THE 12th DAY OF THE 9TH MONTH OF THE YEAR OF THE OP

NORTH WILDWOOD, NJ @ HEREFORD INLET

For those that regard New Jersey as the right and left side of the New Jersey Turnpike on the way to the colors of New England or the Beaches of the south------------ these are the beaches of South Jersey.

Or at least symbolic of the south Jersey beaches. The inlet here is wild and woolly most of the time.

On a high tide with a nor'easter, it's even more interesting. Sure there are allot of beach homes and people around, but come September the summer crowd has all gone back to school.

See you all right here on October 17 and 18 at the Hereford Inlet Lighthouse.

In the meantime, I will be in Florida till Wednesday of Next week and unlikely to post any more dribble until I return. You'll have to do with Fox new till then, so sorry!

THE ELEVENTH DAY OF THE NINTH MONTH OF THE TWO THOUSANDTH AND FIRST YEAR

NINE ELEVEN TWO THOUSAND AND ONE

May our children and their children and their children and their children and their children and so on, remember that day in infamy!

So that our sons and daughters never have to live in caves and their women never have to wear burkas!

And may the perpetrators and the followers of that atrocity forever live in there own perceived hell without martyrdom forevermore!

The 9th day of the 9th month of the 2009th year

AS HIGH AS AN ELEPHANT'S EYE

9-9-9 now play that on the lottery!

Some time's it's a nice to get up close and personal with one's subject, as it is to capture the whole critter.

This is the eye of my subject at the Riverbanks Zoo here in Columbia SC. I do have some interesting shots of this fellow in the whole, but the eye has character. Long lashes and great brown eye color. The texture of the skin is fantastic despite all the added dirt which they seem to love. Wonderful wrinkles.

The 8th day of the 9th month of the year of the OP

EAST COAST LIGHTHOUSES
A NEW PRODUCT

It has been awhile since I sat down and have gotten creative with some new packaging. But since I have an annual show in North Wildwood on the Weekend of October 17 and 18, I thought I had needed get to work.

http://www.herefordlighthouse.org/

Of course I have the state posters which can be seen at the websites and individual prints, but the top lighthouses are scattered all over the place. And this will be a lighthouse show. The New Jersey Lighthouse Challenge.

http://www.njlhs.org/challenge/challenge.html


So the top twenty or so are now centered on an individual glicee print which will range in sizes from 8x10's on up. They will be sold on boxes, matted, and framed. Prices will range from inexpensive to second mortgage type stuff in hand made frames of quality woods such as antique oak and black walnut.

Most of the images have been tweaked to make them a little different from the run of the mill post card prints and look fairly decent. At least I think so, but it will be all in the presentation.

The 7th day of the ninth month of the year of the OP

DIFFERENT FEATHERS IN STRANGE PLACES

A few day back I talked about different birds seen in places not ordinarily seen in back yards or places not necessarily ordinarily seen.

A few years back when making a study on the watermen of the Chesapeake Bay and while in the middle of the bay with land about five miles away in every direction, a Cockatoo landed on the boat.

Out of nowhere!

Now these are expensive birds and must have escaped from some collector on shore somewhere and needed a landing spot because five miles is a long flight for a captive bird all in one gulp.

He/she hung out for a while. Ate some handouts and eventually took off for parts unknown.

The one shown here was taken last year at the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine Florida and seems to be waving at us.

http://www.alligatorfarm.com/

The 4th day of the 9th month of the year of the OP

STORMY DAY AT THE BEACH

I know that this isn't the type of day we wish to spend at the beach to cap off a summer of fun. But I just love a stormy day at the beach!

This one at Edisto Beach in South Carolina complete with sea oats and snow fencing to help protect the dunes from the erosion caused by impending storms. The rocker is empty because whoever was in it has fled to safer climes.....too bad!

You can almost smell the approaching weather and feel the chill blowing in off the surf.

Have a great Labor Day weekend you all!

The third day of the ninth month of the year of the Owl Pellett

EVERYTHING IS RELATIVE


I spent the bulk of the day doing yard work, which meant alone with time to think and that is always not good.

