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.

The Walrus

       

Among other things, yesterday, I hit upon what the Walrus said. “Suck it up, Buttercup.”  I went to lunch with my sister, who said she was so glad to hear Laura is getting over her teenage angst. 

Interestingly, I heard “Suck it up, Buttercup.” I hoped to create an opening to discuss family relations, but fared badly. She was happy to hear my neighbor and I will share Bob Evans take out for Thanksgiving.

The indoor band concert was last Saturday. The “leave your hearing aids at the door” concert. We do warn people. Just this minute I checked back for the last time I used my camera, and it was May 1^st. I downloaded the D.C. pictures, and presumably, because it’s what I always do, charged the camera. In fairness, May 1^st was six months ago.

At the band concert I found Laura on the opposite end of the stage than I expected. I snapped a picture or two, and planned to move to the other side of the auditorium at the band’s convenience. I took another shot and then the camera shut down. “Suck it up, Buttercup.” Battery life is not forever.

Laura’s trumpet section is on the right. Our trumpeter is the short nose with ear muffs. The band does not wear hats for the indoor show, and headgear of their choice is the order of the day. I like the screenshot from the video before the show. “Half time is our time.”

I asked Laura if her mother and Bekka were at the show. Yes. “Mom did homework the whole time and Bekka helped with the uniform, ‘to remember her band days.’”

“Suck it up, Buttercup.” Giving Bekka an envelope of money to celebrate her trade school graduation and another to celebrate her birthday a month ago doesn’t obligate her to thank the person her mother trained her to hate. Along with the last oyster, the Walrus mentioned “the right thing may be the hardest thing you ever do, Buttercup.”

Today was wall to wall sunshine. I had breakfast with Linn, and heard about her trip to haunted Disneyland (the one in Florida). Laura would have loved it, she said. This afternoon I took the camera out. A new high school is being built down the road. It features a very red crane. I tried pictures from across the street a couple of weeks ago, and was told to leave the property. Insensitive oafs. I put a lot of pictures in the camera today, to show off later in the week.

On the way home I stopped at River Light Gallery. I met Diana at the door, and said “Oh.my.god. The buffalo plaid.” I worked it out. We wove this no later than 1989. It was before we hired a sewer, and I sewed it. And, I sewed on the buttons. By hand. It was way before the Husquevarna, that made lovely buttonholes and sewed buttons on. Buttercup left smiling.

I voted today

I hope you voted, too. Sadly, we cannot vote out crazed shooters, bullying and death. All separate topics.

We are reduced to railing against shooters. Literally, screaming in the wind and flailing arms. There is no solution. It’s all old news.

Bullies are closer to home. My granddaughter’s struggle against bullies began sixteen years ago, when she became the displacement baby. It reduced her to the status of everyone’s punching bag. By her own will she has stood up, come back, been heard, become a real person.

Yesterday afternoon she had an Instagram message: “You’re being targeted.” Are you sick? I am. It’s in the hands of the police. If there is a connection, this blog will be wiped clean.

I have a gentleman friend I may have mentioned. He used to sell road equipment, before he retired few years ago. He called on the road guys, who were out to lunch one day, so we went out, instead. He was a pretty new widower.

We’ve met for lunch once a month or so, ever since. He could solve any problem. Tires low? “You unscrew the caps; I’ll inflate them;” with his electric tire pump. We solved world problems over apple dumplings (me) and the special of the day (him).

I realized I hadn’t heard in a bit. I called. No answer, voice mail full. I texted. No reply, until last weekend. A shaky teenaged voice fished about a bit to verify my name, then blurted “Grandpa told me to call you. He was sick and he died.”

There's more; that's enough.

Just fuck. 

Penny project

It’s a shame the penny project ended. It has amused me for two or three weeks, and kept Laura nimble as a goat. Twenty odd plastic cups holding solution and a penny to be cleaned needed to be set up and tended for a week. In our house, the kitchen or Laura’s desk were available, except…

The kitchen counters are for cooking. Leaving cups of solution invited spillage, toast crumbs, coffee inadvertently added by grandma, or bits of spinach and olive oil from Laura’s stir fry. Laura’s desk is a joke; there is more room on mine.

