I'm due to receive something called a UV-IR filter later today for the 24 - 70mm f 2.8 lens I use much of the time. I've had one, the first one I've ever used, on the 70 - 200mm lens I received last month and I want to see if it will make a difference on the 24 - 70mm as well. The UV stands for ultraviolet, it filters ultraviolet light, and most photographers use one primarily to protect the front lens element from damage. Better to scratch a filter than a lens and filtering UV does indeed improve your results.

The IR stands for infrared and they're claiming quite a difference in the way it handles digital (not film) color. Photographers pay attention when you start talking about color. So I'll use this one I have coming today to test against the UV filter and see if I can see a difference. I've been thinking what I've been seeing with the new 70 - 200mm lens has different and perhaps better color, but it's a new lens primarily used on a new camera and it's hard to tell. So that's pretty exciting, here in Dingle-Dell.

Back now from breakfast and the papers, the morning foggy and a bit cold. Reading about Haiti, of course, the earthquake, the complete devastation. It's easy to get caught up in my little cocoon here talking about lens filters and breakfast, a fuzzy head and movies I've seen and it's easy to find myself relating to something like this earthquake as just another fantasy coming in over a wire. We forget we all live in an earthquake zone, life is an earthquake zone, and in life real shit happens.

So maybe think about sending some money (sending a text message on your mobile phone with the phrase "Haiti" to the number 90999, for example, will donate $10 to the Red Cross relief effort, the $10 showing up on your next phone bill). Quick, easy, eases the conscience, let's us get back to our virtual world where mothers, fathers, friends and family don't die horribly in front of our eyes on a Thursday morning waiting for UPS to arrive.

Are we preaching?

We are a bit confused and flabbergasted by reality for the moment. This phase will pass, but not before I've deducted a few dollars from my dwindling bank account. Nobody asks about your grip on reality when you make an effort to help.

Later. A morning and mid afternoon spent backing up images and printing DVD's waiting on the UPS truck before saying the hell with it and getting outside for a walk. Not much of a walk, but a walk none the less, starting with a picture or two of the usual tree, a picture of a bird watcher (I'd thought I'd have seen more of them by now, this being a bird sanctuary and all) and a picture of a street lamp. Were any of these worth the effort? Who knows and worrying if the world considers them any good or not isn't productive, isn't something a photographer should consider (he said with enormous confidence).

Back now, still no sign of the mail or the UPS truck, so we'll obviously be here when he or she arrives, if he or she arrives. I'm thinking of going out later after dark to see how this filter might change the strange light you find under street lamps and such. Pretty exciting stuff for a Thursday for this old coot.

Later still. Ah, well. No sign of UPS, although they've arrived later than this in other deliveries. No big deal. A good day otherwise. I've have this weird urge to hang a couple of the framed prints lined up along my bedroom wall. Believe me, I don't have these urges, not for a long time, yet recently they've been popping up. I'll be curious what I might report in this regard tomorrow.