Floral Combos

Summer Blossoms

Assembled using PhotoCollage for the Mosaic Linkup

Twenty Years of Blogging!

My first blog post was on June 13, 2005. Even I am amazed that I've been blogging for 20 years.

Post #1

When I started, we were spending a lot of time in our Glebe Harbor home and the Internet connection was painfully slow. They didn’t have high-speed Internet in our corner of Westmoreland County so I had to use the phone line, and it was a very old phone line. I would actually click on a link, go to the kitchen and get coffee, and return to see that pictures on my screen were still opening. And pictures back then were much smaller because many people still had dial-up connections!

When I wanted to post a page with photos, I would compose it on my laptop and shrink the pictures to 3 x 5“ size (at 72 dpi), and drive to the library which was about 5 miles away. There I would connect to their DSL Internet and upload my text and pictures. I did not post every day until after we moved back to Bryce Resort and got a high-speed connection at home. 

I’ve selected a few pictures from my early months of blogging. There were other favorites that are too small to look good on today’s devices. 

Our view at Glebe Harbor

Even then I enhanced pictures in Photoshop.

Assateague Sunset

Marie

Blog Post #9000

Nine thousand is a huge number of blog posts. I’ve been blogging for over 19 years, almost every day.  With any luck, I’ll make it to 20 years. Perhaps at that point I’ll cut back and skip a day here and there. 

Today I looked back at earlier anniversary posts. Post #1000 happened on Lynn‘s birthday so I shared two pictures of her. 

In order to save space, I’m combining some of the photos into collages. I used the web version of Photocollage for this. 

I didn’t find a post labeled 2000, but this picture of me is from a post that was close to that. 

Post #3000 showed my childhood home and a chalet that was home many years later. “I’ve always lived in Virginia,” I wrote.

I created a computer image with a squirrel as a background because the title of this blog is “The View from Squirrel Ridge.”  I gave it the title when we were living in the chalet on a ridge in Basye. 

A photo of me at Breaks Interstate Park appeared in #4000.

Post #5000 has pictures of me, my sister Peggy, and younger daughter Marie.

I didn’t find a post labeled number 6000 but one close to it had pictures of a visit to Shenandoah National Park. 

Post #7000 had one picture and I used a special effect that looks weird to me now. I think I was getting tired of showing my face, but anniversaries are a good time to re-introduce myself in some way. This is a screen print of the first part of the post.

Post #8000 featured a visit to a goat farm in West Virginia.

Sharing with Mosaic Monday

These posts covered some of my most frequent topics: Shenandoah, Family, and Animals. Somewhat in contrast to those, the post that gets the most hits is my 2014 one about the three towering crosses near the interstate. I think that people who drive on I-81 are often curious about their striking appearance. They are maintained by Restoration Fellowship Church.

If you have read this far, thank you! Many of my readers are fellow bloggers, and I apologize that I am not as punctual on commenting as I would like to be. If you have any tips on how to comment efficiently yet meaningfully, let me know. 

Seven Hundred Posts with Creeks and Rivers

My site statistics show that I have posted 700 times with the Creeks and Rivers label. I may owe non-bloggers an explanation about labels. Basically they are tags or topics, and we decide for ourselves what labels we want to have on our blog. They can be useful in finding subjects later, and they can help search engines find our posts.

I hope that my regular readers are not tired of seeing river pictures. I feel that pictures of the Shenandoah River are almost a requirement of having a blog centered on the Shenandoah Valley.

Sharing with Water H2O and Skywatch

Here we see the North Fork of the Shenandoah as I saw it today from the Hollingsworth Road bridge. Most of our snow has melted. 

When the snow was still plentiful, I took pictures of the river a little further down at Lupton Road. And then yesterday, I filtered a couple of them using an app called ArtCard. It gives them a painterly look.

More Favorites from 2024

Post #8950

Today's batch of photos is from the first five months of 2024. I just went through the album of my blog posts from that time to select some contenders. It was my final book made by Blog2Print. Unfortunately, they are not printing blog albums anymore. I would love to find another publisher that does the same thing, including the text as well as pictures, and preferably the same height and width so that it would match my existing albums.

This first collage is not from the album. I made it using PhotoCollage.

