by Jim Bellomo | Nov 5, 2020 | Photography
Greetings all!
Dropping in with absolutely NO TRAVEL NEWS. Nothing. Nada.
As you may recall from my last post, our plan was to head to the San Juan Islands last week. If we had I would have posted at least two or three times from the islands. But my brother and sister-in-law arrived on Friday the 23rd. On Saturday the 24th, they joined me on a short walk to the local library (about four blocks away). On the way back, Redmond's lousy, tree-pushed sidewalks took my sister-in-law down. A hard fall when she hooked her foot on an errant sidewalk, left her battered and bruised with two broken kneecaps.
This put her in a local hospital until yesterday when they left for the long ride home. The bad side was no traveling for us but the good side was I got to see my brother for almost two weeks. And I got to cook just about every night. We were not able to get our money back from The Web Suites in Friday Harbor but my brother declared his against his travel insurance (see why you need it) and we were able to move ours to another time. We are thinking about going in early December so watch for pics then.
But enough about our woes. On to my new camera...or my new phone, I can't tell which. My old iPhone 7 was on its last legs. The battery was lasting just enough time to go from 100% to less than 10% on my two hour walk. So when Apple announced the iPhone 12 I decided it was time to move on...up!
Watching the Apple announcement I was impressed with the fact that the new phone was 5G (can't get it here in the house but was able to try it out in downtown Redmond—FAST!) and the form factor and look of the phone. But since I am a DSLR Nikon shooter, I wasn't that jazzed about the camera. I figured it wasn't a whole lot better than my iPhone 7. Then I started doing some looking and realizing that so much of the excellent photography I was seeing on Instagram was from phones. I started having online discussions with other photographers using only their phones to get amazing shots and I was convinced.
So during the event I was chatting with my buddy Mike in Florida as we both watched in our respective living rooms. When they showed the iPhone 12 I was thrilled and figured I would save $150 and get the 12 and not the 12 pro. But Mike convinced me that I should really think about spending the extra $$$ to get the pro because the cameras were so much better. Plus he said the since I am now skipping a bunch of generations of phones, the pro would last me longer.
So now I have had the phone for almost two weeks and I have to say I am impressed. It did take me a while to get used it not having a home button and to get everything to work together (watch, AirPods, etc.) but now things are flying smoothly and I am trying to learn the camera. Speaking of learning, Apple now has a program that gives purchasers of new products 30-40 minutes of education on those products. They send you an e-mail in advance and tell you that a week after you have the product you can set up an appointment to ask questions or focus on a specific area you want to learn. By the time I scheduled my online meeting, I had pretty much figured out the phone so I just asked them to show me all the features of the phone for pictures and video. Had an outstanding session with a guy named Derrick. Then I went out on a couple of walks the next few days and shot some different kinds of things.
Of course it helped that Washington is seeing tremendous fall foliage this year so I had lots of color to work with. And I haven't shot anything indoors yet nor have I shot any video, so I promise to post that when I have it. But suffice it to say, I am darned impressed. Below are six shots I took with the new iPhone. And they have never been in Photoshop. The camera just knows what to do. If you click one of the photos you will get a scrollable slide show so you can really see the incredible quality.
Somehow this paragraph was dropped when I originally posted this. I had a quote from Steve Jobs below. Just last week while searching YouTube for videos comparing the different versions of the new iPhone I came across the original video of Steve Jobs introducing the first iPhone. That's where the quote below came from. I just wanted to say that Steve messed this one up when he said the iPhone was only an iPod, a phone and an internet mobile communicator. What it has also become is a damn good camera. In fact the cameras on phones has pretty much killed an entire segment of the camera world, the point-and-shoot.
An iPod, a phone, an internet mobile communicator... these are NOT three separate devices! And we are calling it iPhone! Today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. And here it is. —Steve Jobs
by Jim Bellomo | Oct 12, 2020 | Uncategorized
Hi there! Not having posted since September, and then only to complain (about software upgrades), I thought I should come back around and say hello. This post may not be all about travel but just some random stuff. I will put a subhead on each subject so feel free to skip the ones you might not be interested in or that are too controversial for you.
