❌

Normal view

Received — 5 November 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Dracula: November 5

✇Dracula Daily
By: DraculaDaily
5 November 2025 at 14:25

Memorandum by Abraham Van Helsing.

5 November, morning.—Let me be accurate in everything, for though you and I have seen some strange things together, you may at the first think that I, Van Helsing, am mad—that the many horrors and the so long strain on nerves has at the last turn my brain.

All yesterday we travel, ever getting closer to the mountains, and moving into a more and more wild and desert land. There are great, frowning precipices and much falling water, and Nature seem to have held sometime her carnival. Madam Mina still sleep and sleep; and though I did have hunger and appeased it, I could not waken her—even for food. I began to fear that the fatal spell of the place was upon her, tainted as she is with that Vampire baptism. "Well," said I to myself, "if it be that she sleep all the day, it shall also be that I do not sleep at night." As we travel on the rough road, for a road of an ancient and imperfect kind there was, I held down my head and slept. Again I waked with a sense of guilt and of time passed, and found Madam Mina still sleeping, and the sun low down. But all was indeed changed; the frowning mountains seemed further away, and we were near the top of a steep-rising hill, on summit of which was such a castle as Jonathan tell of in his diary. At once I exulted and feared; for now, for good or ill, the end was near.

I woke Madam Mina, and again tried to hypnotise her; but alas! unavailing till too late. Then, ere the great dark came upon us—for even after down-sun the heavens reflected the gone sun on the snow, and all was for a time in a great twilight—I took out the horses and fed them in what shelter I could. Then I make a fire; and near it I make Madam Mina, now awake and more charming than ever, sit comfortable amid her rugs. I got ready food: but she would not eat, simply saying that she had not hunger. I did not press her, knowing her unavailingness. But I myself eat, for I must needs now be strong for all. Then, with the fear on me of what might be, I drew a ring so big for her comfort, round where Madam Mina sat; and over the ring I passed some of the wafer, and I broke it fine so that all was well guarded. She sat still all the time—so still as one dead; and she grew whiter and ever whiter till the snow was not more pale; and no word she said. But when I drew near, she clung to me, and I could know that the poor soul shook her from head to feet with a tremor that was pain to feel. I said to her presently, when she had grown more quiet:—

"Will you not come over to the fire?" for I wished to make a test of what she could. She rose obedient, but when she have made a step she stopped, and stood as one stricken.

"Why not go on?" I asked. She shook her head, and, coming back, sat down in her place. Then, looking at me with open eyes, as of one waked from sleep, she said simply:—

"I cannot!" and remained silent. I rejoiced, for I knew that what she could not, none of those that we dreaded could. Though there might be danger to her body, yet her soul was safe!

Presently the horses began to scream, and tore at their tethers till I came to them and quieted them. When they did feel my hands on them, they whinnied low as in joy, and licked at my hands and were quiet for a time. Many times through the night did I come to them, till it arrive to the cold hour when all nature is at lowest; and every time my coming was with quiet of them. In the cold hour the fire began to die, and I was about stepping forth to replenish it, for now the snow came in flying sweeps and with it a chill mist. Even in the dark there was a light of some kind, as there ever is over snow; and it seemed as though the snow-flurries and the wreaths of mist took shape as of women with trailing garments. All was in dead, grim silence only that the horses whinnied and cowered, as if in terror of the worst. I began to fear—horrible fears; but then came to me the sense of safety in that ring wherein I stood. I began, too, to think that my imaginings were of the night, and the gloom, and the unrest that I have gone through, and all the terrible anxiety. It was as though my memories of all Jonathan's horrid experience were befooling me; for the snow flakes and the mist began to wheel and circle round, till I could get as though a shadowy glimpse of those women that would have kissed him. And then the horses cowered lower and lower, and moaned in terror as men do in pain. Even the madness of fright was not to them, so that they could break away. I feared for my dear Madam Mina when these weird figures drew near and circled round. I looked at her, but she sat calm, and smiled at me; when I would have stepped to the fire to replenish it, she caught me and held me back, and whispered, like a voice that one hears in a dream, so low it was:—

"No! No! Do not go without. Here you are safe!" I turned to her, and looking in her eyes, said:—

"But you? It is for you that I fear!" whereat she laughed—a laugh, low and unreal, and said:—

"Fear for _me_! Why fear for me? None safer in all the world from them than I am," and as I wondered at the meaning of her words, a puff of wind made the flame leap up, and I see the red scar on her forehead. Then, alas! I knew. Did I not, I would soon have learned, for the wheeling figures of mist and snow came closer, but keeping ever without the Holy circle. Then they began to materialise till—if God have not take away my reason, for I saw it through my eyes—there were before me in actual flesh the same three women that Jonathan saw in the room, when they would have kissed his throat. I knew the swaying round forms, the bright hard eyes, the white teeth, the ruddy colour, the voluptuous lips. They smiled ever at poor dear Madam Mina; and as their laugh came through the silence of the night, they twined their arms and pointed to her, and said in those so sweet tingling tones that Jonathan said were of the intolerable sweetness of the water-glasses:—

"Come, sister. Come to us. Come! Come!" In fear I turned to my poor Madam Mina, and my heart with gladness leapt like flame; for oh! the terror in her sweet eyes, the repulsion, the horror, told a story to my heart that was all of hope. God be thanked she was not, yet, of them. I seized some of the firewood which was by me, and holding out some of the Wafer, advanced on them towards the fire. They drew back before me, and laughed their low horrid laugh. I fed the fire, and feared them not; for I knew that we were safe within our protections. They could not approach, me, whilst so armed, nor Madam Mina whilst she remained within the ring, which she could not leave no more than they could enter. The horses had ceased to moan, and lay still on the ground; the snow fell on them softly, and they grew whiter. I knew that there was for the poor beasts no more of terror.

And so we remained till the red of the dawn to fall through the snow-gloom. I was desolate and afraid, and full of woe and terror; but when that beautiful sun began to climb the horizon life was to me again. At the first coming of the dawn the horrid figures melted in the whirling mist and snow; the wreaths of transparent gloom moved away towards the castle, and were lost.

Instinctively, with the dawn coming, I turned to Madam Mina, intending to hypnotise her; but she lay in a deep and sudden sleep, from which I could not wake her. I tried to hypnotise through her sleep, but she made no response, none at all; and the day broke. I fear yet to stir. I have made my fire and have seen the horses, they are all dead. To-day I have much to do here, and I keep waiting till the sun is up high; for there may be places where I must go, where that sunlight, though snow and mist obscure it, will be to me a safety.

I will strengthen me with breakfast, and then I will to my terrible work. Madam Mina still sleeps; and, God be thanked! she is calm in her sleep....

Dr. Seward's Diary.

5 November.—With the dawn we saw the body of Szgany before us dashing away from the river with their leiter-wagon. They surrounded it in a cluster, and hurried along as though beset. The snow is falling lightly and there is a strange excitement in the air. It may be our own feelings, but the depression is strange. Far off I hear the howling of wolves; the snow brings them down from the mountains, and there are dangers to all of us, and from all sides. The horses are nearly ready, and we are soon off. We ride to death of some one. God alone knows who, or where, or what, or when, or how it may be....

Dr. Van Helsing's Memorandum.

5 November, afternoon.—I am at least sane. Thank God for that mercy at all events, though the proving it has been dreadful. When I left Madam Mina sleeping within the Holy circle, I took my way to the castle. The blacksmith hammer which I took in the carriage from Veresti was useful; though the doors were all open I broke them off the rusty hinges, lest some ill-intent or ill-chance should close them, so that being entered I might not get out. Jonathan's bitter experience served me here. By memory of his diary I found my way to the old chapel, for I knew that here my work lay. The air was oppressive; it seemed as if there was some sulphurous fume, which at times made me dizzy. Either there was a roaring in my ears or I heard afar off the howl of wolves. Then I bethought me of my dear Madam Mina, and I was in terrible plight. The dilemma had me between his horns.

Her, I had not dare to take into this place, but left safe from the Vampire in that Holy circle; and yet even there would be the wolf! I resolve me that my work lay here, and that as to the wolves we must submit, if it were God's will. At any rate it was only death and freedom beyond. So did I choose for her. Had it but been for myself the choice had been easy, the maw of the wolf were better to rest in than the grave of the Vampire! So I make my choice to go on with my work.

