Tag Archives: 5D Mark III

A Sense of Place

Random photos from Bath, North Carolina
Random photos from Bath, North Carolina

Several discussions have been swirling around lately on the various blogs I follow about the relative suitability of ones location in terms of climate, activities, culture, economy, etc. And not coincidentally, Kathy & I have been having similar discussions as we ponder our own futures and plan our eventual withdrawal from the corporate meat grinder. Interestingly, I find a wide divergence of opinion on the role that location plays in one’s outlook, from the overall quality of life to intangibles like access to healthcare, a reasonable sized airport, and proximity to important things like the beach, the mountains, and an ABC store. 😉

Random photos from Bath, North Carolina
Random photos from Bath, North Carolina

For the longest time, Kathy & I regarded Charlotte as a place to live until our “real lives” began. We saw it as a good place to raise the kids, it had and still has a good economy with reasonable prospects for employment, and we have much better weather here than we faced in northeast Ohio in the years prior to our move. Now that we’ve been here for a while – in December we will have lived in North Carolina for 20 years – we find that we really like it here. We absolutely love our new house, and as we work to put the finishing touches on making it our “dream home” we find that it’s easier and easier to think about it as a place we don’t need to leave. But ultimately it’s just a house and a place to store our stuff. It’s our outlook and our state of mind that makes a place our home. For us, whether we are in Charlotte, North Carolina, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina or Fort Collins, Colorado, I think home is wherever Kathy & I happen to find ourselves, not necessarily where our house is located. Although Jost Van Dyke holds some appeal….

Random photos from Bath, North Carolina
Random photos from Bath, North Carolina

As we travel we wonder about other towns as possible places to move to, but for whatever reason we always come back to our current home as the place we look forward to getting back to. And we’ve pretty much felt that way about wherever we have lived. It’s not that we wouldn’t or couldn’t make a new home somewhere else, but that we are comfortable with ourselves and are happy to make the best of where we are, wherever that is.

Random photos from Bath, North Carolina
Random photos from Bath, North Carolina

One of the many life lessons that I have learned from my photography is that there are an endless number of places that I could be at a given time. If I’m sitting at an overlook on the Blue Ridge Parkway socked in with fog and rain, someone else is at Clingman’s Dome in the Smokies witnessing a spectacular sunrise or sunset. I’ve seen people racing up and down the Parkway trying to find the perfect conditions, but I’ve made some of my favorite photographs from places where I have stuck around to see what happened and ended up making the best of the conditions I was handed where I was.

Random photos from Bath, North Carolina
Random photos from Bath, North Carolina

The key for me is to live my life and spend my time enjoying where I am and making the best of it, rather than spending a lot of energy worrying about where I’m not. And I realize that doesn’t work for everybody, but as I think about how I prefer to plan my days, I don’t worry about where I live, I just want to be sure that I do live, and that I make the best of wherever it is that I happen to be.

Random photos from Bath, North Carolina
Random photos from Bath, North Carolina

Lists, Goals & Plans

Fall Color in Historic Frog Level, North Carolina
Fall Color in Historic Frog Level, North Carolina

Kathy and I love to travel, of course, and while we aren’t the “world travelers” that some have made us out to be, we’ve seen our share of the world and we spend a lot of time talking about what kind of travel we want to do. We have our lists of places we “should” go, and all of those have varying levels of interest and priority. And of course there are places that we would love to go but probably never will. Some of our favorite memories are from places where most people would never bother to go. Of all the places we’ve been, a trip to Kentucky a few years ago still comes to mind as one of our favorite experiences. Who’da thunk?

Dogwood in fall colors, Waynesville, North Carolina
Dogwood in fall colors, Waynesville, North Carolina

Like a lot of things, what we do and what we enjoy has to come from within. We need to be able to take the time to figure out what means the most to us. What are our priorities, rather than a heavily cliché-ed “bucket list” developed by some magazine publisher to sell more advertising. Who we are and how we feel is a product of our own existence and our own experiences. Comfort level has a lot to do with what we are willing to try. Not everyone has that voice that tells us to step out of our comfort zones. But for those of us who do, we definitely need to listen.

