Post-sunrise light at Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine
“Three weeks ago, I found myself sitting on the banks of Hudson Bay, a stone’s throw from the Arctic circle, waiting for a polar bear to wake from his slumber. One can wait a long time for a polar bear to awaken. Several times, our group of photographers asked whether we should move on, and several times the answer was, “You don’t leave a bear to go look for a bear.””
Most followers of this blog are already familiar with David duChemin. He gets a little preachy sometimes, but more often than not his words of wisdom are quite wise. In his most recent blog post, For Stronger Photographs: More Time, he writes about the difficult but valuable need to be patient. To take the time for something to happen. To make the time to be in the right place for something to happen. Its a lesson for all of us, photographers and non-photographers alike.
I’ve said numerous times that the most valuable thing I have learned from photography is that it is nearly impossible to be in the perfect spot at the perfect time. For that to happen even once is unimaginable, but to expect it over and over again is foolish and unproductive. There is always a better sunset, a better wave, a better expression, somewhere. But we don’t know where or when, so the best we can do is be where we feel we need to be, or make the best of wherever we are.
I’ll be the first to admit that I am not generally a patient person. But in waiting for a cloud to cover the sun, or for a wave to crash on a rock, or for shadow to spread evenly over a waterfall, there are times when patience is rewarded. Slow down, look around, and don’t leave a bear to go look for a bear.
Church Street Craft Festival in Waynesville, North Carolina
How many times have we seen it – a group of people taking pictures of some interesting scene or event with their phones, then showing their screens to each other as if to show off what they saw. But did they actually see the scene itself, or are they experiencing it only through their pictures? Will they only remember an event by looking at it on their phones? I wonder.
Mount Rushmore National Memorial, South DakotaHudson’s Seafood, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
When our kids were growing up, back in the dark ages of film, camcorders were becoming “the thing” among cool parents. Dads walked around school events with their “mini-cams” on their shoulder, documenting the events like a White House cameraman during a press conference. Kathy & I resisted, preferring instead to experience the events through our eyes and remembering them in our memories. We have still pictures, sure, but don’t have boxes and boxes of videotape that will never be watched. But the memories are precious and remain in our minds.
Pienza, Italy
I just read an article in the New York Times titled “Is the Immediate Playback of Events Changing Children’s Memories?” In it, the writer recalls a piano recital given by her daughter. The writer’s mother recorded the performance on her phone, and as the mother went to replay it 30 minutes later, “When I saw my mother’s finger hovering over “play” on her phone, my daughter leaning over her shoulder, I stopped her: “You know what … let’s just let her enjoy the moment.”
Pienza, Italy
I think that sentiment applies to everyone, not just children. Having a camera with us all the time, whether a “real” camera or a phone, causes our initial reaction to something to be an urge to photograph it instead of just looking at it and enjoying the moment. It disconnects us instead of connecting us.
It’s an interesting article so I won’t repeat it here, other than the final paragraph:
“It’s been a week since my daughter’s performance. “I can’t believe it’s over!” she says twirling around the kitchen. She knows I have a video of the performance, but, interestingly enough, she hasn’t asked to see it, and I haven’t volunteered it. I think I’ll let us both remember it just as it was that night for now: raw and unfiltered, and from our own perspectives, perfect.”
St. Mark’s Square in Venice, ItalySt. Mark’s Square in Venice, Italy
Think about that when we spend our time composing photographs through that little viewfinder or on that little screen. Remember to experience the world with our eyes, too. I’ve often told people that the quality of the photograph is less important than the quality of the memory. And that memory lives on long after the pixels are filed away on some hard drive.
Abandoned buildings along a dirt road stretch of Historic Route 66 near the New Mexico-Texas border
One of the bloggers/photographers I follow is Om Malik. He recently posted an article titled Future Of Media – A Quick Reality Check that I found interesting.
