Spam Spam Spam Spam

 Every once in a while, I check my spam folders to make sure nothing got misplaced.  It's been ages since I've seen that happen, but still easy enough to check.

Lately, I've noticed an uptick in the good-old Nigerian scam.  With a 2022 twist:  Now they've upgraded from a Nigerian Prince to a woman, a victim of the "Russian civil unrest in Ukraine ",,,,  The wife of a contractor.  Sadly, the poor woman has "already lost [her] family, [her] husband, son and daughter to the cold hands of death"....  Fortunately, her husband transferred a "reasonable" amount of funds to a Security Company in France" 

Well, since life in Ukraine is so risky these days, this woman has decided to entrust me, a random stranger, with the care and custody of the funds for investment purposes in my country!  A mere 8.5M euros. She adds "I know that a million words would not make you help me,nor would a million tears but I want you to bear in mind that I'm sending you a strong message as a widow which I have come to plead with you to please help me in this situation."

I will say that the spelling and grammer are much better than the old Nigerian scams used to be. 

It is an interesting twist that there is no actual mention of what's in it for me.  Just a request that I claim the funds "as a good business partner" to her late husband and I provide "care and custody" of them.  Maybe the scam has determined that people are catching on to the reality that nobody is just going to give a fortune to a random stranger?  I guess I could reply and see what my cut of the 8.5 Million would be.....   But that would be stupid, since it is a transparent scam.

The sad thing is they send out millions of these queries, and it only takes a handful of people to fall for it to be worth their time.  Maybe I'll buy a couple of lottery tickets, at least I know how much I'l lose, and there is an actually chance (miniscule, but >0) I might win a few bucks.

Solitude

 A little bit of a throwback, and another before-and-after.  2 years ago this month, my wife and I tool a long weekend trip to Michigan, saw some kighthouses, and spent a day at Mackinac Island.  There;s several posts in the archives, seee them here.

Anyway, I was digging around on the iPad today, and found this photo from that trip.  It never got processed at the time, becasue it didn't quite "click".  Today, I decided that a rather dramatic crop might be a good start to what I felt.  So I pulled the image up in smapseed, and played around.  I'm pretty pleased with the inal result:

This is a humble little iPhone photo, not sure why I don't have a version from my Fujifilm, but I don't.

So, here's the sequence:  I leveled it a little, cropped it square, and also cropped tighter to eliminate most of the trees in the foreground.  A couple of tweaks to brightness / contrast to correct the camera's auto-exposure.  Then some heavy lifting that I don't normally do:I used the healing tool to remove the last bit of the trees, and a freighter that was barely visable in the (far off) center.  Adding a little spot-contrast to the kayaks.  And lastly, dropped the saturation a bit.  And that;s what I posted to instagram.  

I sent it to the "real" computer this evening, resized it to 1024 px / side, and did a little Levels tweak to true up the exposure on a big screen, and posted to betterphoto and 365project.

This is a LOT more processing than I normally do, but I'm pretty happy with the end result.  And I had funpulling it together, and that's really the point of it all.

Below is the original, Straight-From-Camera for comparison,

August 1972 on the Music Charts

   Continuing the series of hits -of-the-month, moving to August1972.  Fifty years ago (Yikes!)

There were 4 weeks in August of 1972, and there were 49 songs that spent time in the Top 40.  That's a fewer than the past couple of months, for what it's worth. And over those 4 weeks, there were only 2 songs that topped the charts: Gilbert O'Sullivan's  "Alone Again, Naturally" carried over from the last week of July, and spent another 3 weeks at number 1.  Pretty impressive, but still lags Roberta Flack and "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" which was #1 for 6 consecutive weeks in April and May.  "Brandy (You're A Fine Girl)" by Looking Glass took over the top spot for the last week of August.

Here's the top 10 songs (11 with a tie) of the month, ranked by average chart position over the 4 weeks of the month. 

• Alone Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O'Sullivan - 1.25
• Brandy (You're A Fine Girl) - Looking Glass - 1.75
• (If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don't Want To Be Right - Luther Ingram - 4
• Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress) - The Hollies - 5.25
• Daddy Don't You Walk So Fast - Wayne Newton - 7.25
• I'm Still In Love With You - Al Green - 7.75
• Where Is The Love - Roberta Flack - 9
• Coconut - Nilsson - 10
• Hold Your Head Up - Argent - 12.75
• Goodbye To Love - Carpenters - 12.75
• The Happiest Girl In The Whole U.S.A - Donna Fargo - 12.75

kind of typical 1972, lots of brilliant songs, and a few that are forgotten for a reason...

Meanwhile, Eighteen (18) songs made their Top 40 debut. And time there's some great stuff headed up the charts that will be making an impact in next month:

• Black And White - Three Dog Night - 23
• Rock And Roll Part 2 - Gary Glitter - 34
• Baby Don't Get Hooked On Me - Mac Davis - 35
• When You Say Love - Sonny and Cher - 36
• Pop That Thang - The Isley Brothers - 36
• You're Still A Young Man - Tower Of Power - 36
• Back Stabbers - The O'Jays - 37
• Power Of Love - Joe Simon - 37
• Run To Me - Bee Gees - 37
• Join Together - The Who - 38
• The Guitar Man - Bread - 39
• Sweet Inspiration - Barbra Streisand - 39
• Popcorn - Hot Butter - 39
• This World - The Staple Singers - 39
• Beautiful Sunday - Daniel Boone - 40
• Saturday In The Park - Chicago - 40
• Go All The Way - Raspberries - 40
• Honkey Cat - Elton John - 40

Pierre's Markette

 Pierre's Markette, The photo on Google Streetview (dated 2016) shows the name on the facade, and it seemed to be open.  But it's gone now..

I presume the name is a hat-tip to nearby Pere Marquette State Park (and Lodge)

 This was taken just a 3 minutes after sunset (per Google), and shot using one of the B&W  film modes in my Fujifilm X-T3.  I did a little crop, and then some postprocessing in Photoshop Elements, and Topaz Studio's B&W filter.   I've found that I like the dynamic adjustment in Topaz's plug ins, but they've largely been discontinued as the company is focusing on AI products.  I understand, but still makes me sad.  Looks like B&W was discontinued in late 2020. This is the kind of thing that keeps me limping along with my outdated computer:  the outdated software that does exactly what I want, and that I've invested countless hours learning to do exactly what I want...

Oh well..,  The straight from camera version is nelow if you want to compare. 

Here's a screen grab from streetview, dated September 2016:

Here's SOOC version:

Bridges, Cuyahoga River, Cleveland - BetterPhoto 2nd Place Winner, June 2022

 

BetterPhoto announced the winners of their June 2022 contest yesterday (7/31) and I managed a 2nd place.  I uploaded 20 images to BP in June, and 18 of them received some recognition:  11x Editors Pick, 2x Staff Favorite, 4x Finalists, 1x Second Place.  Hard to complain about that!  

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I spent a few days in Cleveland in June, and managed a day to wander around the Edgewater Park / Windy Park area.  This is looking up the Cuyahoga River from the east edge of Windy park.  I really liked the lines and angles of the bridges, and was able to catch the kayakers as they passed under the train bridge.

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Camera: Fujifilm X-T3 Exposure: 0.002 sec (1/500) Aperture: f/11.0 ISO Speed: 400 Focal Length: 55 mm