Jim Bellomo

Only 10 More Photos to Go

by Jim Bellomo | Dec 23, 2025 | Uncategorized

This was one of my favorite weeks of the entire year. My birthday, a concert in Olympia at Capitol High School where my grandson plays the clarinet, an almost full day with my family, making pizza with my granddaughter and playing games with the whole bunch. I bet you know which one is my favorite this week...it has to be my daughter, grandkids and Keeley from Saturday. It's a total winner.

: Continuing our Christmas theme, yesterday we featured a Christmas dog, and today we have a Christmas moose with his little boy. I enjoy taking bokeh shots with the lights shimmering in the background. This guy has lights on him, so it looks even better. Using a 50mm f1.4 lens with a very shallow depth of field really helps.

: The young man on the left is my grandson Mason. Tonight, we attended his high school orchestra’s Christmas concert. It was very nice, and it’s great that he is finally in high school, so we no longer have to go to concerts in the gymnasium and sit on hard bleachers. His school has a beautiful concert hall venue. Sadly, it was POURING tonight, and I didn’t want to take my Nikon out in the rain, so I had to shoot this with my phone. I still am okay with it, but it would have been so much better with a camera and a longer lens.

: Today was wrapping day. We have finished all our Christmas shopping, and I have to say I have never been so excited about what we got for everybody on our list. I can’t wait to see if they all like it as much as we enjoyed getting it for them. So today, I spent wrapping. This is the rest of today.

: For the last three weeks, I have stopped at the Bellevue branch of the King County Library to take a photo of their wall of license plates. Each week, I have found a better photo, so today I went back and got another one. (I now have three weeks of license plates.) They are not real plates but are made from words. Most of them are black and white, so I converted the entire photo to grayscale. I like it better that way.

: Today was a REALLY special day for me. My family (kids and grandkids) came to celebrate my birthday. They asked what I wanted to do, and I said I wanted them to come to our house so I could make pizza for them. It has been so long since I have been able to cook a real meal for them, so that’s what I wanted to do. They drove up, and we played games. I got to assemble pizzas with my granddaughter, and I got to spend the entire day with my son, my daughter, my grandkids, my son-in-law, Kathleen and Keeley. It was glorious. My granddaughter, my daughter and my grandson were on the couch with Keeley, and this was the most fun photo I took all day.

: Took Keeley on a 3-mile walk today, and we went to Duck Lake. It’s about 1.5 miles from our house. I have taken photos of this lake before, but never with this much water. Usually, it’s a big swamp or bog, but with all our recent rains, it’s a lake again.

: As you have probably heard, we here in the Pacific Northwest have had a lot of rain this week and last night’s wind. I wanted to walk one of our Trilogy trails today to see if there was any damage. There were a few trees down, but when I went to take a shot of Cari’s Bog, the biggest impact of the storm was that the bog was full of water. The most I have seen in the three years we have lived here.

I never knew what I was doing until I was done. – Man Ray

It’s Christmas…Soon!

by Jim Bellomo | Dec 23, 2025 | 365

Only two and a half weeks until New Year’s! YEE HAW! Here are another seven shots, with my favorite being today’s weekly (or should I say Christmas) Keeley. I hope your holiday season is going well, and we look forward to a busy time ahead—starting with my birthday dinner at Brian and Michelle’s tonight, Mason’s Christmas concert in Olympia on Tuesday, my birthday on Thursday, the kids coming over next Saturday, and Christmas soon after.

: Come on, you kind of knew this was coming—Keeley’s Christmas photo. We just think it’s adorable. She has a small underbite that shows perfectly in this picture. She was a really good girl to sit still while I took the photo. You can tell by where she’s looking that Kathleen was behind me holding a treat.

: I have many of these in my office. I call them protectors because they keep me safe from bad things that can happen while you’re in your office, like losing clients or having your computer crash. These two guys have been with me forever—at least 25 years. They’ve moved to every office I’ve had during that time. If you’re not my age, you might not recognize them, but the squirrel’s official name is Rocket J. Squirrel. His lifelong buddy is the infamous Bullwinkle Moose. Have they actually worked? Have they protected me from tech problems and business failures? Hell no. But they’re fun to have around. There are others, too, including Ted Lasso, Fernando Valenzuela, Ken Griffey Jr., Julio Rodriguez, and the Sheeeeit guy from The Wire.

