30 SEPT 13

Home again, home again! Jigity Jig

A.) I have survived the fifty five years after High School Graduation and 2.) the fifty fifth gathering of the students of the same.  The HS reunion was held in Point Pleasant Beach, New Jersey where the Westfield High School class of 1958 celebrated each other.  

I had fun!

  And apparently so did the rest.  It was truly fun getting to renew with  some new old folks and hanging with some very old friends.  It is just amazing the love generated by people who when in high school would not even talk to each other.  But now we're survivors and let the love roll.  Yes, I took a couple of photos but I won't embarrass anyone.

One really cogent comment was made by a life long friend, Tom Davies, on Saturday morning as we walked the boardwalk for our exercise.

  "For the first time in thirty years, I have absolutely nothing to do"! Says he.

"What are we going to do?" Says he.

Perplexing,  as I had no idea other than to do the walk and eat breakfast.

  Then who knows!

The amazing thing was, we just hung out and talked to folks, relaxed, and didn't even take a nap!

No to do list!

Chatted with Rico and his wife.  Carol and Jim.  Tom held court in the baseball hat.

And the hot girls beached it.

Others did the same in small groups all over town.

It was the invasion of the "Seasoned" people!

As you can see the weather was superior, but I don't think  anyone made it into the ocean.  Maybe, but don't think so.

Fellow HS athlete, friend and all around good guy gave everyone a four CD package of "The Tunes of our Time".  A collection of all the songs we listened to, danced to and made out to.  One hundred fourteen songs of the mid to late 1950's.  What a job he did!  What a thoughtful gift of his time and talent! 

Like I said, all around good guy!

I would be remiss without making note of all those who were instrumental in putting the party together.  So Thanks David, Carol and Drude.....and anyone I miss due to my own ignorance.  

 Ya-all done good!

I was great seeing Anita, a blog buddy.  John and his camera.  Michael, Tom, Dave, Pinky, David, Steve, Carol, Meg, Karyl, Lynn, Pam and a ton of others ...... you guys are the best!  I know I have left some out and for that I apologize but the memory button is a little rusty after 73 years. 

 You all rejuvenate me!

I got to talk with my friend Pam and even stop in at Hereford Inlet lighthouse on our way to the ferry across the Delaware Bay when it was all over on Monday.

There will be some new images posted to the website in the coming days as the party kicked off a week of free wheeling photography that included NJ, DE, MD and PA.  

I did get some interesting images, but the most important one is of all my old friends "Just hanging"!

19 September 2013

I am looking forward to being on the road again tomorrow.  Will be driving eleven hours to my son's home in Maryland and will get the chance to spend Friday night with two of the grands and then on to the high school reunion in Point Pleasant, New Jersey.  

No, I won't be driving my fantasy car.  Only wish.  But if you see a gold color Ford Explorer broken down along the Blue Hair Highway, stop and give a fella a lift.  After the partying of the seasoned, past, students from a school called Westfield High, it's then back to Maryland to hang with the kids at night and out free-style photographing during the day.

I have no idea how long I will be away!  Probably till the money runs out.  I do want to make some new images and will probably head into Pennsylvania and New Jersey again.  I am sure that you will find some of the new stuff make it on to the web site.

I will also want to make a stop to meet with an old friend of the New Hampshire fishing crowd that I have written about in the past.  My friend Bill still lives in Jersey and has a spare bedroom for lost souls like me and I just might take him up on his hospitality. 

It will be about a month too early to start looking for the change in season colors.  That will come in October and another trip north.  That one to Hereford Inlet Lighthouse for the NJ Lighthouse Challenge.  A great two day show which will be the only show this year for me.  Good friends there and always a productive showing of the art.  I think that it will also be too early by a month for the massing of the Monarch butterflies in Cape May.  Again maybe in October.  I am told that they gather along the point of Cape May waiting for favorable winds to carry them across the Delaware Bay.  It's supposed to be quite the sight, but never have hit it right for photographs.  Maybe this year.

So stay safe my friends and to the NJ buds, see you on Saturday......God willing and a good tail wind!

16 September 2013

Moving right along!

A week end spent basically in front of the computer, editing and posting.  Sorta like publish or perish!

I did finally get a triptych created with some of the Modern Fossils I made a year or so ago.  When they were finishing the River Walk and they poured concrete in the fall.  Easier time to work, but I don't think anyone thought about falling leaves and wet concrete.  Hence what I call Modern Fossils.

I also get a small program from the Apple store called Dynamic Light which enables me to do some approximation to HD processing.  Small and inexpensive program that does well on certain photographs and gives a whole nother look at old images processed the old way.  I kinda like the process for a look which I have called a fantasy image.  Have gotten a few decent comments quickly, but the acid test of course is does it sell in Peoria.  Or anywhere for that matter.  

