It was a rainy day, the sky was very gray, but that just makes the beautiful reds and oranges stand out differently.

Wild CottenWild Cotten

Today I am stuck at the computer working all day. I took a shot mid morning and then again early evening. The morning shot is front lit and the evening shot is back lit. 

I think it makes an interesting little study about how much one scene can change based on the position of the lighting.

I'll try again with a longer lens, but for now, here is what I got.

This one makes him look like some ET.

I passed up some decent shots, but I'll be back for them.

Either way, I am definitely going to name him. Something to do with being the Protector of the Trails. :-)

But today's fog was stranger than most. It was only in certain areas and not others. So I followed it, until it led me to a place I haven't been to yet. A place within a couple of miles from my house. 

I am not a member of Trump International Golf Course, but at 6am I don't think anyone cared that I was running around the grounds with my camera. 

This is my favorite one of the bunch !

A little closer.

Closer still

And here is why I knew the monk would still be there. As I walked around the trail toward his front side, this is what I saw.

Yes, it's true, I knew it was a log, but it still looks just like a monk from the right angle. I am always amazed when one thing can look like something totally different, if viewed from the right perspective, with a little imagination. I hope to see more of these types of things ! Thanks for indulging my little fantasy. :-)))

What can you do with such a face ? I had only one choice. Fall in love with the little PITA ! That's right. I knew from the beginning that along with all the joy I would get from the little thing, I would get a large share of headache. Three weeks into this, I can tell you that I was right about that. <grin>

So I took a couple of semi formal portraits of her, using window light and flash bounce for a white backround.

A couple of days after this, Gracie ( yes that is the name her mother ( my wife ) has given her ), met Molly and it was an instant bond. Molly lives two doors down and the two have become inseparable.  See for yourself.

Alas, she is still a baby and still loves her Mommy and Daddy too.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw what can only be described as a shack, from another era, with a guy just hanging out on the porch of the shack.

There was something about that shack, I think it was the POW-MIA sign. I couldn't resist. That would be an interesting thing to go check out, and possibly shoot ( with camera ). :-)    But in order to do that, I would have to go on to the property, introduce myself to this fellow who looked like he might be out of some motorcycle club, and ask him if I can check him and his stuff out, pretty much.

I guess in my old age I am getting a little braver, because that's just what I wound up doing. 

I figured for sure this was a Vietnam era Vet, who was living some non mainstream lifestyle. And I figured I had enough to relate to him about, being that I grew up during that war. As it turned out, he is older than I thought. He is a Veteran of the Korean war !  He's 73 years old. Name is Lenny.  Real nice guy. Offered me a tour of his dank, musty little shack, offered me the only Heineken he had in his refridgerator and we sat and talked for a while.

Lenny built the place in the 60's and has been there ever since. He doesn't actually live there, but hangs out there. It's a musician shack, a biker shack and a shack for visitors. Over the years people just come, hang out, have parties, break out the couple of electric guitars inside and jam, sit and drink beer, smoke dope or whatever, and just hang out.   Lenny did drop the names of some famous band members who have visited there in the past, but I forgot who they were.

There was a place of on Rt. 211 south of Warrenton Va I used to go to in the late 70's, called Cross Creek.  Now that was the place in the day. Field parties all the time over there. Whoa !!  This place just has the vibe of that.

It was really dark in here, especially on the side of the room near the guitars. My shutter speed was very slow, so they are a little blurry.

I like the Notice ( Nodis )

We talked of various things while I nursed my beer, said our goodbyes and I went on my way, but not before shooting a few shots of the garage and other buildings on his property. 

I think this place has some character, and there is a flavor of the historical attached to it. It has seen over 5 decades come and go, right on James Monroe Highway ( Rt. 15 ) in Loudoun County Va.

We eat it, we wear it, we fuel our cars with the past results of it. We see it and hear of it every day, but oh how we refuse to look it in the eye.

 How many cars pass this scene every hour ? How many people in those apartments have looked upon it ?

My wife thinks I have a morbid streak and am a freak for taking pictures like these. Maybe I am by "normal" standards. I prefer to think of myself as a realist.

The longer I live, the more death becomes real to me. Not only do more and more  people that I know die, but I also begin to realize my own mortality. By the national averages, and the past history of my family, I should probably have about another 20-25 more years in this world and then I'll share the fate of this WhiteTail deer. That is IF I make it through  today. One never knows.

Instead of denying it, and being repulsed by it, I am thankful that I have the opportunity to begin to come to grips with it now. There is a lot to come to grips with. I mean really come to grips with. 

This deer was probably feeding with a friend and maybe her yearling children when the great equalizer came for her. What's left here ? A defilement of the body. The life force is gone and the body is defiled.

Our bodies will all become defiled at some point. Whether by the birds as in this case, or by maggots and bacteria if we get buried, or by the ravages of heat and flame should we get cremated. Either way, our earthly skins will meet a similarly destructive fate.

When I see this, I try to realize deep inside that "I" am NOT the body. "I" will not suffer this fate, but what I am currently identifying myself with, my body, will indeed be ravaged until it no longer exists. 

