Cox's Bay at high tide

Today I have posted my 500th blip. My thanks to the clever people at blip central who have set up this site and maintain and moderate it. I've forgiven the removal of one post without explanation, as I can see how it may have been unintentionally outside the rules. My thanks also to all those who have and continue to subscribe to my journal, and offer me their encouragement and support. In the last 500 days I have made a number of friends, and have been struck by the similarity of views that so many of us have.

Because of ambivalence about joining a group online to post a photograph, it took me some months to accept tsuken's encouragement and join. I started with the aim of taking a photograph while on my runs, which to prove I could do it, I had been doing during those months. About a week after joining, the only two photos I took on my run turned out to be blurred, and I resorted to taking another photograph as an alternative. Thereafter, I have often posted non run photos, although about 75% are taken while on my runs.

Blipfoto is an important part of my daily routine; before starting, I would not have thought it would become so. Taking the photos is the easy part, as I am an obligatory daily runner. Posting them takes a little time and that I will willingly do, and only reluctantly do I plan to backblip. I get great pleasure from viewing the work of others, and I have subscribed to a number of journals, for a variety of reasons, usually because I admire their photography, the way that they show aspects of the world that sometimes I know, and often are new to me, and then become familiar. With some of you I have exchanged at times intense and emotional thoughts and words. From all of this I have continued to learn, one aspect of what Aristotle regarded as a life lived well. When I don't comment, it doesn't always mean I haven't looked; it means I have not had the time to formulate a comment.

Reflecting on the pictures I have posted has been an interesting exercise. I chose to join when I felt pleased enough with a photograph to want to share it. Aspiration was my first post, although I later discovered that because of the vagaries of date and time I had joined the day before; I backblipped some months later to complete the set.

Being a morning runner means I blip a lot of sunrises. Because of where I stay in Auckland, I am often by the sea, and even more so when we go to the beach house at Snells. Of the many such posts, my personal favourite is One lonely boat. My grandchildren are central to my sense of meaning and purpose in life. I value my time with them, and I have had many opportunities to take photographs of them. They are all active little people, and my personal favourite, Mr H and the swing, shows that in a way that I would not have thought worthy until I looked at it.

Street art in various forms has been an intermittent feature; graffiti, murals, decorated electronics boxes, and public outdoor sculpture. It was hard to choose, but I think that Wind Tree by Michio Ihara pleases me most as a photograph. Portraits have been rare, and The matriarch is one where I think I captured her essence. I tend to avoid self portraits, although was very pleased with the response to Anniversary, earlier this year.

I have at times responded to various events with my choice of subject. I have sometimes written about topics with some feeling. I have been wordless in the face of the pain and suffering experienced by those in Christchurch. Some of those blips still please me. But the one I am going to refer you to as one of my favourite blips is simply titled A poem. Even as I am writing these words, I feel the emotion well up, because my darling S has captured in words something timeless and important, and I hope my picture shared that and strengthened that core of connectedness I have experienced since joining blip.