Upcoming Travel
We actually have some travel coming up! YEAH! It won’t be far but we are going to Washington’s gorgeous San Juan Islands the last week of October to celebrate Kathleen’s birthday. We have rented a really cool condo right in downtown Friday Harbor on San Juan Island itself. We are staying at The Web Suites. The owners had commented on one of my photos on Instagram and I went to look at what the heck The Web Suites was and discovered they were in Friday Harbor. We haven’t been there in something like 10 years so we are really looking forward to it.
We are also thrilled that my brother and sister-in-law are going to join us. We were telling them about it and, as they have become our travel buddies on many of our cruises and they have as bad a case of cabin fever as we do they said, “Can we come too?” We were thrilled and would have asked them first but we never thought they would join us this far from home as they live in Southern Cal and not sure they wanted to fly. We were right about one thing; they don’t want to fly. They are driving all the way from beautiful San Juan Capistrano to our place here in Redmond. Then after the weekend of hanging out here we will head to the San Juans via a Washington State ferry leaving from Anacortes.
If you have never gone to the San Juans, you first drive (from our place about an hour and a half) to the city of Anacortes and board a ferry (so in a way, we are going on a cruise). The ferries stop at four of the islands. There are more than 400 San Juan Islands but many are just large rocks jutting out of Puget Sound but 128 of them are named and you can actually walk on them. If you want to go to any of them other than those four that have ferry stops you have to do it on a private boat. Lots of people do that to camp and a few of the smaller islands have vacation homes as well. One thing different for us (since the last time we were in the islands) is that it is advised to make reservations for the ferry sailing you want. I made sure to get up and be online on the day we could reserve for our dates. Snagged us exactly the times we wanted both coming and going. Our ferry trip is just about an hour and 15 minutes but it could have been much longer. We did our best to get the one ferry (both going and coming) that doesn’t stop at any of the other islands. So we get a straight shot from Anacortes to Friday Harbor.
Social Media
I have now been off all social media for more than a month other than Instagram where I post travel photos. It has really made me a lot less tense to not have to read all the election vitriol and the sniping. I will probably go back on Facebook after November 3rd and maybe a little more on Twitter but for now I need to stay off.
The Election
I know. I should stay away from politics on this blog but just a couple of quick things. First, everyone needs to vote. I can’t believe how low a percentage of people exercise their right to vote. But in some places it can be just too difficult. Right now I am reading a biography (not something I normally read) of Ulysses S. Grant, our 18th president, and it is really interesting the parallels between then and now. Grant followed an impeached president, there was a lot of voter suppression (much more violently) as the southerners tried to disenfranchise the freed slaves. From my viewpoint many states are still doing that.
The second thing I have not been able to do is to sit down with a true Trump supporter and have a discussion to find out how they can continue to support him after everything he has done and is. I don’t want to talk to someone who just blindly follows him and actually rejects science and believes the fake news stuff. I want to know what issue is so big that it outweighs (I guess I could have said trumps) all the bad. Someone intelligent so I can understand.
And I am scared to death what is going to happen if he loses and it’s close. After the kidnapping plot in Michigan, I can honestly see a huge rise in domestic terrorism. People who would never have considered it before are buying guns and ammo. This is sad.
Television
During this pandemic, so much of our time is spent either watching TV or planning on what to watch. We have been very lucky so far but our luck is starting to run out. Since this started we have been lucky enough to find some multi-year, multi-episode programs that somehow we hadn’t seen. Since March our favorite long term shows have included Younger, Damages and lately Friday Night Lights on Hulu, Parks and Rec on Netflix. There have been other things mixed in but these occupied us for quite a while. We are out of these now but some other shows are coming back. The new season of Fargo is outstanding, we have some favorites that have come back on PBS (Last Tango in Halifax, Endeavor) and some new ones on PBS (COBRA, Van Der Valk) and even a couple of network shows including a really good hospital drama out of Canada—Transplant.
This month promises to be much better in the coming weeks. Must-sees for us are the West Wing “reunion” on HBO Max, The Mandelorian on Disney+ and the only reality show we watch starts soon—Amazing Race…cause it’s all about travel.
