Well, I made it to Month #2 of my month-end summaries. If you came here wondering what is a Monthly Leaf Pile, it is something I just recently started in April 2020 to look back on various happenings throughout the month. It is a way to reflect upon and also reveal some otherwise “behind the scenes” activities related to my work, this website, and the key topics of this blog in general: creativity · environment · exploration · photography. You know, I should probably think of an “R” topic so I can use the acronym CREEP. 🙂

This month, I started thinking I should have some better organization for this thing as it tends to get long. Good blogging advice states you should start out writing all of your Headers first, then work on filling content. I like that. Then throughout the month, I can start dumping ideas or other content under those headers. So I picked the key topics for main headers (in no order it seems) and fill in sub-headers below. It helps me organize a month-long jumbled mess of thoughts, it may also help you follow them.

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Photography

VEP (Vision • Exposure • Develop)

Last year I wrote an article on my own personal rule of thirds – the philosophy I use for approaching photography. I thought it would be noteworthy to rake up some notes on how I applied it month to month. If anything, keep a check on me to see how the philosophy holds up over time.

Frankly, in this difficult time, I have found it hard to keep my focus (pardon the pun – broken AF motor maybe 🙂 ). Yet photography is also something I can do to tune out the noise of the world. But any creative pursuit is also impacted by my mood, stress, depression, some troll on your social feeds, etc.

I started playing more with raster painting on the Develop end in combination with some new Exposure aerial landscapes. This will likely warrant a future post on some of the things that popped up as I was exploring both concept and technique. I only went out once to fly K-2SO during peak spring colors here in Michigan.

It is hard to believe I will have to renew my FAA remote pilot license already this coming fall – 2 years have already passed by. It looks like there will be study time ahead in late Summer / Fall coming up. So much has changed just in 2 years when it comes to regulation and new requirements in this blossoming field of drones.

Even though photography can be a very solitary activity well-suited for pandemic and stay-at-home orders, I found myself wandering more through older images than having a desire to pursue new exposures. Call it a Vision Block if you will, call it wanting to run far, far away from the crowds now in many of my local woods. Still, I am yearning to do something different than chase after the same spring wildflowers I usually do. Looking at spring colors from the air was one of them.

Also on the Develop front, I did put out a review of Topaz Sharpen AI, an impressive piece of software technology. I am also currently in my 30-day trial of Helicon Focus. All of my previous focus stacking is done either within Photoshop using layers or using TK Panel blending tools in the past. However, some recent attempts with a lot of exposures (9 to as many as 49 images!) weren’t so successful with these previous tools. Therefore, I am trying out the well-known “standard” when it comes to this technique. I’ll have a future post on this.

On organization

My keyword list in Lightroom is still a big mess. I try to keep it in a parent-child hierarchy, but every so often some import or export throws keywords outside of their parent umbrella terms. So I have this mess of children running around without their parents (what a nightmare! 🙂 ) – others within their parents, some are complete orphans. It is a tedious, boring task I just keep putting off. It is one thing I hoped to cross off my to-do list by now, but more pleasing activities took priority. It really doesn’t do much other than an appeal to a sense of organization.

Website Bits & Bites

Running your own website always comes with its share of pleasures and headaches. It is a tree that keeps growing, hopefully spreading roots. It is a constant battle with foreign invasive species and also has debris to rake up.

Edit 02Jun2020: A funny thing popped up this month in search term trivia that made me think someone was messing with me. Some fellow photographers from a camera club I used to go to used to refer to my preferences in photography work as “artsy-fartsy.” And this month, some rather curious search terms showed up. So either it is a curious coincidence, or someone from my past is trying to have a little fun in a very clever way. Quite smart actually, and assumed I would catch such a thing. Either that or my marketing is drawing some people here in curious ways.

Tweaks

There is not much new here, other than some very subtle annoyances I fixed. Much like a Bonsai tree, you always seem to be in a mode of tweaking and pruning. Little things that you hope will lend itself to the overall harmony.

Most Creative Spammer of the Month

Sometimes I get some really unique spam comments on my site – those little bugs digging at my bark.

For a while, my biggest concern was for all of those people that subscribe to replies in my comments section would get emails from these spammers simply because they subscribed. That is a showstopper for me. Nobody wants that to happen to their site visitors, especially those that take the time to engage and comment. As such, any comment requires a previously approved comment before going through. I’ve had this in place for a while now, but it also enabled me to get rid of some redundancies. It is a middle-ground vs. moderating everything and keeps you, good folks, from getting spam emails just from subscribing to comments.

Anyway, this section is part of my Monthly Leaf pile raking to recognize those that at least come up with something unique. Congrats Mindy B! No, I did not know the evil background of those chip implants. Biohacking is all the rage now! Thanks for the warning, but I did not click your link nor did anyone here see it. I’ll just take your word for it. Good luck with that.