Block Island Fantasy,

And----

Hereford Inlet Fantasy!

14 September 2013

OK, so there's fantasy football!  543 shades of grey! All kinds of other porn regardless of shade other than red for embarrassment!

So now there is Lighthouse Fantasy!

I'm kidding right?

Nah!

Actually these images, which are in "The Galleries",  are simply dressed up to look a little HD.  But they also look a little dreamy or fantasy like.

  Hey I never promised you a rose garden....I think they look a little fantasy like.  But then again I am old and am not sure what fantasy is anymore.

  The Block Island image above has garnered a number of positive comments so far.  Two others are equally weird, but I like them.

The first is Pemaquid Point in Maine!

And the last is the Plum Island light in Massachusetts.

If any of these sell, you'll probably see many more of the Fantasy series.  I have edited some other images in this same manner, but they won't be scored as Fantasy shots.  I particularly like this one of a mountain cabin I took in the Smokies in Tennessee.

You will note that I have provided links to each of these, just in case you fall insanely in love with any of them and want to buy one or all.  Yup another fantasy on my part!

Hey, it's all a fantasy.  So is life.  So live it!

Call it a thousand shades of fun and no Mommy porn here!

Friday 13 of September 2013

Friday the 13th!

Bah Humbug!

What did the man say, "If I didn't have any bad luck, I'd have no luck at all"? 

 Think I'll just holster up and go look for the neighbor's black cat. 

 Of course I have to walk under the ladder I left standing against the house

Which reminds me, I did finish laundering the house this week.  Might have one or two more windows to wash, but the big job is done and it looks just fine thank you!

 Now if I can just get that darn raven off the corner of the roof.

I think you can tell that I don't really believe in all those superstitions at all.  Or maybe a little false bravado will just ward off all of the bad luck.  Not to mention the zombies that live next door.

And then there is Murphy.  You know that rank amateur who said the "Whatever can go wrong will"!

Well, my law is that Murphy was an optimist!

Life is really something, if all that stuff really works.  Guess I just better trap that cat, round up some pumpkins and corn stalks and start to decorate for all the Halloweenees that come around.  I mean who rents a bus to take their kids and friends out to scrounge candy from benevolent old people who have decorated their place worse than they do at Christmas?

"Hide the candy Maude!  Here comes the first and second church of remembrance, devotion and redeemers bus"!

Wasn't that last kid a little old?......I mean he asked for a refill on his drink and ignored the candy before he staggered off to the next victim.

OK, I am a little rough on some of our traditions.  But a lot of it is just plain silly.  Take all that candy and decorations ---- turn them into food and give it to the real poor and needy folks!

Then you're celebrating Jack!

If you don't hear from me for a week or two, you'll know that Murphy was right.  Have a great weekend all!

12 September 2013

"On the road again"

I think that it was Charles Kuralt who made that term famous with books and a TV show back when times were a little different.  He wrote a few books and broadcast about trips he took across the country.  Back town roads and hamlets.  The people who made those places he visited.  It was an interesting concept that made a lot of followers.  Good reading and good viewing.

 There also was a book written by William Least Heat-Moon and entitled "Blue Highways" about a guy who traversed the country using only the "Blue Highways" on the map.  The roads less travelled if you will.  Small communities with little and unique country stores.

  I would love to do what they did, but it will unfortunately be in the next life or the here after.  Just like I would love to have been a meteorologist.  Or Bill Gates!  But somewhere along the line I actually realized that I would become none of the above.  Big relief to me that!

But in looking back at my photo library (that I am still organizing and digitizing), I guess I can say that I have travelled some of the same paths.  For that I am blessed and grateful.

All that as an introduction to my next road trip.  Next week I will be going to the Joisey Shore for a high school reunion.  There will probably be a story or two about this zombie apocalypse or gathering of the almost dead.  Now if any of you are reading this, don't take that the wrong way.  I'm right in there with ya!  On the other hand I don't care if you do or not.  It's simply my way of saying that we are all getting seasoned but in our case enjoying it and having fun along the way.  And for those of you who are recluses Joisey means New Jersey!

And no we don't talk like that.

Anymore!

I grew up in a mid sized town called Westfield which was a bedroom town to New York City.  Fathers commuted by train into the big city.  Mothers kept house and worked the many charities and hospitals in the area.  Fathers played golf on the weekends.  Kids for the most part took College Preparatory classes in High School.

A whole bunch of leave it to Beaver and Brady bunch families.  Sure there were working families who were mostly local merchants and such.  But the kids were pretty much all the same regardless of their parents perceived positions in life.  The cobblers son dated the CEO's daughter and everybody was pretty cool with that.