: This one is totally out of character for me, an abstract. I can’t remember the last time I shot something like this, but today, while walking several miles in our Trilogy gym (we have an indoor track—not very big, a mile is 21 laps), I noticed these interesting shadows on the ground each time I walked around. So I took this shot. Then, when I processed it, I thought it looked better in grayscale. Sure enough, I like it.

: Today was glorious. The sun rose and shone all day long. Keeley and I went for a very long walk (for her), and it was beautiful, especially after the terrible rains and flooding we’ve been going through. The worst might be over, but we are expecting two more days of heavy rain in the coming days.

: Well, the weather forecast said we would have five days of rain this week. Doesn’t look like it, does it? Actually, I went for a long walk today in the sun and light clouds. I love it when weather predictions get it wrong.

: This photo (taken outside Trilogy’s clubhouse says it all about our weather today and expected for the rest of the week. Straight-out flags, wind gusting into the 30 mph. Temps in the low 50s or high 40s and buckets of rain. We are expected to have more than four inches of rain this week. We get constant warnings on our phones and watches about coming winds, rains, and flooding in the lowlands.

Don’t pack up your camera until you’ve left the location. – Joe McNally

Three Weeks Out

by Jim Bellomo | Dec 21, 2025 | 365

Being only three weeks away from finishing this project is quite a relief. If you are one of my few readers who are not yet retired, just know that if you think that once you retire, you will have a lot of “spare time,” that’s a fallacy. At least I don’t. When I started this project, my thought was, “I’m retired, I will have plenty of time.” But to be honest, I have never been so busy. I am constantly asking myself how I managed to do this project the other three times and run a business. I still don’t know.

Here’s this week’s batch of photos. I think the last sunny day was my favorite of this week. We’re about to experience a whole week of rain, which they’re now calling an atmospheric river. You know those. It used to be just a storm, but now it moves so slowly and dumps so much water, it’s like a river.

: Yesterday, we decorated the inside of the house. We have quite a collection of Santas that we’ve gathered over the years. This guy is one of my favorites just because he’s a little quirky—and he makes me smile. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Santa, having played him numerous times over the years. I even used to own my own suit.

: Here’s a landscape for you. I went out for my long walk today (6.7 miles), and this was the best view I saw. It’s not way out in the country; it’s across the street from a very busy elementary school. It was a great day, but it was cold and foggy in the morning, finally clearing up in the afternoon.

: Saw this “monster” tree in Bellevue today. Took some other shots, but Kathleen and I decided this one was the most interesting. If you look at it for a while, you’ll see all kinds of funny stuff. Maybe the one on top looks like a monkey? Not sure, but I like it.

A good photograph is knowing where to stand. – Ansel Adams

One Month to Go!

by Jim Bellomo | Nov 30, 2025 | 365

December is finally here. And I have 31 photos to go!!! These last seven aren’t bad. Just not amazing. It seems I only get those kinds of shots when I am traveling, and since we aren’t traveling again until we go to NYC in April, it’s going to be a long spring. Currently, I am NOT planning on continuing the 365 for 2026. I am considering a 7/52. That’s where, instead of taking one photo every day, I can take seven photos in a week. Here are this week’s photos. My favorite is probably the one from my mid-week walk with Keeley. The light was just about perfect.

: A food shot today of a new recipe I tried for the first time—Chermoula Potato and Fish Stew. It had a wonderful blend of spices, herbs, and harissa on top. It turned out amazing. As soon as I saw it, I knew Kathleen would like it because it includes potatoes, one of her favorite foods.

: This picture I took tonight of a little house that sits in our living room isn’t the problem. I mentioned earlier in the week that I had to take my Nikon to my local camera shop for cleaning. The sensor had dust on it, which caused dots on my photos. I had to remove those in Photoshop before I could post them. I got the camera back two days ago, but today was the first time I shot with my macro lens. It turns out that when they clean the camera, they reset all the settings back to factory defaults. So, when I processed this photo tonight, I found that it was saved by my camera as a JPEG. It should have been in Camera RAW format, which allows me to do much more with it since RAW creates a digital negative. Oh, well, I guess I have to reset everything.

: A little abstract for you tonight. Shot a piece of glass we had in the house with a great pattern. Stuck it in front of a nice light source and got some pretty colors.

