A Little Something

So here's a little something from my jaunt up Roaring Run Monday morning. You might not be able to tell it from this post, but this is actually a composite of three images that are combined and meant to be a panorama. I've recently hit on the idea of producing panoramas, mostly just to see if I could do it, and I've ordered the Falling Springs Falls photo you see at the bottom of the blog for a test run. Truthfully, this is mostly a combination of frustrated boredom coupled with a desire to get out of the house and the happiness of finding my favorite lens again.

I seem to have hit a pretty solid wall that's turned into a bad case of writer's block. The key, as Tony has reminded me in the past, is to just put one word in front of the other. I have. I've even come up with some pretty good passages, but right now they're all disjointed and I don't know how they fit together. Heck, some of them aren't even in the same story.

And that is the crux of the problem, I believe. I haven't found my next story. I will, I'm sure of it. These things come with time. Patience is a virtue.

I can't always claim it's one of mine, however.

On a somewhat related note, I've found a pretty decent read in The Magicians by Lev Grossman. What's intriguing to me is that I haven't yet figured out where he's going with it all. The pacing of his story is an odd combination of meandering and driven and my nose has been buried in it for three days.

As autumn is quickly making its early presence known here in western Virginia, I find myself looking forward to cooler weather and the rustic, macabre feeling that October brings with it. It's appropriate, I think, that All Hallow's Eve takes place in the fall. Autumn is a special season where the air just seems ripe with frightening ancient possibilities. I've never been a great fan of horror flicks and, with the exception of the occasional Stephen King and episode of Angel or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I generally stay away from the genre. Yet fall makes me think off the insane possibility that at least some of that stuff is rooted in ancient legends or stories buried so deep in our past that we retain only a basic, instinctual fear of what goes bump in the night.

Of course, it also inspires me to have a soup simmering in the Crock Pot all day long, so it's hard to tell, really, which urge is correct.

A Better Photograph

Since the last photograph I uploaded wasn't my best work I thought I'd offer up this one tonight. After all, I couldn't let you think that the last photo was the best of my football work. If you're looking for the story in the photography, you'll have to know Covington football to understand it.

Covington doesn't throw the ball unless they're behind, and with a 6-6 final record, that happens more than the Cougars would like it to. When they do throw it, they tend to put in another quarterback, who you can see scrambling to get the ball out of his hand before he's sacked. There's not a lot of drama in the photo, but if you've watched enough Covington High School football you know what's going on.

It is the week of Thanksgiving and we're slowly getting ready for it. The turkey (all 22 pounds of it) is in the refrigerator happily thawing out for the big day. I went to Kroger today and bought the last of the things we need to have on hand when Thursday rolls around. I think we'll have a grand total of eight people, which should make for a nice dinner. It's a shame that the only football that's going to be on television is the Patriots at the Lions, which should be a complete massacre.

Then & Now

I've shot quite a bit up at Roaring Run, particularly in autumn, and I always seem to come up with something new. Sometimes I'll even revisit an old favorite and see it in a different light.

This is another one of my keepers from Sunday's Roaring Run trip. I took a photo last year from almost the same position but at a completely different angle. The water was higher last year, taking away a lot of the gentle rolling you see in this image. There was also a great deal more color in the forest then as opposed to now.

The assignment for Sunday was capturing motion and light. Usually I use a really dark Neutral Density filter (about 9 stops worth) and take a three minute or so exposure. I was traveling in a pack Sunday and didn't have a great deal of time to spend on each photo like I normally would. So instead I shot with my 28mm wide angle lens and 50mm macro and closed the lens all the way down, lowered my ISO and used a polarizer to bring out the colors and give me another couple of stops of darkness.

Using the polarizer instead of the other filter gave me an entirely different image of the water. Sure, it wasn't as silky smooth as the others, but look at the image above. The water has a nice blue tint to it (mostly due to the fading light) and a great deal of flowing motion that may have been smoothed over in a longer exposure. I especially love the fact that the water fills up the entire bottom portion of the photograph before flowing to the left and then away from the camera.

