And That’s a Wrap

by | Jan 1, 2026 | 365

Here it is. The last post of my 365 project in 2025. I can't tell you how much I am looking forward to not taking a photo today. Not a single one ?. But you know I will probably be taking some in the not-too-distant future. I love photography. For all of you who have been following along faithfully, all I can say is thank you for your words of encouragement. I will be back to do another 365 in 2035. See you then...or the next time I travel.

Actually, there will be a post tomorrow. I always end a year and start a new one with my top 10 photos from that year. So far, I have it narrowed down to 18. So you might get eight honorable mentions and the top ten.

Whew! I almost blew it. I almost forgot to take a photo yesterday. I had planned to take a photo of the front of our house, the one I had tried to take earlier in the month and never got back to. But since I had to wait until it got dark, I forgot all about it. As I was putting my laptop on to charge before we went to bed, I just happened to notice my camera sitting there. YIKES! With only three days to go, I had almost missed it. But I grabbed my shoes and a sweatshirt (it’s been pretty cold at night) and got the shot.
This is my second-to-last shot of 2025. I took it, just to prove to everyone who does not live in the Seattle/Puget Sound region that we have BEAUTIFUL days all year long, even in December. The sun was shining, the temperature was in the mid-40s (just where I like it), and Keeley and I went for a walk in the forest.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Boys and Girls…this is it. As of today, I have taken a single photo (sometimes more) every day of 2025. This is it. The last one, and it features me, the love of my life, and our forever neighbors (Jayesh and Lisa—neither of us lives where we were neighbors). A few years back, we started going out to dinner on New Year’s Eve because we lived across the street from a great restaurant. We missed last year after Lisa’s mom passed, but now we live on Redmond Ridge, and they have moved to Camano Island (about an hour and a half north of us). We decided to get together, with me doing dinner and them doing appetizers, and we will switch for next year. These people are two of our best friends in the world, and we hope to be able to celebrate many more New Year’s Eves with them. Next year, we go to their place.

Big News for this website

One more piece of big news (that I hope you never actually see happen) is that I am moving this blog to a new server. I have been with WordPress.com since I started it in December 2018, but they recently raised their prices. I also host other URLs I own with the web hosting company Bluehost. I have now moved the entire blog over to Bluehost. That means that right now, as you are reading this on WordPress.com, there is a duplicate version on Bluehost. All I have to do, sometime between now and January 14, is click a switch, and it will move my URLs over to the new service. You shouldn’t have to do a thing, and I hope all my current subscribers will still receive their notifications. More about this just before it happens. If we somehow lose you, go to www.jimbellomo.com

So, here's my final three photos for 2025. My favorite of these is last night's dinner when we were joined by our forever neighbors, Jayesh and Lisa, to resume our annual New Year's Eve tradition.

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.   ? Ansel Adams

It’s Christmas…Soon!

by | 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 | 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 | 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 | 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