Deja Vu

Went to Home Depot today. Home Depot is the primo supplier of goods for the money challenged who are looking to construct what we lovingly refer to as a "Ghetto Home Studio." Picked up a few dowels and hooks that hopefully will work in supporting a few backdrop muslins. Had less luck in making the right contact to get a few empty cardboard rollers that formerly held vinyl flooring. One guy said "Yeah sure...just get an ok from a manager," and the manager I approached blew me off with a: "No, We compact those," as he scurried away.

Weather was nice, so I decided to stop in Lancaster City to shoot a few frames as long as I was only two minutes away. Parked the car, headed to Queen Street and Binn's Park, and came upon something I hadn't witnessed in many years...a war protest rally. Good sized crowd in the park, passionate speakers, and about a hundred people with cameras poking them here, there, everywhere, and in general, bordering on being an annoyance. I'm not good at these kinds of close encounters. It just feels too intrusive to me to get right up in someone's face and snap off frames like they were an attraction at a zoo. Paparazzi I'm not.




I retreated to a position on a pedestrian bridge about 30-40 yards away where I could get a wider shot of the crowd and felt better about that. One thing that struck me almost immediately was how well behaved the crowd was. Not that I expected a raucous group in Lancaster County, but it was all polite applause and a few scattered people shouting "Yeah!". No long haired guys or girls with guitars and leather vests sitting on the grass singing protest songs. Very circumspect. A few peace sign banners and one girl with rainbow colored hair. No dancing hippies. Only two guys wearing clown makeup with homemade signs that were absent of any profanity. For better or worse...this was the face of "Protest 2008." "Not at all like the protests of the 60's," I thought. However...



A few minutes later I decided to go to one of my favorite picture taking spots...the roof of the Prince Street Garage, which was just a few feet away from my current vantage point. I went to the stairwell leading to the roof, took about three steps, and was nearly knocked over by the unmistakable odor of a 60's war protest rally staple...pot. Yeah it's illegal...yeah it's bad for you...yeah I don't condone or recommend it...but sweet baby James, for a moment there I was transported 40 years to 1968 and couldn't help but smile and consider that maybe things hadn't changed all that much.





Staggered to the roof...took a few deep breaths of fresh air and went to my "spot" overlooking Prince Street. I am quite simply fascinated by the look of people from an overhead view. Groups of people create patterns we can't see from eye level. Shadows add depth and drama we also never see looking head on. I'm mesmerized by this view even on days when the stairwell atmosphere is in it's normal high urine content mode. Stayed for a few minutes, was happy with the shots I got, and went back to the rally (stairwell still quite potent) which was now organized into a march through some downtown Lancaster Streets.

Headed home, hoping to stop at what I heard was a car show of some sort at a Sonic Drive-In near there. I love shooting old classics, but this turned out to be very modern cars ...the kind that do that "drifting" sort of wacky racing on winding roads and garage ramps seen in movies. No interest there for me, so I continued home. Now I'm not saying I spent any more time than necessary on that garage stairwell...I didn't, but I did have a monster case of the "munchies" when I pulled into my driveway. Interesting day.

Time To Get This Puppy Flying

Since my daughter Val has decided it's not a bad thing to constantly make less than polite comments about why I haven't started this blog nearly three months after saying I would, here we go. Thank you Val for your input. Love you.
Why a blog? Why not? I'm as opinionated as anyone, and since I'm as old as dirt and nearly as pretty, I'm presumably wiser and possibly right about a few things. Or not...but that wouldn't be the primary purpose of this blog. For the major portion of whatever goes on here, we're talking photography. My intent is to share some of my photography, my thoughts on photography, and links to other photography related sites, resources, and assorted photographic stuff. And since I am opinionated about most everything, I imagine I'll have a passing comment or two about other things happening in my life when my eyeball isn't pressed into the back of a camera.

I expect the format and look of what's going on here to make a few changes as I get to figure out what I'm doing. Then again, many would say I've lived a good portion of my life never quite figuring out what's going on. To those of little faith, I say: whatever. So then...welcome to my first post, and hopefully, my first blog photo under this if I understand everything correctly. More exciting things to follow, including who I am, where I live, and possibly my shoe size, because people really don't talk enough about shoe size and I think it may draw us closer together if you know personal tidbits like that. I'll kick off this first post with two photos. The first is a recent one of lovely model Bevin taken at a Strobist get-together. Strobist is the place to visit to discuss and learn about all things related to off-camera lighting. Check it out. I'm looking forward to doing another session with Bevin in my home studio in the near future.





Next is a photo of an old diner I took last year. Old diners must appeal to a lot of folks because I was surprised at the number of "unsolicited" views it received on my Flickr pages. For the record, at present I haven't gotten into the Flickr cycle of mass posting a photo into thirty or more groups and the subsequent number of views one will get from that. I have mixed feelings on that practice and will more than likely spout off in a future post. The pic obviously has a lot of post processing applied...I was going for a old post card look and got it to a point where I was happy. And isn't happy a wonderful place to be?