There are a number of endings at play here. One story from this day belongs to someone else and I won't relate it here. But the others?

On the morning of this shot I headed up to Digital Camera Warehouse in Canterbury in Sydney. (That's a few k's from my old residence, actually; it used to be a lovely short drive out to there of a weekend morning, albeit one that was a tad too tempting to make too often.)

I was off to pick up some filters and other odds and sods. On the way there I drove past a large independent hardware store that was quite near my old place. That was another piece of local temptation for me and, consequently, part of my own past. It also sold timber, and had signs up advertising all of the timber types available including Oregon. There may have been something prophetic in that for within a year or so of moving there I was indeed standing on the very soil of Oregon itself. And that trip launched me on my photographic journey because the shots from my old Kodak 35mm were so utterly gorram appalling that I decided that I should learn to do photography properly. But I digress, or maybe I don't. Anyway, after more years than I can know it has a "Closing Down, Last Days" sign up.

I drove on to Canterbury. DCW is on the right and it's impossible to turn into their car park from my side of the road so I usually loop around the back streets, past light industrial factories (joinery and so forth) and a large Mitre 10 hardware store down near the Cooks River. Or which used to be, for on this day there were traffic controllers directing vehicles through to allow construction vehicles into what is now a multi-story apartment block construction site. And some of the other light industrial places have "For Sale, Rezoned Land stickers" on them. The whole character of the area is changing; once light industrial, now high density residential.

Another ending was my hope to have the 40-150mm f/2.8 lens to supplement my 12-40 before the end of the year. DCW said that Olympus had reported a worldwide shortage and, indeed, other places had them as "Pre-order" as well. But I knew that before I went there. The closure of two large independent hardware stores and the redevelopment of Canterbury... that I knew nothing about.

So why isn't that my shot? Because there was a beginning that day as well. As the astute EXIF reader will be able to deduce.

I delayed posting this for as day because Don Mottershead posted a macro in his PAD that made this shot of a Bird Of Paradise plant look, how shall we put it... a tad primitive. However it was the first shot and in very different (and harsher) light, so it is what it is. And I'm not really disappointed with what it is.

Edit: Ummm... no. It's not the complete and utter absence of the EXIF data set in the grid that I'm referring to which I have no idea of the cause of. The usual data appears on the .jpg and in the Tech Notes field of PBase. Why it's rendering nothing into the grid I have no idea. But at least the lens details are there.