Red Ivy

photo by Ballard Blog

Most of the leaves are on the sidewalks now but there are always a few holdouts. This ivy grows alongside a sandstone building on Ballard Avenue and it sticks around until November each year. The entire side of the building will blaze red, but because the building next to it gets in the way of even the most intrepid photographer, there's no way to capture that in a photograph. We'll have to settle for a small snippet of its redness.

This un-noteworthy photo is noteworthy in that it's the first photo posted here taken by BallardBlog's newest consumer electronic time-sink, a Sony digital camera. It's very cute. Lots of buttons to push. A hundred pages of cryptic owner's manual to learn. Ouch.

I've taken lots of pictures with lots of film cameras over the years. Technically, at least, I know what I'm doing. (Artistically, I'm sure, the jury is still out.) But this little Sony somehow manages to turn everything I know upside down, shake 'n bake it, and deposit it back into my lap with a vague reference to page 73 for an answer. And then the batteries die.