We learned yesterday that our libraries will reopen on June 1, albeit with very limited services including only allowing one person at a time in the building. That’s OK with me, as right now I just want to return two physical books that I’ve had since February. All of my other reading has been on my Kindle. It will be nice to get the books off our living room table!
Kathy & I haven’t been frequent pool-goers in any of the neighborhoods we’ve lived. But this year we had decided we were going to use the one in our current neighborhood more. Of course it has not yet reopened for the season so we walk past it every day. Some kind of hoopla between the HOA board, the pool company and attorneys. But it gives some of the neighbors something new to talk about! 😉
This week Kathy & I pulled the plug on our October cruise and cleared the travel slate completely. We’re planning a trip to the beach, thinking that renting and living in a condo down there for a week will give us a similar insulation from others to living at home while providing a change of scenery. We need a change of scenery.
We’re hoping that things loosen up a bit across the country in June and July and are hoping to bag a few more states. Unfortunately the ones we still need are in the far corners of the country. But fortunately most of the states are wide-open spaces, so as long as we can get gas, get food and sleep, we might be able to put together a nice drive without a lot of people-ing.
We were greeted this morning with word of a new tropical storm off the coast and headed our way – TS Bertha. Looks like more rain and cool weather for the next few days. Things get interestinger and interestinger…. 😉
I’m looking forward to watching the SpaceX launch this afternoon. Weather forecast looks iffy there, too, but we’ll see. Kathy & I had discussed the possibility of driving down and finding a place to stay for the week, but decided that was probably too far, too soon. We just missed a launch a few years ago. We had gotten off a cruise ship in Port Canaveral that morning, found a place at a roadside park across from the space center and were ready to go, but the launch was scrubbed with 11 second remaining. As Maxwell Smart would have said, “missed it by that much!” 😉
I’ve been reading and thinking lately about how the ability to work from home will influence the future of work, and in particular the future of commercial real estate. For nearly all of my work career, there was never a thought given to the ability to work somewhere other than the office.
The concept of “butts in seats” never occurred to companies in the 80’s and 90’s up until just a few years ago, because we worked at work. Even my most recent manager, with half of his team already working in remote locations around the country, was highly resistant to the idea of his Charlotte team working remote except for extreme circumstances. He once admonished me for wanting to work remotely from an out-of-town B&B on a Monday before a Tuesday holiday, reasoning that I was “really on vacation” and should just take a vacation day. Things might be different now., but my theory was that with a phone and a laptop, know one knows where you are working from and it shouldn’t matter. That is proving to be true for a lot of workers.
The idea of a Corporate Headquarters has traditionally been a reflection of the huge budgets and egos of the corporate elite. Bank of America has the tallest building in Charlotte at 60 stories tall, and why wouldn’t they? Depending on the day they trade places with JPMorgan Chase as the largest bank in the US. The building is a monument to the empire of Hugh McColl and the company he created. Down the street the building that is now the Duke Energy Center started off to be the new headquarters of Wachovia. We know how that turned out.
But right now all of those buildings are mostly sitting empty. People have been told not to expect to go back to the office any time soon. So what will happen to all that office space? Good question. Companies have started to realize that space is expensive. Add to that the potential cost of refitting workspaces to meet new health rules, new cleaning requirements and the potential of workplace-illness-related litigation, suddenly all that office space starts looking pretty unattractive. And companies are realizing that shifting occupancy costs to their employees will save them some Big Money, allowing the Big Wigs to get even Bigger Bonuses.
It’s just the beginning of that cycle, I’d guess. It will be interesting to see which way and how far it goes.
I took the day off from thinking yesterday, so I don’t have a lot to say this morning. But I did manage to take some pictures on this morning’s walk.
I have a “goal” in my step tracker of 5,000 steps per day. That isn’t much by some standards, but it is good enough for me. Most days I exceed it by several thousand, earlier this week I actually went over 10,000. I think today will mark 54 days in a row. Every day since March 1.
I’ve decided we’ve had enough of the B&W for now, so I’m going to switch to color. I’m hoping to keep shooting and posting new stuff but may have to resort to the archives on occasion.
One of our neighbor’s houses has a beautiful display of these orange lilies in front, and I snuck up the driveway before anyone was awake to catch me. 🙂
We awoke this morning to some dense fog, following the passing of the weather system that brought us all the rain over the last few days. I grabbed my camera for a walk and came back with a nice collection. No, I never get tired of shooting those power lines and towers. 🙂
TGIF and Happy Memorial Day Weekend!
I’ve been working lately on having a camera with me on my morning walks. It’s interesting what I see when I have a camera with me (duh!). 😉
Transmission towers aren’t exactly a glamorous subject (unless you’re into such things), but they do have some interesting lines and shapes. This one is a regular subject, mostly because it’s always there, looks different in changing light and weather, and gives me a reason to trudge to the top of the hill.
It’s also a good camera test – to check focus and sharpness!
Long-time readers of this blog may recall a series of Aspen motion-blur photos that I shot during our first visit to Colorado in June 2015. Because it was springtime, the vertical trunks of the Aspen trees made for great subject matter when combined with the fresh spring green.
Since our most recent visit to Colorado was in the fall, I hoped to add to my Aspen Blur collection with some photos of trees with the golden yellow of fall. A lot of the trees we saw in the first few days of our visit were on the mountainsides, too far away to effectively get the results I wanted. On our final day, a drive through the Poudre Canyon with my pal Monte, we came across several excellent stands of trees.
It sometimes takes a lot of “misses” to come up with a handful of keepers. In this case I shot a relatively light 200 photos, and came up with a few that I’m really happy with. A couple have some really funky looks to them as a result of a happy accident or two.
I suppose the next step will be to get out there in the winter and make some photos of Aspen with snow. I’m not sure I’m up for that yet, but it may make it on to the to-do list, you never know! 🙂
I was reading a recent post on Monte’s Blog in the context of a commercial print job I’m currently working on. Monte was discussing how much he wanted a new Fuji lens (me too!) but indicated that his current cameras – 4 and 6 years old – still suited him fine, and he reminded us that all cameras still require a photographer to work.
I was recently contacted by a local restaurant owner about providing prints for their bar and dining rooms for an upcoming remodel. I’m flattered that they asked me, and even more excited that it is one of our favorite restaurants. And that they want 17 photos! One of the things that interested me in the context of Monte’s post and the discussion about needing a “pro” camera for doing quality work is the breakdown of the cameras that were used for the photos we chose for this project:
I wasn’t too surprised about the number of 5D shots, and I wasn’t at all surprised at the number of shots from the Fuji X-E2 and X-T1, my current cameras. But I was quite surprised at 6 of the photos coming from two point & shoot cameras! Maybe there is something to be said for ditching all of the interchangeable lens cameras and just buying a single, good, point & shoot camera!
I’ll share the photos later. Or even better, photos of the photos once they are hung! 😉