Introspection leads to all kinds of weird links between the bellums of my brain, which seem to be dying at an alarming rate but that too is another story.


Sarah- and Anti- used to date quite a bit, but now argue constantly, which happens I guess with allot of old relationships. Oh well I digress!

We spend a ton of money and effort on maintaining our properties....pouring dollar after dollar into fertilizer to grow grass.... grass requires water to make it grow.......grass needs to be cut......grass produces clippings that need to be disposed of. Please be aware of the fact that I am referring to the green stuff in your front lawn and not the stuff some people smoke!

We purchase nice little posies that need to be planted......in the right position.....then transplanted because they "don't like where we put them in the first place"...... then removed because the store sold us crummy product in the first, first place.

OK here's an alternative.....Green concrete and plastic flowers. They do sell that stuff! Looks like crap but it works..............Sigh! Just got to remember not to water the plastic flowers.

Another alternative. Like my friend who lives across the street from the guy with the 4 million dollar mansion in Delaware. His house is on cinder blocks. Has a 4x6 treated wood front porch....a little fallen down but holds his chair which he can tilt back to drink his beer and put his feet up. So what if one of the cinder blocks is broken and partially replaced with a smaller brick. It allows his kid to run his match box cars inside the house from the bedroom all the way through to the kitchen to the end of the living room. Now that's living! And the dog under the porch only moves when it's time to hunt racoons.

But, you know what. It was fun today and the place looks nice. I am proud of it. I am able to attract a certain amount of wildlife to photograph without expense, like the mocking bird attached today. A photo which was sold last year to a magazine. I suppose if I lived in West Virginia I could photograph black bear cubs in the back yard, or whales off Cape Cod, gulls off New Jersey, deer in Pennsylvania and Tennessee.

But for now, I just cut my grass and ruminate.

The second day of the ninth month of the year of the OP

A LITTLE ZOOLOGICAL DIGITAL WIMSEY

Rarely do I enter the world of photographic digitery or is it digitary. Not sure any one knows, even Webster, as the art is relatively knew. Spell check says digitary.....Bless their hearts. That's a southern expression I am told.

But when I do digitize, I tell rather than to keep it a secret. Actually maybe it's digitry, I haven't even looked up the meaning yet but you get the drift.

In this case it is pretty obvious. But it does take allot of patience to get a hippo to stand on a flamingos head in the right position. I had to go back a half dozen times to get just the right light.

There's a story about the lion too. And the elephant, well.......!

One of my granddaughters and my grandson will be here on Friday and we will go to one of the best zoos in the country and see each of these critters.

Except the hippo, I think that he past away a year ago. Must have fallen off the pile or something.

I look forward to showing them the genesis of this picture.

THE FIRST DAY OF THE NINTH MONTH.....WOW!

WHAT HAPPEN---AGAIN?

I remember this was the time the new shoes went on!

Hell, any shoes at all went on!

New haircuts!

Spit and polish!

School's starting!

It's now getting dark now around eight o'clock and it always seems to get a little cooler on the first of September regardless of whether it does or not!

It seems we will soon see more spectacular sunsets than earlier in the year!

One long weekend to go and the doors of the dreaded school house will open until June with only small breaks along the way. Significant gifts like Christmas, New Years, Spring Break, but nothing like summer.

Now I guess the time of year is defined by places like Staples and Wally World.

I like to think of it in simpler terms and not discounts for things like No. 2's, three ring binders, back packs, and those little sticky things that reinforce the holes in pages of paper.

More appropriate are Superman lunch boxes, your pencil behind your ear to be cool, those springs for your pants so your cuffs wouldn't catch in the bike chains, and your ball glove on the handle bar, now that's what I'm talking about.

Of course as parents.....It's just the other side of the coin. We love our kids, but it's a different kind of freedom. Someone else gets to mold their little minds of mush for seven or eight hours a day.

But, you know what? We lived through it. And so did our parents. And I guess our kids and grand kids will do the same.

Another September.