In Hibernation

As this winter season so far has been rather uninspiring from photographic point of view, I’ve decided to let the Picture Book go into hibernation for a while. I might wake it up again when spring starts to bring a bit more colour back into the world. In the meantime, I’ll concentrate my blogging to my main blog – Beyond the Lone Islands.

You’re All Invited!

A fanfare to celebrate ‘The Grand Re-Opening’!

Did you have trouble accessing this blog yesterday? I’m so sorry. I didn’t notice myself until luckily one of my most faithful followers alerted me to the fact. To me everything looked all right, because I was logged in. However, I had been going over some settings, and in connection with that I must have happened to inadvertently change my permission settings from public to ‘invited readers only’. Since I had not invited anyone, that meant that for a day or so this blog was visible only to myself!

I assure you, even if I have had to cut down a bit on regular posting lately, I had no intention of withdrawing into total seclusion!

If you missed yesterday’s post, it should now be visible here.

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PS. Today’s picture is of our official summer street musicians who are playing daily in the streets and squares and shopping malls etc in the summer holiday season.

Out Of Touch…

It’s Friday evening, and Blogger has been down all day. It just seems to have come back on, but my lost Thursday posts are not back yet. I think I’ll wait until tomorrow and see how it goes before I try to repost anything, or to publish new photo posts. (Thankful for Windows Live Writer which enables me to save drafts locally…)

Earlier today Blogger had this message up on Twitter:

"To get Blogger back to normal all posts since 7:37am PT on Wed 5/11 have been temp removed. We expect everything to be back to normal soon"

A few hours later there was another Twitter message to say that they had started to restore the messages that had been removed.

Just now Blogger seems to be back on, but not the posts from yesterday that they had to remove – and on top of that, now their Twitter page (or even all of Twitter?) seems to have gone down. So I don’t trust that they’ve quite got things under control yet… ;)

In spite of still having internet access, and email, and Facebook, I have felt strangely “cut off from the world” today!

Hope to “see you” all again soon!

 

“He Gave Us Eyes To See Them…”

Ginny (Let Your Light Shine) commented on my Watery Wednesday post yesterday (a green glass bottle stuck in the ice in the river) that it seems (I assume she must mean from other posts…) we don’t have much problem with litter here…

My answer was that “With the camera, one focuses on the bits that one wants to see. And editing gives even further possibility to cut out the bits one does not want to show.”

I have to confess that my camera is not really set by default on “the truth and nothing but the truth”. I think it’s more set on finding

“All things bright and beautiful … All things wise and wonderful…”
(follow the link for the full lyrics)

So unless litter happens to be sort of beautiful (like a green glass bottle magically frozen in a waterfall) - or at least extraordinary enough to cause wonder - my camera does not seek it out. That of course does not mean the litter is not there In Real Life. You just don’t get to see it, unless I choose for some special, odd reason to show it. Like today, because Ginny sort of requested it…

Scrolling through my February pictures, I realized that I did have a few more recent photos of litter. Things that did seem extraordinary enough to pass through my general “ugliness filter”…

 

Yes, things can be found in the river which don’t belong there.

 

Yes, empty bottles get dumped also in other places than the river. This one caught my attention, because on that day I was out “exploring”, hoping to find signs of spring… Hmm…

I bent down – ouch – and took the photo, continued my walk… Stopped. Turned back.  Picked up the (empty) bottle and carried it to a glass recycling container. (Had just struck me that I’d be passing by one anyway.) Still felt kind of awkward just walking that short distance holding it. (Never did a lot of exploring of alcohol. Prefer tea!)

 

On closer look I could understand why the person who dropped half an orange might not have been too keen to pick it up… Yuck.

 

* A Stylish Award *

This award was given to me by Mersad at Mersad Donko Photography.

I’m honoured, of course – but also in trouble!!! Because, as most awards circulating in the Blog world, it comes with a set of rules…

There are four steps to follow that come along with this award.

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers.

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award.

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Seven Things Or One Story:

1. I have had pen friends in other countries ever since the days when one had to use pen and paper and stamps, and could not even imagine such a thing as the Internet.

2. It was an Australian pen pal who got me blogging two years ago.

3. Hardly had I got started before she sent me a “Treasured Friends” award which I was supposed to pass on to five other people.

4. Five?! I had not even “met” five people in the Blog World yet!

5. So I had to start my career as a blogger by bending rules…

6. … and have continued as I started…

7. … and will probably continue to continue…!

8. (Bonus info, to prove my point) That’s a quote from Paul Simon.
In case you haven’t already noted, I tend to quote him a lot!

So I'll continue to continue to pretend
My life will never end,
And Flowers Never Bend With The Rainfall.

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Now, I did give this some thought. Could I name 15 stylish blogs? Yes, I think I could. However, it is doubtful whether they would qualify as “recently discovered”; unless you stretch “recently” to (dis)cover 2 years (i.e. my whole blog-life)...

Because, you see, I like to discover things slowly. When I run around trying to explore too many new blogs at once (which I sometimes do), what happens is that after a while I see names appearing on my dashboard list and have to admit: Hey, I have no idea who that is!!!

Now, checking the award posts by Mersad (who gave the award to me) and Doreen (who gave it to Mersad), I find no less than twelve of my own favourites who were already just recently given this award…

This leaves me in a rather tricky situation. Because if I am to exclude those twelve, and pick fifteen others from my blog rolls, that would leave only a handful or so rather randomly and unfairly “unpicked”… (Not to mention that having to decide would give me a sleepless night!)

So I’m just putting the spotlight on three (12+3=15) whom I have been following for some time (but not from “the very beginning”), and who have not already - as far as I know – been given this award. (Although that might have changed while I’ve been writing this post!)

Other things these three have in common:

* All three have their own individual style
* All three have a great sense of humor
* All three have an excellent eye for photography, and there’s not much they would not do to get the photo they want…!

Adrian’s Images

Let Your Light Shine (Ginny)

Madsnapper (Sandra)

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PS. Since I’ve already bent “the rules”… Feel free to do the same…