One of the cars I frequently see in our neighborhood has a sticker on the back that says “Salt Life.” I’ve seen it in other places too, but never really knew what it was all about. Remember that I live a sheltered life, with no advertising and stuff, so bear with me. The other day going to work I followed an SUV that was sporting a “Salt Life” spare tire cover. Finally getting the better of my curiosity, I turned to The Google to see what this was all about.
Sand bar in the Calibogue Sound
So as it turns out, Salt Life is a company that sells stuff that says Salt Life on it. According to their website, they are “an authentic, aspirational and lifestyle brand that embraces those who love the ocean and everything associated with living the “Salt Life”.” So in other words, according to the cynic in me (me, cynical? 🙂 ), they sell stuff to people who are too busy living some other “authentic aspirational lifestyle” to actually go to the beach and enjoy “everything associated with” being at the ocean. It’s a fantastic business model – get people to pay for the privilege of advertising your brand. One of the oldest models in the world.
Sand bar in the Calibogue Sound
Don’t get me wrong, I’m good with it. I ain’t judging. But the whole idea strikes me as kind of shallow. I mean, if we really aspire to living at the beach, then we need to get our a$$ to the beach. Don’t just buy stuff that makes other people think you went to the beach. Besides, the real beach people can tell.
Sand bar in the Calibogue SoundSand bar in the Calibogue Sound
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Kathy & I attended a fantastic concert last evening by guitarist Tommy Emmanuel. For those who aren’t familiar, look him up and check out some of his recordings or videos. Regarded by many as the greatest living guitarist on the planet, his resume includes over 20 record albums and two Grammys. The dude can play!
Today, I got an e-mail from the concert promoters thanking us for attending and wanting to make sure we were aware of another acoustic guitar player that would be performing there soon and hoping we would attend. I’m sure he’s an excellent guitar player and I am fully aware that everyone needs to start somewhere. But this guy’s claim to fame, at least according to the promoters, is that he has received “over 20 million views collectively for his Youtube videos.”
That’s a lot of views, certainly. But I’d love to ask, “so what else has he done?” I suppose I’m missing the point, but it’s pretty amazing to me that someone’s Youtube videos qualifies him as a successful musician and one worth paying money to hear. I suppose we might decide to go, but at least I know I can see his videos to help me make the decision.
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Samantha Chrysanthou and Darwin Wiggett recently posted on their blog that they had decided and agreed (it was Samantha’s idea and Darwin decided to go along) to a June 30 deadline to either process their unprocessed files or delete them. Delete as in gone. Forever. Their reasoning is that having so many unprocessed images was limiting their creativity by creating “clutter” and that Samantha “CAN’T STAND the idea of going out to shoot with hundreds of images just waiting for me back home.” Samantha had 89+ folders and Darwin nearly 200 folders dating back to 2005. Rather than me copy and paste their comments, you need to read the several (so far) posts on the subject to get the whole idea.
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
In their posts they refer to the concept of Minimalism, which is one that Kathy & I have been exploring lately. Part of the goal of downsizing to our new home was to rid ourselves of physical “clutter” that we had been making space to store and making time to think about. There’s nothing like facing the prospect of moving all that “stuff” to make one wonder how much of it is really necessary. And parsing all of it down to just the essentials for living in an apartment for 6 months really made us think about how much of that stuff would ultimately survive the move. Suffice it to say that we’re glad to have a Goodwill store close by.
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
I’ve never given all that much thought to my digital backlog. I have a very well thought out method for sorting, categorizing and rating my photos so I always know the status of a given image based on the Pick status, color label and star rating. Having unprocessed files doesn’t bother me. In fact, I will sometimes go back into the archives and see an image that, for one reason or another, I missed or passed over the first time or two through the folder. I’ve reasoned that as long as I have captioned and keyworded my photos, if I ever needed to process one I would, and if I never did? No big deal.
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
For a while I felt like I needed to have a goal of processing every single one of my “Picks.” And I actually have processed many of my files from the early digital days, starting around 2004. What I have done, though, is when I’ve gone through and made my Picks I remove the non-Picks from the Lightroom catalog while leaving them on my hard drive. I have nearly 32,000 images in my Lightroom catalog, but many multiples of that number reside on my hard drive. It’s not that I think all of those “rejects” might be valuable as much as I figure with as cheap as hard drives are there isn’t a lot of point in deleting them.
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
So I’m not judging anyone else’s decisions or their workflow, but I’m pretty comfortable with my “system” and it doesn’t bother me to have unprocessed photos. But it was obviously something they considered to be important, and more power to them. Not all “clutter” is visible, and if something is hampering their creativity, addressing it in the way that works for them is the right approach. I’ll be interested to see how they did come June 30.
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South CarolinaEvening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South CarolinaEvening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
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.
Fishing boats in Swan Quarter, North Carolina
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.
Fishing boats in Swan Quarter, North Carolina
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!
Along the Pamlico River waterfront in Washington, North CarolinaI guess her tripod didn’t come with a manual. Points for the Holga, though.Along Main Street in Washington, North CarolinaAlong the Pamlico River waterfront in Washington, North CarolinaAlong the Pamlico River waterfront in Washington, North Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
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!
Outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina
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.
Outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina
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).
Outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina
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.
Outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina
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.
Outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina
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.
