Making a baby
Note: There are no dirty words in this joke!

The Smiths were unable to conceive children and decided to use a
surrogate father to start their family. On the day the proxy father was
to arrive, Mr. Smith kissed his wife goodbye and said, ‘Well, I’m off
now. The man should be here soon.’

Half an hour later, just by chance, a door-to-door baby photographer
happened to ring the doorbell, hoping to make a sale. ‘Good morning,
Ma’am’, he said, ‘I’ve come to…’

‘Oh, no need to explain,’ Mrs. Smith cut in, embarrassed, ‘I’ve been
expecting you.’

‘Have you really?’ said the photographer. ‘Well, that’s good. Did you
know babies are my specialty?’

‘Well that’s what my husband and I had hoped. Please come in and have a
seat’.

After a moment she asked, blushing, ‘Well, where do we start?’

‘Leave everything to me. I usually try two in the bathtub, one on the
couch, and perhaps a couple on the bed. And sometimes the living room
floor is fun. You can really spread out there.’

‘Bathtub, living room floor? No wonder it didn’t work out for Harry and
me!’

‘Well, Ma’am, none of us can guarantee a good one every time. But if we
try several different positions and I shoot from six or seven angles,
I’m sure you’ll be pleased with the results.’

‘My, that’s a lot!’, gasped Mrs. Smith.

‘Ma’am, in my line of work a man has to take his time. I’d love to be In
and out in five minutes, but I’m sure you’d be disappointed with that.’

‘Don’t I know it,’ said Mrs. Smith quietly.

The photographer opened his briefcase and pulled out a portfolio of his
baby pictures. ‘This was done on the top of a bus,’ he said.

‘Oh, my God!’ Mrs. Smith exclaimed, grasping at her throat.

‘And these twins turned out exceptionally well - when you consider their
mother was so difficult to work with.’

‘She was difficult?’ asked Mrs. Smith.

‘Yes, I’m afraid so. I finally had to take her to the park to get the
job done right. People were crowding around four and five deep to get a
good look’

‘Four and five deep?’ said Mrs. Smith, her eyes wide with amazement.

‘Yes’, the photographer replied. ‘And for more than three hours, too.
The mother was constantly squealing and yelling - I could hardly
concentrate, and when darkness approached I had to rush my shots.
Finally, when the squirrels began nibbling on my equipment, I just had
to pack it all in.’

Mrs. Smith leaned forward. ‘Do you mean they actually chewed on your,
uh…equipment?’

‘It’s true, Ma’am, yes.. Well, if you’re ready, I’ll set-up my tripod
and we can get to work right away.’

‘Tripod?’

‘Oh yes, Ma’am. I need to use a tripod to rest my Canon on. It’s much
too big to be held in the hand very long.’

Mrs. Smith fainted!!!

Over the past few days, I’ve been bombarded, so to speak, with messages about changes. It seems that every movie that I’ve watched talks about it. I get e-mails concerning this subject, etc. Perhaps it’s the blogs that I visit, the movies that I watch, or the e-mails that I subscribe to.

I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button the other day. Though it was quite long, it was a very good movie … if you are receptive to it, I think. One of my favorite quotes from the move was from a character, Captain Mike who said:

You can be as mad as a mad dog at the way things went. You could swear, curse the fates, but when it comes to the end, you have to let go. — Captain Mike

Things don’t always go the way that we want and no manner of anger is going to change it. People change. Relationships change. Locations change. People, things, events come and go. So, where am I going with this?

I remember back in high school literature class we were sometimes tasked with reading a poem, short story, or other piece of literature and would have to tell the teacher what the writer was trying to say. In other words, we had to interpret his intentions based on his words. At the time, I thought that it was pure drudgery and a great waste of time. How could I possibly know what was going through her head at the time that she wrote it. Now, I still think the same way about literature or any type of art, especially that which is dear to me, photography.

I’ve never really been drawn dilapidation; however, I do find old structures somewhat spiritual for some reason. This past Saturday, I spent time among what I would call a building graveyard. These were old government buildings that were pretty worn out and nature is having her way with them. She is reasserting herself, letting it be known that these structures were just temporary. Things change!

i was intrigued by the slow changes happening all around. These buildings were once functional, well maintained work spaces. Now, plant and insect food. Were my photographs ever to become famous, doubtless that some critic would happen by and try to make an interpretation of why I took these photos and he would probably get it wrong, unless I specifically told him. He’d base his interpretation on his past history, not on mine.