I knew that there were at least three graves to find—graves that are inhabit; so I search, and search, and I find one of them. She lay in her Vampire sleep, so full of life and voluptuous beauty that I shudder as though I have come to do murder. Ah, I doubt not that in old time, when such things were, many a man who set forth to do such a task as mine, found at the last his heart fail him, and then his nerve. So he delay, and delay, and delay, till the mere beauty and the fascination of the wanton Un-Dead have hypnotise him; and he remain on and on, till sunset come, and the Vampire sleep be over. Then the beautiful eyes of the fair woman open and look love, and the voluptuous mouth present to a kiss—and man is weak. And there remain one more victim in the Vampire fold; one more to swell the grim and grisly ranks of the Un-Dead!...

There is some fascination, surely, when I am moved by the mere presence of such an one, even lying as she lay in a tomb fretted with age and heavy with the dust of centuries, though there be that horrid odour such as the lairs of the Count have had. Yes, I was moved—I, Van Helsing, with all my purpose and with my motive for hate—I was moved to a yearning for delay which seemed to paralyse my faculties and to clog my very soul. It may have been that the need of natural sleep, and the strange oppression of the air were beginning to overcome me. Certain it was that I was lapsing into sleep, the open-eyed sleep of one who yields to a sweet fascination, when there came through the snow-stilled air a long, low wail, so full of woe and pity that it woke me like the sound of a clarion. For it was the voice of my dear Madam Mina that I heard.

Then I braced myself again to my horrid task, and found by wrenching away tomb-tops one other of the sisters, the other dark one. I dared not pause to look on her as I had on her sister, lest once more I should begin to be enthrall; but I go on searching until, presently, I find in a high great tomb as if made to one much beloved that other fair sister which, like Jonathan I had seen to gather herself out of the atoms of the mist. She was so fair to look on, so radiantly beautiful, so exquisitely voluptuous, that the very instinct of man in me, which calls some of my sex to love and to protect one of hers, made my head whirl with new emotion. But God be thanked, that soul-wail of my dear Madam Mina had not died out of my ears; and, before the spell could be wrought further upon me, I had nerved myself to my wild work. By this time I had searched all the tombs in the chapel, so far as I could tell; and as there had been only three of these Un-Dead phantoms around us in the night, I took it that there were no more of active Un-Dead existent. There was one great tomb more lordly than all the rest; huge it was, and nobly proportioned. On it was but one word:

DRACULA.

This then was the Un-Dead home of the King-Vampire, to whom so many more were due. Its emptiness spoke eloquent to make certain what I knew. Before I began to restore these women to their dead selves through my awful work, I laid in Dracula's tomb some of the Wafer, and so banished him from it, Un-Dead, for ever.

Then began my terrible task, and I dreaded it. Had it been but one, it had been easy, comparative. But three! To begin twice more after I had been through a deed of horror; for if it was terrible with the sweet Miss Lucy, what would it not be with these strange ones who had survived through centuries, and who had been strengthened by the passing of the years; who would, if they could, have fought for their foul lives....

Oh, my friend John, but it was butcher work; had I not been nerved by thoughts of other dead, and of the living over whom hung such a pall of fear, I could not have gone on. I tremble and tremble even yet, though till all was over, God be thanked, my nerve did stand. Had I not seen the repose in the first place, and the gladness that stole over it just ere the final dissolution came, as realisation that the soul had been won, I could not have gone further with my butchery. I could not have endured the horrid screeching as the stake drove home; the plunging of writhing form, and lips of bloody foam. I should have fled in terror and left my work undone. But it is over! And the poor souls, I can pity them now and weep, as I think of them placid each in her full sleep of death for a short moment ere fading. For, friend John, hardly had my knife severed the head of each, before the whole body began to melt away and crumble in to its native dust, as though the death that should have come centuries agone had at last assert himself and say at once and loud "I am here!"

Before I left the castle I so fixed its entrances that never more can the Count enter there Un-Dead.

When I stepped into the circle where Madam Mina slept, she woke from her sleep, and, seeing, me, cried out in pain that I had endured too much.

"Come!" she said, "come away from this awful place! Let us go to meet my husband who is, I know, coming towards us." She was looking thin and pale and weak; but her eyes were pure and glowed with fervour. I was glad to see her paleness and her illness, for my mind was full of the fresh horror of that ruddy vampire sleep.

And so with trust and hope, and yet full of fear, we go eastward to meet our friends—and him—whom Madam Mina tell me that she know are coming to meet us.

Received — 4 November 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Dracula: November 4

✇Dracula Daily
By: DraculaDaily
4 November 2025 at 14:24

Dr. Seward's Diary.

4 November.—To-day we heard of the launch having been detained by an accident when trying to force a way up the rapids. The Slovak boats get up all right, by aid of a rope and steering with knowledge. Some went up only a few hours before. Godalming is an amateur fitter himself, and evidently it was he who put the launch in trim again. Finally, they got up the rapids all right, with local help, and are off on the chase afresh. I fear that the boat is not any better for the accident; the peasantry tell us that after she got upon smooth water again, she kept stopping every now and again so long as she was in sight. We must push on harder than ever; our help may be wanted soon.

Memorandum by Abraham Van Helsing

4 November.—This to my old and true friend John Seward, M.D., of Purfleet, London, in case I may not see him. It may explain. It is morning, and I write by a fire which all the night I have kept alive—Madam Mina aiding me. It is cold, cold; so cold that the grey heavy sky is full of snow, which when it falls will settle for all winter as the ground is hardening to receive it. It seems to have affected Madam Mina; she has been so heavy of head all day that she was not like herself. She sleeps, and sleeps, and sleeps! She who is usual so alert, have done literally nothing all the day; she even have lost her appetite. She make no entry into her little diary, she who write so faithful at every pause. Something whisper to me that all is not well. However, to-night she is more vif. Her long sleep all day have refresh and restore her, for now she is all sweet and bright as ever. At sunset I try to hypnotise her, but alas! with no effect; the power has grown less and less with each day, and to-night it fail me altogether. Well, God's will be done—whatever it may be, and whithersoever it may lead!

Now to the historical, for as Madam Mina write not in her stenography, I must, in my cumbrous old fashion, that so each day of us may not go unrecorded.

We got to the Borgo Pass just after sunrise yesterday morning. When I saw the signs of the dawn I got ready for the hypnotism. We stopped our carriage, and got down so that there might be no disturbance. I made a couch with furs, and Madam Mina, lying down, yield herself as usual, but more slow and more short time than ever, to the hypnotic sleep. As before, came the answer: "darkness and the swirling of water." Then she woke, bright and radiant and we go on our way and soon reach the Pass. At this time and place, she become all on fire with zeal; some new guiding power be in her manifested, for she point to a road and say:—

"This is the way."

"How know you it?" I ask.

"Of course I know it," she answer, and with a pause, add: "Have not my Jonathan travelled it and wrote of his travel?"

At first I think somewhat strange, but soon I see that there be only one such by-road. It is used but little, and very different from the coach road from the Bukovina to Bistritz, which is more wide and hard, and more of use.

So we came down this road; when we meet other ways—not always were we sure that they were roads at all, for they be neglect and light snow have fallen—the horses know and they only. I give rein to them, and they go on so patient. By-and-by we find all the things which Jonathan have note in that wonderful diary of him. Then we go on for long, long hours and hours. At the first, I tell Madam Mina to sleep; she try, and she succeed. She sleep all the time; till at the last, I feel myself to suspicious grow, and attempt to wake her. But she sleep on, and I may not wake her though I try. I do not wish to try too hard lest I harm her; for I know that she have suffer much, and sleep at times be all-in-all to her. I think I drowse myself, for all of sudden I feel guilt, as though I have done something; I find myself bolt up, with the reins in my hand, and the good horses go along jog, jog, just as ever. I look down and find Madam Mina still sleep. It is now not far off sunset time, and over the snow the light of the sun flow in big yellow flood, so that we throw great long shadow on where the mountain rise so steep. For we are going up, and up; and all is oh! so wild and rocky, as though it were the end of the world.

