In a motel, baby, like the Holiday Inn (0421)

      Another in the series of photos in and around hotels while travelling.  Today is shots from August 2018.  Once again, the post title is from the old Elton John song:  CLICK.

Check out the TAG to see more from the series.

This was taken during a trip to the Nashville, TN area.  Pretty sure we stayed at a hotel on the south-east side of town, along I-24.  Maybe Smyrna? Almost certainly an IHG property.

Album Cover Challenge

 One of my favorite challenges over at 365project, but also one I haven't been very active in this year.  I'm closing out the year with an entry into the 158th edition of the challenge.  I need to update the TAG, looks like I haven't cross posted here for quite a while.

Here's my entry:

The explanation:  Album Cover Challenge

And all entries

Simple

 

Ornamented

 Christmas decoration at Drost Park....  They had several of these baubles hanging among the bare trees in the park.  

I actually appreciated the occasional splash of color around the park.

The best camera is the one you have with you?

 There's a saying I have repeated often:  "The best camera is the one you have with you".  And I do believe that, with a caveat.  Point being, I (almost) always have my cell phone with me, so that camera is (almost) always with me.  I can't carry my "real" cameras everywhere, much less my various lenses.

BUT, that does not, by any stretch, mean that the phone camera is the best camera for any task.  There are photos that I can take with my 400mm zoom that my phone camera can't come close to matching.  Most notably, my bird photos...

Here's a baker's-half-dozen of bird photos taken December 2024.  All with the big-zoom.  

That said, a high percentage of my favorite shots, overall, are taken w/ my phone.  9 of the past 10 photos on my Instagram (as of today) are phone photos.

  Dark Eyed Junco

- - -

Red Breasted Woodpecker

- - -

Northern Cardinal

- - -

White Throated Sparrow

- - -

House Finch

- - -

House Sparrow

- - -

Northern Flicker

- - -

White Throated Sparrow

 I love the splash of yellow...

Wide or Telephoto...

 My new-ish cell phone comes with built in focal lengths:  0.5x, 1x, 2x, 3x.  It's a nice feature added from my previous phone.  So, what's the point?

Well, 0.5x is wide angle, has the effect of stretching out the distance.  3x is telephoto, and has the effect of compressing distance.  On a recent walk, I took both extremes of the same spot.  Here's a comparison:

Wide Angle (0.5x).  The trail seems to go on forever

- - -

Telephoto (3.0x).  If there were a distant object, it would seem closer.  the trail seems to end (turn, actually) just ahead.

- - -

So...  which is better?  Obviously, it depends.  In this case, I prefer the wide angle version, it stresses the feeling of solitude, the endless trail.  But if there were a person, or people) on the trail, the telephoto would add a sense of immediacy, of "closeness" with nature.

In a motel, baby, like the Holiday Inn (1119)

      Another in the series of photos in and around hotels while travelling.  Today is shots from November 2019.  Once again, the post title is from the old Elton John song:  CLICK.

Check out the TAG to see more from the series.

These are both from the Sheraton hotel in downtown Raleigh NC.  The first is from the lobby, the others are out our window.

House Finch (M)

 A pretty common bird, but they're still beautiful.

Fading Light

Sunsets in the midwest are often pretty dramatic.  Wide open skies, reflecting off all sorts of cloud formations.  BUT, if it is a crystal clear sky, on a cold (low humidity) day...  well, not so much.

I still though this was interesting, though not dramatic.

 

Cell Phone Lot

 One of the more useful advancements in recent years is the airport cell phone lot.  Instead of circling the arrivals area of the airport, fighting traffic while creating more, you can pull into the cell phone lot, turn off the car and relax until your party's fight arrives.  Add in the joys of cell phones, and your party can call when they've picked up their bagage.  In this case (STL), tyhe cell phone lot is very close to the terminal for Southwest airlines, which is where we're ususally meeting people.

Good stuff. 

Orchid Buds

 We have an orchid plant that was given to us after a niece's wedding we attended this year.  It was pretty for a while, then dropped the blossoms and pretended to be dead for a while.  At some point, my wife gave it some occasional water, and it seems to be coming back.  

Anyway, I liked the buds...

In a motel, baby, like the Holiday Inn (1018)

      Another in the series of photos in and around hotels while travelling.  Today is shots from August 2018.  Once again, the post title is from the old Elton John song:  CLICK.

Check out the TAG to see more from the series.

This is the inner courtyard at an Embassy Suite hotel.  Almost positive it was in the Columbus, OH, USA area.  It was a business trip.

It never Hurts...

Back in the day (70's) I used to make a lot of mix tapes.  I'd pick a song, then see where it led me.  The end result would be a 90 minute cassette.  These would get a lot of use, from parties to road trips.  Most of those tapes have disappeared w/o a trace, but the rise of iPod led to a whole new generation.  And now I make occasional spotify playlists.

So:  Today (in the car, via iPod) I was listening to a playlist "Various Artists 17 - It Never Hurts".  This is an iPod recreation (or approximation) of an old mix tape,  The starting song was "It Never Hurts To Be Nice To Somebody" from the New Riders Of The Purple Sage album "Who Are These Guys".  Not a great album, but a very solid one with several very good songs, that got regular plays during my college days.

Anyway, I decided I'd create a Spotify version of the playlist.  EXCEPT:  the seed song (It Never Hurts..." is not available on Spotify.  Spotify has most of what I want, but every once in a while I find a miss.  Like this, or the Mike Nesmith album "Infinite Rider On The Big Dogma".  

Anyway, it ticked me off, so I won't make the playlist.  But then I couldn't find the studio version on YouTube, just a live one.  The, to add insult to injury, the Poco's album Head Over Heels is not on there, and I had to use a live version of "Keep On Tryin'".

This is why I'll never switch completely over to Spotify.

Here's the playlist if you want to check it out:

It Never Hurts

The "Right" Crop / Aspect Ratio

So... yesterday I posted some photos from Watershed Nature Center (which has been renamed Nature Preserve Foundation).  This included a photo of a tree trunk with beaver damage.

This photo, reposted below, is a 1.33:1 aspect ratio.  This is the original phone photo's aspect ratio, corresponding to a 4x3 print (or 8/6 etc).  I usually crop to 1.5:1 aspect ratio, to match a "standard" 4x6 print.  But in this case I didn't, which surprises me in retrospect.

A bit later, I went to post this to Instagram, and they default displays photos at 1:1 aspect ratio (corresponding to 5x5 print).  Often I change that to match the ratio I used originally, but in this case, I looked at the 1:1 preview and decided that this was a much better photo.  What do y'all think?

So, lesson to myself, don't let your (my!) mind overlook various crops!  Even non-standard crops...