When I took the top picture, I was thinking: Wow! How tightly we try to hold on to things, yet all the while, they keep changing despite our best efforts.

It’s about inertia. I admire Andreas’ ability to find something to photograph every single day and to post about it. It takes lots of dedication and passion to do it. Anita was talking about here 2 year anniversary and her desire to post more often. I know that I could post more if I wanted to talk about equipment. Sometimes, I’m as much a gear head as the next guy, but most other times, I am very curious as to why I take pictures of the things that I do and frequently, I try to get outside of my photographic ‘box’.

Yesterday was such a day. I had spent the weekend in Augusta, GA and was to leave to return to Charleston, SC on Sunday. Usually, when I go somewhere, it’s a bee line. I want to get there with few stops in between. This is odd, because I am a stop and smell the roses kind of guy, but when driving, I just want to be away from behind the wheel. So, I made myself a promise when I left at 6:40 AM. Travel time was 2:20 between Augusta and Charleston. I told myself that I could get home no earlier then 10:00 AM. That would force me to shoot for an hour … so I did. As a matter of fact, I got home at 11:00 AM.

I took time to stop along the way and take photos of the various houses along the way where nature was reasserting herself … I’ll talk about those thoughts in another post. As I neared home, there was another place that I wanted to go that was about 30 minutes past my apartment. It was a real struggle to go because I just wanted to go back to the apartment … for what, I don’t know, but I didn’t. This place, near work, is fraught with all manner of photographic material, but it was getting close to 10:00 AM. The sun was already high in the sky and the shadows were getting deep. I nearly called it off, but I didn’t. I thought that I didn’t need ‘perfect’ light to photograph this area. As a matter of fact, I needed harsher light to bring out the textures and such.

When I got there, I spent about 45 minutes to an hour walking around and shooting. It was great to get out of my routine and do something different. I probably won’t post daily like Andreas, but I do have my own hand on my back making me try some different things!

I took one of the many tourism brochures from the lobby of the hotel. It was for a place called Savannah River Rapids Park. It sounded promising. Fortunately, it is about 5 minutes from the hotel. Last night I checked the time for sunrise, set my alarm for 5:45 so as to get there about 40 minutes before the sun came up, and went to sleep. I awoke at the proper time, got dressed and headed out. After walking down to the dam, I saw a trail along the river that might offer a better view. The wide view turned out to be so-so, but I happened to walk down to a place where people launch their small boats.

After I had been there for a few minutes, a kayaker, pictured here, came down, said good morning, told me about the otters, beavers, and various wildlife that I might see, and away he went. Of course, I had to take several slow shutter speed exposures of him. This was the one that I liked best.

Next came a man with a small fishing boat and a kitten. He said that he had just found the kitten in his driveway this morning and picked it up. He thought that the kitten might like to go fishing! He noticed my camera and wanted to know what I was using. I told him that it was a digital camera. He said that he used to be a photographer for about 20 years, shooting weddings using Hassleblad equipment. Now, he and other photographer buddies of his have day jobs. They no longer shoot. Him, primarily because of some ankle surgery and a torn ACL (knee ligament). He said, though, that he doesn’t miss it much. He’d much prefer to do his day job than to deal with all of the Bridezillas that he had to work with most every Saturday.

As he hold me his story, I watched the light continue to change. I was somewhat anxious to continue shooting, but then my whole attitude changed to one of thankfulness. In this time period where there is so much political correctness and fear about almost everything, especially strangers, I felt quite honored that he would take the time out of his day to stop and tell me his story. After that, I simply relaxed, didn’t care about the light, and was really interested in what he had to say. He told me about his one encounter with a computer in his home and why he got rid of it. His daughter did a search in the Internet for ‘toys’ and the pictures that she got back were not suitable for younger audiences. He is a very religious man, so wanted the evil thing out of his house. So, he’s not willing to bring another one in and learn about digital photography. He said he’d stick with film.

