This is my first post in a long time. Let's see if I remember how this works. This is a portrait of Tuk taken a couple of weeks ago. Tuk has matured into the most amazing cold weather cat. He's big and burly with a dense coat that would be the envy of any arctic explorer. As the weather gets colder, the other cats stay in and sleep more. Not Tuk. We think he's part Norwegian Forest Cat.

I have actually taken quite a few good cat portraits recently... some I might post later. I stayed up all night yesterday going through my photos from summer/fall 2010 and I have more than 60 ready for posting. I haven't had much time for photography lately, but I'm encouraged by the fact that some of my fall photos are the best I have ever taken. I will be posting them eventually... the only question is where.

Part of the reason I haven't posted is that I've become a bit disenchanted with my current options for displaying photos online. I made a Picasa album for my Iceland photos because I have lots of family and friends who wanted to view the photos without being bothered to sift through a blog. I realized a few things in doing this. First of all- storage on Picasa is limited. I had to severely scale down my Iceland photos in order to post them. Second, all of the photos I post on this blog are linked to a Picasa album... and therefore the same space limit applies. There is a finite number of photos I can post on this blog before running out of space. I calculated that ~2 years of daily posts would do it, assuming no other vacation albums were made. The Picasa album for my blog is also 'public' -- open for anyone to view. I didn't really want random people viewing the photos outside the context of the blog, so I tried to make the album private. That immediately made all of the photos on my blog unviewable... So the whole Picasa thing is messed up.

The blog is not the ideal vehicle for photography, either. The photos are small... enlarging them to fit the screen is sometimes problematic. They get lost in the text. There is no way to view a group of photos in isolation, view a slideshow, or view thumbnails.

Red Bubble is also problematic. I have good computer setup at home, but whenever I view the site at work, it takes an eon to load and sometimes freezes. The site layout looks horrible on the small screens at work. I imagine that this is probably how most people are viewing the site. The newest version of Red Bubble also removes control from the user over how photos are displayed... and again - no way to view a certain collection of photos or a slideshow. In some ways it's more like a self-congratulatory social networking site than a place to display art... and that can be grating.

There are other sites online that will display photos for a fee... Both Picasa and Flickr offer more storage space if you pay. My take on this is that if I am going to be paying for a site, I want to have complete control over it, with a site tailored to my specifications. None of the current photo-hosting sites I have seen can offer this.

I have been thinking that I still want to maintain a blog, but more for writing than for photos. The blog posts may occasionally contain photos, or focus on photography, but it won't necessarily be a photoblog. I think photoblogs are ideal for beginning photographers and people who are trying to encourage themselves to carry the camera more often or just to be more observant of the world around them. This worked for me at the beginning, but in some ways I think I've moved beyond that.

Graem asked me what I hope to 'achieve' with my photography. The short answer is that I don't know. I'm not very achievement-oriented (ie. I tend to waste a lot of time). Do I want to sell my photos? Not necessarily. It is always nice to sell a piece, but unless I become some kind of personal photographer for the stars, my photography earnings will never eclipse my day job - a sad fact I have come to terms with. When I started this blog, my intention was to share the beautiful and interesting things I discover with other people who might appreciate them... and I think this is still my goal.

The thing about dedicated photo sites with full-screen photos, slideshows, and limited text is that they tend to belong to 'pro' photographers or very talented amateurs. One of the things holding me back is that I'm not sure my photography is strong enough to stand on its own. I spent a long time last night going through my best photos from the past 3 years and asking myself that question... "Can this photo stand on its own and tell its own story?" The short answer: Some of them can... and I hope that in the future that percentage will be higher.

As I mentioned, I have more than 60 photos in the queue to be posted, so I'll try to keep posting here and on Red Bubble for now. In the next few months, I hope to come up with a completely different way of exhibiting my photos. Maybe it will be better.

More cute feline pictures today. Jackie was quite aptly named after Jackie Chan. He is the ultimate stunt cat, and when he was a kitten, he'd do flips in the backyard catching snowballs that we'd throw for him. Sometimes he got about 5 feet off the ground!

The weather has been a bit nicer lately, and Jackie has felt up to coming outside and catching a few snowballs. These maybe aren't the most technically brilliant photos, but I was experimenting with a new technique: Throwing a snowball with my left hand and holding/operating the camera with my right. Exposing a dark grey cat against white snow is also difficult. I'll have to practice more.

I took some snowy tree and landscape shots today as well... I'll post them in the coming days.

Today I'm about to break two of the rules I've established so far for this blog: Number 1: No posting photos taken by other people. This just seems like cheating to me. I've been tempted to post photos taken by Graem before (kind of a guest-blogger thing, just like some webcomics occasionally have guest artists). I've always managed to avoid the temptation. I was going to post one of his frog photos, but found them underexposed when I went to convert them to JPEG. I was going to post a macro shot he took of the spindles on our back door... but I just never got around to it. That one still might turn up one day. Rule Number 2 (the hardest for me not to break): Thou shalt not blog like a kitten parent. Let's face it... I am a kitten parent. And a proud one at that.

Moosh has always loved Christmas. Maybe it's something about the catnip toys, the special treats in his food dish, or all of the boxes, bows and wrapping paper he gets to investigate. This year we had very little of that, but it didn't seem to matter. The excitement of Christmas was enough to make Moosh (a cat who sleeps 90% of the rest of the year) tear around the house meowing, fuzzy tail raised sky-high. This is Moosh's tenth Christmas, and it seems like every year we have a "Christmas Moosh" photo... one that manages to capture all of his exuberance and life. This year Graem got that photo (those are my legs in the background). Without further ado, I give you Christmas Moosh 2009. Here's to many more.

Here is Jackie, cute as ever and doing much better. We're giving him subcutaneous fluids every day and he is on antibiotics for a kidney infection. He has been put on a low-protein renal diet with a potassium supplement as well as an appetite stimulant (though I can't blame him for not wanting to eat that foul-smelling goop).

Despite all of that, he's slowly getting his energy and personality back and gaining a bit of weight. We've had a few warm days, and Jackie has remembered how much he likes to pose for the camera! To honour the special occasion, I'm mass-posting the latest cute Jackie photo to this blog, Red Bubble and my Facbook profile. I'm hoping for many more cute Jackie photos to come.

This picture was taken with my cell phone camera. I haven't really scrutinized it closely. It's low resolution, and might be blurry. It's really just a fun picture. The 'best' camera is always the one you have with you when a good photo opportunity presents itself. If I had been fumbling with the Nikon, I would have missed this moment altogether!

Since it wasn't a good day for flower photos, I decided to practice my cat portraits. This is Jackie (aptly named after Jackie Chan). I have three cats, but Jackie is the only one who actually likes having his picture taken. Whenever Jackie sees the camera, he rushes to put his face in front of the lens. When he sees me trying to take a picture of one of the other cats (or anything else), he rushes to get between the subject and the lens. Jackie has a real knack being cute.

This baby sloth fell out of a tree and was separated from his mom. The gardeners were taking him around in a wheelbarrow to protect him from the snake that was patrolling the premises. I'm not sure how, but he was eventually reunited with his mom... we saw the two together in a tree.