Hackberry General Store along Historic Route 66 in Hackberry, Arizona
I started my blog back when blogs were ‘cool’ as a way to share my written thoughts as well as my photographs. More often than not, my posts were a way for me to clarify my own thoughts on a subject, rather than just writing for writing’s sake. It sort of morphed into – for me at least – an alternative to social media. Yeah, I’m on Facebook (sort of) and Instagram (sort of) and I have a Twitter account that I never look at. But mostly I have this blog. And while I appreciate every person who comes and looks, especially those who take the time to leave thoughtful comments, I would probably do it even if no one visited or commented. I suppose it is my version of a journal, although one that anybody can read.
Twin Arrows, an abandoned roadside trading post located along I-40 in Arizona between Flagstaff and WinslowTwin Arrows, an abandoned roadside trading post located along I-40 in Arizona between Flagstaff and WinslowTwin Guns, an abandoned settlement along I-40 between Flagstaff and Winslow, Arizona
The passage in Malik’s post that I found especially valuable is the one where he talks – referencing still another article on the subject – about the distinction between blogging and social media:
Marc Weidenbaum, a music enthusiast and founder of Disquiet.com, expertly captures the distinction between blogs and social. “Social media expects feedback (not just comments, but likes and follows),” he writes. “Blogs are you getting your ideas down; feedback is a byproduct, not a goal.” In other words, one is a performance for an audience, while the other is highly personal, though others may end up finding it interesting. Weidenbaum also admirably points out the difference between blogs and all the suddenly ubiquitous newsletters. “And newsletters = broadcasting,” he says. “Blogging is different.”
Feedback is a byproduct, not a goal. I don’t write for Likes or Hearts or Thumbs-up, just for me. I post on Instagram, and while I don’t obsess over whether anyone “Likes” my photos or not, it’s nice when they do. And a few of the people who follow my Instagram will never read my blog. And that’s OK.
Hackberry General Store along Historic Route 66 in Hackberry, ArizonaExhibit at the place where the original route of Route 66 crosses the Petrified Forest Road in The Painted Desert, part of Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona
Just last night I had someone tell me, “I see your photos (on Instagram) from all these far-off places but never know where you are.” I explained that I always add the location, you just need to look at the text. And he replied “well, I just look at the pictures, I don’t bother reading anything.” Well, OK then. That’s how people use social media, and that guy will never read my blog. But I love him anyway. 🙂
“Leaning Tower of Texas” near Groom, Texas on Historic Route 66
Castillo de San Marcos Fort in St. Augustine, Florida
We turned the air conditioning on last night for the first time this year, after hitting a high of 83 yesterday afternoon. The pollen onslaught has begun and everything is taking on a yellow cast. It’s going to cool off a bit this week but I’ve started pulling out my short-sleeve shirts. 🙂
I’ve gotten a few questions about our experience with scheduling and actually getting the vaccine, and thought it might be helpful to share a few thoughts.
The Process: I’ve mentioned previously how frustrating the registration process is for many of the county and health agency websites. Kathy & I are fortunate to be registered with the two major health providers in our area, so we were able to use our login credentials to access those sites, which likely led to a slightly better experience. We ended up with the Moderna Vaccine through Novant Health.
We were fortunate to find any locations at all on the very first morning of our eligibility. The fact that the one we found was 200 miles away was no big deal for us. We have the flexibility to go wherever we need to, and it was easy for us to make the trip.
The vaccination site was in the parking area of a community college near Wilmington, NC. The approach was well marked, there were National Guard personnel directing traffic into several lines, checking to confirm appointments and providing forms for completion. The one glitch was that we had pre-filled everything online, but they still had us manually complete paperwork with the same information. Taking the paperwork pre-filled and printed would not have helped.
We arrived at about 10:40 for an 11:00 appointment, and although the lines looked long, we queued up and were directed to the actual vaccination line promptly at 11:00 (not due to any process on their part, it just happened to work out). We sat in our car until someone came around, asked us a few more questions, explained the process and handed us each a card with confirmation of our follow up appointments for the same time and day of the week in four weeks. Shortly thereafter two nurses came up with the vaccine, plunked each of us in the arm, wrote the time on a paper stuck to the windshield, and told us that after the prescribed waiting time we would be released. We rolled out of the parking lot at 11:30.
