Looking Back at West Coast Memories

 After so many centuries - I've always wanted to say that - I can accurately and honestly say as long as I have been behind a camera viewfinder, I've been trying to archive those image files! I haven't advanced too much in that endeavor though, and yes, I just create yet more self-inflicted work and it's already too much work!

It's not all work though, as I relish in so many great events, times and memories that I am seeing. It's so unfortunate that I have lost many of my negatives though, as I had trusted "friend" Zach Kunkle with a lot of my personal stuff and later abandoned all of this stuff which consisted of furniture, personal papers, many negative files, books, lots of 5x7 silver framed images (Black and White nudes), very expensive equipment including a Canon DSC520C camera body, my Lucky darkroom enlarger and associated darkroom stuff, and more, in a back yard shed in Lenoir, North Carolina a few years ago. 

Here's one image that was snapped back in San Francisco, and as usual I am just so amazed at what my camera has seen and recorded!

My cameras and I have been to a lot of places and seen a lot of stuff! I even remember a trip south to San Diego where I went for my Navy bootcamp, and to sightsee and do a few more things than I was able to do way back in the early 70s!

 

Reflective Balboa Park 

Hotel del Coronado

Coronado Bridge

New Year New Insights

Haven't been here in what seems to be forever. Busy here and busier there. But the camera is always with me....

Brought into the Olympus digital system about two years ago - tis strange since in the past century I had a film Olympus camera: the ever-popular OM1 then later the OM2. It didn't last long though, before I swapped those out for a different camera. I cannot count on both hands and feet the numerous film cameras I've had, and now in this new digital era the story is the same: I cannot count on both hands nor feet the digital cameras I've gone though!

I currently have two EOS R5s with a few RF lens, and will be swapping those out for a single Sony A7c, replacing the Sony camera I picked up over a decade ago while in San Francisco, and now that A6000 is in Andalucia with my grandson Dylan. Hoping he'll enjoy it as much as I did!

The R5s were just too heavy to carry and I am NOT getting any younger! I need lighter and just as robust and capable, and liked the way it handled and the great sharp images it gave me!

It's raining in western New York (WNY) as I type. My leased Hybrid Kia Niro is now just a wee bit over a year and a half into a three-year lease, BUT if I could trade it in for an EV or another hybrid with a better range and eMPG at a price NOT in the clouds, I'd do it in a heartbeat. 

Other news: today closed my only active site featuring my imagery for sale, and now have only this blog and a portfolio online now. I just had waaay too many websites and it's difficult to stay on top of everything. I do NOT know how others do it all, and are successful on their virtual platforms. I ditched facebook a few years ago, this time permanently. I was back on twitland for a few months, but I just closed that just minutes ago also. 

Now I'll have more time to "image-archive" which is changing also: now instead of archiving, I will just simply delete all my images.

I am not a famous well-known photographer and I don't didn't ever get a lot of visitors to my many image sites. You know what happens when one isn't getting the foot traffic to a physical store, and virtually it must be the same. I see no sense in populating a site with my imagery if few will even take the time to see my imagery let alone purchase one. It's a huge world out there, and with more people thinking they are master photographers which I never have been, to compete with....  well. It was just a matter of time that I closed up my shop. No one will miss my imagery. No one will miss me!

Hoping everyone is staying as possible. The wife and I still wear our masks at the ready - around our necks -while outdoors to wear so we try to keep ourselves and others as safe and healthy as possible.

Life of My Traveling Camera!!

We just spent two days on the Canadian side of the Niagara gorge to help celebrate Canada's dropping ALL of their Covid restrictions for their and American citizens wishing to cross the border! We stayed at the Sheraton Fallsview hotel, within walking distance of the Rainbow Bridge, and with fabulous superb views! Drove the next day to Niagara-on-the-Lake to see Fort Niagara from the "ofther side" and it looked just as lovely, but renovations have been in progress on the French Castle, so it wasn't a very photographic subject....  

Snapped over 300 memories on the camera, including on the phone, then come home to find out I cannot find the images on ANY of the SDcards used, of which I only used two! Looking everywhere to see if a card got lost, got mixed up with other...  you know the nightmare. The next day after arriving home, checked the car. 

Nothing.

So this leaves only one course of action of take: undelete and recovery. This has happened before in my far past and recently even, but the most I ever had to recover was on an internal hard drive when I accidentally deleted over 30gigs while working on image files at 3am, still then in the San Francisco Bay Area! It took days to recover all that!

I use a great app that I discovered decades ago and have used it much and still. It's Puran software and they make a variety of apps including a handy-dandy app that allows right-click for adding a copyright, resizing and more to image files! It stopped worked about half a decade ago due to some updates/changes in Windows OS. I tested each app extensively but it would NOT work at all. A few months ago I upgraded to Win11 (which I tolerate and do not enjoy), and I rediscovered these right-click apps during a casual search of old files. Just for giggles I reinstalled them and voilà, it functioned superbly right off the bat without even having to reboot or anything!! WoW!!

Back to my current day nightmare of finding the Canada image files...  I went through a possible five cards that I just cleared of files yesterday; the culprit was the second card checked!

LUCK! As I type this, there are now 200+ recovered image files of our Canada trip restored! Whew!!

Another thing I have noticing is that MANY of my image files are fragmented, not due to being overwritten BUT because I don't simply delete, BUT move my image files off the SDcards used in my cameras. In doing so, I have created SD cards with a lot of fragmentation, which I am seeing now! So, to prevent this in the future, I will start formatting each card after the files are moved off the cards! I could suggest you do the same, but you are smarter than me!!  ;)

Again, the Puran File Recovery app has saved my Life and image files yet again!!

20 minutes later: over 1400 image files recovered! It seems since I started NOT regularly formatting my SD cards, the "image files" are still on the cards though not displayed! I finally stopped the recovery process after it had recovered and placed more than 1900 of these lost but now recovered files in a folder. Of all the image files recovered to this folder, only 1000 files were of our recent two-day Canadian trip. The others are all files moved from the card but never permanently deleted, and not formatted. So, I'll begin formatting my cards regularly very soon as I formerly did regularly a decade ago! 

Some of the files were even snowy scenes at the Falls recorded during the last Winter!!

Thoughts on a Cold Fall Morning

A Man without seeds sown, departing this Earth without Children, leaves an empty Destiny with no Meaning, Hope nor Future. All Species of this planet thrive on finding a mate to sow its seeds to continue its Heritage, and when that seed grows to finally lift its branches or eyes to the Sky and Sun, and in its own new Life will also one day mate and sow its seeds to look up and see the Sky. 

Life is to continue, NOT die without its Life continuing. 

Life is continuance.

These words are my own, not copied nor changed from someone else's mind. These words in whole or in part, cannot be copied or used without my advance permission.

Remembering Nature's Beauty!

 Isn't Nature just so lovely and BeautYful? Seen at Presque Isle State Park, Pennsylvania some time ago, and I just love how the wings of the Great Egret are in this captured movement. These days I am just reliving the memories! If you'd like to see more of my wildlife imagery, you can visit my wildlife gallery to see the various species my cameras have seen in my travels there and here.Thanks in advance!