20 NOVEMBER 13

SEASONS

The color is just now beginning to hit our woods down here south of the sun.  

Mostly yellows except for those trees man-planted in lawns surrounded by telephone wires and houses which are not really photogenic.  I have been working in the house this past week content to add to the website and edit photos.  OH, and yesterday we hit the 300,000 visitor mark on the site and I would dearly love to entice another 100,000 by year end.  The above was taken on the river walk this week.

Yesterday I did manage to walk along the new section of the walk and as it is somewhat distant from most people and a lot don't even know it is there it was nice.  No people but of course no wildlife either.

My contribution today to minimalism in photography is the image of the electric lines going across the Congaree River.  

As you can see more yellow over there, but still some green. This new walk is all concrete and makes for some pretty quiet stalking, but all I could sneak up upon were a couple of squirrels.  Skinny ones at that, but then again I am comparing them to my sunflower seed raised thieves I have on my feeder.

Y'all have a good week.

ELEVEN ELEVEN THIRTEEN

We had a guest last night in the form of an old high school chum, Michael Tierney and it was a hoot catching up on all the things that we missed at the 55th Zombie Apocalypse.  We both look forward to the 60th.  This morning he's off to DC and I will be on this infernal machine peddling pictures.

The rocket scientists on the weather channel are talking about cold stuff coming down from Canada this week.  That is when they can break into their scheduled reality weather shows of snow storms, hurricanes and disasters that happened ten years ago.  This morning's weather be dammed.  So in keeping with the forecast for the northeast…I include this.  

So throw another log on the fire Mother and button down.  

Have a good week all!

Nine November Thirteen

INTREPID PHOTOGRAPHY

I took life and limb in hand again this week in order to make an image.  In the not so small town of Aiken, South Carolina lies a street covered and enveloped with old oak trees.  A great vision I thought.  This town is just about on the Georgia border and only a half hour or so away.  

First I did not know the town and have not gotten to the point to where I can actually understand how to program that lady in the box on the dashboard.  So it was with Rand McNally in hand, that I went to Aiken.  

I am sure I am guilty of this as well.  But how is it that when you go into a strange town everybody  there knows where they're going and are doing it at warp speed.  Hence, they drive right on your bumper, some blowing their horns or the tops of their heads at the old guy who hasn't a clue (me).  I have to remember that when I am out an about in my own town.  It's "Rule of the Road Number 27"!  Which reads "Get out of my way tourist"!  I know I am guilty of doing that as well, and really do have to work on my road manners.  I got the rage thing down pat!

At nine AM  the traffic in Aiken is quite similar to some of the Avenues of New York City when it comes to automobile one ups man ship.  And I want to stand in the middle of one of those streets with a tripod and a camera set at f22.  For the uninitiated that's a really small hole, f22 that is.  And it means that in dark conditions the shutter speed is slow.  Furthermore, I had to wait till traffic cleared and there were no cars around.  So this is not your normal drive by shooting.  I got the image.  I am not real proud of it, but did post the thing.

I wish you all a good weekend and to the good citizens of Aiken, if you were late to work because of some crazy photographer…I apologize.  And you have a really neat town!

6 November 13

In the shadow of--

For a lot of years I lived in New Jersey and commuted to NYC each day.  My commute was a two hour ordeal each way starting at around five AM and ending somewhere around nine PM.  Some would say crazy, but then again I have been accused of being that smart on a number of fronts over the last seven decades.  I lived in central Jersey for one reason.  Kids!  I wanted them to grow up in a semi rural environment and to go to school and church there instead of some of the near ghettos around the big city.  It worked, they both turned out to be fantastic kids and now adults.  So the sacrifice was worth it all.    

Years later when I grew up and started my lighthouse odyssey, I had a chance to revisit the big apple in a whole different role.  I needed to photograph the Jeffery's Hook light.  Or as some called it the "Little Red Lighthouse".  Little because it stands directly under the George Washington Bridge on the New York side and is dwarfed by the bridge itself.  You really have no appreciation for just how large some of those bridges are until you stand under one.

You also have no appreciation for just how downright dangerous it was back in the late nineties to get to a bridge abutment in Spanish Harlem on foot.  This becomes especially tricky when you have a pretty wife and about seven thousand dollars of camera equipment on your back.  One cannot park a vehicle near the bridge.  It just isn't available.  So there is about a 25 block walk through a couple of parks and a couple or three slum streets all the while looking like Mr. Clean in the midst of the Congo.

To say I was nervous is an understatement, but we did make it back out alive.  Somehow!  I did have to talk my way out of a few skirmishes.  I mean, those people had no idea what National Geographic was!  Not that I was working for them, but I felt the story would help to wrap us in as cocoon of authority.  Or at least semi safety.  Fat chance!  Back then that was a pretty tough neighborhood.

Then when we go there, the light was wrapped in a shroud to protect the environment from falling paint chips while it was being painted.  So, this is the only image of the Little Red Lighthouse that I have.  And I ain't going back!

Tomorrow is Camel day!

5 November 13

Fun!

If you happen to be a friend of mine on Face Book, you may have been following a discussion with my resident entomologist and all around good guy Nancy Tidy about the name of the butterflies in this photograph.

