About a week ago on Cedric’s Blog a few of us were commenting about how we enjoy taking pictures of people taking pictures. I had been collecting photos of that topic for a while now, but hadn’t really posted any of them as a collection. So here are a few that I was able to dig out of the archives to get the ball rolling on this.
I’ve not been able to come up with a lot of words lately, but I have been making gradual progress on processing some photos. Here are a few more from our now-not-so-recent trip to Ohio at the end of June. Much more work to do, so I may just spit out a bunch of photos as I get to them.
I know my thousands of readers will go elsewhere if I don’t keep their attention. 🙂
Enjoy!
This month’s wallpaper is a little less abstracty than the ones I’ve been posting, but this is a fairly recent addition and one that I happen to like a lot. I hope you do, too.
Kathy & I made a bit of a whirlwind visit to Ohio a few weeks ago – hard to believe it has been a month already – dang! – and on that trip we visited Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, near where we lived before we relocated to North Carolina.
Unfortunately I don’t know the history of these trees, and even Google seems to be failing me, but I had forgotten them from previous visits. They were obviously planted by someone many years ago, probably as an early reclamation project. There are rows and rows of these trees throughout the park, and we spent some time walking around and I snapped a bunch of photos. A thunderstorm had just passed through before we arrived, and while the rain saturated the greens, the sunshine made for some interesting shadows on the ground. It also tended to make this a very contrasty scene, but I think the combination works well. I tried to process it with a bit of a Velvia look and think it comes pretty close. Hopefully you will be able to enjoy it for the month of August!
One of my former bosses had a bunch of “Bob-isms” that we heard holiday after holiday. I think a few of them may have ultimately gotten him fired. But this was one of the tamer and sillier ones, and I felt like using it as the title of this silly post. Accompanied by a couple of my “nature’s fireworks” photos.
I hope everyone has a weekend that allows you to do whatever makes you happy.
My typical practice when I get back from a trip and am going through photos to process for my blog is to toss some of the picks into a Quick Collection in Lightroom. I’ll process those and when I’m done I’ll have a little group to go with whatever words I’ve had bouncing around in my head.
These photos have been sitting in my Quick Collection folder since we returned from our visit to Belhaven in late March. I think 6 out of the 8 were done, I just hadn’t finished them.
I thought I had better clear them out before I start posting more Hilton Head photos. So here they are, better late than never, I guess!
Kathy & I spent the week leading up to Memorial Day at Hilton Head Island, South Carolina. HHI is our “go-to” beach for a nice, relaxing vacation.
As I had hoped to do, I bribed Kathy with good food and some wine from home to convince her to eat in a couple of evenings so we could enjoy – and I could photograph – the beach at sunset. She’s such a good sport! 😉
Capturing the water in the evening light often results in images like these that just ooze peace and quiet. I had a little extra incentive to come up with some good images this time, as we have a few walls in our new place that need some art. I even made a few verticals with that specifically in mind, but those will need to wait for a blog post since not too many people I know use their monitors in the vertical position. Although it might make a nice phone or tablet wallpaper. Hmmmm…. 🙂
I was a little slack with my posting and processing the last few weeks, but I have a lot of new photos to process and a number of them that I am looking forward to sharing!
One of my favorite places for wandering around with my camera is downtown Charlotte. Because it is close to where Kathy has a parking space, I especially spend a lot of time in the area around the NASCAR Hall of Fame. It’s just an interesting building, especially the metal work over the main entrance and all around the outside. I think it is supposed to represent a high-banked racetrack, but to me it just looks cool, especially at different times of the day as the lighting changes.
I’ve never been inside the building, although if someone came to visit who was interested, I would certainly consider going. While I have given up following auto racing along with all other professional sports, I still have an appreciation for the history of the sport as it existing before money spoiled it (IMO).
So Thursday evening before the baseball game, we wandered around this area killing time. I have photographed this building numerous times, but I never get tired of it, since there is always another shadow or angle that I haven’t seen before. Just the color of the sky can change how the metal reflects the light.
One of the advantages of visiting a place repeatedly is that there is always something new to see, another angle to explore or a different way the light and shadow plays with the subject. In this case it is the shapes and lines of the building.
Did I end up getting anything that I haven’t gotten before? I did. I found another interesting section that for some reason I had never seen. Many of these photos are of the same views as before, but one or two of them are a fresh look at something I have been looking at and photographing for several years, and which I will hopefully be photographing often in the years ahead.
Kathy & I are having a little “stay at home vacation” this weekend as we have Bill & Cathy, our friends from Ohio, in town for a few days. Thursday evening we ventured downtown to check out a baseball game at BB&T Ballpark, the brand-spanking-new baseball stadium here in Charlotte.
I’ve never been a huge sports fan, but I do like baseball. And while Major League sports in general have lost their appeal to me, there’s something enjoyable about heading to a minor league ball game on a chilly spring evening.
I called ahead to confirm, but they do allow cameras in the stadium. Big yay! So off we went, and I got a few shots to show for it. I think we’ll probably head back there soon. It was a great deal of fun and is a beautiful place to watch a ball game.
My friend Earl Moore and I spent some time wandering around Washington, NC a few weekends ago. One of the places we visited was the graveyard at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church. We were only there for about 15 minutes, but we both got a variety of shots.
It’s always interesting to see the results when different photographers visit the same place, especially at the same time. I won’t clutter this post up with a bunch of words, but I do have a few of my own photos from this visit. There are definitely some similarities to what we saw and shot, but just as many differences.
What fun!
It’s funny, but I just never think about pulling out my phone and using it to take photos. Last night our friends Edgar & Ann, both photographers, were at our place for dinner, drinking wine, eating food and talking about everything under the sun. Ann started it, although she might say otherwise, but she remarked about the patterns on the light fixture over the dining room table and asked me if I had ever photographed it. I admitted to having looked at it numerous times and thinking that it might make an interesting photograph, but I had never actually taken a photograph of it. Isn’t that weird?
I guess the thing for me is that I just don’t generally have my phone at the dinner table, and when I do my manners usually prevent me from playing with it at the table. Yes, that probably shows how Old School I am.
Like most people, when I do take a picture with my phone I’m often tempted to share it, or at least do something with it. But since I don’t share stuff on Facebook, Instagram or any other “share on the run” websites, I often just don’t bother taking a photo. But when I do I realize that it’s a great way to take photographs without the pressure of needing to Make Art and without the constraints of needing to be technically perfect – all “requirements” I tend to have when I use my Real Camera – it can just be a way to have fun.
I’ve stated before that I have gotten to where I don’t process my photos when I travel because I like to continue enjoying my travel and not feel compelled to start looking at my photographs. The same principals apply when I use my phone to take pictures. I usually just take a picture and forget about it. But once in a while it is fun to just play around with a different tool. I need to get better at remembering that. Sometimes I just don’t realize what I’m missing!
