That is the number of consecutive days in a row that I have posted to this blog so far. I had no idea when I started this diary if I would be able to maintain this pace and some days I barely have, but what was more important then was that Ray needed for one of us to get out and make some pictures. If he couldn’t then I would do it for us both.

Ray passed just over a month after I started this site and what began as a gift from me to him has somehow turned into a gift from him to me. I have spent the past several months doing things I had not tried before in almost half a century of photography using different cameras, and lenses, and techniques. Real friendship is when you’re gone, but you leave the gift of your inspiration to those who remain.

Ray has been on my mind a lot over this past week. Sometimes it is when I have pulled out and am using the Canon EOS 7D he bequeathed to me. He loved that camera so much when it was new and was very proud of it. It is important to me that whatever I do with it, I do to Ray’s standards. Anyone who knew him will tell you he could be a cantankerous bastard. They will also tell you he was no slouch with a camera, and he got results with any camera that was in his hands, period. He was that good.


I am just really missing my friend right now. I don’t know if this is a guy thing or a “Ray and I” thing or just a dumb thing, but I miss having arguments with Ray over completely stupid shit. He was Mac and I was Windows. He had certain fashion sensibilities and I have zero fashion sensibilities (if my wife is reading this, she is nodding right now). We never agreed on what types of social media were valuable or if they were valuable at all. We enjoyed getting on each others’ nerves, at least until the end when he no longer had the energy for it and I promised to dial things back.


I also miss getting teased by Ray, often relentlessly. I am notoriously bad at remembering any sort of name. Not just people, but things, too. I got tired of getting corrected for incorrectly labeling birds and flowers and now just refer to anything I am not sure of the name of as a something something.

As to the day itself, it was okay. I had the feeling of coming down with something throughout the day. My throat was getting increasingly sore, my nose stuffing up, and my energy level dropping. Not a good omen for Canada Day the following day. Oh well.

I got some images around my yard during a light shower and then the Missus and I went for a cruise outside of town in the hope of getting dramatic sky pics. The sky wasn’t that dramatic, but I still got a few images and felt good about it. The overgrown parking lot image is a throwback to a previous blog post. There were also homemade pretzels. I was grateful for the day.

The top two country images were made using my Canon EOS 50D with a Canon 17-40mm EF L USM f4-5.6 lens. The flower images and the pretzel photo were created with my Samsung Galaxy S23 Ultra phone.