Then I arouse Madam Mina. This time she wake with not much trouble, and then I try to put her to hypnotic sleep. But she sleep not, being as though I were not. Still I try and try, till all at once I find her and myself in dark; so I look round, and find that the sun have gone down. Madam Mina laugh, and I turn and look at her. She is now quite awake, and look so well as I never saw her since that night at Carfax when we first enter the Count's house. I am amaze, and not at ease then; but she is so bright and tender and thoughtful for me that I forget all fear. I light a fire, for we have brought supply of wood with us, and she prepare food while I undo the horses and set them, tethered in shelter, to feed. Then when I return to the fire she have my supper ready. I go to help her; but she smile, and tell me that she have eat already—that she was so hungry that she would not wait. I like it not, and I have grave doubts; but I fear to affright her, and so I am silent of it. She help me and I eat alone; and then we wrap in fur and lie beside the fire, and I tell her to sleep while I watch. But presently I forget all of watching; and when I sudden remember that I watch, I find her lying quiet, but awake, and looking at me with so bright eyes. Once, twice more the same occur, and I get much sleep till before morning. When I wake I try to hypnotise her; but alas! though she shut her eyes obedient, she may not sleep. The sun rise up, and up, and up; and then sleep come to her too late, but so heavy that she will not wake. I have to lift her up, and place her sleeping in the carriage when I have harnessed the horses and made all ready. Madam still sleep, and she look in her sleep more healthy and more redder than before. And I like it not. And I am afraid, afraid, afraid!—I am afraid of all things—even to think but I must go on my way. The stake we play for is life and death, or more than these, and we must not flinch.

Jonathan Harker's Journal.

4 November, evening.—The accident to the launch has been a terrible thing for us. Only for it we should have overtaken the boat long ago; and by now my dear Mina would have been free. I fear to think of her, off on the wolds near that horrid place. We have got horses, and we follow on the track. I note this whilst Godalming is getting ready. We have our arms. The Szgany must look out if they mean fight. Oh, if only Morris and Seward were with us. We must only hope! If I write no more Good-bye, Mina! God bless and keep you.

Received — 3 November 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Dracula: November 3

✇Dracula Daily
By: DraculaDaily
3 November 2025 at 14:24

Dr. Seward's Diary.

3 November.—We heard at Fundu that the launch had gone up the Bistritza. I wish it wasn't so cold. There are signs of snow coming; and if it falls heavy it will stop us. In such case we must get a sledge and go on, Russian fashion.

Received — 2 November 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Dracula: November 2

✇Dracula Daily
By: DraculaDaily
2 November 2025 at 14:23

Jonathan Harker's Journal.

2 November, morning.—It is broad daylight. That good fellow would not wake me. He says it would have been a sin to, for I slept peacefully and was forgetting my trouble. It seems brutally selfish to me to have slept so long, and let him watch all night; but he was quite right. I am a new man this morning; and, as I sit here and watch him sleeping, I can do all that is necessary both as to minding the engine, steering, and keeping watch. I can feel that my strength and energy are coming back to me. I wonder where Mina is now, and Van Helsing. They should have got to Veresti about noon on Wednesday. It would take them some time to get the carriage and horses; so if they had started and travelled hard, they would be about now at the Borgo Pass. God guide and help them! I am afraid to think what may happen. If we could only go faster! but we cannot; the engines are throbbing and doing their utmost. I wonder how Dr. Seward and Mr. Morris are getting on. There seem to be endless streams running down the mountains into this river, but as none of them are very large—at present, at all events, though they are terrible doubtless in winter and when the snow melts—the horsemen may not have met much obstruction. I hope that before we get to Strasba we may see them; for if by that time we have not overtaken the Count, it may be necessary to take counsel together what to do next.

Dr. Seward's Diary.

2 November.—Three days on the road. No news, and no time to write it if there had been, for every moment is precious. We have had only the rest needful for the horses; but we are both bearing it wonderfully. Those adventurous days of ours are turning up useful. We must push on; we shall never feel happy till we get the launch in sight again.

MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

2 November, morning.—I was successful, and we took turns driving all night; now the day is on us, bright though cold. There is a strange heaviness in the air—I say heaviness for want of a better word; I mean that it oppresses us both. It is very cold, and only our warm furs keep us comfortable. At dawn Van Helsing hypnotised me; he says I answered "darkness, creaking wood and roaring water," so the river is changing as they ascend. I do hope that my darling will not run any chance of danger—more than need be; but we are in God's hands.

2 November, night.—All day long driving. The country gets wilder as we go, and the great spurs of the Carpathians, which at Veresti seemed so far from us and so low on the horizon, now seem to gather round us and tower in front. We both seem in good spirits; I think we make an effort each to cheer the other; in the doing so we cheer ourselves. Dr. Van Helsing says that by morning we shall reach the Borgo Pass. The houses are very few here now, and the Professor says that the last horse we got will have to go on with us, as we may not be able to change. He got two in addition to the two we changed, so that now we have a rude four-in-hand. The dear horses are patient and good, and they give us no trouble. We are not worried with other travellers, and so even I can drive. We shall get to the Pass in daylight; we do not want to arrive before. So we take it easy, and have each a long rest in turn. Oh, what will to-morrow bring to us? We go to seek the place where my poor darling suffered so much. God grant that we may be guided aright, and that He will deign to watch over my husband and those dear to us both, and who are in such deadly peril. As for me, I am not worthy in His sight. Alas! I am unclean to His eyes, and shall be until He may deign to let me stand forth in His sight as one of those who have not incurred His wrath.

Received — 1 November 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Dracula: November 1

✇Dracula Daily
By: DraculaDaily
1 November 2025 at 13:22

Jonathan Harker's Journal.

1 November, evening.—No news all day; we have found nothing of the kind we seek. We have now passed into the Bistritza; and if we are wrong in our surmise our chance is gone. We have over-hauled every boat, big and little. Early this morning, one crew took us for a Government boat, and treated us accordingly. We saw in this a way of smoothing matters, so at Fundu, where the Bistritza runs into the Sereth, we got a Roumanian flag which we now fly conspicuously. With every boat which we have over-hauled since then this trick has succeeded; we have had every deference shown to us, and not once any objection to whatever we chose to ask or do. Some of the Slovaks tell us that a big boat passed them, going at more than usual speed as she had a double crew on board. This was before they came to Fundu, so they could not tell us whether the boat turned into the Bistritza or continued on up the Sereth. At Fundu we could not hear of any such boat, so she must have passed there in the night. I am feeling very sleepy; the cold is perhaps beginning to tell upon me, and nature must have rest some time. Godalming insists that he shall keep the first watch. God bless him for all his goodness to poor dear Mina and me.

MINA HARKER'S JOURNAL

1 November.—All day long we have travelled, and at a good speed. The horses seem to know that they are being kindly treated, for they go willingly their full stage at best speed. We have now had so many changes and find the same thing so constantly that we are encouraged to think that the journey will be an easy one. Dr. Van Helsing is laconic; he tells the farmers that he is hurrying to Bistritz, and pays them well to make the exchange of horses. We get hot soup, or coffee, or tea; and off we go. It is a lovely country; full of beauties of all imaginable kinds, and the people are brave, and strong, and simple, and seem full of nice qualities. They are very, very superstitious. In the first house where we stopped, when the woman who served us saw the scar on my forehead, she crossed herself and put out two fingers towards me, to keep off the evil eye. I believe they went to the trouble of putting an extra amount of garlic into our food; and I can't abide garlic. Ever since then I have taken care not to take off my hat or veil, and so have escaped their suspicions. We are travelling fast, and as we have no driver with us to carry tales, we go ahead of scandal; but I daresay that fear of the evil eye will follow hard behind us all the way. The Professor seems tireless; all day he would not take any rest, though he made me sleep for a long spell. At sunset time he hypnotised me, and he says that I answered as usual "darkness, lapping water and creaking wood"; so our enemy is still on the river. I am afraid to think of Jonathan, but somehow I have now no fear for him, or for myself. I write this whilst we wait in a farmhouse for the horses to be got ready. Dr. Van Helsing is sleeping, Poor dear, he looks very tired and old and grey, but his mouth is set as firmly as a conqueror's; even in his sleep he is instinct with resolution. When we have well started I must make him rest whilst I drive. I shall tell him that we have days before us, and we must not break down when most of all his strength will be needed.... All is ready; we are off shortly.

Received — 29 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Last Post Ever on TypePad

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
29 September 2025 at 21:21

Well, this is it—the last-ever TOP post on TypePad. TypePad is scheduled to close down tomorrow, although who knows what will happen and when. We'll all see, I guess.

I will be posting for the foreseeable future over on Patreon, where I urge you to become a visitor or, better yet, a supporter. Voluntary donations from readers have become the biggest income generator for The Online Photographer. It has changed many times over the years, first ads, then affiliate income, then print sales, etc., but that's where we are now.