One of the most fun things I have found about this dog eat dog world of marketing one's photographic art is the effort to be accurate and complete in what we do.

A good friend of mine once told me that he "Always told the truth or as close as he could get to it"!

Well I think, as the president is increasingly finding out….not telling the truth is more trouble in the long run than doing so.  I for one have learned that lesson the hard way.  But I digress.

The collective we thinks that these are butterflies of the Pearl Crescent group.  I think that is close as I can get to it.  Well, maybe a Harris Checker Spot pair.  Another friend called them litter bugs.  Hence, the name of the piece.  I found them on the concrete of the River Walk the other day.

But my point is this.  It is fun to go and search information about all that we photograph.  Is why you will see a bit of history with each of my photographs of lighthouses.  I think it's just fun to go out and become knowledgeable about that which we study with the camera.  Don't stop with the click, click of the camera.  While that is what we all like to do the most…the fun just begins there.

Become the local knowledge center for that which we photograph and it becomes more fulfilling in our quest to fine tune our trade.

And that's the truth…or as close as I can get to it.

4 November 13

November, what the heck ever happened to April?  Time flies. 

 Walked the new section of the River walk the other day.  Have a new idea for a blog, but that will come when I figure out how to do it on this new computer.  Which, judging by the way time flies, may not be till after the elections in 2014 or even 2016.  My eldest Granddaughter has a Birthday today and she is getting way to much older than I thought I was.  Sigh!    

The new section of the walk is still unused for the most part and for me that is a good thing.

The entrance on one end and  a boat ramp on the other.  The whole stretch probably isn't a half mile and it is a very quiet walk.

That's the Congaree River, and during the fishing season can become a pretty busy place. But on this day there were only two vehicles in the parking lot.  Even so, I marvel at the ingenuity of the thugs that inhabit our world.  

That pole is about 30 feet high and is one of the steel pilings used to hold the floating dock.  The thugs had to climb 20 to 30 feet just to get their gang colors and symbols up.  If we could just channel all that talent into something other than rape, murder and mayhem maybe we'd have something.  Just amazing.

The modern day thugs remind me of poison ivy climbing an old oak tree that it will eventually kill.  Amazing what a quiet walk will conjure up in an already seasoned and muddled mind.

I know there are deer here, but don't see too much sign of them.  I thought this might be a deer trail leading from the woods to the river, but so such luck.  And I didn't see any of those critters on this outing.  Maybe today will be different as I intend to head over there in a little bit.

After watching that show on the Nat Geo channel about losing the grid across the country, I am more and more aware of the wires and stuff that criss cross our land.  Here pole 139 provides a short study in minimalism in photography.  And finally, no blog worth it's salt can be completed with the requisite dead tree photo.

Happy Birthday E, and the rest of you have a wonderful week. 

 I do so look forward to January next week!

11 1 13

DECK THE WALLS

OK, we've gotten through the Black Cat season and now we have to roast a turkey and then we can deck the walls.  So I jump the gun a little.  But because the Christmas Season is my favorite.  

I still get a thrill from an overnight snow storm.  The next morning just glistens in an extreme quiet which can only be measured by being out in it.  It always overwhelms me with the awesomeness of nature.  One minute it is cold, overcast, maybe raining a little with a good wind blowing and the next time you look outside everything is covered in white.  And the only thing to prove witness the scene are the tracks of little critters looking for their next meal.

It brings to mind one such morning in Central Pennsylvania fifty years ago.  It was opening day of deer hunting season, (Yes Maud, I was hunting with "Gasp" a gun at the time) and we had about six inches of the white stuff fall the night before.  I had climbed a mountain to just below the tree line in the wee hours (where did that saying ever come from? Wee hours?) of the dark morning.  I strategized correctly that when the sun came up all the hunters in the valley would scare the b-Jesus out of the deer and they would head for higher ground to hide out. Well, I was right.

Deer will generally feed in the fields and edges at night and then move to higher and presumably safer ground as the sun rises.  Part of the reason for this is that scent will rise in the early morning hours as the air warms up and they will move above for safety purposes.  In addition, in the evening as the air cools, scent will fall and they will have protection from above by going to feed in the lower climes.  

To make a long story short, the minute the sun barely rose,  the first gun went off.  I tensed and strained eyes and ears, looking for the first escapees.  I was sitting with my back to an old oak tree about three times as wide as my own profile when a group of about twenty deer made their way over the bench in front of me.  HA!....he says to himself ... I was right!  They climbed above me with only a small fork horn buck amidst the group.  So I was wrong.  No huge Pennsylvania record book buck for me out of that group.  They milled around behind me for a half hour, finding spots to lie down, rest and be safe.  Other than little peaks around the tree, I could not watch them for any protracted period. 

But hearing steps behind me, I looked to my left and from behind the tree came this black, wet nose, followed by two huge eyes of a doe still looking for a spot to nap.  I guess our eyes were about a foot apart.  Only thing to do was say...."Morning lady"!

It was so quiet and still in the snow that she never saw, heard or smelled me.  Of course at that point she just exploded back up the hill taking 20 of her best friends with her.  I didn't get a trophy or a picture the bright snowy morning, but in a way I did.  A trophy memory.