Oh, and just for comparison, below you'll find the image I shot around the same time last year. See the difference?

Camera Club Outing

Sunday afternoon was the inaugural outing of the Alleghany Camera Club. Since Saturday saw Bethany, Sarah and I shooting what should be the last wedding of the fall season, it was a great opportunity to go out and take a few nature photographs (which is the type of photography I love to do anyway).

About a dozen people, give or take a couple, showed up and hiked the 0.6 mile trail up to the top of Roaring Run. I came away with three really good shots that I'm pleased with and a fourth that I'm still mulling over. The assignment was Capturing Light & Motion, so the challenge was to show the motion of the water without leaving out the fall colors (fading as they are).

This photo was taken about halfway up the creek at the third bridge that spans Roaring Run Creek. I took a similar picture last fall and the only fall color I had then was a vivid yellow. This year the colors aren't quite as vibrant but they are still very pretty. 

What I like most about this photograph is the stump that's laying in the creek. I'm shooting from a low angle, so the tree stump looks much more massive than it really is. The stump was full of character, so much so that I actually stopped on the way back down the creek and spent another five minutes just looking at it and wondering how I could capture it's character. It really was a pretty big stump, I'd say every bit of three to four feet across the bottom. 

I looked at that stump in the fading light of day for a long moment as I made my way back down. It made me think of an older time, almost prehistoric, when trees and animals were much greater in size than they are today. Ever seen The Land Before Time cartoon where the leaf falls down and lands on the head of the Apatosaurus and covers his entire head? Or see the fossils of the dragonflies that had a wingspan of six feet? This tree stump laying calmly in the creek reminded me of those this, as if this once mighty giant tree belonged to an older time.

I didn't realize it figured so prominently into this shot until I made it back home and put it up on the monitor for processing. I'm glad that I took it now, because I think I captured the character of that old stump as it appeared to me then. That may be one of the more successful images I've ever made.

The Best Soup I've Made Yet

Last night I made the best homemade chicken noodle soup I've made yet.

The recipe came from my sister in law, Heather, though I can't confess to know where she picked it up from. I've put it on here in the past, but last night I decided to do something just a shade different. Ever see how those chefs on The Food Network take a healthy pinch of kosher salt and sprinkle it in their dishes? Well I did that before I boiled the chicken. Oh...it was perfection in a pot. The salt really sharpened the flavor of the chicken broth and had a great influence on the noodles.

I spent most of the day running errands in Roanoke. I was flying solo, which is a pretty rare event, so I spent a couple of quality hours in the bookstores perusing the shelves. I came home with a wedding photography book for Bethany as an early anniversary present that looks pretty interesting (which means I'll probably be reading it too).

Speaking of wedding photography, we're on the last week of our October wedding crush. We've successfully shot three weddings so far this month and we have a wedding in Vinton that promises to be very photogenic. So much so that we're bringing in a friend to add to the shoot and so we can train someone as a back up in case one of us ever gets sick or just wants to take a break from it.

Sunday I'll be leading the first outing of the Alleghany Camera Club at Roaring Run beginning at 4 p.m. The weather looks promising and I'm hoping we'll have a little more color to enjoy by then. I'm hoping to be able to snag a few outdoor photographs to place in the "Needs Processed" pile to shake things up a bit.

Judging by our shooting schedule we'll be polishing off the last of the fall portrait sessions by the sixth of November. Bethany and I are planning to take a little vacation the following week (to where exactly we haven't decided) and after than I'm hoping that I'll be able to settle back in and spend some quality time on my writing projects and perhaps even pick up another tune or two on the guitar.

I'm definitely hoping to get some more reading done as well. I've stumbled into a pretty rich vein of fall books. My current read is a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel called Hollow Men that is so intense that it almost feels like watching an episode. After that I'm thinking I'll get to James Patterson's Kiss The Girls, his second Alex Cross mystery novel, and then Dragons of the Hourglass Mage by long time favorites Weis & Hickman to round out the fall.