Train station in Rowland, North Carolina
The Vaccine: Did we have any concerns about getting the vaccine? None. We feel strongly that the vaccines have been adequately tested, we trust in the scientific validity of the data and believe that getting the vaccine has a much lower level of risk than not getting it. Everyone makes their own choice, but we feel that in order to do the kind of travel we want to do, more states, countries and companies will require a vaccination than not and we don’t want to be left out when the time comes.
Train station in Rowland, North Carolina
Side Effects: None really, but it surprises me how hyper-aware we become when we’re looking for something. I call it “new shoe syndrome” because of how when we buy a new pair of shoes we spend days paying attention to every little twinge or pinch. We recently bought new tires for the car, and for the first few drives I paid close attention to the sound, feel and ride. After a while you forget about it. We stopped at a restaurant for lunch, and while there a guy came in wearing a really strong cologne. Strong odors like cologne and smelly air fresheners always bother me, so when my throat got a little scratchy I wrote it off. No big deal. Our arms hurt for a few days, especially while we slept. But my left hip is often sore anyway, and since I got my shot in my left arm, I just spent more time on my right side!
Dilapidated building near the train station in Rowland, North Carolina
Eligibility: We’ve read about people gaming the system by falsely answering the questions, crossing state lines to states with more favorable rules or otherwise getting the shot before they should have. Kathy & I waited for our group to be called, answered all the questions truthfully and lucked into an early appointment. Could we have waited? Sure, but why? Everyone who wants a shot will eventually be able to get one, so it really doesn’t matter when we go. Could we have gotten an appointment closer to home? Perhaps, but once we got our appointments I stopped looking. I read somewhere about local appointments now booking out into May or June, but it doesn’t matter any more. The owner of the restaurant we had lunch at told us that someone called him the other afternoon to say that they had 15 Johnson & Johnson shots that were going to expire at the end of the day and to send along anyone who needed them. That happens too, you never know.
I don’t really have a lot to add. If anyone has questions I’ll be happy to answer them as comments or emails. Ultimately everyone is going to make their own decision and have their own experience, but I’ll help where I can.
The Photos: These photos are from the town of Rowland, NC which is on the NC side of the NC/SC line near South of the Border. They are in-camera JPEGs taken using the Kodachrome 64 recipe from Fuji X Weekly. The conditions were less than ideal for Kodachrome and look a little warm/brown for my taste, but I’m not sure I got the white balance right. I’ll try them again under sunny skies and see how they look. I also shot in RAW and will process those my usual way for comparison. It’s an interesting look and I’ve been enjoying playing with them.
Kathy and I received our first dose of Covid 19 vaccine yesterday. Getting it involved a trip to Bolivia. Bolivia, North Carolina, that is! 🙂
When North Carolina announced a few weeks ago that they would be opening up vaccinations to Group 4 (our group), I knew that because it included anyone from 18-64 it was going to be a huge group unless they somehow broke it down. Well, they did, sort of. They determined that the first wave would be people 18-64 with pre-existing health conditions, which in my opinion (and the CDC’s guidelines) is just about everyone. That essentially created a huge group vying for the next batch of vaccine, especially when I’m not sure how good of a dent they’ve made on the 65 and up crowd. I know all or most of our neighbors have gotten it, but we have a pretty aware and active bunch.
Anticipating a wait of days or weeks, I went online Wednesday morning with my pre-saved folder of websites for the local hospitals and county health organizations. These websites are extremely aggravating, as most of them require you to enter and re-enter information, only to take you to a page that says there are no appointments available. I don’t know if it is result of poor (or no) user testing or if it is intentionally designed to keep people from continually refreshing multiple pages. There has to be a better way, but I’m not smart enough to figure it out!
