Thank You, Eric Tenin

Today, to finish with the awards, I first want to thank the founder of the City Daily Photo Blogs, Eric Tenin of the original City Daily Photo Blog, Paris Daily Photo. Eric kindly commented on yesterday's post (the ultimate seal of approval!) The civil, thoughtful tone characteristic of the City Daily Photo blogs stems directly from the example he has set. The best thank you gesture I can think of is to post this picture of an iris. A stylized iris, the fleur de lys, is well known as a symbol for France. The one above bloomed last summer in my daughter's back yard here in Victoria. Thank you, Eric!

Thanks also to Stephan Nebel and to Igor, Demosthenes and Ham (London Daily Photo) who built and maintain the portal that represents and connects us all. Their largely unsung work behind the scenes makes it possible for CDP bloggers to present their daily offerings to the world, to keep track of favorite blogs, to become aware of new City Daily Photo blogs as they appear and to participate in theme days and other related activities. Thank you, gentlemen!

Finally, thanks to the many visitors to this blog, for looking at a little of my world and reading what I write about it. Your visits and comments are the reason this site continues to exist. Thank you all!

Dallas Road November

While autumn definitely brings some brownish hues to the shoreline, things are still pretty green in this photo taken this afternoon. It looks warm and lots of people were out enjoying the sunshine and dramatic cloudscapes, but the wind was cold.

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Awards Part 2

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The Kreativ Blogging Award (see yesterday's post below) requires me to list "six things that make me happy." In my contrary fashion I instead am going to list 5 reasons why the City Daily Photo Blog World makes me happy.

• Nice Talk
  In an internet that is constantly cruised by trolls and foul-mouthed cruelies, somehow the City Daily Photo Blog world remains a network marked by truly civil discourse. Its members one and all seem to work consciously at keeping it nice, friendly, and supportive, both in the text of their posts and in their comments when visiting one another's sites. This is quite remarkable: an online community of people from all over the planet, representing many different cultures, political persuasions and religions somehow managing consistently to be nice to one another. The City Daily Photo Blog world is a shining example of Global Village consciousness being realized on a day to day basis.


• Entertaining
  The photographs that people post are often beautiful and always interesting.The accompanying text is generally informative, usually good-natured and often witty or downright funny. These City Daily Photo Blogs are quite addictive. I'd rather browse them for an hour than watch anything on TV.


• Photojournalism
  The mix of a photograph and some text is just right for me, both as an online browser and as a blogger. A photograph may be worth a thousand words but a photograph and a hundred words is probably equivalent to about three photos or three thousand words. That metaphor's a bit overextended but you get the idea. That complementary mix of text and graphic information is what made magazines so popular and it works in the blog world too.


• Discipline and Freedom
  I like the discipline. To post a photo and say something about it every day is not as easy as one initially considers it to be. Yet the supportive, interested atmosphere of the City Daily Photo Blog world makes it a pleasant task to work on improving one's communication skills every day. And while there is that discipline, there is also the freedom to post pretty much anything one wants.


• Learning
  I learn a lot. Particularly I learn that the world is modernizing rapidly. When I was growing up we thought North America and Europe to be the most technologically advanced societies on earth, the only really modern cultures. This mindset continues for many, as if we constantly move into the future while the rest of the world slumbers in their grass shack colonial past. It's the same kind of jolt I got when I travelled to South Korea a few years ago, expecting to find a somewhat backward Asian country yearning to be modernized. Instead I found a culture more plugged in and online than my own Canadian culture. Thus, it is salutary to see the fantastic malls and skyscrapers of Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Tokyo and to learn that the people there are meeting the same types of challenges and problems as I am and share many of the same joys and sorrows.

Well, that's more than enough for today. More, tomorrow! In the meantime, I'm interested to hear what you have to say about this.

Fall

It seems hard to believe that from this......comes this....But this glorious carpet of maple leaves beautifully illustrates why we call this season "fall." Yesterday it seemed all the trees in Mt. Douglas Park decided at once to let go their leaves. It was like driving through a blizzard with big brown and yellow snowflakes. Leaves whirled into waves and drifts along the roadside and winter's black branches stood out against the sky.

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Awards!

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There are a couple of blog awards floating around now that people have kindly passed on to me, not realizing that I am hardly capable of getting out of the right side of the bed in the morning let alone following the rules governing the various awards...6 nominees...5 followers...list of happy things...links to...gasp...choke....

However, my thanks first to Rob at Trieste Daily Photo and to niamhphotography, who has two blogs about the Spanish cities of Sitges and Barcelona, for presenting me with the "Blogging Friends Forever Award."And thanks also to Nobu of Tokyo Snap Photo and Funabashi Daily Cell Phone Photo, and to Snapper of Gabriola Daily Photo for presenting me with the "Kreativ Blogger Award."I cordially invite you to visit the blogs named above for beautiful photos as well as intimate insights into other cities and cultures. Really! I visit all of the above blogs regularly and always find something interesting.

Now, I am supposed to pass these awards along to others but I will save that pleasure for tomorrow.