: I am sure you know what happened here. I forgot to take any other photos yesterday besides this one, and I almost didn’t take this one either. I spent the entire day cooking something—actually, I spent three days cooking, or at least prepping for cooking. And I had an AWESOME time doing it. Since retiring, I love cooking so much more because now I have the time. Before I retired, I would do everything on Thanksgiving Day itself. Now I do all my chopping, cutting, and mixing a day or two before, and on the day, I just assemble and cook. If anything, yesterday was too easy. I kept thinking, “There must be something I am forgetting.” But there wasn’t.

: A glorious afternoon walk with Keeley gave me this shot. This is the entrance to a nearby trail that I have taken many photos of. This is just the way in. We had a wonderful walk, much better than I expected. It was a beautiful fall day.

: Today, the weekly Keeley is the subject of the photo I took this evening of my project for the day—putting up our outdoor Christmas lights. I took a photo of the lights, actually about 10, and I hated every one of them. I used to have no trouble shooting holiday lights, but somehow these just didn’t work. I’ll try again another night. Meanwhile, here’s Keeley looking her best. We’ve been posting her pictures on Reddit, and she received more than 800 upvotes on r/sonarears. We also post her on r/fluffypits, where she is quite popular.

: Well, I tried once more to take a photo of our holiday lights. This time, a string (that’s right in the middle of everything) decided to go out just before I took the shot, so I skipped capturing the overall scene and instead focused on some zoom special effects. It’s a line of lights shot with a slow shutter speed and a high f-stop. Then you click the shutter and zoom your lens. This is what you get.

When you acquire an understanding of the science behind light and what governs it, then you can predict its behavior and control the lighting in photographs.” – Roberto Valenzuela

Thankful this is almost done…

by Jim Bellomo | Nov 23, 2025 | 365

This 365 project has been fun, but I am ready for it to be over. I am thankful that I have been able to hold up my end of the deal and haven’t missed a day. This week photos bring me up to 328 straight days of taking and posting. I think my shot of the wetlands from Saturday is my favorite. It really shows how we change seasons here in Western Washington.

: We have had an amazing summer and a beautiful autumn, but it is definitely nearly winter now. This is the last blue hydrangea I know of. It’s in front of our branch library, a place I often visit. You can’t go there to read books; we just order them online and then pick them up there. It’s small, about the size of our living room, with nothing but shelves and a computer for self-checkout. But it’s a great setup, and we can order almost any book or video you want.

: The sun returned! It didn’t rain! I was able to walk 6.5 miles! It was fantastic.

: It’s interesting that despite all the tariffs on Canada, their Air Force still stops here whenever they feel like it. My Canadian friend and I always joke about two things—the exchange rate ($100 Canadian is 45¢ US ?) and the Canadian Air Force. Of course, if they are floating in a lake or pond, they instantly become the Canadian Navy ?.

: Here’s your weekly update on Keeley. She loves every other Thursday—that’s the day our housekeepers come for a couple of hours and make our house look great. That means we leave while they’re here and go run errands that we’ve saved up until then. But first, we take Keeley to the local dog park to play for about half an hour because she LOVES our every other Thursday outings. Today, we dropped off my Nikon for cleaning. After Africa, it developed spots on my photos that I had to spend time removing in Photoshop, so I just went ahead and dropped it off today.

: Yesterday was an incredibly busy day, and this was my view for most of it. I believe I drove about four hours total, but covered less than 25 miles. First, I did the Thanksgiving grocery shopping (15 miles), then took a good friend to her radiation appointment (another 15 miles), went to pick up my Nikon from cleaning (30 miles), got my injection in Bellevue, and finally picked up dinner at Ooba and drove home (12 miles)… whew! I have to tell you, it was a VERY LONG DAY! But I got everything done. And no, I didn’t take this while driving. I shot it while sitting in my car, waiting for our friend to finish her week of radiation treatments.

: One of my favorite things about living here in the Northwest is that we experience all four seasons. Growing up in Palm Springs, CA, we only had two—nice and hell. Some people who only have two or three seasons don’t realize how much things change when you actually get an autumn. It’s not just the colors (those are gone now), but once the leaves fall, you can see so much more. This wetland area is a perfect example. As Keeley and I walked today, we noticed so many things we couldn’t see just a month ago. I really do love my seasons.

: Long walk again today, heading in a different direction. This shot is along the Tolt Pipeline, a water pipeline that supplies a significant part of Seattle’s water. It runs from the Tolt River, east of us, to Lake Forest Park, north of Seattle. It’s a nice 5.8-mile walk from our house.

The pictures are there, and you just take them. – Robert Capa

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