Fall Color in Waynesville, North Carolina
Fall Color in Waynesville, North Carolina
Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North
Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina

Like a lot of people, I’m often tempted by the idea of “if I knew then what I know now.” But I try to keep a lid on those thoughts, because ultimately I didn’t know then what I know now, and my entire life’s experience ultimately contributes to where and who I am today. I can’t change the past, so the best approach for me is to look ahead, because that’s the only thing I have any degree of influence on – to make the best of what I have and who I am.

Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina
Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina

In many ways, this idea of comfort zone has parallels with the way we see the world. For those of us who are observers, we see things that other people don’t see, and sometimes others see things we don’t see. And we travel the same way. When I first started doing photography seriously I would sometimes get up in the middle of dinner, afraid that I was going to “miss” sunset. I’ve since learned that I’m always missing something, and that helps me reconcile the idea that I’m not going to get to “do” everything.

Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina
Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina

Kathy & I are very close to the point where we can decide to walk away from our corporate lives. Quite often we find ourselves feeling that that day can’t come soon enough. There are other days when things seem to go along fairly well and it feels like collecting a few more paychecks won’t be all that difficult. The difficult thing is going to be determining when the right time might be to call it quits. We have established many checkpoints that will tell we’re on the path. Some of those we have met, many we’re close on, but a few major ones have yet to be realized. But we have a plan and hope that when the time comes we’ll have the guts to say, “NOW.”

Pumpkin Patch at First United Methodist Church in Waynesville, North Carolina
Pumpkin Patch at First United Methodist Church in Waynesville, North Carolina

For me, my primary goal for what I want to do in retirement is to stay retired!   If I end up doing some kind of work I’d like it to be for personal satisfaction rather than to pay the bills. The good thing is that there are a lot of rewarding things we can do that don’t cost an enormous amount of money. While they may not check other peoples’ boxes for fulfillment, they might be just fine if that was the alternative.

Fall Color in Historic Frog Level, North Carolina
Fall Color in Historic Frog Level, North Carolina

 We’ve never paid a lot of attention to the “if money were no object” scenarios because it was always our intention for that not to be an issue. Not that we expect to never have to think about money, but the idea all along has been to have provided for a level of financial security that would allow us to continue living the life we have become comfortable with. And if that doesn’t work out, I suspect we’ll figure out how to travel and buy wine with whatever we do have! So for now, we hope to hold on to the jobs we’ve got for as long as we can, and every paycheck is a victory of sorts. Murphy’s Law would suggest that as soon as we decide for one of us to stay home, the remaining job we’d be counting on would go away.

Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina
Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina

For a lot of people, their biggest fear with retirement is that they won’t have anything to do. That is the thing that I worry about the least! Whenever we decide to walk out of that corporate world, I know that there is a whole lot of world out there to explore. And while I don’t have a chance of ever seeing it all, Kathy & I both plan to make a point of enjoying whatever we do see as much as we possibly can. That doesn’t take a list, and it doesn’t take a lot of planning, but I think it is a pretty good goal.

Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina
Fall Color along the Blue Ridge Parkway near Waynesville, North Carolina

Switches and Controls

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

We live in an age of absolutes. We have political parties who won’t support another party’s position just because it isn’t theirs, even when it is right. If we choose to not support a given cause then we are considered to be against it, even though we might be generous contributors to some other cause. When we drive it seems we are either rushing down the road like we’re on our way to a fire, or sitting at a traffic light checking the messages on our phones that came since the last red light.

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Our Subaru came with a gauge on the dashboard that gives a visual reference as to whether we are “using gas” or “saving gas.” “Using gas” goes all the way to the 6:00, or “minus” position, while “saving gas” goes to the 12:00 or “plus position. When I am driving down a level road at a reasonable speed, the needle is horizontal at the 9:00 position, which in goldilocks terms means “just right” territory. But the scale between all the way “plus” and all the way “minus” is a continuum. When we first bought the car I became fixated on that gauge, mostly because I was surprised at how often it was pegged to the “minus” position and how seldom it hovered in “plus” territory. Sometimes the gauge just has to go into the Minus zone, like when pulling away from a traffic light, merging onto a freeway or going up a hill. But other than that, I have adjusted how I use the accelerator in order to keep that needle from “hitting bottom” any more than necessary.