Charlie is very cute, so of course some of his pictures are among my favorites. Here he is with my daughter Marie.

Here are other pictures that I decided to consider for photo of the year. I’ll post more tomorrow.

Collages of Blossoms

These collages are actually screen prints of pictures I posted on Facebook. Most of the individual pictures have appeared on this blog at one time or another.

When you post a group of pictures on Facebook, you have the option of choosing a layout. I usually select Frame, and it automatically adds a border color selected from a picture, typically a predominant color in the first image.

The final collage is made up of four different ones. I think they were all made with PhotoCollage.

Mosaic Monday / Garden Affait

Post #8807

Oops, I missed announcing Post #8800 because I wasn’t paying attention to my stats. In honor of that large number, I’ll write a little bit about blogging, but first I’ll show a sunrise from Tuesday.

I’m sharing this picture with Alan‘s Skywatch linkup, one of the most popular blog hops. It still has a large number of participants, even though blogging in general has dropped off. Quite a few linkups have ceased to exist in the last couple of years.

I think many bloggers have found that other social media sites are taking up their online time and energy, Other people have virtually retired from the Internet. I like sharing photos and short updates, and while I also do so on Facebook, I don’t spend much time on the various other social media sites. I already spend more time on my iPad and phone than feels healthy. At some point, a person needs to get up and move around and do other things. 

I’ve been blogging since 2005 and you may wonder why I don’t get bored with it. Well, I love photography and I have a variety of interests. I try to guard against repeating myself too much. Sometimes I notice that I took a picture that is an awful lot like one I posted before. That’s not always a bad thing. I don’t think anybody is going to remember what I posted a few years ago.

Sharing to linkups on various topics helps keep me interested by challenging me to come up with something that I might not have photographed otherwise. I try to find a new mural to post every Monday, and that takes effort. Tuesday is easier because I can just post a picture with a title for the Wordless linkup. The next day is Wild Bird Wednesday, and that can be challenging too. I am not a real bird watcher who hikes with a zoom lens in an area known for birds. I just happen to like birds, and I enjoy pursuing a topic. On Thursday, I often participate in Skywatch, although I can also post to that one on Friday. Friday is a good time to post a black-and-white picture and a reflection or street scene, and getting all of those on one day is tricky. At one time, my posts sometimes covered multiple topics, but now I like to keep them more focused. Saturday is critters day, and a couple times a month. I turn the task over to Charlie because he has fans.  (Okay, a beagle does not literally type out posts, but he inspires them.)

Sunday used to have a linkup for churches, but it went away after there were only three people participating. I was running out of churches to photograph anyway.  I still try to post something positive or inspiring on Sunday, at least most of the time. 

There are other linkups that I like, plus the monthly topic for City Daily Photo. 

Note that I use the words linkup and blog hop interchangeably, but there are other terms that mean the same thing, including linky and link party. Whatever you call them, they are online networking opportunities that connect bloggers with common interests. I have found dozens of great blogs through these pages. 

Did I tell you that I prefer posts that are fairly short? Yet I’ve rambled on the limit of my eyesight’s ability. Come back tomorrow and I’ll try to be succinct.

Searching Your Own Blog

 Blog Post #8732

I’m at the point where finding a particular post on my blog can be challenging. If there is a unique word that I used in a post, I can usually find it using that. But using a combination of labels and words is more complicated. Here is a page showing what Blogger says to do: https://support.google.com/blogger/answer/9675453

I am mainly posting this so that I can find it again. But maybe someone else needs it too. I have also searched using Google Advanced search. 

Blog Post #8700

Farewell to Blog2Print

A change has come to the way that I preserve my blog posts. I have an album or two for every year of blogging, but the company that prints them is going out of business. Blog2Print is having a final sale so I ordered a book for the first four months of this year. I will look for another publisher because I use these books as a combination of photo album and journal.

I began blogging in June 2005 so it's been almost 19 years.  At first, I did not post every day, but once I started doing that the books became bigger. In 2015 I had to split the year’s posts into two books because there was a limit on the number of photos they would print in a single volume.