By the way, best show of the whole summer? Hands down it was Yellowstone, Kevin Costner’s modern-day western. Those 10 shows were the best thing we saw and we can’t wait for the start of the 4th season next year. Sadly, it is on the Paramount network which our cable company does not carry so that means I have to purchase the season every year from Apple. But that’s OK because we get a bunch of outstanding and often hilarious extra films as background. If you haven’t seen Yellowstone, hopefully it will find its way to a streaming service you subscribe to. If not, you can always buy it from the iTunes Store. If you find a way to get it, watch it from the very beginning. There are three seasons of 10 shows each and they get better and better each year.
Walking
The one thing that has been my constant during our pandemic lockdown is walking. (I detailed one of my walks here.) Except for the 9 days of horrid smoke, I have been able to average just over 30 miles per week while walking six days a week. Now my problem isn’t smoke but rain, although I will usually grab an umbrella or put on my Gore-tex and go out anyway. My routes are getting a little boring and I do have a couple of alternatives but they take me through some fairly dense forested areas where all summer there have been wildcat, cougar and bear sightings—staying away from those. Since I am still working out an hour for six mornings as well, Kathleen’s daughter Michelle said, “You are exercising 18 hours a week? That’s a part-time job!”
One final (HORRIBLE) thought
The most amazing (and very sad) factoid I have heard in months is this: The number of people who have died from Covid-related illness in the USA since the day of the first death from Covid back in February is equivalent of 8 (yes EIGHT) Boeing 737s with 168 people on board each one, crashing every single day since then. Can you even imagine? I can’t. Please stay safe.
by Jim Bellomo | Sep 14, 2020 | Uncategorized
When I was younger I used to love when Adobe updated Photoshop. I loved it when Apple updated their operating system. I liked all the new stuff I could try out. I liked that I could then do things easier or faster. It was always a treat.
Now that I am 67, I have had it. I know the software I use. I know how it works. I'm pretty darn good at using that software and I love that it helps me to do the things I love to do...like writing this blog, taking photos and so many other things. But lately it seems as if every company is trying to "make it better." But often making it "better" so they can sell more copies of their software, they just make it either more complicated or force me to learn a new way to do things when the old way was working just fine.
I realize that this is a first-world problem. It's not Covid or wildfires or elections but it drives me nuts and this is my blog so I am going to write about it. If you are tired of my ranting already, come on back when we get back to traveling. Soon, I hope.
Software is a tool. Like a hammer. If software engineers and software providers designed hammers who knows what they would do. Maybe they would have pop-out screwdrivers, serrated saw edges, a small crescent wrench built into the bottom of the claw because they think you want one tool to rule them all. Problem is, I just want a hammer that I can drive a nail with. If I want more speed, I guess I could buy a nail gun but let's be honest, I only use a hammer once in a while to hang a picture so I think a nail gun would be overkill...just like bloated software with so many features it would take you years just to learn them all.
Don't even get me started about discontinued software (thanks Adobe for taking away Muse). You not only made my hammer more difficult to use each and every year, but you sent me a note that soon I could no longer use my hammer. You even told me that sometime in the near future you are going to come to my house and take my hammer away. Seriously, I have used lots of great pieces of software in the past that did exactly what I wanted them to do and all of a sudden the software mucky-mucks decided that this particular product wasn't selling well enough so they would no longer make it. That's fine, just let me keep using the one I bought from you in the first place. That's how it would work with a hammer. I wouldn't have to upgrade to that nail gun, I would just keep on using my hammer.
Why the rant today? Because WordPress, the website that hosts this blog has decided that the "new" upgrade they offered their users a few months ago is now the ONLY thing you can use. (They will let you go back and use a "Classic" version of their software but it does NOT look or act like it did just two weeks ago when I wrote my last post. It looks like something I used two years ago.) So when I went to write this post today, there it was—my new "block" layout (which I hate). It's clunky and definitely not as easy to use. Parts of it just get in the way when I am writing. But I have been told it has new and better features...which I will NEVER use. Why won't I use them? Because my blog is about my views on travel and, to be honest, I think it looks just fine. (BTW: you won't see any difference in the way it looks on your end, I just see it when I am creating it and it gets in my way.)
Even Expedia Cruises just upgraded and change the website we use to book travel. And to be honest, the new changes are not the best you have ever seen. In fact, they seem to make things a little slower and even more cumbersome than they were before.