We had a great high school class of somewhere around 250 if I remember correctly.  It was a fun time.  Fun people and activities.  I can still smell the leaves burning in the streets on football weekends.  Yup, that was back when we all polluted the world with our little piles of inconsideration for the planet.  On any fall Saturday we just increased the temperature of the globe by at least three degrees.  Can still smell it in my olfactory imagination.

It will be fun to see some old friends and retell old stories and lies.  I do look forward to it.

NINE ELEVEN!

NINE ELEVEN 

I remember.

The day was similar to today.  Warm.  Sunny.  

Then all hell broke loose.

And,

I wondered how many people I knew had perished!

What is wrong with people?

Yeah, we got him!

Them!

But the fabric of our country changed.

Stay safe my friends!

God Bless America!

10 SEPTEMBER 2013

I wish I could wait around long enough to see this oak tree really spread it's branches over the lake.  Then the sunset would be mighty!

As it is it's none too shabby!

9 SEPTEMBER 2013

Well, I can see from your attendance that we made it through yet another week end.  I spent most of the last two days washing the house.  Yup the house.  I got three quarters of it done too.  Mold tends to make white siding look pretty nasty after a couple of years and it just has to be done.  

You can see the progress here.  The left portion has been finished while the right still awaits.  Simply put, you spray the area with a Clorox and water mixture and wait five minutes and spray off with fresh water.  It's magic!  I kinda enjoy doing it.  It's like mowing the lawn...you can see the fruits of your labor right away.  Now just the front to do.

Have to put off completing it as I have jury duty this morning.  Hang em high and long.  That's my motto.  You really don't want to have me on your jury....Trust me Jack!

We finished the week end off with a couple hours on Lake Murray watching the sun go down.  Caught no fish but had a bite, strike, nibble from one of the "I am just smarter than you, dumb fisherman" types.

Did catch the catch of the day which will probably make the web site later.  Have a great week all!

5 September 2013

Two sales last night which is very nice.

I understand spellcheck isn't working so suffer!  I am a terrible speller and there you have it.  The only problem along those lines is that I really don't care!

If anyone who is an artist wants to sell their work, I highly recommend Fine Art America.  It teaches you a bunch of stuff like humility followed by elation.  

The key of course is to decrease the amount of humility and increase the amount of elation.  I think that is a direct quote from Will Rogers or maybe Gutfeld...not sure which.

Also takes a lot of online time and effort promoting ones self.  To date I have had 248,676 visitors to that website and 26,062 to this blog.  Lord, I didn't know we even had that many people in this country who could read in the first place.  

A new entry to the selling spree will be added today.  Block Island in some respects and in some places looks a bit like what the moors of Scotland might appear.  At least in my estimation never having been any where east of eastern Maine, USA.  But that's all just a guess.  I mean I see stuff in magazines and on the telly, when I can tear myself away from Housewives of Pick yer Town shows!  I am really trying, you can see, to become an uninformed voter just so I fit in when I vote in the next elections.

Hope you all have a wonderful post Hump Day, enjoy yourselves and learn alot.

4 SEPTEMBER 2013

Again I have been neglectful of the blog and for that I apologize.  I promise to do better in the coming weeks.  The last big weekend found us out on Lake Murray for a ride in a cousin's new boat.  Fun time, decent weather despite a shower or two that we managed to miss.  A good thing that.  The one above I have rendered in black and white just to show that the contrasts of the weather are sometimes rather sharp.  

I did get some good cloud photos that I can use in creating some of the scenic and lighthouse images on the website.

Being out on the water again enabled me to find the sky!  Living in an urban surrounding does not lend to finding expanses of sky and makes it kinda tough the get images like above.  Just too many telephone wires, buildings, trees and houses for good distant scenics.  I do miss that being here in Shangra La south!  But we make lemonade with what we have.

There are additions to the Fine Art America galleries and I hope you have been checking them out.  I still have some Chesapeake Bay images to scan but have finished scanning the general and lighthouse files.  Now it's time for editing.  I may get done by June, but I am not telling you which year!  My goal, other than posting new work, is to digitize all of my decent images under one spot where they are retrievable at a moment's notice.  Yeah, I know I should have been doing that all along.  Put that into the spilt milk file!

Fall cleaning has also overtaken me here at the house and we have about half of the windows, shades and woodwork washed.  Fixin to get ready to wash the entire outside of the house next.  The garden has been deep sixed for another year and proved to be a complete bust this year.  I really have too much shade to grow a good vegetable garden and we will be moving it around next year.  Or maybe not! Alternative is just going to the farmers market once a week.  The old farmer in me seems to have taken a dirt nap!