So, finally, we finished our conversation, which lasted about 20 minutes or more. The sun was now above the horizon and about to peak above the trees. I walked across the spillway’s walkway and attempted to get some pictures of the river, where I encountered more folks who wanted to talk. What can I say. Sometimes the morning is more about bonding and good conversation then it is about photos.

The rain started at about 4:00 PM. It’s now 9:00 PM and it continues. This is the lowcountry, so things don’t drain so well, but I’ve never seen it like this. The water in the parking lot is about 10 - 12 inches deep. The street, in front of my apartment cannot be seen, yet, people are still driving down it. Surprisingly few people have gotten stuck, but some have! Each time that a car passes successfully, the waves roll almost up to my patio! Normally, the sound of waves is comforting, but some reason, tonight they are not.

I had wanted to take some photos this evening, but as it was raining so hard, I decided to come home. Little did I know that the rain would offer an opportunity right at my doorstep … almost literally. This is a shot of the landscaping that is about 4 feet from my apartment. Lovely, isn’t it? I hope that it stops raining soon!

Uh, oh! I just heard thunder and saw lighting! Hey! How about that D300 high ISO performance! ISO 3200. Sweet!

What I’ve learned
One huge advantage of shooting digital is the ability to have an option. This has uncovered a weakness in my photography. I don’t see shades so well anymore. I’m out of practice. What do I mean? Well, shooting B&W film, you have one chance to get it right. You cannot look at the picture, after the fact, and decide if you’d like it to be color or black & white. It’s black & white. Period.

There have been several shots that I’ve taken that I thought would be absolutely dreamy; however, they came out quite confusing to the eye and required lots and lots of work to get them looking halfway decent. For example, when I peered into a section of woods, there was a soft light falling on some fairly new leaves. They stood out for the surrounding woods quite prominently … in color, because everything was a different shade of green. In black & white, they are subtle shades of gray. There does not appear to be much separation. The negative is well exposed, but a slight bit contrasty. None of the tones are blown out, so the negative is certainly serviceable, but would require a bit of work. I need to work on post processing anyway. It’s all about learning!

I’ve also discovered that for equivalent apparent sharpness, I need to stop down about 2 stops from where I would normally shoot. The focus falloff on a medium format camera is pretty swift, not quite as swift as with a large format camera, but fast enough to make it noticeable!

Although I love photographing in the woods though I find it difficult to get a good picture, which is exactly why I’ll spend more time there. However, there is another place, near work, that has some absolutely lovely buildings that are quickly returning to Nature. The buildings are showing lots of rust, decay, and vines, vines, vines! All structures are impermanent … an important Tao/Zen lesson! Nothing lasts for ever … better get a picture of it!

Presences
Kaspar Hauser: I’m a tree-lovin’, tree-huggin kinda guy and this book really hit the spot. The images are quite beautiful.


A Wonderful Emptiness
John Wolf: John took, what was in my eyes a very difficult subject, and made it into a beautiful celebration of the Illinois Prairie.


Sands of Namibia
Katie Bates: This was the first one that I saw that really impressed me. The photos and post processing are both wonderful. It makes me want to hang out in the desert for a while with my camera!

There may be more, but I only looked at about 50 or so books in the last two days! Care to share your favorites?

Paul

George’s mentoring is unusual, as compared to the classic way of thinking about teaching, but I certainly understand and agree with it. If you’ve been reading my blog for a while, you know that I like to read and contemplate on The Tao Te Ching (pronounced dow de jing). Here is a small sampling of the books that I have read or am reading. This is important to explain George’s mentoring and why I think that it fits with me. The books:

• Tao Te Ching: Derek Lin translation.
• The Tao of Pooh. Benjamin Hoff - A great place to start off understanding Taoism
• Chuang Tzu: Thomas Merton translation
• Meditations in Tao: Osho
• A New Earth: Eckhart Tolle
• The Power of Now: Eckhart Tolle
• A Thousand Names for Joy: Byron Katie

Those are just a few of the books. The Tao talks about the natural way of things, whatever it is. Flowing with life. A New Earth places a great emphasis on realizing the traps that the ego provides in our daily lives. If there were any one thing that all of these books have in common, it’s about removing masks and rolls that we’ve become associated with. Our thoughts about ‘who we are’. OK. That’s a enough book review.