I suggested clearing an appropriate space in the front of the shed and be sure she got there in daylight to take pictures. So she did, even stepping over the lab apparatus, lawnmower held high, to deal with the grass last weekend.

The project required twenty household chemicals, plus a plein air control. Of the chemicals, exactly twenty five percent will never cross my/our threshold. Ketchup, hot sauce, cola, Pledge, bleach. Laura canvassed the neighborhood. “Can I have a bit of ketchup?...hot sauce?...a dab of furniture polish?”

After the initial set up, the project was rather humdrum, for the observer, at least. I knew it was being tended when Laura grabbed the shed key and sped out the back door at night, flashlight in the other hand.

The analysis and presentation have been fun. I did make a screen shot of her beginning and ending photos; the colors are nice and/or interesting. The entire affair was emptied on the kitchen counter, test data in careful order. Data previously input into google is downloaded. A google engineer would have been appreciated here, but she got on through.

My next computer will print to the printer on demand, without turning the printer off and on and waiting for its self test. It will print from Laura’s computer with or without getting up and finding the I/O. We closing in on new equipment, real fast.

Little more to say. Next the slicing and dicing, the pasting and gluing (Gorilla glue; the pennies will survive the bus ride to school!), and the obligatory display by the author.

Early credit bonus is 11/6. Done and done and done.

Carrying on

     

Last week I came up on the edge of quitting, blogging at least. Don’t know why I do much of anything these days. To stay connected to earth, I guess. The bad health consequences of my encounter with the Red Bus just keep piling in. I want them over. I want “it” over. Won’t happen, that’s for sure.

There are two kid projects to document. Laura and Kay are closing in on shield and stick. Not in a leisurely two week jaunt, like Cathy and little Red Shoes, but a four day sprint. The two day marathon devolved into a four day sprint. Last day is tomorrow.

I think I have not said enough about Kay. First, that’s not her name, and if I ever write it down, you will say “How could anyone have such a mystery name?” I don’t know; I’ve never asked her. Way over a year ago, Kay made an offer on the old house down the road, and my real estate agent said she could present it, but, in full disclosure, there was another possible offer coming in. Would I like to have both at once, if she could shake it loose?

I set a deadline of six p.m. the following afternoon. About 6:30 that day I looked at the clock and said “This guy better get moving.” I called Kathy, my agent, and said “Is he serious?” Kathy said it was just rolling off her fax, but I could reject it as it was late. “No, bring them both over.”

Kathy laid each on the table. She said each potential buyer was a single parent with children. Did I want the single mother first, or the father. I took the mother and heard the offer. Then the father. His offer was eerily identical, to the dollar, except she would pay for the home inspection and he would have me pay. I accepted her offer.

Kathy asked why, in case she was asked. I said it wasn’t the hundred dollar home inspection, but that he had to be tracked down by his agent, told to make an offer or not, sent it after the deadline, and then asked me to pay the inspection, too. I accepted Kay’s offer.

Wham! Bob (and that was the other fellow’s name) initiated a campaign of how much he wanted the house for his boys, and tried to start a bidding war. And I said “fuck you,” and sold the house to Kay. Who, as you may have realized by now, is quite a gem.

So, Kay has been by at eight a.m. for Laura, last weekend and this. That is a “lock the door behind you and don’t wake me” scenario; especially after getting in well after midnight last night from the playoff football game. They lost. Smile.

Laura has no idea where they are. “Kay has GPS!” Laura has no idea how far they hike. “One was 1.5 miles, one was 1 mile and one was .5, on the signs.” Three miles, said I, of this morning’s hike. At twenty minutes a mile, about an hour. “We’re doing twenty four minute miles. Kay has a measuring thing on her phone.”

It has rained the entire time. I bought her a raincoat for Washington DC. It’s come out of the drawer. “It’s ugly, but I’m warm and dry.” Who could require more?

Next up: experimental pennies.