Least favorite Country Award

I suppose most websites go through their waves of being attacked by hackers. I get some that seem quite persistent. Fortunately, my security measures seem to be holding. But, Italy – you may have great food, some great people, and great vistas, but this month – you are not faring well in the cyber-relations department. Yes, I know you are not all hackers, but hey, sometimes only one rotten olive tree spoils the oil. Vaffanculo!

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Environment

Michigan Dam failures

There isn’t a place on this planet that isn’t being impacted by increased frequency of severe weather events brought on by climate change. In general though, the upper Midwest of the US has typically been portrayed as an area that will experience less severe impacts than others in comparison. But a prediction of being “more safe” doesn’t mean immune.

Michigan experienced nationwide, headline attracting dam failures, brought on by heavy rains this month, which resulted in the flooding of some fairly large cities and a lot of property damage. It would be wrong to say these dam failures are directly a result of climate change. In fact, there are numerous contributing factors from private owner negligence, to failures in state regulatory oversight, to competing interests on maintaining lake levels. But the domino that made all the other already-wobbly ones fall, was the heavy rain.

Michigan's dam safety regulation falls to two engineers, their boss and a budget of under $400k, for more than 1,000 regulated dams in 83 counties.https://t.co/wzsqQDUh7j@freep #MidlandFlood

— Keith Matheny (@keithmatheny) May 24, 2020

It is a fact that climate change acts as a threat multiplier. Imagine a game, where a dice roll determines if you strip naked and walk down the street. On a 6-sided dice roll, you would think you have a 1-in-6 chance of significant embarrassment. With a climate change influenced die, it is currently like having 2 sides with the number 6. Roll a 6, and congratulations, your existing infrastructure weakness areas are naked for all the world to see. Roll something else, and your shortcomings and weaknesses are hidden for a while longer.

The longer we putz around, the more numbers on that die change to sixes. Scientists know this, even the US Pentagon knows this for threats much larger than the flooding of a few towns. The historical support of municipal infrastructure as far as funding and priority need to change, in some cases dramatically, if we are going to mitigate this amplification. Ultimately it is the game of pay now, or pay much more later. Pay now, and you hold off some numbers on that die switching. Human psychology trends toward paying later, the walk of shame is approaching closer every day, and the costs exponentially more than personal embarrassment. More like a 6-shooter revolver.

Dandelions as Food

https://twitter.com/MarkSGraf/status/1262814090059186176

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Creativity

I don’t have much to add here that I didn’t cover above in my VED discussion above, and none of that really matches this great piece at BrainPicker I saw this month:

Codex Seraphinianus – history's most bizarre and beautiful encyclopedia of imaginary things, written in a code language https://t.co/a6FthImuFa pic.twitter.com/I5eyRrZ2PX

— Maria Popova (@themarginalian) May 12, 2020

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Post-publish edit 02Jun2020: Yeah, I knew I should have taken better notes. If you are looking for an entertaining TV series to watch – check out Dickinson if you happen to be an Apple TV+ subscriber (worthwhile considering if you are not). We binge-watched it this past month during the pandemic binging that a lot of people are likely doing.

It characterizes Emily Dickinson’s early life with some creative (often comedic) liberties on music and story, typically with each episode theme based on one of her poems. Honestly, it has been quite a while since I have read any of her work, but this show energized my interest to explore further.

A Bird, came down the Walk - (359)
BY EMILY DICKINSON
A Bird, came down the Walk - 

He did not know I saw -

He bit an Angle Worm in halves 

And ate the fellow, raw, 

 

And then, he drank a Dew

From a convenient Grass -

And then hopped sidewise to the Wall 

To let a Beetle pass -

 

He glanced with rapid eyes,

That hurried all abroad -

They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,

He stirred his Velvet Head. - 

 

Like one in danger, Cautious,

I offered him a Crumb,

And he unrolled his feathers, 

And rowed him softer Home -

 

Than Oars divide the Ocean,

Too silver for a seam,

Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon, 

Leap, plashless as they swim. 

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Exploration

A podcast worth listening to (not photography)

Making Sense with Sam Harris #204: Interview with Jonathan Haidt – a really interesting conversation related to the state we are in with our country, the pandemic, critical thinking, and our political bias.

• this led me to pick up Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Righteous Mind” – in attempt to better understand the batshit crazy people on this planet.

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Coda

Thanks for joining me in raking up some leaves from May 2020. Undoubtedly there is something I forgot and need to take better notes of along the way. As always, let me know what you liked or didn’t like about these summaries. (Italians can hold off until next month given I am a little irked at you right now) I am only on month two, so plenty of room for improvement and growth.

The care of the Earth is our most ancient and most worthy, and after all our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it and to foster its renewal is our only hope.

Wendell Berry