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This is my favorite Haiku, written by my friend Ken Chawkin. As soon as I heard it more than eight years ago it was memorized!

Tiny bells call me,
Arbutus blossoms falling,
Sounding the silence

Blaine sent this one to me, and I like a lot:

In places without names,
Gladsome and lovely
Wild cherry blossoms.

Koshun

I’ve gotten a good response from today’s newsletter. It was fun doing some black and white photography for a change and I think I will try to do some in a lot more of my photo shoots.

Here’s the link to today’s newsletter.

Enjoy!

This morning I went out to take a few more pictures for my newsletter tomorrow. I headed down to the apple orchard because the apples are in full bloom. When I arrived, the beautiful light on the tall orchard grass caught my attention and added another dimension to the photo shoot.

I ended up spending an hour in the orchard, and printed many of the shots in black and white. In the end, I decide to use only today’s shots in tomorrow’s newsletter. The dandelion orchard photos will be saved for another time.

You can see more of this shoot in the Straight From The Camera section of my site.

Today I spend a good chunk of time figuring out how to add barcodes to my greeting cards so I can sell them wholesale.

Soon you may find one of these barcodes on a greeting card from me. Below is the design for the back side of one of my cards to come.

It’s definitely a puzzle figuring these barcode out, but I’ve got to say it’s been kind of fun!

If you ever need to get your own ISBN number in the U.S. go to www.isbn.org. If you need a UPC code in the U.S. go to www.gs1us.org. Get ready to get an education because there’s a lot to learn!

Yesterday evening I went out photographing with Blaine’s niece, Sarah. She had never used a camera in manual mode with a tripod, but she caught on very quickly. We spent most of our time in an apple orchard that is starting to bloom. The door photo is just across the street from Sarah’s house.

I hope you will enjoy Sarah’s photos:

You can see more photos from this shoot in the Straight From The Camera section of my website.

Yesterday I came across this beautiful peach orchard in bloom, with dandelions covering the earth. You can see more of these photos in the Straight From the Camera section of my website.

These incredibly long stairs begged to be photographed.

And this deer and I noticed each other about the same time in the cherry orchard.

“When people see some things as good, other things become bad.” Tao Te Ching

I was out this morning for a short bit in the hills photographing what the locals here call Okanagan Sunflowers. They cover the hillsides here in early May and are as lovely as any garden flower.

You can see a few shots in the Straight From The Camera section of my site.

Check out this week’s newsletter here.