When I went to the website for Novant Health, one of our two large local hospital networks and one for which I already had an online profile, a few clicks took me to a page to show what appointments were available. There were no appointments available locally, but they were showing numerous appointments available at Brunswick Community College in Bolivia, North Carolina. Where the @#$%^ is Bolivia, I asked? Well, Bolivia is a little crossroads just outside of Southport and near Wilmington, in the southeast corner of the state and a little over 200 miles away. Kathy & I immediately snagged appointments for the same time on the same day. ROAD TRIP!
Of course it doesn’t take much of an excuse for us to load up the car and head somewhere. But the promise of a vaccination appointment just two days away was not a hard decision to make. So we found a motel, an Italian restaurant and a place for breakfast, just like we would do anywhere. It’s good to have lots of practice. 😉
I’ll talk more about the trip and the vaccination process in another post, but suffice it to say it was smooth as silk. They automatically provided us with appointments for our second dose in the same place at the same time in 4 weeks, so we’ll go back and do it all over again!
Oh, and we made some photo stops along the way there and back, so that will also be the subject of future posts! 🙂
Signals stored at a train station in Williston, Florida
Over the last year or so, Kathy & I have come to understand the impact of food choice on nutrition and overall health. One of the arguments I hear a lot as to why people make poor choices regarding food is that not everyone has access to quality food. My opinion is that people don’t know how to make good choices regarding food, because they don’t know what good food is, let alone what it tastes like. Why? Because the marketing messages we receive aren’t pushing healthy foods. They’re too often promoting foods which are actually bad for us but are sold to an unsuspecting public as being good for us. As I like to say, there is little profit in selling (for example) broccoli.
One of the food blogs I follow is Marion Nestle’s “Food Politics.” A recent post titled “Feed The Truth: Draining The Swamp” outlines a study and paper by an organization called Feed The Truth titled “Draining The Big Food Swamp.” This paper outlines the influence that “Big Food” has on national politics, which in turn affects the information people receive to make decisions about food. I highly recommend reading Nestle’s post and then following the link to at least the Executive Summary of the report.
This is important stuff. And this report only covers part of the problem, as it does not address the influence of pharmaceutical companies on the health care profession. Drug companies don’t make money off of healthy people any more than food companies make money selling healthy foods. We could solve a lot of the country’s health problems with a focus on quality food as an alternative to drugs and miracle cures.
Side view of my computer. The big blue fan is a cooling fan while the small fan (currently red) changes colors. Ooooooh!
My computer brain, that is. 🙂 My trusty machine was getting a little long in the tooth, having begun life as a pseudo-Mac about 7 years ago, then was transformed to a Windows machine about 4 years ago. The hardware was good, but the choices were made primarily because they were compatible with the Mac OS. It still made for a decent Windows machine but was not ideal.
Fortunately, I have in-house tech support who is willing to work for food and drink. My son Kevin helped me pick out new hardware, and I ended up keeping the case, power supply and video card. I (actually he – I just stayed out of the way and tried not to break things) replaced the motherboard, processor and memory plus a new SSD. I already had upgraded my photo drives from 2TB to 4TB, so they stayed intact. Not replacing everything saved me a bit of money, and that made the CFO pretty happy since it gives her more to spend on decorating. 😉
For those who care (and know what it means!), here is a summary of my upgraded hardware:
GeForceGTX760 Video Card
ASRock X570 PHANTOM GAMING 4 ATX AMD Motherboard
AMD RYZEN 7 3700X 8-Core 3.6 GHz Processor
CORSAIR Vengeance LPX 32GB DDR4 SDRAM
WD BLACK SN750 NVMe M.2 500GB Hard Drive
SanDisk X210SD 512GB SATA Hard Drive (Currently unused)
WD 4TB Desktop Performance 7200 rpm SATA III 3.5″ Internal HDD (X2)
CORSAIR TX650M Case with 650W power supply
It’s a pretty sweet setup. Getting everything back up and running took a little time, but at least that was something I know how to do! 😉
Print made for a private booth at Dressler’s Restaurant in Charlotte
One of the household projects Kathy & I have been dabbling with over the last year or so is some decorating. We’ve been in our condo for just over 7 years, and other than buying new furniture and hanging some things on the walls it’s been pretty much the way it was when we moved in. We just never got around to “finishing” it – traveling is way more fun! But now that we’ve been spending more time here, spending less money on travel and are generally tired of looking at the same stuff, we’re trying to change things up a bit.