This morning, on Patreon, I published the long-promised version of the Dogs Baker's Dozen with the photographers' comments attached. It was super easy, and a pleasure. I have to say that during its decline, images had become increasingly difficult to publish here on TypePad. It would sometimes take an hour of work (and frustration) to get one to post successfully. Sometimes I'd have to give up and come back to it later. The folks from TypePad couldn't figure out what was wrong, and if they couldn't, I certainly couldn't. Sigh. The handwriting on the wall wasn't that difficult to read. 

At the lower right-hand corner of this site it says, or used to say, "Member Since 06 / 2007." I actually started TOP in 2005 on Blogger—our 20th anniversary is coming right up at the end of November. Considering that my "stretch goal" in 2005 was to keep the blog going for as long as one whole year, that's pretty amazing. A whole year seemed next to impossible in November of 2005. For the most part, it's been the perfect job for me. The work suits my skills and interests, and the circumstances (self-employed, set my own schedule, limp when I'm feeling down and crank when I'm feeling energetic) also suit me. I have no idea how many people have come and gone over those 20 years, but it could easily be well into six figures. And I've been especially lucky in attracting so many great readers. I initially started 'Featuring" comments to foster discussion and a sense of community, but something better happened—I attracted a whole lot of thoughtful, intelligent people with extensive knowledge in this and other fields, and provided an outlet for them to share their own experiences, wisdom, and musings. I have been so influenced by readers I can't even tell you. Virtually every aspect of my life has been touched by something I learned from somebody who reads my blog. 

It's still kind of an open question whether TOP will be able to continue—a forced relaunch on a different site, with a different look and a different setup, is a rough transition even when it's carefully planned for months in advance. Executed pell-mell on short notice and under duress, well, let's just say the conditions are not favorable. But I'll try. It's not like I have much choice. I can't retire. To repeat one of the jokes I like and repeat again and again, "my retirement plan is to keep working." 

Well, I don't want to go on and on, because this could disappear before 24 hours have passed. It's been a good 18 years and three months since June 2007. That's 6,700 days, and I've written something here on most of them—about 9,400 posts total. 

Sic transit gloria mundi (thus passeth the glory of the world). Good luck to us all, and I hope I'll be seeing you! 

Kind regards,
Mike

In the heart of the old Burned-Over District
September 2025

Received — 27 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

FreshRSS 1.27.1

✇FreshRSS releases
By: Alkarex
27 September 2025 at 15:07

This is a security-fix and bug-fix release for FreshRSS 1.27.x.

A few highlights ✨:

  • Keep sort and order criteria after marking as read
  • Automatic database recovery: skip broken entries during CLI export/import
  • Add possibility of Docker healthcheck
  • Add security option for CSP frame-ancestors
  • Several security fixes
  • Several bug fixes
  • New translation to Ukrainian
  • Improvements of some themes
  • And much more…

This release has been made by @Alkarex, @Frenzie, @Inverle, @aledeg, @math-GH and newcomers @beerisgood, @nykula, @horvi28, @nhirokinet, @rnkln, @scmaybee.

Full changelog:

  • Features
    • Automatic database recovery: skip broken entries during CLI export/import #7949
    • Add security option for CSP frame-ancestors #7857, #8021
    • Lazy-load <track src> #7997
  • Security
    • Regenerate session ID on login #7829
    • Disallow setting non-existent language #7878, #7934
    • Safer calling of install.php #7971
    • Prevent log CR/LF injection #7883
    • Restrict allowed cURL parameters #7979, #8009
    • Fix reauthentication while updating #7989
    • Fix some CSRFs #8000
  • Bug fixing
    • Include port number for HTTP Retry-After #7875
    • Fix logic for searching labels #7863
    • Fix cURL response parsing for HTTP redirections #7866
    • Fix fetching OPML URL with special characters #7843
    • Fix validation when creating a new user label #7890
    • Fix bug in user self-deletion #7877
    • Fix displaying of current date in main statistics #7892
    • Fix default values on stat processing #7891
    • Fix UI JavaScript error when navigating to last article with keyboard #7957
    • Fix some links in anonymous mode #8011, #8012
    • Fixes for no-cache.txt #7907
    • Fix Docker Traefik .yml and SERVER_DNS example #7858
  • SimplePie
    • Upstream contribution: Normalize encoding uppercase simplepie#936, #7967
    • Sync upstream, including bump to 1.9.0 with better PHP 8.5+ support #7955
  • Deployment
    • Docker improve CMD compatibility #7861
    • Add possibility of Docker healthcheck #7945
  • UI
    • Keep sort and order after marking as read #7974
    • Improve leave validation #7830
    • Improve Origine theme visibility of toggle buttons #7956
    • Improve Dark pink theme #8020
    • Improve Mapco and Ansum themes: read all button in mobile view #7873
    • Improve Swage theme #7608
    • Use standard CSS overflow-wrap instead of word-wrap #7898
    • Various UI and style improvements: #7868, #7872,
      #7882, #7893, #7904,
      #7952
  • I18n
    • Clarify the concepts of visibility hidden vs. archived in feeds settings #7970
    • Translate the API information page #7922
    • Add a default language constant #7933
    • Label config delete label #7871
    • Add Ukrainian #7961
    • Improve Dutch #7940
    • Improve German #7833
    • Improve Hungarian #7986
    • Improve Japanese #7903, #7918
    • Improve Polish #7963
    • Improve Simplified Chinese #7943, #7944
    • Minor improvements #7881
    • Add CLI command to add i18n file #7917
    • Add make target to generate the translation progress #7905
  • Extensions
    • Add entry_before_update and entry_before_add hooks for extensions #7977
  • Misc.

Received — 25 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

City Life vs. Country Life

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
25 September 2025 at 20:45

I should probably lead with the good news. it looks like the problem of the old site—this one—is solved. The entire TypePad site, all 17 years of it, will go up on the web as a static resource. You'll be able to search it, illustrations will be present, and some of the links will continue to work.

For the foreseeable, I'm going to be blogging over at Patreon, which you can access at: 

patreon.com/theonlinephotographer

I'm still learning how Patreon works. This morning I wrote an off-topic post as a sort of experiment—tomorrow I'll experiment with a post containing a video. 

At Patreon, you can sign up for free (at the site, look for the three dots underneath the right-hand side of the picture of the lake), or you can just visit, or you can sign up to be a member, a.k.a. supporter, for whatever amount you want, as little as $1 per month. The most common amount is $5 a month. 

Members/supporters see everything, and can comment. Free subscribers and visitors will see all the photographic posts but not the off-topic ones. I figure people who support me like my writing, while people with a free account or who are just visiting come for photography content. They can't comment. That's not my decision—it's just how Patreon is set up.

This morning's OT post is about the many contrasts between the city and the country. In some cases the city wins, like this one: 

"If you live in the city, there are a hundred places to buy whatever you need. In the country, there's one place to buy any particular thing you need, and they will periodically run out of it. In the city, when a store or vendor runs out of something, it will be back in stock within, say, four days. In the country, when a store or vendor runs out of something, you might still be checking whether it's back in stock five weeks later, and at some point it becomes an open question whether you'll ever see it there again."

And in some cases the country wins, like this one:

"In the city, if your car breaks down by the side of the road, large numbers of cars will drive right past you as if you meant to be right there doing just what you're doing, and eventually a cop will help you. In the country, if you get stuck in the mud by the side of the road, a stranger in the very next passing pickup truck will stop, silently rig up a towline by taking it off another piece of equipment he has in his truckbed, pull you out out of the mud, and leave again, having said about eighteen words to you the whole time. He will of course wave off the ten-dollar bill you hold out to him as a thank-you for his time. Even though he could use ten bucks."

If you're NOT a Patreon supporter, would you do me a favor? Go over there and tell me what you can see. You're supposed to see the first paragraph and then come up against a paywall. But I'd like to know how it looks. As the so-called Creator, I can't see what you see.

Not so good
The Patreon compositor is more limited than the one here. For instance, those two quotes above are inset. I can't do that at Patreon. And I'm stuck with the font they provide. But you want to know what bugs me the most? Subheads! I like writing with subheads—they break up the "gray matter" (an old publishing term for unrelieved, unbroken masses of text), and they serve as mileposts for readers skipping forward or back or trying to find something in the post. But the way they're supposed to look is the way the subhead looks at the start of this paragraph—with no line break. Well, I can't do that at Patreon—it has to look like this:

Not so good

With a line break after it. Ugh. Has TOP no standards?! That just looks wrong to me. 