And by then it'll be time for all the holiday food....

A Premature Review & An Invitation

I found my fall read.

Monday morning I blogged about how I hadn't yet found that exciting fall read to fill my free hours. I went to work, put in a few hours and started rereading a Star Trek novel. I sat that aside and on a whim picked up Stephen King's The Green Mile.

Incredible.

It's been quite a while since I've read a book that's kept me up all night and The Green Mile came pretty close to succeeding. I'm not really a Stephen King fan, though I've said all along that he's one of the best essayists around. If you don't believe me, check out this essay on the finale of Harry Potter and the series as a whole.

But I digress.

I have a close group of friends that read and I value their literary opinions highly. To a man, they've recommended The Green Mile. I put it off for a long time and I'm regretting having put it off for so long. I don't know what it is about this tale that's pulled me in. It's almost...homespun in a way. I get the feeling that I'm dipping in to something slightly surreal, something otherworldly when I read The Green Mile. The narration is down home simple, told from the first person perspective of the chief prison guard of the Depression Era death row known as the Green Mile.

Paul (the narrator) reminds me just a little of the Ancient Mariner in Coleridge's Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. Remember how in the beginning the Mariner reaches out and grabs the wedding party and holds them spellbound as he relates his tale? I've been under his spell since late Monday evening. I've reeled off nearly 300 pages since then. It's gripping, at times gruesome as it unabashedly wallows in the macabre...yet there's something more here that I haven't seen yet.

I haven't finished, so if you comment, please don't spoil anything for me just yet. I've been carrying the book around with me everywhere I've went today, trying to sneak in a few pages when no one was looking between tasks. With any luck I'll be blogging about the end within a day.

Switching Gears

How's that for a smooth transition? Hey, at least I warned you.

The photo above is from one of my absolute favorite shooting locations: Roaring Run. It was one of the last I took last year and I though it fitting to post tonight since my thoughts have been taking me back along that stream these past few days.

On October 24th I'll be leading a photo outing for the Alleghany Camera Club to that very site. I've been asked to make some notes and a very brief, but helpful (I hope) presentation on capturing motion and light. We're going to meet at Fire & Light Gallery at 3 p.m., leave by 3:15 and be on the trail by 4 p.m. If the weather cooperates we should have some pretty sweet diffuse light coupled with an array of fall colors, a perfect recipe for great photographs if there ever was one.

This photo comes from about the halfway point of the hike. The stream takes a hard bend to the left (as you're walking upstream) and the trail breaks away to a higher vantage point for a hundred feet or so. To get this photo I actually jumped off the trail and crawled down the edge of the river. I put the feet of the tripod in the water by the bank and took about a 3 minute exposure to capture this image. There are a thousand different ways to shoot a moving stream, but one of my go to methods is to get right down in the water and shoot upstream.

If you're interested in attending, please do. You can comment here on this blog or e-mail me at SportsWriter2303@aol.com. I'll be happy to reply with directions or an e-mailed copy of the notes once I work them up.

An Allergic Refraction

I have found these days that the only real writing I'm accomplishing is this blog. It surprises me, because not only have I been attempting to write every day I've been attempting to work on the Druid project with Devan.

But you know what? I'm pragmatic, I'll roll with it. Photography is taking on a pretty big role in my life at the moment and I'm just going to take the time to deal with that so that it settles back in to the routine of my creative life. I've mentioned that we have a full October, but to give you a glimpse into that I will tell you know that I've already processed approximately 1,100 photographs this week. I have just about as many more to hopefully get finished before Saturday.

In my last post I mentioned the first meeting of the Alleghany Camera Club. It was a success and there's another meeting set for October 28. Not only that, but there is an outing scheduled for one of my favorite shooting locations, Roaring Run, and it's my job to see to the organization of it. I don't know just what's involved yet, but I think I'll have the opportunity to find out tomorrow when I meet with Chuck Almarez. I'm looking forward to the challenge.