The books are expensive, especially since I order hardcover ones. But I watched for sales and took advantage of 30%-off deals. An old-fashioned photo album wasn’t cheap either; the cost was just spread out more because we would get our rolls of film printed one or two at a time and then buy an album to put them in. Most of those old albums eventually deteriorated and pictures started falling out or fading. The color photos faded more than black-and-white, and sometimes I copy them and use software to turn them into black-and-white images, sharpening and increasing the contrast so they look fresher. 

Here’s a glimpse of my 2006 album. My dogs then were Guppy and Benny. 

Do you print your blog? Do you keep a backup somewhere? Do you print your photos and keep them in envelopes? 

I have boxes of envelopes of photos, and shelves full  of these boxes. For a long time I had most of my pictures printed, but I stopped pasting them in albums long ago. I only print a fraction of them now. I keep telling myself that I’m going to go through the old ones and throw out half of them, but it isn’t a high priority.

Dear Friends

Sometimes I can't find you.

This is a note to fellow bloggers who leave comments but don’t get views or comments in return. Check your profile page. If it does not link to your current blog or website, I probably won’t be able to find it. 

I’m not great at leaving comments because I often run out of time. But I do enjoy finding bloggers who have common interests,  or who post interesting images. If you have not been able to update your profile page, please put your URL at the end of your comment. Thank you.

Reflections, Shenandoah

A woman sits beside the North Fork of the Shenandoah, watching it flow by and no doubt enjoying the peaceful sounds of rippling water.

Click to Enlarge.

Blog Post #8622.

I made a minor change to the blog layout in order to make the title more visible. I started this blog in 2005 and have been sharing photos almost every day since 2006. It was originally designed for desktop and laptop viewing. We didn’t have smart phones then.

I realize that some aspects of the layout does not display properly on a cell phone, but the main body of the blog is readable, and the pictures should be visible. Blogspot has kept up-to-date for mobile use so hopefully the layout works well enough for my readers, who I value and appreciate.

Bare Trees, Misty Afternoon

One thing about having a dog is that I go for walks even on days when the weather is not great.

Black and White

Blogging note: Something has changed on the Blogspot interface again. I hope it’s temporary. I’m not able to edit code tonight in HTML. This probably wouldn’t matter to most people, but I used to code so many webpages that I can probably do it in my sleep.

The interface is pretty good and lets me do basic things quite well. But sometimes I want to make a change that’s easier in HTML. Also, I often blog on my iPad, and it has limitations. It helps to hit the save button regularly.

Working on a Logo

At one time I had a little image at the top of my blog, but at some point it disappeared. I just used Flaming Text to create a text logo. Let's see if I can get it to show up as a header.

Nope, i’m not able to edit the code right now. I’ll try later. Or maybe I’ll use this version that I edited in Picsart.

New Blog for Unreality

I’m working on a new blog for computer-generated images, and also for posting my photos that are altered beyond reality. Imagecroft.blogspot.com will be a home for those pictures so that I don’t annoy or confuse my friends who prefer not to see them.

They are fun to create. Unfortunately, computer-generated images can be alarming because they can spread misinformation among the naïve. Of course, fake imagery has been around for a long time. There’s just more of it now.

When we learn how it’s made, we have the power to handle it better. Once you make a fake photo yourself, you won’t be naïve about it.

For Fellow Blogspot Users

 Have you checked your Spam comments folder lately? Mine is filling up with old comments that are not Spam. Some bloggers report that their own responses showed up there! 

Fortunately, I found that I was able to check these all off at one time through a “Manage” option.

By the way, leaving comments is often tricky. Sometimes I have to switch browsers to submit a comment. 

Inspiration?

For years, I took part in the Inspired Sunday blog hop, but it no longer exists. Sometimes I still like to post something inspiring for Sunday. Today I thought maybe artificial intelligence (AI) could produce something from the word inspiration. What images might I get? 

I tried the free image generators StarryAI, Dream by Wombo, and NightCafe. I tried various styles, and none of them really satisfied me. This first one was not bad.

Several looked like an apocalyptic fantasy, and some had a disturbing detail. There were some nice skies, but I have real photos that have more inspiring skies.

I combined the rest of the images using PhotoCollage to keep this from being an overly long post. If nothing else, you can see the AI can emulate a variety of art styles. I don’t find the images to be as inspiring as what real artists can produce.

View More Collages/Mosaics