The other wonderful thing (sarcasm intended) about all this upgrading is that I get to buy new books, I get to watch countless YouTube videos and I get to spend hours chatting with tech support trying to figure out how to make something work I used to do quite easily. Case in point—see my Memoji at the top of this page. It took me almost a half an hour of Googling and chatting with tech support to figure out how to place it so the copy went around like it did two weeks ago when I knew how to do it. And to be honest, I am still not sure how I got it like that. Every time tech support would suggest something, it would make it look differently than I wanted it to look. One time it put a gray box around it. Never had that happen before. Another time it made it three times as big. I am beyond frustrated and do not have the motivation to learn an entirely new piece of software all over again just to be able to create a simple blog post. Thanks a bunch WordPress.
The world changes, but I want that change to be necessary or respectful of what has happened before. Everything changes, and that's quite right. —Iain Sinclair
by Jim Bellomo | Sep 1, 2020 | Photography
Some of you may not realize it but about a year ago I started posting what I considered my best photos on Instagram. I had just taken a fantastic photography workshop taught by the amazing Scott Kelby.
Scott told us that if you want your photos to be noticed you need to post the best of them on Instagram. So I started an Instagram feed (you can click any of the photos on the right and the link will take you to my Instagram feed) where I posted one travel photo per day. I feel like it has done pretty well as far as garnering attention. Scott also said that it would help me choose which pictures were the most popular and he was right.
All of this is leading to my next direction. A lot of my Instagram followers have been telling me that I should consider selling my photos and I totally appreciated that feedback. I also felt so gratified that they would think I was a good enough photographer that people might want to hang my work in their homes or businesses. So this morning I put my photo store on line. This is something I have wanted to do for a very long time.
If this interests you at all, you can find them by clicking here. The photos can purchased in a variety of sizes and those photos are printed by professional photo finishers associated with SmugMug, where the site is hosted. I hope you will check it out and maybe even tell your friends who might be looking for something to hang in their homes or offices.
Just a note for the photographers out there. One thing that really saddened me in doing this was having to eliminate so many of my favorite photos. You see I can’t sell photos of recognizable people without their permission. Since so many of my photos were taken on the streets of so many cities that means that most of the people in them are strangers. Which means I have no way of getting their permission. I have an entire folder of more than 100 photos of street photography in places like Hanoi, Leeds, London, Auckland and so many more others that I can put on Instagram but not sell. Makes me sad because I love them a bunch.
And to my number one reader (you know who you are), I cannot sell the pic you think is my best because it is too wide to be printed by any of the suppliers on SmugMug. Sorry. Here it is again so you can see it one more time. 
Thanks for reading my little commercial for my new venture. Hope you check it out and come back here soon for a post on travel. I do have other things to write about even though we can’t go anywhere.
BTW: The quote below says everything I believe in about photography.
Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography. —George Eastman
by Jim Bellomo | Aug 4, 2020 | Uncategorized
Tomorrow I am going to post the photo above on Instagram. I have been posting one of my best travel photos there each day for 249 days and I have been saving this one. Knowing that it is coming tomorrow as my 250th photo it made me want to write a little about it. Because it has a lot to do with the moment I truly fell in love with travel.
Some background first. My father did NOT like to travel. As a kid, the furthest we ever “traveled” was to visit our grandparents in the LA area (about 100 miles from our home in Palm Springs). I honestly can’t remember staying in a hotel before I was in my teens and I went away for school speech tournaments. My first international travel was driving six miles into Mexico to see an orphanage that our church supported. Other than that, I never left California (except to attend a speech tournament in Phoenix) until I was well into my late twenties.
In my previous life (before Kathleen) I didn’t travel either. Not necessarily because my first wife or my kids didn’t like to travel, but because we really couldn’t afford to go anywhere. We were living in the Northwest by the time we had kids and of course we drove them back to California to see their grandparents and maybe even took them to Disneyland. Once, when they were in their early teens, we actually took them to Disney World…on an airplane…for four days.
Speaking of airplanes, when I turned 30, I had still never been on a commercial airplane. I had taken a short and scary ride in a Cessna piloted by my at-the-time brother-in-law but that really doesn’t qualify as traveling. We started and ended at the same airport.
When I was 30 we were living in Rogue River, OR and I was teaching school. I got a call from the best manager in my lifetime, Gil Duncan, asking me if I could come to San Francisco so he could interview me for a job with Jostens. He said he would send me an airline ticket. To be honest, that totally freaked me out. The idea of flying someplace was totally not something I did. I was not the guy who flies.