I should mention that on the list of things I'm looking forward to is Canadian Thanksgiving. We have a good friend, Sarah, (The Student Knitter) who just happens to be Canadian. So of course she celebrates Canadian Thanksgiving, which is earlier than the American version of the holiday. Which is cool because, in effect, we get to attend two Thanksgiving dinners. It was a pretty relaxed dinner party and we're looking forward to more of the same on Sunday. 

Last year I was introduced to cribbage, a pretty cool card game that took me a couple of hands to figure out and that I've probably forgotten how to play in the year that followed. I was also introduced to Bubbles & Squeak, a dish that I doubt I would've tried otherwise. This year I've heard there is going to be a Butternut Squash Risotto. I've never had that and it sounds pretty good. The cooking at Sarah's house tends toward the excellent and varied and I'm looking forward to trying something new.

In the past week I've managed to gain a better understanding of my job situation. That's been a weight off my shoulders that I didn't realize was as heavy as it was. Dealing with that has made me feel much better about a lot of things, including life in general. I've a lot to look forward to in the days ahead.

Since it's fall and I haven't shot anything new outdoors, I'm offering up the above photo as a place holder. I shot it in the months before my marriage nearly two years ago. It's rag weed pinned up against a wall by a sheet of glass that's reflecting the image of the woods behind my grandpa's house. I've named it Allergic Refraction and I even entered it in the Fall Festival Art Show the year that I took it. It didn't place (I've never placed in any photo competition) but it did receive a great deal of positive feedback. It's one of the few prints of my own work that I have up in our house.

The First Meeting of the Alleghany Camera Club

Last night was the second meeting, but first official, of the Alleghany Camera Club. It was a very enjoyable experience. Everyone was supposed to bring in their favorite picture and tell why and how they took it. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed hearing everyone's stories. 

Since I've already posted the photo I used at the meeting last night I'm posting this one. This photo is the first bird picture that I took with my 75-300mm lens about seven years ago. It was taken in Patrick's backyard before I even really knew what I was doing and I ended up with a photo that I've kept for this long. I was digging through some old files to find some sports photos for a portfolio for a job interview when I found the digital file for this one. I thought I'd lost the file and was very happy to add that to my collection of processed work.

The meeting was held at Chuck Almarez's Fire & Light Gallery in downtown Clifton Forge, a gallery that I'm happy to say I've worked at a bit. Chuck has let me freelance shoot a lot over the past few years and I'm looking forward to helping him again next week. His KidPix Photography business has been shooting area sports teams for years and it's pretty cool to get to help out with that on occasion.

It looks like our next meeting is going to be October 28 and we'll also have the opportunity to participate in a tour of The Roanoke Times and hear a presentation from the head of the paper's photography department a week before that. It all sounds pretty interesting.

It's the first weekend in October and the beginning of our crush of weddings. We'll be shooting the Persinger-Walton wedding tomorrow. It's an outdoor wedding, so that takes some of the stress of lighting away. The reception looks like it's going to be fun and it's going to have my favorite ham rolls from the A&B Bakery, so I'm good to go.

A Change Of Perspective

I must admit to being something of a nerd. I'm not the painfully nerdy type you see on The Big Bang Theory or anything like that, but I do geek out on occasion. I can't wait for the next Star Trek novel to come out. I'm drooling over Firefly on Blu-Ray. I think Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel are two television series that were fine examples of drama, action and comedy.

That list could go on for a long time so let's just end it there.

The point is that among the things that I "geek out" about is good writing. I watch television shows and wonder what goes into making them. I read books and wonder how the author knew to take his characters in that direction. I want to know how it's done. I want to know the gritty, messy details that are covered up by the scenes. So I often watch the writer/director commentary on DVDs. (Yes, go on. Add that to the list of nerdiness in the first paragraph. It's OK.)