Outside the NASCAR Hall of Fame in Charlotte, North Carolina
Charlotte Knights baseball game at BB&T Ballpark in Charlotte, NC
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.
Charlotte Knights baseball game at BB&T Ballpark in Charlotte, N
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.
Charlotte Knights baseball game at BB&T Ballpark in Charlotte, NC
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.
Charlotte Knights baseball game at BB&T Ballpark in Charlotte, NCCharlotte Knights baseball game at BB&T Ballpark in Charlotte, NCCharlotte Knights baseball game at BB&T Ballpark in Charlotte, NC
The Three Amigos and their Husbands (thanks to Earl’s phone for the photo)
One of the many blogs I follow is that of Paul Maxim, a photographer who resides in Rochester, NY. Paul and his wife Barbara have been on a month-long adventure around the country. A few days ago I read on Paul’s blog that he was going to be in Charleston, SC so I sent him an e-mail suggesting that if he was going to be passing through Charlotte to give me a call. As it turned out, he was and he did!
So Thursday night, Kathy & I joined up with Paul & Barbara and Earl & Bonnie Moore for dinner. It was nice to meet Paul & Barbara in person, talk a little about photography, a lot about travel and retirement, and had some good food as well.
I’ve only gotten to meet a few of my virtual friends in person, but I’ve found that so far I like them even more in person than I do by seeing only the slice of them that they show online. There are a bunch of interesting people in this world and I feel privileged to have met a few of them!
Graveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North Carolina
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.
Graveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North Carolina
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!
Graveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North CarolinaGraveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North CarolinaGraveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North CarolinaGraveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North CarolinaGraveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North Carolina
Kathy & I value quiet as much as just about anything there is to value. By quiet I don’t just mean sound, although that certainly accounts for a lot of it. I mostly refer to the kind of quiet that means the absence of noise, both physical and mental. By that I mean the constant background chatter, the incessant televisions that keep us “entertained” while we try to shop or have a meal, or the impatient and distracted “me first” drivers. It can mean also mean something as simple as having to call the bank or the cable company for the eighth time about some problem that can never quite seem to be resolved.
Fishing boats in Swan Quarter, North Carolina
We go to great lengths to make our home as peaceful as possible. We don’t have a television. It’s amazing how much difference that makes. When we did have one we found that even when it was not on, it begged us to turn it on, to find something – anything – to watch. That’s noise. We love to listen to music, but when we do it is often smooth jazz or classical, with no words and no blaring horns or guitars. There’s a time and place for the big band jazz and the vocals, but we save that for working in the garage or cleaning the house. Our favorite play list on Spotify is called “Shhhhh!” (I made it up myself)
Fishing boats in Swan Quarter, North Carolina
On our recent weekend with our friends Earl & Bonnie Moore, we found ourselves spending some quiet time at Swan Quarter Wildlife Refuge. At the end of a mile or so long dirt road is a good-sized parking lot. Why the parking lot is so large I have no idea, because in all the times we’ve been there I think we might have encountered just one car. The parking lot was established for the Bell Island Pier, a beautiful fishing pier that extends perhaps 200 yards or more into Rose Bay Creek, which is an inlet of Rose Bay, the Pamlico River and eventually the Pamlico Sound.
Bell Island Pier at Swan Quarter National Wildlife Refuge near Swan Quarter, North Carolina
Despite the sound of the wind and surf, this is truly a quiet place. We enjoy spending time there, and enjoyed sharing it with Earl & Bonnie. It’s a place that reminds us that there can be quiet anywhere, we just might need to work a little harder to find it. There are a lot of spots like that everywhere. A few of them I like to keep to myself, although they aren’t exactly a secret. With others the key is to know when to go there and when to stay away.
Bell Island Pier at Swan Quarter National Wildlife Refuge near Swan Quarter, North Carolina
Kathy & I have often discussed the possibility of relocating to eastern North Carolina. There’s a lot to like out there. It’s close(r) to the Outer Banks, we have made friends in Belhaven and Washington, and we’ve found that it’s just a great destination for a quiet weekend, whether I photograph or not. There’s a noticeably slower and more relaxed pace out there. It’s a pace we enjoy because it comes very close to the way we like to live our lives.
Swan Quarter National Wildlife Refuge near Swan Quarter, North Carolina
One of our objections to moving so far east is that it is so far from the other places we like to go. It’s a good 5-hour drive from Charlotte, and another couple of hours or so to the mountains. But at some point we realized that, being so far from everything might just be the point. Maybe escaping the hustle & bustle, the traffic and congestion, might be worth the price of having to drive a little farther to get to some of the other places we love. It’s hard to say for sure, but we may be on to something. It’s possible that being farther from some things might bring you closer to others.
Graveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North Carolina
For the foreseeable future, home is where the jobs are, since it’s those jobs that allow us to have the house and travel to all of the places we like to travel to. Down the road it might be another story, although I suspect the finally getting to the point where we can kiss the corporate world goodbye might lessen the need for escape. That’s a hard scenario to predict. But in the mean time, you can be sure that we will continue to seek the quiet places, whether they are close by or farther away.
Graveyard at St Peter’s Episcopal Church in Washington, North CarolinaAlong the Pamlico River waterfront in Washington, North Carolina
Along the Pamlico River waterfront in Washington, North Carolina
Along the Pamlico River waterfront in Washington, North Carolina