But oh well. Any port in a storm. TypePad is slated to disappear five days from now. 

By the way—fingers crossed—it looks like the problem of the old site—this one—is solved. The entire TypePad site, all 17 years of it, will go up on the web as a static resource. You'll be able to search it, illustrations will be present, and some of the links will continue to work. It doesn't have a URL yet, but it shouldn't be too long now. 

Comments are still open here. 

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Received — 22 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Please Follow Me Over On Patreon

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
22 September 2025 at 15:21

As we enter the mournful final days of the old TypePad blog, I've temporarily taken up posting at the Patreon site, which I formerly used just as a means of collecting voluntary contributions. There's a new post up over there this morning. The URL is: 

patreon.com/theonlinephotographer

Please bookmark it. Also, soon, my three domains, theonlinephotographer.com, .org, and .net, will all point to it. I haven't done that yet but I will soon. 

Really sad to say goodbye to my home of 17 years, but I'm rather liking Patreon. I like writing on the compositor. It feels a little different somehow. Illustrations can be larger. And, to be frank, I had been having a lot of problems here in recent months. It had become extremely difficult to load and publish illustrations, for example. 

Two little housekeeping details: one is that Patreon doesn't support RSS feeds for posts (sorry! The final WordPress site will have that feature), and the other is that you have to be a paid supporter to leave comments over there. That's the only means of moderating comments, except for deletion. 

Please head over there to see new posts and to leave comments (comments will be closed here from now on, although I'll post new reminders here a few more times).

Thanks for reading all these years, or however long you've been coming! 

Off we go into the future,

Mike

 

Received — 20 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Time for an EXECUTIVE DECISION

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
20 September 2025 at 18:12

I've decided what I have to do. It's becoming clear that the new site is not going to be ready for prime time by October 1, so...

The Online Photographer is moving to the Patreon site temporarily. The URL is:

patreon.com/theonlinephotographer

But, TOP on Patreon will still be mostly free. It won't be just for paying customers. Naturally, I love it and appreciate it when people want to join for a few bucks a month, but I'm more comfortable when you can do it voluntarily. So, over there on Patreon, you can either join as a paying supporter, join with a free account, or just go to the page and visit—most things will still be viewable that way. Hopefully people will become supporters because they want to, not because I'm coercing them by withholding most of the content. That's the way it's been up till now. Of course, a few things will be reserved just for supporters, because it's only fair. Supporters support me, after all.

How long will this last? Well, certainly until I get my groove back and settle into writing again. Maybe a couple of months. (That might turn into double that—just guessing.) As a way of taking the time pressure off of getting the new site up and running smoothly.

Dad's decision disk
Some people like making decisions early—"there, that's settled"—while others like leaving decisions until the last minute. I actually hate making decisions. Early-deciders think people like me are crazy, but there's an explanation for people who feel this way—it's that we dislike closure, because it shuts down possibilities and makes it harder to react and respond to new insights or new information. It's a version of what they call opportunity cost—when you decide on one possible course, you lose all the others. So people like us make decisions grudgingly and late and might still want to leave them open longer.

Just a personality kind of thing.

Decisiveness is good for certain pursuits—business, probably—but maybe not always; indecisiveness can hamper us in many cases, but in other circumstances it might be what saves the day. I could name examples of decisions reached rashly and too soon. Sometimes, people, or companies, or countries get cornered into having to accept a decision that's clearly wrong. (If I named those examples, it would hijack this discussion straightaway.)

My father's notion was that any decision is better than no decision. He was so frustrated with my indecisiveness that he came home from a trip once with a present, a brass medallion about three inches in diameter. One side was inset with red enamel and said "NO," and the other side was enameled green and said "YES." He told me that whenever I had a decision to make, I should flip it on to the carpet and go with whatever came up. 

So the next time I had a decision to make, I flipped it on the carpet. It came up Yes. I stood there for a minute or two, pondering, then reached over and with my toe flipped it to the No side. Then a pondered a while longer, and flipped it back to Yes.... 

Laughing emoji here....

So that wasn't going to work. 

Anyway, this isn't really a decision either. But I'm overwhelmed and stressed out, and if I don't find a way to relieve the pressure, then these next ten days (this site, on TypePad, will be gone forever on the 30th) will not be pleasant. Or productive: I don't deal with pressure well (never have), and I don't work effectively once the pressure gets too high. When you don't do things until you have to, sometimes it's good. It falls under the category of motivation. But when the pressure gets to be too much it turns into a net negative. 

Again, the new URL is patreon.com/theonlinephotographer. I'll point my domains there within the next few days. The old links will break on the 30th.

As an aside, I've gotten fascinated in the past week or so with videos showing boats navigating Florida inlets—Haulover Inlet, for one—which I never knew was a thing. (The internet is full of surprising things you new knew existed). Boats being buffeted and tossed by chaotic waves—it's like watching a metaphor.

I will be astonished if I don't lose half my audience in the next two weeks, so, if you stick with me through these choppy seas, you're really helping, and thanks. 

If you have any comments, please leave them over there. I'll leave comments turned on here for a few more days, but they'll disappear soon. 

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. COMMENTS HERE WILL BE TURNED OFF SOON, AND OLD COMMENTS WILL BE LOST

      
Received — 16 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

New blogging venture

✇An und für sich
By: Adam Kotsko
16 September 2025 at 18:32

I have decided to start a new solo blog entitled That Blog You Like Is Going to Come Back in Style. My first post is an attempt to set an appropriate tone.

My reason for doing this is a sense that I need a change. It may be permanent or it may fizzle out. In either case, this site and its archives will remain available, and it will be open for new posts from any of my co-bloggers (i.e., Marika).

Existing email subscribers to this blog have been subscribed to the new one. I apologize for any inconvenience and annoyance. Feel free to unsubscribe without judgment or offense. But by the same token, I’d love to continue the conversation with any past blog fans.

A Thousand Ways to Miss a Shot

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
16 September 2025 at 10:40

David Vestal once said photographers are "professional noticers." I notice things all the time that most people pass by blissfully unaware. Constantly looking. Constantly noticing.

I can tell when I get in "photographing mode" because I just start seeing pictures. As I go about my life in the world I'll think to myself (does that expression strike anyone else as singularly dumb? "Think to myself"? How else does anyone ever think?)—anyway, I'll think to myself, that's a picture right there or there goes another one. 

And there are a thousand ways to miss a picture. Which, I suppose, is why it's most satisfying to go out photographing with a singular purpose—equipped, attentive, undistracted. Mainly, you drive past it. Or you don't have permission. Or it's fleeting, a momentary juxtaposition of moving things. Or the light changes. Or you don't have your camera with you. Or the thing you see suits another camera you own, but not the one you're using right then. Or I'll see four possible pictures and stop and get out of the car for the wrong one, the one I've taken before and seen before. The list goes on. 

You've got to be prepared and ready, willing to stop, willing to do the work of getting the shot, because otherwise the missed opportunities will mount up and the whole experience will tip over into becoming too frustrating, too weighted with failure. You need to try hard to succeed because you need to succeed enough.

I've written in the past about some of "the ones that got away" (the expression comes from fishing). Most of them don't hurt.

Some hurt.

As you might know I'm between cars. I have a new bus; a friend will arrive today to pay me a wad of bills for the old sheet metal, and I'll be sorry to see it go. It's been a great little car and I've always liked it. In the new car, I've been carrying my camera. So, on Saturday, the magic happened. Picture the scene: a 1950s convertible, top down, parked in front of the backdrop of a big, hulking old stone church. A bride and groom in the front seat. Gathered around them, a semicircle of smiling, dressed-up wedding guests. In front of the car, a number of people raising phones in the air to capture the moment. And they're all just... there. I mean the scene is stable, not shifting or moving or dissolving. And right across the street, the grocery store parking lot. Where I can park within mere steps of the perfect standpoint to get a shot of the whole scene, with nothing to worry about but passing traffic possibly getting in the way. I'm thirty feet from the entrance and coming up on it. Perfect, perfect, perfect. I stand a real chance to get this one. And the sequence in my head goes: omigod perfect; they're not moving; camera's right here; I can swing into the parking lot and be right in position in like a minute. 

And then...oh no, wrong car! I was driving the old Acura because I was going to the house of the friend who wanted to buy it so he and his wife could take a test drive. The camera was sitting back in my garage, eight miles away, in the other car. "Hold it right there! I'll be back in 25 minutes"? Arrrgh. 