Nobody knows empirically whether our soul exists outside of the body, lives on after the body dies. We hope and have faith of such things but do not really know it. But we do know that the memories of us do last beyond. The love we impart while here, the courage we show, the humanity we exhibit, the kindnesses we do, these things will be remembered about us after we are no longer part of the physical world.

Look on it one more time.

Nothing should make us feel more alive then when we REAL-IZE that today we could meet the same fate. For REAL.

To be able to live each day as if it were our last. To have the ability to "number our days" as the Psalmist said. These are things I strive for. Gruesome as these images are to our sense of being and sense of self, they are reality. I see no point in denying what is there in nature for us to see and to learn from.

If you've gotten this far in my indulgence, then thank you for the kindness of your attention for that long. I hope this blog will repay your kindness with at least a small amount of extra knowledge of LIFE !!

May 2013 bring you LIFE every day !

You can't read my mind so I'll say it. I'm THIRSTY.

Thank you for turning the water on.

Yup. It's just the right temperature.

Oh Yummmy !

That hit the spot. Getting a little sleepy now

So today I took a backroad into old Sterling and came across this little scene with the birds gathering on the guide wire for a power pole. Now nobody goes down t his road. It's a dead end, and the only thing down there is an old Ruritan club. I pulled my car on the side and got out to shoot, and as soon as I framed the shot, I see a Sherriff car heading toward me down the road. 

I snapped the shutter and my conditioned response was to put the camera down to my side and wait/watch.  As the cop came past me, I waved and he went right past, probably to go have a break or take a leak at the Ruritan club. ( Like I said, nobody is down there ). 

What bugs me now, when looking at what I have to show, is that I didn't have the presence of mind to hold the frame and snap again as  the cop got closer and closer. I believe now, it would have made the shot more interesting.  But that moment passed me by totally, because, in this day and age, cops and people with cameras are more and more at odds.  I've been stopped before and questioned for doing much the same thing on other roads and in other places. So I have been rather quickly conditioned to stop what I am doing when I see a cop approaching. 

I'll chalk this one up to experience and maybe, just maybe, next time I will keep my concentration on what I am doing and let the cop worry about any potential encounter. As you can see, my response was pointless because this particular LEO didn't see me as a potential terrorist, and he went about his day. 

On another quick note, I like the square-ish aspect ratio this image wound up being cropped to. I think I'll investigate that some more. 

I realized that the other night. The moon was out, it was a gorgeous night,  I expected to see her swinging, but the swing stood empty.

I made up my mind that I was going to send her a picture of that swing on her facebook page for a gag. 

So I took a couple of shots and sent them to her on FB. She loves them !! She even wants to print at least one of them.
Finally something a little good comes from my hobby.

When I remembered, I shot out the door to have some fun, and document it. I was thinking I would get some good shots, asking people to ham it up for my camera. I figured they would all be in the mood for that.

However, when I got there, even though there was a small crowd, it wasn't the gay community or protesters at all. It was some loosely attached car club that shows up in that parking lot on some Friday's.   

When I started roaming around with my camera, I just didn't get the sense that I would be well received asking people to let me take pics of them. I don't know why, I just chickened out.  I did get a couple of shots in the fading light however.

I took Snickersville Turnpike all the way back to Rt. 7. As an aside, that whole area, of Aldie, Middleburg, Bluemont, Airmont used to be called Snickersville a long time ago.   I've been on this road before, but somehow never saw this little country store in Airmont. It is a very small village and it's little general store fits right into my Country Store project.

Airmont General Store

Airmont General Store

I also came across this interesting Tree in Aldie. It was in the front field of some farmette. I did a U-eee when I saw it and had to go grab it as best I could.

WHS_6060_2

Wedding photos at Grand Tradition Estate Fallbrook by Wedding Photographer in Temecula (221)

This guy. Nice guy. I saw him first riding his bike to the train station. They always say you need to stretch your boundaries, and face your fears. Get out of the comfort zone etc.. if you want to grow. So I mustered the cajones to go up to him and ask him if I can take his picture. I told him he's just an interesting looking guy and I'm working on a project or something to that affect.  He was very nice and said I could.  

Most of the shots I took with the manual focus lens were out of focus because I was nervous.  Then while shooting the breeze with him I was able to shoot this one. I like it. It sticks. I need to do this more and build on this little experience !

The train depot. Looks like something from the past.

This one of an old grainery, I like the color and the black and white. So I'll post both. The B&W helps contribute to the "back in time".

I got turned around for a second on some backroads and saw this quaint little house !! 

This isn't to say that it's not possible to capture a real genuine happy smile that actually reflects inner joy in your subject. It is very possible. It's just not done well too much. This image kind of does that, but this isn't a posed smile. It just happened to my shy little neice. 

If you really want to attempt to get an interesting image, one that people don't see a thousand times a day, then don't let your subject say cheese. 

The best images show some emotion, or tell some story, or part of a story.  What are these two thinking ? What brought them together here to be quietly reflecting on the water ? Is one of them sad, and one of them consoling the other ? 

