leap Day is better known as a fudge factor. A plugged number. A “what do you want the numbers to say?” kind of adjustment.

Let’s just call it a rounding error.

I work in contracts and we have something similar. It’s what one of my first and favorite bosses called “weasel words.” This is where the person on the other end of the contract (usually a lawyer) is being petulant and you can’t quite give them the language they want. Instead you can appease them with something in the vicinity of what they want. Words like “reasonably attempt” and “in accordance with best practices.” Leap words, if you will.

Not to digress, but baseball has something similar. Called a “neighborhood play” it roughly means that the second baseman doesn’t have to actually touch the base or runner to get the out as long as they are near to the base and in control of the ball.

Second basemen tend to stay a bit off the bag because lead runners like to come barreling in trying to disrupt a potential double play. The topic of the neighborhood play came to a head during the playoffs last year as a player got seriously injured.

So in this Leap Year, baseball looks to be changing up the rules. Which will likely make for a lot more leaping shortstops trying to stay off the DL.

In the spirit of both Leap Day and my favorite sport of baseball, I present to you my favorite Giants shortstop of all time, Omar Vizquel, doing what he did best.

Happy Leap Day!






Leaping Omar image found here.





The Blues & The Words

The 26th of February. That what today is. February 26, 2016.

My, my, how time does fly.

Speaking of flying time, I see that the last time words were posted to this space was in November. That was like, yesterday, right?

Nope. 26th. Of February. Of 2016. Whew.

Well, okay, gotta try to shake that off and keep rolling. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about this little ol’ blog. It used to be that I’d knock out a post every weekday. Then three times a week. And then nothing since November.

Been wondering what got in my way.

Three things, really. First, I got a little worn out. I’d pushed The Muse and it was getting harder to think of interesting ideas to write about. Eventually The Muse asked me to give it a rest.

Another contributor was starting a different job. I used have a free lunch hour where I both ate and knocked out the words for this blog. In my new job, I am in so galldarn many meetings each day that my lunch break is now me eating while my staff streams in the door to grab a few moments of my time.

Finally, I started wondering a little bit about the fate of so-called long form blogs in an ever-shortening attention span world. I read an article a few years ago declaring blogs dead in favor of tweets and Tumblr. I kind of took it to heart.

So I let my word field lay fallow. And maybe that is okay. It needed some rain and some decay and some time to become fertile again.

One of the most compelling reasons that I started this blog was to be a place for writing practice.




Practice, practice, practice. When I kicked off these pages back in 2007 I felt like I had something to say and needed a venue, so I made my own.

Over many years I wrote something every weekday and watched my writing both inside and outside the blog become stronger, sleeker, and more concise.

While I still benefit from all of that work, the last few times I’ve been working on a short story, I’m noticing the flow just isn’t there. It’s always an uphill climb but without the many days a week practice to keep me limber, the hill got a little steeper (and a lot more pedantic).

There is a widely debated theory that it takes ten thousand hours of practice to become a master at something. I am not sure that is true because any artist I know would say you never master your medium, no matter how much or how hard you practice.

But what I do know is that as of the moment I am putting these words into print, there are over six hundred thousand words that I created and added to this blog. That hasn’t taken me ten thousand hours to create, but it’s still not nothing. It’s something that matters and something I am proud of.

Last weekend while I was sprucing up the blog and giving it a Spring cleaning (I’m kind of in love with this shade of blue) in preparation for my return to the words, I looked hard at that number in the footer of this page and thought to myself “I’m not done.”

And so I’m not.

One added benefit is that I get to grab those crazy thoughts from my mind and get them down. There’s good stuff in there. No more trying to blog it out loud to my kindly understanding spouse or my long-suffering coworkers.




So here I am, back for today and hopefully back again soon. I want to push out my elbows and make the space in my world for the words, the practice, and the ever wonderfully agonizing quest to get better at what I love to do most.




Carnegie Hall cartoon found here.

Blogging out loud cartoon found here.