That wedding scene was one of the three best pictures I didn't take since 2022 when I got my current camera. Pure luck. Pure gift from the cosmos, the Universe, the gods. Missed it.

The part of the brain where guilt resides
I think I've now written about all three. (I guess doing so makes me feel a little better.) The first one was a breathtakingly picturesque thunderhead on the other side of the lake, with the sun behind one side casting out strong and dramatic crepuscular rays. I was out walking the dog, and was passing by a spot where the property owner has explicitly given permission for me to go on to his property to photograph the lake. And, setting out, I had considered bringing the camera along, and then had thought (to myself): why bother? I'm not going to see anything I haven't seen a million times before.

Well, I did.

The second was when a neighbor had the Mennonites clear half an acre of trees up on the hill, with front loaders and backhoes. The great heap of felled trees sat there for half a year, drying, and then one day I passed by and the Mennonites had built a giant pyre for burning, maybe two and a half stories high, interwoven, almost sculptural, as if it were crafted, with a giant stump like a crown on top. It was mystical, magnificent. I drove by that again and again, each time thinking (right, to myself) I've got to get a picture of that. With darkness coming and a brooding overcast gray sky, it looked fantastical, like it could have been raised by primitive Vikings or Druids a thousand years ago. Enigmatic. Architectural. Mysterious. Did I stop? No. Again and again, no. I was always rushing out or rushing home. The last time, I think I even thought (...), this looks fine, and I have my camera with me, but you know, to really get "the" shot I might have to come back again and again, photograph it in different light and at different times of day. Like that should stop me; why should that stop me?

And then came the day when I drove past and it was a heap of smoking ash. 

All three are seared on my brain. The part of the brain where guilt goes. Of course it's a natural part of photographing; Ansel almost missed "Moonrise" and Eddie Adams clicked the shutter before the fatal shot and the Marines at Iwo Jima raised the flag a second time for the press cameras. Buzz and Neil didn't have the camera set wrong when they were hopping around on the moon. But every photographer misses shots too.

Fishing, you do usually catch a few. But oh, those ones that get away....

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Whisk Briskly (How I Make Salad Dressing) (OT)

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
16 September 2025 at 09:10

Every day I've been eating what I call a "survival salad." Basically because I'd rather not die too soon if I can avoid it. I have heart disease, and an ever-varied assortment of edible greens comes in hot at No. 1 on the grand list of the healthiest possible things to eat. Regardless of nutritional ideology—or idiot-ology—gotta get your greens. What follows is what my research led me to for dressing.

Oil is controversial in the WFPB (whole-food plant-based) world. Some doctor/scientists recommend zero oil—the estimable Dr. Greger famously called it "the table sugar of the fat kingdom." However, there's an epidemiologist who I listen to, Walter Willett [note: links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases], who thinks fats are important enough that he includes healthy oils in Harvard's amended version of the USDA "MyPlate," the "Healthy Eating Plate." He recommends focusing on unsaturated fats, from sources like olive oil, canola oil, nuts, seeds, avocado, and fatty fish such as salmon. In sensible, small amounts. Aside from the linked book, Dr. Willett is the author of the standard basic epidemiological text of the links between foods and diseases, Nutritional Epidemiology, and the researcher most responsible for identifying the dangers of trans fats. 

HEPJan2015-2

Harvard tries to correct the political distortions
in the USDA "MyPlate" recommendations,
which were influenced by industry 

Contrary to received wisdom, unpretentious canola oil is the healthiest oil. It has half the saturated fat of olive oil and more omega-6. Still, I use olive oil for salads, as it tastes better, and canola oil for cooking.

You can make the dressing right in the bowl you're going to mix the salad in. One tablespoon of your oil of choice, one tablespoon of a vinegar of choice; a small dollop—maybe the size of a garbanzo bean on the tip of a spoon—of both dijon mustard and garlic paste (you can finely mince real garlic if you have the time); a generous pinch each of ginger powder and salt; a couple of turns of black pepper from the grinder; and I add just a bit of water and lemon juice. If it strikes you as too acidic you can add a little honey or maple syrup. Whisk briskly (I love the term "whisk briskly"—say it out loud), then add your salad fixings and toss. Modify to suit.

Lazy, easy, tasty and neat, and you can say that out loud too.

Mike

(This is a test of adding Amazon book links and other links to Patreon. —Mike the Ed.)

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Received — 14 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Another Idea... (Blog Note)

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
14 September 2025 at 16:15

[TypePad is closing at the end of this month. If all goes well, a replacement site will be up and running before then at theonlinephotographer.com . We're a-workin' on it.]

How about this idea? How about all the photography-related posts on the public free blog, and off-topic posts added to the Patreon version? 

Note that the Patreon version (you can see the two posts I've put up there so far by going to patreon.com/theonlinephotographer , although I have to figure out how to get rid of that "Featured Products" block which I don't like) has the first part of each post as free public content—anyone can see it. Those people can pay a one-time fee to see the rest of one specific post if they really want to. Patreon contributors see all of every post at Patreon without ever having to pay anything extra.

That gives "Mike fans" (contributors) posts on my random enthusiasms, but keep the public TOP centered more on photographic topics and subjects. That way, visitors to a site called the online photographer don't come for the first time and find a long post about pens, dogs, the weather in the Finger Lakes, keyboards, eating beans, baby robins, or whatever I'm on about.

Of course it also means Patreon contributors might have to toggle back and forth if they want to see the more polished presentation (man, I hope those words don't come back to bite me) on the public free blog site. 

What do you think?

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Received — 13 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Open Mike: My New Not-a-Charger (OT)

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
13 September 2025 at 17:49

[Note: The third incarnation of this website, which will be at theonlinephotographer.com and will launch in October, won't publish on weekends, or during August, as Yr. Hmbl. Ed. continues the Battle Against Burnout. But it also won't have off-topic posts on specific enthusiasms, such as WFPB diets and electric cars. Those will spin off to different sites, eventually. But as long as this version of the website endures, you are not yet safe!

My readers are very indulgent.  :-) ]

Lenz

Woo-hoo! The day finally came. I got my 240-volt AC Level 2 EVSE installed. Level 2 is overnight charging, used by the vast majority of EV owners who charge at home.

The thing that says "LENZ" is not actually a "charger." (It's not a lens, either. Although it is named for a physicist—Emil Lenz.) It's a supply box. Technical name EVSE, for "electric vehicle supply equipment." EVs—electric vehicles—don't use external AC chargers. The AC charger is in the cars. For a month now I've been using Level 1 (standard 120-volt outlet) with the portable cable that came with the car. Honestly, it's almost good enough for me to use permanently. Not everybody needs all that much charging. 

But it's nice to have a little more. Level 1 supplies about 1.2 kW of continuous power. My new circuit is an AC 240V, 50-amp circuit. The maximum it will supply is 40 amps. My car's maximum acceptance rate is 30 amps (it's more in European versions of my car, a Nissan Ariya. Don't ask me why). I had Richard Bruno, the electrician, set my EVSE at 24 amps. That's 5.8 kW, so it'll be almost five times faster than the Level 1 cable I've been using.

So what you're seeing in the picture is a 14-50 outlet, the EVSE plugged into it, and the cable and cable holder. The electrical box (pre-existing) is on the wall in front of the car. Total cost of installation, about $790, including the EVSE, the receptacle (outlet), the wall plate for the outlet, and the plywood. 

With most EVs, you let the car tell the supply box how much power it wants. With most cars you can choose a percentage of full—I normally charge to 80% or so. But for some reason the Ariya doesn't let you do this—all you can set is the time of day and the length of time you want it to charge. So you do have to kind of estimate how long you're going to need to charge. Funny thing is, though, the MyNissan app does tell you to the percentage of charge—for instance, I just unplugged from my new EVSE's maiden voyage, and the app looks like this:

Screenshotariya

More weirdness, though—the apps lets you start charging remotely, but it doesn't let you stop charging remotely. I read the reason for this somewhere but I don't remember it now. 

Once I get use to it, though, this is going to be very easy. And fast. It takes me about a minute to program the charging time on the screen in the car, and then no time at all, really, to plug in. After that there's nothing—you just come out in the morning, unplug, and off you go. With a "full tank" by whatever your own definition of "full" happens to be. Did I mention I haven't been to a gas station in a month? I wave as I glide silently by, though. 