What is this guy's story ? Did he just wake up or is he listening intently to some captivating story ? Personally I'd vote for #1, except that I took the picture and the truth is that he was surprised and wondering in that split second what this contraption stuck in his face was. :-))

Now this guy is definitely taking a nap at work... Or is he ? I remember snapping this. He was actually talking to me. I just happened to catch him in the middle of some expression. He's an animated and was nodding in agreement to something that was said. Oh how the camera can lie. :-))

Now this is real ! His look says exactly what you may think. "What the hell are you doing ? Not again with the stupid camera in the face trick" Something along those lines. Still, it's more interesting than a plastic cheesy smile. 

I really suck at posing people. It's an area I may decide not to pursue. Most of the people pics you see of mine, are either sniper shots taken with a telephoto, or more often quick grabs taken candidly but very close with  a wide lens. In this one case however, I did ask for a certain look and out of all the snaps I took, this one proved the most interesting.  There is a somberness here, maybe even a bit of sadness to this beautiful woman.

This person was at a party across the table from me. She was genuinely depressed. The image is grainy because the room was actually pretty dark. The technical quality of the image doesn't matter much to me in this case because what's more important and what stands out the most is the emotion captured here. This image has something that grabs and forces the viewer to ask questions. It tells a partial story and leaves the viewer hanging just like a good soap opera. It begins to hook into the emotional level. That's what a photograph should do. Aside from the technical aspects of composition, the real strength of an image comes from it's ability to hook into some emotion of the viewer. 

One of my favorite "models" to date. This guy is a fellow photographer who enjoys doing non-traditonal shots. 

Day 60 part 2

Inner Light

This one of my nephew, and the one above, display refelection. I am always interested in these types of shots. To me, they have more substance than .... dare I say it another time...... the cheese shot. :-)

So next time you're taking family pics, go ahead and get one or two of the traditional shots if you want, but try and get something deeper. I know I will. 

I'm not 100 percent sure this is a cloud. It could be a space ship cleverly concealed as a cloud. <grin>.

The B&W version is a bit more dramatic. :-))

This last one is very cool for me because you can see the rotation in the main part of the cloud above that hook tail.

These images are of Herndon Landmarks and are processed a certain way for the client ( the Mayor of Herndon ), and sit in her office in Town Hall.  Thank you Mayor Merkel.  :-))

While I was there seeing how they were framed and hung, I took a couple of shots of the Mayor's office. 

I was heading down to our nation's capitol today in order to get some exercise and try another move out of my photographic comfort zone. How does one exercise while "committing" photography one may ask ? That's easy. Getting off of the ever widening ball of butter that keeps me from falling in the toilet, and using my legs for something other than propping up on the reclining chair, ( in other words, getting off my ass and walking ) IS exercise these days. 

More on that later. I was almost there, and I had to make a U-Turn and head back to the  Holy Transfiguration Melkite Greek-Catholic Church when I saw this giant Crucifix on the side of the road. It didn't look quite like this before I got my processing chops around it. :-)

It definitely struck me as a strong image to be used in an upcoming project I have hopes for. 

Ok, here is the color version. 

The funny thing is, while  I was taking pics of it, well off the road in a construction area, a family from India saw me taking pictures and figured they would come and check out what I was up to. The guy got and started commenting how he had never seen a spider that huge before. . I said "Yea, it's big even for a fake spider" <roll eyes>.

Well he wasn't going to let me shoot anymore, and got his whole family out to check out the giant arachnipod while I bolted out of there, smiling my butt off.

A little later I heard on the radio that we were in for some more severe thunderstorms. We're checking out some of Viki's wonderful Lifetime movies ( pardon while I barf ) when someone upstairs must've known I needed a break. About then, the sky started getting dark. I went outside and there was some pretty big stuff building right on top of our house.   So selfeshly glad though, that it went to wreak it's havoc somewhere else today. :-)

This all while we are in the middle of a 100 degree heatwave. We really couldn't stay in the house during those two days. It was off to the hotel for us, along with all the stress caused by being displaced, having all of our food spoiled, not knowing when we could get back in etc...

Even during those times one must still take pictures. :-)) I would say the quality of the pics I took on day 2 weren't up to my best, but that wouldn't stop me from sharing. ( Maybe it should. You be the judge ).

 This is a shot of a large branch in the front of my house, that met it's demise at the hand of the Derecho. I like it because the selective focus leaves the bottom leaves looking a little "3d'.

I don't know what this is. It was actually raining while I took this picture. I worked it from all kinds of angles, but the orginal centered composition worked best for me. I really processed the heck out of it. Probably a bit too much.

I enjoyed this picture not only because of the nice pink in the sky, but because of the juxtaposition of the moon with the streetlights. They are both about the same size too with this lens 35mm f2 zeiss.

I have a long term project going, to capture license plates from all 50 states, in various ways. This seemed to fit the bill, and get me Utah, while having the added bonus of the Kenworth truck. :-)

Here is the room we "suffered" in. Not too bad actually. Kind of old and smelly, but at least it had a chair you can relax in. Not complaining here, we were lucky to be able to get a room nearby.