Print made for a hallway at Dressler’s Restaurant in Charlotte
When we downsized from our old house, we had a lot more prints hung there than we needed for our new place. There were several that had been admired by friends and family, so I was happy to give some of them new homes. Others I removed from the frames, stored the matted prints in an archival box, and they are under the bed. I sent the frames to Goodwill. I’ll probably never hang the prints again but I have them and they are out of the way. I had new prints made for some specific places, but for the most part we just recycled prints that had been hung in our old house. I haven’t wanted to spend money on prints for prints’ sake without a specific location to hang them.
One of two grids of prints made for a banquet room at Dressler’s Restaurant in CharlotteOne of two grids of prints made for a banquet room at Dressler’s Restaurant in Charlotte
I have never collected prints by other photographers. I have several prints from photographers that mean a lot to me, and with the exception of one that needs framed, I have them displayed prominently (sadly, I don’t own a Curto 😉 ). One of our rooms is dedicated to prints of paintings by an artist in St. Martin, and that room doesn’t need a thing. But there are places in the house that just need decor. We recently had our bedroom and bathrooms painted. I have a beautiful grouping of prints on wood that I rehung in our bedroom over the dresser, but the other bedroom and bathroom walls are currently bare and awaiting our inspiration.
Prints made for the dining room of Dressler’s Restaurant in Charlotte
We’ve constantly struggled with the question of what to hang on the walls. I obviously have a huge selection of photographic material, but (a) we’re both sensitive to the idea of not wanting our house to be a “photography gallery,” (b) there is only so much wall space and (c) deciding on what to print and hang is a huge challenge. Printing and framing is expensive, and once we’ve put down a few hundred dollars for printing and framing (or for canvas or metal) we’ve always felt like we needed to be willing to live with it for a while.
Prints made for the ladies’ room of Dressler’s Restaurant in CharlottePrint made for the men’s room at Dressler’s Restaurant in Charlotte
But is that really the case? I consider a lot of my work to be “artistic” but I don’t consider myself to be an “artist” in the sense that any of my work will ever mean anything beyond a close circle of family & friends and a few “accidental” clients. If I went to Ikea, brought home a carload of decor, hung it on the wall for a few years and then tossed it in the trash, so what? But other than the fact that it’s my work and it cost me a bit more than Ikea, what’s the difference if I throw or give it away after I get done with it? We don’t mind spending (say) $300 on a case of wine or a fancy dinner, so if we spend that same money on a few things to hang on the wall, I don’t see anything wrong with considering them to be “consumables.” Better to give them away to an appreciative recipient of course, but we don’t have to live with them forever.
Print made for the bar at Dressler’s Restaurant in Charlotte
So the question I’m struggling with is this: If we consider replacing artwork to be no different than buying a new bedspread or draperies or having a chair reupholstered, so what? As long as we’re good with the money, no one cares but us. Yes, I would always try to find a new home for old pieces with someone who appreciates them. But that appreciation is more likely to be because they came from me rather than them being an artifact with some kind of collectible value. It feels a little weird to think of it that way, but I think it is OK.
Print made for the bar at Dressler’s Restaurant in Charlotte
It’s hard to not be moved by a sense of pride in this great country when our democratic system is permitted to function as it was intended. I shed a few emotional tears watching the ceremonies today, but I look forward to our future with optimistic and hopeful anticipation.
Fourth of July Parade in Belhaven, North Carolina
I need to go back and re-watch or read Biden’s speech, but the words that keep returning to my head are when he referred to ‘leading not by the example of our strength but by the strength of our example. Amen to that.
Fourth of July Parade in Belhaven, North CarolinaEdenton, North Carolina