Level 2 charging just means that you're plugging in to a 240-volt circuit instead of 120V. The outlet looks like the one for your dryer or range (but it had better be better quality—cheap 14-50 receptacles aren't designed and built for continuous current. This is the one I bought. It's expensive, but worth it unless you want your outlet to melt or, in rare cases, your garage to burn down).

Fun fact: Volts are named for Alessandro Volta. I don't know if you learn something new every day, but I do. 

Many sizes all fit all
There is no single power level for Level 2 charging. You can set yourself up for a variety of levels of power and the associated charging times. Here's a brief look at the circuit breaker you need, the EVSE amperage it supports, and the power expressed in kilowatts for the various levels of level 2 charging: 

100-amp circuit: charger amperage 80; continuous power 19.2 kW.

60-amp circuit: charger amperage 48; continuous power 11.5 kW.

50-amp circuit: charger amperage 40; continuous power 9.6 kW.

40-amp circuit: charger amperage 32; continuous power 7.7 kW.

30-amp circuit: charger amperage 24; continuous power 5.8 kW.

20-amp circuit: charger amperage 16; continuous power 3.8 kW.

All these are compared to Level 1, which requires a 15-amp circuit and supplies 1.2 kW continuous power. 

It's worth noting that it's not entirely up to you what you get. All EVs—the cars themselves—have a maximum acceptance rate. It does no good to get a charger that's faster than your car allows, except if you're future-proofing your setup for your next car. 

The thing is, though, for AC charging, it really doesn't matter how fast your car charges. All Level 2 charging is essentially overnight charging. It takes no time at all because you're not waiting for it—you're inside, sleeping.

Mike

Coda: This is the post I was working on when the line went dead on Sept. 4th. It's now the 13th, and in those nine days I've only had the car hooked up to the electricity four times, for a cumulative grand total of about 12 hours—two hours the first night, four the third night, and so on. My best estimate of the cost for that is somewhere between $3.16 and $3.89. I didn't need to charge yesterday, for instance. The SoC (state of charge) has only been below 30% once, and the highest SoC I've charged up to is 85%. It almost seems like it should be more difficult.

If my usage for the first nine days is typical, and the cost estimate is correct, then my electricity cost for the car for this month should be between $10.43 and $12.84. In a typical household with an EV, the car is not the biggest user of electricity—it comes in third, after heating and hot water. 

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Received — 12 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

Great Light Makes Great Pictures

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
12 September 2025 at 17:32

[Note: The TypePad site is not allowing me to upload new content easily. I did finally get the previous post to publish—or maybe someone at TypePad helped. I'll keep trying to publish this one and maybe eventually you'll see it. —Mike the stressed-out Ed.]

My old friend Phil Davis had a remarkable room in the large, gracious house he built out of concrete and precast concrete slabs in Whitmore Lake, outside of the city of Ann Arbor in the State of Michigan. I'd say the place was built like a brick except it was stronger and sturdier than any mere brick. Phil was the inventor of BTZS, Beyond the Zone System, a more technically rigorous version of Ansel Adams and Fred Archer's system of exposure and development control. Phil, who was of my father's generation and died in 2007, was a technical polymath, and had been a top advertising photographer for the Detroit automobile industry in the 1950s. It's a shame his car pictures were never collated and collected—some of them would be amazing period pieces today. But to him they were just work product. He was very unsentimental about photographs. Anyway his dining room had what looked to be absolutely gorgeous light, and there's a story behind that.

The room was a nice but normal-sized dining room centered around a magnificent George Nakashima live-edge dining room table (an original, built by George, not his studio). The room had one large panoramic window of the type that used to be called a "picture window" that was north-facing or nearly so; it might have caught a bit of direct late-afternoon sunlight in the summertime. So what Phil noticed was that the light in the room had varying qualities on the walls and ceiling. The wall opposite the window was brighter than the others; one side wall took on a subtle greenish cast from the woods on the ridge, the other a subtle bluish cast from the open sky. So what he did was to paint all the walls of the room to enhance the natural light that already existed—one wall a little more greenish, the opposite one a little more blue, the back wall a little brighter. This had the effect of intensifying the natural effect of the light. It was subtle enough that you didn't recognize what was going on at first, but the visual impression was close to magical—your impression was that the room glowed with an ethereal, otherworldly natural light. 

Phil really understood light.

When he drew the curtains and turned on the room lights you could see it. Or, at least, you could see it as he described it to you. When he first showed the room to me, I had been at his house for hours—I'm sure he was waiting for the optimal time of day to show me the effect.

He was also a very patient guy. When he tested Fred Picker's contention that fixer was heavier than water and sank to the bottom of print washers, which was total bunkum, he mixed fixer and water in a bottle and let it sit for a year to see if it would separate. Of course it didn't.

I thought of him recently because I happened to install a daylight (cold) light bulb, 5600K, in the overhead fixture of my downstairs powder room, when the fixture over the sink has one of those old-fashioned style clear glass bulbs that are very warm, 2700K. Pretty sure they're universally called "Edison" light bulbs. I actually like the effect—warm and cool light play off each other in the little room, giving the visual impression that the cool light is coming from the single small high window.

Phil, who was of my father's generation, died in 2007. We kept up a daily correspondence for six or seven years before he got sick with his final illness. He was a deeply erudite, curious observer of the world, very thoughtful, and had truly forgotten more about photography than most people ever knew. He loved to design and run technical experiments in the large studio-darkroom that took up one end of his large house in Whitmore Lake—his wife Martha ruled the other end of the house, which contained the kitchen, the laundry room, and her office—she was a professional indexer, and a great proofreader too. The dining and living rooms were the neutral middle ground which they amicably shared. Some of Phil's many experiments I could induce him to publish in Photo Techniques, but some of them I couldn't—he thought they'd be too controversial and provoke backlash, and he didn't suffer fools gladly when it came to all the nonsense that true-believer types then believed about photographic technique. He had jousted in the past with many of them. He would just patiently prove them wrong in his own lab, with impeccable scientific rigor,  and leave it at that.

Phil wrote several books. His textbook is of course outdated but I think parts of it are still of interest today. When digital came along he was nonplussed, despite having spent so much time and effort becoming a deep master of the older tech. He just set to understanding it and how it worked—and commenced to teasing me for being hidebound and old school, pretty funny as I was younger by 36 years. Phil had four grown sons, and I was the age, if memory serves, of the youngest.

Natural light studios? Who does that?
I used to do portraits by extemporizing natural-light studio setups. One of the best was in the second-story storage area of a very old (circa 1903) garage building at my grandparents' summer home. The building is now gone, at least from where it used to be—an eccentric cousin had it moved to his own property a few hundred yards away, where it now sits in the woods. Anyway on the second story there was one largish north-facing window, and a solid railing over which you could look down into the garage below. A subject (a friend) sat on the railing, and the distance into the unlighted background space made it look completely black. Some number of stops of illumination differential would make a background look black to B&W film—I forget now how many. The window was to her right and slightly in front of her. Then I took a white sheet and hung it just out of the lens's view to her left, for fill. Boy, did it ever look crude and primitive. But the result was as good as any portrait lighting I ever achieved. I used to try to replicate it with studio strobes.

I assisted for a top studio advertising pro in D.C. for a short time—I couldn't afford graduate school and was on a mission to educate myself by working down a checklist of my own devising of a variety of experiences in photography. Assisting for a studio pro was one of the items on the checklist. My boss was a master of artificial lighting—he probably had $100k worth of lighting equipment at his studio, and that was more money in the '80s than it is now. He asked to see some of my work once, and he was highly enamored of one particular portrait of a beautiful young model, done with another of my natural lighting setups. He kept gushing about how perfect the lighting looked, and asked me if I would describe the setup to him. I think he expected that I would refuse, because lighting setups to him were a trade secret, not to be given away to competitors or possible future competitors (it was thought at the time that most assistants would eventually go on to open their own studios, possibly competing with their former employers). When I described the setup to him he was incredulous. He kept saying, "that's natural light?!" He was a bit of a control freak when it came to lighting and didn't like using natural light even when he had to. On a sunny day he would move into the shade and set up his beloved Speedotrons to mimic sunlight. (Not really. I'm joking.) Finally, after staring at in silence for a good while longer, he flipped it dismissively on to the table top and said, "it's not really that good." Makes me chuckle—it was good until it couldn't be. 

Here's a secret tip for making better photographs—look for great light.

You gotta get used to looking at light rather than at the thingy-ness of the world. It's not those things you're photographing—it's those things in that light. Light is ever-changing, and the same thing or scene will look completely different in different light. Great light helps make great photographs. 

