Snow Place Like Home and a Betterphoto Finalist

Wake Up on the Bright Side      We're here in December with its many activities and beautiful displays.  While today is a rain day in Niagara, December marks the start of snow and a transformed landscape. There are a lot of pun jokes with snow in them...perhaps it indicates the appeal of winter to children.   1. What time is it when little white flakes fall past the classroom window? Snow and Tell. 2. What is a mountains favorite type of candy? Snow caps. 3. What is it called when a snowman has a temper tantrum? A meltdown! 4. What do you call a snowman with a six pack? An abdominal snowman. 5. What do you call a snowman that tells tall tales? A snow-fake! 6. What do you call a snowman party? A snowball. 7. What did the snowman eat? Icebergs with chilli sauce. 8. What did the snowman and his wife put over their baby’s crib? A snowmobile! 9. What do Snowmen call their offspring? Chill-dren. 10. How do you find Will Smith in the snow? You look for Fresh Prints! 11. Today isn’t the day to be making jokes about the weather. It’s snow joke. There are more HERE at the Thought Catalog - there are 50 of them.  Today's image was a Finalist in the Betterphoto October contest.

Betterphoto Contest Winner

Lily Lantern is a second place winner in the flower category of Betterphoto's December contest.  The following three pictures are finalists.  You can see all the winners HERE.  Here's my question for today. If you listen to JazzFM you know these lyrics: "I hear babies crying, I watch them grow They'll learn much more than I'll never know And I think to myself what a wonderful world Yes I think to myself what a wonderful world" The voice you would likely associate with this is Louis Armstrong.  He's singing "What A Wonderful World" as though he's still with us. The songwriters are George Douglas / George David Weiss / Bob Thiele.   The song was initially offered to Tony Bennett, who turned it down.Then it was offered to Louis Armstrong. George Weiss recounts in the book Off the Record: Songwriters on Songwriting by Graham Nash that he wrote the song specifically for Louis Armstrong. Weiss was inspired by Armstrong's ability to bring people of different races together. The song was not initially a hit in the United States, where it sold fewer than 1,000 copies because ABC Records head Larry Newton did not like the song and therefore did not promote it. It reached number 1 and was the biggest selling album in the U.K. It gradually became a standard all over the world and is much used in movies and television. What I wondered about was how much "babies will learn that we'll never know".  In the song it is a sentiment, but now it is a fact.  In terms of fact Buckminster Fuller created the Knowledge Doubling Curve.  He noticed that until 1900 human knowledge doubled approximately every century.  By the end of World War II knowledge was doubling every 25 years.  On average human knowledge is now doubling every 13 months, and IBM predicts that it will double every 12 hours.  I wonder if this is quantity rather than quality.  Whichever way it lands, it is true that there is information and knowledge today that wasn't in existence 50 years ago.  To get an idea, I checked out Good Housekeeping's list of 40 things we didn't have 40 years ago - it's HERE.

Photo Contest Finalist March 2016

There are bees boxes in every orchard that I looked at yesterday and I spent quite a bit of time looking at orchards.  I have something in common with bees -  I can imagine the experience a bee has with the thousands and millions of blossoms.  It is a good thing bees love to be busy.  Today's image is a Finalist in this month's Betterphoto (BP) contest.  The contest has 6400 entries each month with just under 600 finalist photos.  There are some remarkable winning images - here's the link to the contest results.  There's an 'all time' contest underway there, and I've been getting notifications of pictures placing in the Staff Favourites, etc. So something to look forward to there.  Participants on Betterphoto are primarily U.S.-based. So there are mostly images from the  United States - each day the scenes vary across the country, giving one the experience of a living travelogue.   Redbubble, another photography site, originated in Australia, so there are many Australian members and we get to see their distinctive landscape.  Right now we we move through Spring and they move through Autumn, so there's a contrasting experience in the seasons and landscape. I think of Marshall McLuhan'a expression 'The Global Village' and realize this is it.

When Does Spring Start?

The sun is rising on a snow-covered garden, and I find out that for the weatherman, spring starts on March 1st.  There are different definitions of spring. Meteorological spring references a standardized split up of the seasons into four, 3-month periods.  Astronomical seasons are based on the solstices and equinoxes that occur around the year. Today's pictures are the entries in the Betterphoto contest that placed for the month of January.  The first is the second place winner in the Details and Macro category.  The other two are Finalists.  View this email in your browser

Betterphoto Win - Sunset Delusions

My website is hosted on betterphoto.com.  Like other internet sites, this is a small company with a single owner, and it seems have its personality swings with this business model.  I find this small company personality issue with  Rebubble and Fine Art America as well.  The photography and art hosting websites seem have a behaviour profile. It has been many months since I've sent out  an announcement on the monthly contest  as I have hardly had any images receive the first round Editor's Pick, let alone the Staff Favourite, Finalist or Winner Placement. So it was good news this month, that out of the 4700 entries, I had two placements - Sunset Delusions received a Second place in the Elements of Design category, and the next image - Construction Site was a Staff Favourite. The September contest wins can be seen here:http://www.betterphoto.com/contest/winners/1509.asp

Betterphoto Contest WInner - Rose Alight - August 2014

I enjoy the Betterphoto contest each month.  There are over 6600 entries in the contest in 10 categories. My "Rose Alight" was in the details and macro category.

You can see the winning entries here:

http://www.betterphoto.com/contest/winners/1408.asp