Once I started with Jostens in 1982 I flew all kinds of places in the USA to attend company meetings and teach yearbook workshops but these weren’t really travel. They were just business trips. I never saw anything except the airport and the insides of conference rooms and college classrooms. My first wife really didn’t have that much interest in joining me and in the 23 years we were married, I think she came with me to one of these meetings/workshops (wives were usually welcomed) once. We had no one to take care of the kids.
So when I met Kathleen one of the first things we did was go someplace. It was one of those yearbook workshops. This one was in Montana. We decided to rent a convertible and drive there, I would teach the workshop and then we would continue on our road trip visiting Jackson Hole, Grand Teton National Park, Yellowstone and Glacier National Park on the way home. Except for the fact that she HATED being left alone at the motel while I taught yearbook, it was an awesome trip. (Note from Kathleen, we were in a teeny tiny town with nothing to do!) But we didn’t fall in love with travel then. That was just a nice road trip.
Over the next few years we continued to travel sporadically. Went to Canada (me for the first time—now we go there all the time), NYC, took a short Alaskan cruise but that was about it. Until 2002 when we both turned 50. To celebrate, we decided that what we needed was a “great adventure,” and that the adventure should be in Europe. I had always wanted to explore the country of my ancestors, Italy. She had always wanted to do the same in Scotland. So we compromised, decided to do both and I went first.
We booked our first overseas flight to Italy. We did a ton of prep. This was going to be BIG! It was going to test us to see if we could actually travel to a country where they didn’t speak English, where we would have to try different foods, different customs. We knew we could do it. We signed up for an adult-ed class called, “Italian for Travelers” that not only taught us some basic language but also about what it would be like to be in Italy. We went to Edmonds and listened to lectures by Rick Steves and read all his books on Italy and museums.
In November 2002 we headed to SeaTac to board our flight to Italy. We were on Delta and flew first to Atlanta, changed planes and then took our flight to Milan. By the time we got to Milan we had been awake in airports and on the plane for more than 20 hours. Not being a good flyer and not having the money for anything but the cheapest coach seat, we had not slept a wink on the plane.
When we arrived in Milan it was 7:00 am there. We were exhausted but we had a long way to go. We took a bus to the train station (dragging our bags) and got on the train to Venice. I am sure I could have gone to sleep on the train but by this time I was way to excited. I wanted to see everything out the windows of that train that I possibly could. And to be honest, I was kind of disappointed. I thought Italy would look different. Instead it was kind of gray (the weather) and foggy. The train travelled through some pretty dirty and gross industrial areas. I was not sure exactly what I had expected Italy would be like, but this was NOT it. In the four hours on that train we were just not that impressed.
About an hour before we were scheduled to arrive in Venice, I think we both finally succumbed to our exhaustion and fell asleep. The last thing I remember was going through Padua and it was still rainy, gloomy and commercial-looking—disappointing.
We woke up as the train began to slow coming into Santa Lucia station in Venice. In fact I am pretty sure that we were already under the cover of the station itself when I became fully aware that we had arrived. I couldn’t see what the weather looked like, so I assumed it was gray and gloomy just like the rest of the trip. We disembarked with our luggage and made our way to the outside of the station where it happened. We fell in love with travel. The first thing we saw when we came out into the glorious sunshine is the photo at the top of this post. I can still remember that moment like it was yesterday and I am pretty sure I shed a tear because it was so beautiful. I actually still do whenever I think of this story. The rest of that trip was magical. We saw Venice, Florence, Sicily and Rome before we headed home and loved it all.
So that’s how we fell in love with travel. We loved that trip so much we went to England, Scotland and France the next year, took a Panama Canal cruise the year after that and the rest as they say, is history. Since then we have traveled to forty-one countries, thirty-one states and six Canadian provinces. We have done land trips and cruises that put us on five continents and we have loved each and every (well almost but you forget the bad stuff) moment of it. We have met the most amazing people. We have friends in so many places and we can’t wait to go to more places and meet more wonderful people.
BTW: Hemingway said it right below. I can’t imagine having done all this alone without the person I love most.
Never go on trips with anyone you do not love. —Ernest Hemingway
