A photography discourse

My first camera was a Brownie. I was eight years old. When I was a teenager, my dad passed along an old Kodak bellows. He never mentioned the benefit of a light meter, so I pretty much worked it out myself. The other day I pulled out the phone and framed up a picture.

Laura said, “Kay showed me the nine points of framing a picture, while we were hiking.” I smiled. Two universal truths. The nine points of framing a picture, and ‘teacher says.’ I think I’ve always seen the world as a picture, and the truth of my philosophy, ‘there is no such thing as objectivity.’ It totally is in the presentation. Move a few steps left. Wait for the light to change.

I may get a Moto Z Droid phone, next upgrade. Laura needs a new phone. She has dropped and shattered her <one year old phone so often and badly, it holds its charge barely half a day. It’s under contract for two or three more years. Mine is out of contract in a couple of months. Sounds like she gets mine and I get a new phone.

The Hasselblad feature is still up in the air. It has to live in another pocket and go on the phone. It’s only another 10X, but on a good camera. But, it does not have a eye piece, an essential to finding my photographic world these days, especially in the bright sunshine I like for photography.

Clearing all the old photographs to a flash drive was such an experience. My dad’s work ranged from classically fine to street photography. My mother was a good photographer. Neither one of them showed me how to used a light meter or select depth of field. But, I figured it out. Dad cataloged their work. I’m the only person in the family who gives a damn. So I’ve scanned it all to a flash drive Someone may look, some day, and be stunned.

Now there is nothing in my “Pictures” folder. All my old work is cataloged and on the same drive. I’m starting over. It’s so easy to begin new. Yesterday was a fine, bright day, and I left with the camera, to take some pictures of the red crane down the road.

This is Titus; he lives next door. The picture is a the epitome of using a screen on a bright day. 

Not sure, in the glare, if I had him all in the frame, I said his name, to change the dynamic, and tried again. Even less highly bored dog made it into the picture. I switched over to eyepiece mode and went on down the road.

At enormous cost, a new high school is going up down the road, consolidating all the schools onto one property, the old Quick farm, on Quick road. I tried to take a picture of the red crane last week, from a business directly across from it, across the road. I was told to vacate the property at once. I did. 

Coming back from somewhere earlier in the week, I saw the red truck, the red bushes, the red crane, all about the same color. The motor cycle dealer was not fussed, though I might have produced my motorcycle endorsement for bonafides.

There is a flag up there, not the stars and strips. I pushed the camera to max in hope of capturing and identifying it. But, the wind was not in my favor.

So, I pulled the camera in a bit, to fill the frame from top of the flag to the bottom of the wrecking ball. See the problem? I lost the ball anyway, and did not  do the old photography trick of two or three shots, to be sure. That is one red crane, though.

Then I went on down State Road, down Steels' Corners, across Haas Road and down Wetmore. I needed a day of roads with first names. State Road was Akron-Cleveland Road, before annexation by the big city. You knew it went from Akron to Cleveland. It's how I got to college, in Cleveland.

All the land between Quick and Wetmore once belonged to two farms, the Quick's and the Blacks. Actually, the Black farm ran from Wetmore, across Quick and all the way to Truxell. Tomorrow, good pictures from the shambles the national park service has made of the Black farm.