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

This will sound silly, but in many ways that gauge has literally changed my life. That visual reference has taught me that the gas pedal is a control, and not an on/off switch.

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

My son Kevin has a term for people who pay attention to things and people around us. He calls us “observers.” I like that term because it is descriptive but not a label. Being an observer is both a blessing and a curse. Being an observer lets us experience things around us that other people overlook, for all the various reasons that people overlook things. Being an observer also makes us see all the things that people do that make us angry. One of the things I observe is how often people appear to live their lives either “off” or “on.” And for me that often manifests itself in how people drive.

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

I see that little needle as an analogy for the way I live my life, and I guess I project it on others as I imagine them running around with their personal needles pegged on Minus. This feeling is especially prevalent on my drive to work in the morning, as we move from one stop light to the next, all of us ending up in the same place, just in a somewhat different order. Some people race to get to the light sooner, and just have to wait longer for it to change. Others roll up to the light just as it is getting ready to change, but it’s the same cars each time. I guess in many ways I’m playing the role of the tortoise vs. the hare, but I learned long ago that no one gives out prizes for being the first person into the office in the morning. And they don’t serve cocktails to those who are still in the office at 6:00. When I leave for the day, I do so with the confidence that it will be there when I get back. Right where I left it the day before. It’s funny how that works.

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

So where did the title come from? I was thinking about the fact that people seem to know only two settings on their cars – “go” and “stop.” I was thinking about the fact that I can choose how hard to press the gas pedal – that it is a control that allows me to add gas gradually instead of just mashing it to the floor, instead of an off/on switch with only two settings. And I choose to live my life somewhere between the Plus and Minus settings. Sometimes it’s OK to peg the needle one way or the other, but things seem to run more smoothly when I keep the needle in the middle. And I guess I just find myself happier when my personal needle spends more time on the Plus side of the scale than the Minus.

Good Words

Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina
Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina

One of the many non-photography blogs I follow is Becoming Minimalist by Joshua Becker.  I found these quotes especially appropriate given some of our recent discussions.

Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina
Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina

“Too many people overvalue what they are not and undervalue what they are.” —Malcolm S. Forbes

Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina
Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina

“Focus is often a matter of deciding what things you’re not going to do.” —John Carmack

Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina
Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina

Stop trying to impress others with the things that you own and begin inspiring them by the way that you live.

Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina
Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina

“Money is a poor indicator of success.” —Joshua Becker

Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina
Random photos from downtown Waynesville, North Carolina

September 2014 Wallpaper

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Back to the real abstracty stuff for September! Last month’s calendar photo was a little too literal to fit the “abstract” theme, but I like it and it works.

I really like this month’s photo for the pastel colors and the soft edge of the waterline against the sand. It fits into my idea of a quiet evening, which is one of the things I like best about being at the beach.

Urban Landscapes

Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio

This is certainly not a new term in photography or even a new use for an old one.  But it’s a way I’ve described some of the images I’ve made during our various travels.  They aren’t people pictures and they aren’t (necessarily) historical landmarks, but it’s a way to describe the details that make up the greater part of the whole.

These are some of my “urban landscape” photos from our recent visit to Millersburg, OH.

Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio

Holmes County Court House

Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio

While we were in Ohio visiting my brother Bob, we went to Millersburg for dinner.  Here are a few photos that I took while waiting for our table at a local restaurant that happened to be right across the street from the Holmes County Courthouse.  It’s a classic building in classic (I’m sure there’s a proper word for it) courthouse architecture.

Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Holmes County Courthouse in Millersburg, Ohio
Bragging?

😉

Some More of That

Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio
Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio

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!

Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio
Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio
Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio
Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio
Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio
Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, Ohio
Gaston's Mill at Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, O
Gaston’s Mill at Beaver Creek State Park in Columbiana County, O

Salt Life

Sand bar in the Calibogue Sound
Sand bar in the Calibogue Sound

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
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
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 Sound
Sand bar in the Calibogue Sound
Sand bar in the Calibogue Sound
Sand bar in the Calibogue Sound

Claim to Fame?

Evening on the Beach, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
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