Sunday art... a walk in the park

Yesterday at the local Scott Kelby photo walk site I took pictures, but based on what our walk leader said, I was trying hard not to do the standard "tree in a park" or "pretty flower" pictures for purposes of the contest... these were a few I liked...

Henry Johnson ...(wiki link) ... who was kinda cute if I do say so. That's inapropriate, but not as much as what I accidentally said to APB when I saw the statue. ("Huh, I never saw this before, ... I never came in this end before" - since we were doing "that's what she said" jokes all day, he doubled over laughing. Sorry A. I actually didn't INTEND to act like a 13 year old in that moment.)

part of a statue... me, fixated on tiny details. How true this rings...

While I was taking the above picture, the two poets besieged my companions, wanting to read to us and have their photo taken. I began hiding. I should have stayed hiding. One poet had a poem about a Girl, who was a godess, and he looked my way at key points in the poem and I wanted to sprout wings and fly away. :::hangs head in shame::::

this for some reason is one of my favorite shots of the old Dodge we saw. I know. Not much to it, but it really appeals to that quirk part of my brain that likes robin's egg blue, and tiny details of things (and tonal curves. Look, this post has NO WIERD PICTURES WITH FREAKY TONAL CURVES. Are you proud of me, internet? thank you. I will post a couple tomorrow from my hike today.)

this is the door handle of the car. It probably DOES need a tonal curve adjustment to punch it up. If only I knew the RIGHT way... hahaha. Look, no electronic keypad to get in. Me likee. Right after I took this picture I told APB yet another TWSS punch line, and our other friend took pictures of us cracking up. They're awesome. But I don't have a model release on APB so I won't share them with you. There are rules, you know.

technically, I suppose this is a flower and so I can not enter it in the Kelby contests because flowers are boring, yada yada.

I have a few others, that I am actually thinking of submitting; since I can only submit two I will wait until I see what I have on the memory card on J's camera. He was crazy, um, nice enough to bring a spare memory card and let me shoot for a while in RAW format on his REAL camera with multipoint focus and a 70-300 lens.... damn I want a real camera!!!

More tomorrow, my friends.

Deja vu

I had an appointment near my college yesterday, and so I detoured to go and walk around the campus. I took pictures in a little courtyard that I used to visit once in a while. It was an oasis of peace and quiet and it still looks exactly the same... right down to the single, almost randomly placed, hedge -- clipped to a very specific height because the girls stand behind it with this as their background, for one of their senior photos. (At least, I did. And no, you can't see. It was 22 years ago. I don't wanna.)

Shoulda Used Photoshop

That's what I said! But Kelby says it MUCH better....

http://tinyurl.com/dywwru

Clicked

*

In these shoes, Stanley played Ave Maria on the church organ for me, when I converted. (I was raised Lutheran and joined the Catholic church a few years after meeting my husband.)

In these shoes, he played for the baptisms of each of my children, at a Sunday mass... and thousands of other babies, over his 55 (and counting!) years of service at our church.

In these shoes, he played on the Christmas Eve that my son was carried up the aisle, representing the Baby Jesus.

He has played for so many girls in tiny white dresses and boys in white ties, as they receive their sacrament of First Holy Communion. And yes, that includes my children.

He played for my friend's wedding. When her husband tragically died a year later, and we were all heartbroken, and the entire community came together to grieve with her, Stanley wore these shoes.

So many weddings, so many funerals, he has played, wearing these shoes.

He has played Lenten music, Tenebrae services, Easter Vigils and Easter mornings, Advent Sundays (four weeks, year after year after year) and Christmas carols at Midnight Mass, in these shoes.

In the choir loft, there are file cabinets brimming with frayed yellow sheets of paper, worn at the edges by many before me -- all songs which Stanley has played, in these shoes.

Latin masses-- I never dreamed there were so many variations.

We sing Bach, Beethoven, Schubert. German music, Russian music. Polish music, to honor the homeland of Stanley's ancestors. And, something that always amuses me, gospel music that would be very familiar in a Baptist church far south of where we stand to sing.

Yes, he has played the Hallelujah chorus. MANY times.

In these shoes, he plays Stars and Stripes Forever, and God Bless America, every Fourth of July.

May he wear them for many, many years to come.

Unclicked

I am starting to think about not only the photo opportunites that I have missed not only for lack of a camera in my hand, but also those images I have been reluctant to capture.

Someone remarked to me last week "Oh, it's always easy to tell how you feel." It was kind and lighthearted, and there is some truth to it. Always? No. I am certainly bossy and outspoken about some things, but like anyone else I have moments when I clam up and don't have the guts to say what I'm thinking or ask for what I want.

Sunday at church I had my camera in my purse. I got to the choir loft first, followed up the stairs by a sweet older Tenor who reminds me in some ways of my own father. He's very nice, and yet his presence made me too shy to take an opportunity to get a shot I've been wanting.

Stanley has a pair of shoes, which rest by the organ when he is not playing. They are beautifully aged leather men's dress shoes -- faded and distressed, literally cracked through on one side. The soles are worn thin. They are surely twenty years old, at least, and serve as tangible evidence that this man has been playing for years and years and years. I'm quite sure he can FEEL the pedals in these shoes.

I want to capture them, to do the image justice, and I am not sure a hastily snapped shot will ever succeed. Black and white? Sepia? Will the congregation below see my flash? Can I shoot at a different ISO? WHAT will Stanley say if he catches me photographing his shoes? Will he understand? I think he might.

I am quite fond of Stanley. My own grandfather (the only one I ever met; the other died long before I was born) had the same quick wit and conspiratorial smile. Somehow for me a photo of the shoes would be almost as much a portrait of Stanley as if I were able to take a shot of him smiling at me over his music rack.

Look up, look down

Shuttersisters spoke of changing your viewpoint the other day, by looking up for example. Up was sky, out my window, and so I looked down instead. Here's a little detail for the day.

Working from home, so I get to start earlier and stop now & then for laundry, oh so exciting -- and I picked up the camera before lunch.

Because it's logical (not) I tried to open some of our windows on the coldest day in quite a while.


Found that some of the new locks on our windows (in the addition) actually prevent opening of said windows. Hmmm. Mr. Carly is not going to like that observation...

One of the ones that DID open gave me a view of a drainpipe with some "drips" frozen on it, which I experimented a little bit with (you can see a few on my flickr page , I'm not really sure where I'm going with whiter vs. bluer, just yet... )

I am also looking at other photographers' work like (this series at an old ranch) and noticing that they zoom in on details, and show only part of an object, where I try to do the opposite all too often.

Once upon a time, that leaf above was green and beautiful.... sigh. I hate winter.

It's much too cold

D'oh of the day

I watched "The Shot" today while I was eating lunch. If you haven't heard of it, it's Reality TV with photographers, random "judges", etc. I accidentally came across it, and really liked the shot of Joss Stone that "won" the episode.

They mentioned a contest near the end of the show, something about Take Your Shot, and I didn't realize it was a sweepstakes. So this photo popped into my head, and I wasted about 15 minutes finding it, only to realize I can't enter it. So, enjoy it.

I took this picture almost 3 years ago on the first really warm day in March, when I finally got the kids outside to test out the scooters they had received for Christmas. The digital camera was new and I did a bunch of fun stuff that day ( a multi frame of my daughter swinging, that I later collaged onto one scrapbook page, and so on.)

I know it's just the start of winter (brrrr) but think SPRING!