Random Thoughts

(NOT) The Big City

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Blacksville, South Carolina

I’ve never been to New York City.  I know it’s a really big city but have no concept of how truly huge it is.  Many of us who live in Charlotte like to think Charlotte is a big city, but it’s it’s just a small town with lots of people. An article in yesterday’s New York Times had a comment that underscored that point for me.

Pete Wells, the Times’ restaurant critic, was writing in “Restaurant Dining Is Back, if You Can Find a Table” about how restaurants responded to being able to open for outdoor seating. He indicated that the new rules went into effect on a Monday, and that by noon on that Tuesday 4100 restaurants had received approval for outdoor dining. 4100 restaurants! North Carolina probably doesn’t have that many restaurants in the entire state if you exclude fast food.  Amazing!

Blacksville, SC is another one of those “along the way” places we passed through.  This old store is across the street from the train station, which now houses the town library and will likely be the subject of another post. 🙂

Roadside Finds

Roadside Finds: Kline, SC Train Station

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Train station in Kline, South Carolina

There are rail lines all over rural South Carolina, and on our backroads travels we often find them paralleling the highway.  Every time we go through a small town, we look for a likely spot for a train station.  Many of them are long disappeared, but occasionally we come across one.  As we passed through the town of Kline, SC we came across this old depot.  Still in pretty good condition but could use a little TLC.

Random Thoughts

So Now We Have Covid-19 Waivers

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Peggy’s Cove, Nova Scotia

Yesterday I received an email from our neighborhood HOA which contained a waiver that anyone using the pool or the clubhouse must sign.  They are also supposedly working on some kind of disclaimer to state that the HOA bears no responsibility for anyone who gets sick.  They paid an attorney to create these documents.  Wouldn’t have been easier, less expensive and no less effective to just say, “Hey look, y’all know about this virus thing, right?  It’s up to you to not do stupid stuff and your own responsibility for anything that happens if you do.  Got it?  Good.”

I was reminded of the above photo from our visit to Nova Scotia in 2013.  A simple warning seemed sufficient for the people there.  Canadians aren’t that much smarter than we are, are they?  Maybe they are.

Photography

Same Meat, Different Seasoning

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ACROS+Red filter

The photo in my previous post was processed using the “Vintage 01” profile in Lightroom.  My default setting is usually an Import Preset I’ve developed using the “Camera Velvia” profile, with some of my own secret sauce.  The Velvia version with that subject came out way too saturated, so I started messing around with a few other treatments.  I created new Virtual Copies, changed to a new profile then made a few additional tweaks based on what I thought each version needed.

Original with Velvia Profile

No verdicts or preferences at this point, but it was interesting to see what the different options can do.

Vintage 01 Profile
Pro-Negative-Hi Profile
Classic Negative Profile
Roadside Finds

Roadside Finds – Murray Gin Mill

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Murray Gin cotton mill on SR 3/Whetstone Road near North, South Carolina

Kathy & I like to joke that “no one turns a 5 hour drive into a 7- or 8-hour adventure like we do!  Even going to the beach we like to take back roads and explore what we find along the way.  For this recent trip to Hilton Head we decided to take a picnic lunch and stop at Barnwell State Park, located a few miles off our usual route through rural South Carolina.  The route to Barnwell took us down a road we hadn’t been on before, and we passed this mill along the way.  I didn’t stop, and kicked myself several times before we were too far away to turn around.  I promised myself that I would stop on the way back, and I did.

I haven’t looked too hard yet, but have not come up with any kind of history on this mill.  I did find some indication that the name “Murray” appears on a number of cotton mills in the area, but nothing so far that tells me more.  I’m guessing that the mill is no longer operational, but I’ve seen places that look worse than this still churning out product once a year.

And yes, there is actually a town called North in South Carolina! 🙂

Photo Project: A Change Of Scenery

All Good Things….

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Drift fence shadows on the beach in Hilton Head Island, South Ca

We’re headed back to our home base today, after a refreshing week at the beach.  A little photography, lots of sun, sand and surf, and even a few dinners out made for a nice break from all the hoopla at home.  It sounds like we’re returning home for the possibility of a bit more pandemonium, but after a little break it will hopefully be easier to bear.

With luck we’ll be headed out again in a couple of weeks for Ohio and perhaps beyond.  We’ll see what develops during that time.  Trying not to look farther ahead than the next journey!

Photo Project: A Change Of Scenery

Wide Angle Fun

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I have always loved the look of a wide angle lens but feel like I struggle to come up with wide-angle photos that I love.  I forced myself to carry my 10-24 with me yesterday afternoon, expecting to find some long shadows in the afternoon.  I was not disappointed!  It’s especially hard (in my opinion) to use a super wide focal length without a tripod, because it is virtually impossible to get the framing I intended.  Some of these came out OK!

Drift fence shadows on the beach in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Drift fence shadows on the beach in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Photo Project: A Change Of Scenery

Nice To Get Away

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“Socially Distanced” Lifeguard

So far, so good with our little “experiment” of being away from home.  We visited our favorite Hilton Head restaurant yesterday evening, and it marked the return of their Wednesday night live jazz, which is main reason we like to go there on Wednesdays.  It’s “the beach,” so everyone is fairly relaxed anyway, and things aren’t a lot different now.  We’ve seen very few masks on the beach, but when we went to the grocery store about 75% or more of the people were in masks.  We’ve only been to three restaurants.  At two of the restaurants all of the servers had masks, while we haven’t seen a single guest wearing one.

Ominous clouds to the north due to a low pressure system off the coast

We’ve overheard and had several conversations with people about where they are from and how those places have been coping, but very little “hand-wringing” or negative talk.  It seems like most people are doing what makes them comfortable without a lot of judgement.  Although sometimes you hear a comments about “anti-maskers” or some such nonsense.

I’ve taken the camera to the beach at some point just about each day, although I have not tried to make photography my main goal.  I do think I’ve gotten some pretty nice shots, though.  And I’m learning more and more about how to make this new camera do what I want it to do.

Father-son fishing lesson
Photo Project: A Change Of Scenery

Lather, Rinse, Repeat

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Drift fence and grass, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Somehow I never get tired of walking along the drift fences and catching the shadows of the fencing and the green grasses growing up through the sand.  I sometimes feel like I’ve done too much of this, but then I end up seeing something new and different and off I go.  More of the same but never the same…almost like snowflakes!

There may be a few minor technical flaws in this photo, but given the vagaries of wind and shifting frame to to image stabilization, I like how this turned out.  Loving the juxtaposition between the grasses and the fence with the shadows behind.

Photographs and stuff!