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

(Featured Comments are suspended because I'm having so much trouble with uploads.)

      

More About the Upcoming New Site

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
12 September 2025 at 02:51

The old (TypePad) site is back, hopefully till Sept. 30th, and the URL is:

https://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/blog_index.html

The new site is currently just a "Coming Soon" page but will be accessible once it goes live at

theonlinephotographer.org

and

theonlinephotographer.com

And by the way, don't worry too much if the new site is pretty rough at first. As I understand it, they're going to build it based just on my verbal descriptions and then give me one pass at fixing whatever I don't like. However, thanks to the 86 people who contributed to the GoFundMe a few days ago, I have enough moolah handy to hire a third party to go into it and fix up anything that's still not right. So we should still be able to get where we want to get to. It might not happen right away, but I'll keep after it.

It's going to look very different than the current site: pretty simple and plain. If all goes well it will just be a blog, on a white background. You might miss the yellowish and tan and earth tones of the old site, but I won't miss having to fill in the backgrounds of illustrations with the old background color. If you don't see something on the new site you want, let me know when the times comes and we'll see what we can do about it. 

The tabs will be Home (the blog itself, which will be the landing page), Contact (a form—mostly people can communicate with me in the Comments section, as I'll continue to read all the comments), Books, Settings, and, possibly, social media icons. The Books tab will go to a Book of the Month page—I plan to journey to the Eastman Museum or some other good photo bookshop within striking range (even Boston or NYC) and look at books, and pick one that's worthy of our attention. Then on the books page I'll post a thumbnail image of the cover, the title with a link to Amazon, and a short review. I tried to do this for a while with a "Book of the Week" version, but it was too much work to do every week and I really feel I should see the book myself, the paper and the ink in person, before I recommend it. Besides, I should be up to date on at least some current photobooks, so the effort will educate me.

Settings will be for "mechanical room" stuff, Comment Guidelines, the RSS feed, recent posts, that sort of thing. 

One big question is whether each post should have a "Continue Reading" button after a few paragraphs, or appear whole and complete right there on the main page. I know some people like just being able to read straight through without clicking around, but I think newcomers are put off by long posts and don't immediately "get" that there are other posts! So I'm leaning to an intro with a "Continue Reading" button at the end. Besides, that will help me to be more focused about writing ledes. We all know how I can get prolix (wordy) and take my time getting to the point. (I should also stop using words on the difficulty level of "prolix," which is used .01 times per million words and is unknown to perhaps 98% of native English speakers. The blog shouldn't be a vocabulary test).

As for social media icons, I don't understand them or how they work. Some people say if readers click on a social media icon (Facebook, Instagram) on a website, it takes you to their social media site, to allow them to share what they just read. Other people say the icons will take them to my (the writer's) social media sites. The former would be good, the latter not so much—my problem being that I don't have any social media accounts. I have enough work to do just maintaining and keeping the conversation going on TOP. So I'm not sure if the new site will have social media icons or not. 

One thing that's long been a sore point is how illustrations are going to be handled. I'll describe what I'd ideally want and you see what you think. The second option is a real thing that I've seen in the wild, so it's theoretically possible. 

What I'd like is two classes of illustration. The first would be a nuts-and-bolts kind of thing that imparts information but isn't aesthetic. That can just be a standard size that fits the width of the column or smaller and doesn't enlarge. 

For aesthetic images I'd like them to click open on a whole screen such that the image is seen uncropped and surrounded first by a narrow band of white, and then on a background (roughly the proportions of an overmat) of Zone VI or Zone V gray. Then, if the image size allows it, a further click should enlarge it to 100%. The next click returns you to the blog. I'd make an illustration of this (a desktop computer with an image like this showing on it) except it's beyond my skills. 

I have seen this in the wild, honest, and it's just right. I have my grail. We'll see if we can actually implement it on the new site. Wish us luck. 

A final comment: many people know I'm an alcoholic in recovery (my anniversary was yesterday—35 years clean and sober), and a member of the granddaddy of 12-step programs, which must not be named because we don't represent at the level of press, radio, and films (and television and social media and ostensible photo blogs). I use the program as the basis for my spiritual life, and I've found that the more you put into it, the more you get out of it. It's been wonderful as an engine of personal growth for me. But here's the point: I never, ever would have gotten into it in the first place except that I had to. I'm an introvert and a loner and I go my own way. I'm not a joiner and I always had trouble feeling like I belong—even in the bosom of my own families, nuclear and extended. But alcohol left me sick, miserable, trapped, and desperate—so much so that I had to get help. It was that, or continue on toward a pathetic early death. I had tried my best to get well on my own and I just could not. So I was forced into my recovery strategies and programs by absolute necessity. 

See the analogy? Back when I realized TypePad was going downhill, I tried ten times in the intervening years to migrate TOP to a new platform (if you go to theonlinephotographer.net you will see a two-year-old aborted try on Wix, which I futzed with for a torturous four hours and then abandoned). Each time I was driven into the rocky shoals of my ineptitude and gave up. So this is good for me, in a way. I'd never have actually finished this migration to a new platform, except now I have to. 

By the way, I'm also thinking about doing two other new blogs, one about WFPB and one about electric cars. I have a lot of interest in both that remains untapped despite their regular intrusions into what is supposed to be a photography blog. So I might just spin those off. 

It's been fun to think of things afresh. More news as I have it. Thanks for sticking around. This too shall pass.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Received — 11 September 2025 ⏭ Uncategorized

What Just Happened?!

✇The Online Photographer
By: Michael Johnston
10 September 2025 at 22:06

IMPORTANT NOTE: The way to get to me (The Online Photographer a.k.a. TOP) in the future will be to go directly to...

theonlinephotographer.com

...which is my domain that I own and can control.

theonlinephotographer.org  should work as well. All the old TypePad links will go dark after September 30th. Please make note of the new URL and, if you can and wouldn’t mind helping, please spread the word!

Every now and then in life, you get a wild ride that you didn’t see coming. Or rather, it’s like a sign I saw on a city bus in D.C. many years ago. The sign, above the automated side door of the bus, said "WARNING: Door May Close Without Warning," below which some wag had written 'Not any more it won't."

Both were right, in a way. The sign's warning is general, and it means you won’t get any notice that the door is closing at any specific moment. You get it.

So that’s the warning I had about the demise of TypePad, the blogging platform that has been TOP’s home for 17 years. Generally, the handwriting had been on the wall since 2020, when they stopped accepting new customers. Specifically, though, the end hit me like a lightning bolt from blue sky.

On August 27th, TypePad announced it would be shutting down—on September 30th. That gave slackers like me a month and three days to do two important things: 1.) prepare existing content (I have quite a lot of it, as you might know) for migration and make sure backups were all in order, and 2.) get a new site built somewhere else. That would have been hard enough. A mere seven days later, though, on September 4th, TypePad experienced some sort of unexplained but catastrophic crash. Probably, all their clients were bombarding their servers with requests to retrieve content—I know that’s what I was doing. TOP vanished from the Web. It seems to be back up now (thanks, TypePad team...they're working very hard and dealing with a lot of ¢R@p, I'm sure). 

With the help and input of lots of people, including Gordon L., Alex B., Martin Q., Chris C., Chris F., Richard T., and Robin H.—and others, not forgetting them—I decided that the imperative was to get a new site up quickly. That's what you'll see if you go to theonlinephotographer.com or .org now. It's a "Coming Soon" page as I write this...or should be; soon it will be a temporary placeholder site, and after that it'll be a customized self-hosted Wordpress-dot-org site built with professional help. As for an archive site with old posts, well, all in good time.

We're not out of the woods yet. This amounts to what magazine people used to call a relaunch, and it was well understood in the magazine world that relaunches were essentially just as perilous as inaugural launches of new titles. Old habits and old expectations get broken, existing customers have trouble finding you, and circulation (called traffic on the Web) takes a dip.

But—as Jack Nicholson’s character in The Shining said, “I’m baaa-ack!”

I sure am glad. Wild days indeed. I have to say, though, I'm really going to miss the old site. It's as comfortable as the proverbial old shoe. I'm so used to writing in its compositor that I have trouble with all other word-processing programs. I suppose I'll have to adjust.

Still a lot of work to do yet, but hopefully I'll be around here for the rest of the month. Then on to v.3 (this is the second incarnation of TOP. The new one will be v.3).

Another quote, from a now-ancient TV show: "And awaaay we go!"

Mike

Original contents copyright 2025 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

❌