Back to my conversation: George’s program involves working with a student to first find out how they see the world and how they organize things visually. Then, the real work begins. Over the next year, there is an attempt to help the student remove all of the layers of other people’s work that they’ve seen and get down to their true essence. To get down to showing the world as they truly see it, sans ego (story) about who they think they are or how they think things should be shown (unquestioned beliefe in thought = story = ego).

Without getting into specifics, because you should really contact him if you think that you might be interested, the year sounds supremely challenging and is will worth the price, in my opinion; however, it would not be for everyone. This mentoring will test you to question your very core, as do the above list of books. Many, many, many people are not ready to let go of those thoughts of who they believe themselves to be. This is called becoming conscious. Others will call it cult thinking, new age rubbish, etc. I started down that road about 3 or 4 years ago. George has been on his journey for greater than 20 years! I’ve a lot to learn.

He asked me where I wanted to go with my photography. My answer was: I don’t know. I’ll see when I get there. As I said my post about passion: Sometimes I come back with a photo, or photos, so sublime, I wonder if I took it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be sublime to anyone else, but that I will recognize it as the work of ’self’. That, I think, is a glimpse of my authentic self peeking through the layers. The idea here, is to be able to access that more often.

So, I will be working with him, but not immediately, though I want to. There are a number of things that we need to accomplish this summer with regards to helping our friends and, of course, Tony’s never-ending basketball. So now is not the time, but it is on the top of my list.

When I went to my niece’s graduation, I took time to visit my old neighborhood, schools, and surrounding areas. I had wanted to do a book about them for some time, yet, each time that I went there, I never took the time to do so. All of the photos were taken in the space of about 4 hours. During the past week, I have been assembling those photos into a book complete with my thoughts about growing up. I wanted a book containing text as well as photos, not just photos. Even when I uploaded it, I had no idea if I had even met the minimum number of photos, 35. I find that I had met it with 47.

This year, Scribus fought me all the way. It crashed a few times. As the book was getting longer, it was taking 5 to 10 minutes to load it and then was very sluggish. Later, I found that it was partially my fault. I had exported all of my images as TIFF files and they were each 69 MB. As a software developer, I can see holes in the design of Scribus. They try to load all pages into memory at once … this is what took so long! But, that is neither here nor there as they say. I finally got it done. I redid all of my pictures in JPEG, which made them much, much, smaller.

Anyway, here it is.

This weekend, as I walked around my former elementary school, McEbright Elementary, I was aware of a number of feelings. Feelings of nostalgia. Feelings of joy. Feelings of sadness for innocence lost. I wanted to keep these feelings alive because I thought that they would make a great project. Certainly, I didn’t want to slow down the process by writing. It’s too cumbersome.

I had been thinking of purchasing a digital recorder. So, I went to the only place that I was pretty sure would be open on Sunday morning, Walmart, and purchased a Sony 1 GB digital recorder for about $60 USD. It’s compact, very easy to use, and has a number of features to make organizing one’s thoughts fairly easy. You can organize your thoughts into folders: A, B, C, D, E.

After I made the purchase, I came back to the school, got back into the mood, walked around the playground, the building, and recorded my thoughts and memories. All through the rest of the morning, I simply pressed the record button to record any thoughts that I had. It’s a great way to take notes, etc. of those great, yet fleeting, ideas that you have along the way. I think that this will be my constant companion from now on.

When I returned, I sat down and, as I worked on my book and listened to the snippets that I had recorded. It was fantastic way to recapture those on-the-spot feelings that often soften and even disappear after a very short time.

The downside to this particular recorder, as well as other Sony recorders, is that it is a proprietary format and has only Windoze software available for it. There is no Mac equivalent that I have found. I did see a post on a forum of a work-around. Plug the output of the recorder into the Mac and record it directly to the machine. Yeah, it’s digital to analog to digital, but at least it will be captured on your computer. Also, I found in that same post that Olympus recorders are Mac friendly.

I can say that I would have bought an Olympus, if Walmart would have had them AND I would have known about the Sony Windoze-only issue. However, it’s not a show stopper. I’m glad that I bought it. However, I could have saved about $20 by getting a 512 MB model.

Another non-photography tool for the bag. I think that I’m now officially multimedia!