I've spent the week trying to get caught up on processing photos before the October rush. When I'm processing I usually flip on a disc or two of a television series that I have on DVD and just let it roll as I get into the groove of processing. Today I started out with Two and a Half Men and quickly realized I was bored with it. I didn't make it through the first 22 minute episode before pulling the plug. Instead I put in my Blu-Ray copy of Serenity, scrolled through the extras and put on the writer/director commentary.

I have a knack for being able to do one thing and listen to another. It's how I made it through school without ever studying. So as I processed I listened to what Joss Whedon talked about on the show. Some of it was interesting without being useful. I found the commentary on lenses he used during the shooting fascinating, though I doubt it will translate into photography usefulness. What I really focused on instead was the commentary on the characters themselves and I learned a few surprising things.

The first thing I didn't realize, though in hindsight I should have, is that the movie is Mal's story as told by River. The entire movie is wrapped around getting Mal from the dark place he starts at to the better place he ends at because of River's plight. Fascinating.

The second thing I keyed on was how the story itself was told, what little tricks of the trade were used to pull the viewer in and give him all the back story he needed without beating him over the head with it. Again, some of that I noticed, some of it I didn't.

What really struck me the hardest, however, was listening to Joss Whedon speak about the vision he had for the movie and the characters he'd created. Everything he did, every scene, every bit of dialog was aimed at bringing that vision to life. There wasn't a single bit of extraneous material.

But more importantly, Whedon had a vision. He knew what he was sitting down to create. He may not have known all the stops the story would take along the way, but he knew what he was creating. It was analyzed and thought through before the pen hit the page.

It made me realize that I rarely, if ever, have asked myself an important question when starting a project, namely this one: What is it I'm trying to do? What is it I'm trying to create? Why am I doing this?

Looking back I can see where that's hurt my creative efforts. I think I've only satisfactorily answered that question once, with The Crownless King. The Sixth Sword may very well come in a close second at that. Yet for the most part weak answers to those questions have made the quality of my work less than in could be, I believe, and have caused me to lack focus lately.

I'm not saying the past six months have been wasted, but I see now how answering those questions could have made me put the time to a better creative use. I can see now that I must readjust my perspective if I'm going to have a shot at a successful writing career at all.

Out And About

Yesterday was a mix between work and fun. After spending the morning bound to a computer I went photo hunting with my sister, Elisha, who was looking to practice her outdoor photography. We made a quick trip up North Mountain to see what we could photograph and I came away with this image you see before you. It's a Swallowtail butterfly, a pretty common butterfly around here. There were dozens of them along the road and it was a simple matter to stop the Jeep and take a photo without ever leaving the air conditioning.

Last night for dinner we tried something a little different. I made chicken rolls. You simply pound out chicken breasts until they're decently flat, cut them into strips, place whatever seasoning or stuffing you want in them and then roll them up and secure them with a toothpick. Fifteen to twenty minutes on the grill in low heat and you have yourself dinner.

I made my classic Italian Hagy chicken just to keep it simple so I could try out the method. I cut the breasts along their length, which made the rolls bigger. The seasoning definitely seems to clump together at times and, while the flavor was excellent, I believe that the "less is more" approach will make it better next time. Next time I might even add goat cheese. I've been told that would be excellent.

Back In The Day

So here's something from back in my reporter days. I've been staring at wedding photographs all afternoon and as I'm uploading the next 300 to the flash drive so that I can work on the laptop, I thought I'd take a break, dig up an old photo and blog about.

Baseball is, of course, our national past time. My absolute favorite sport is basketball, followed closely by football. But there's something about baseball in the summer time...I don't even like to watch it on television until the playoffs roll around. Yet I can go to the ball park, smell the hot dogs cooking and hear the crack of a bat and suddenly all is right with the world.

Obviously, the bat didn't crack on this picture, but it's still one of my favorite sports photos I've ever taken.

Into Every Life A Little Rain Must Fall

Now this is my kind of day.

It's been so long since we've had any rain that I've nearly forgotten what it looks like. But today is a perfect rainy day. It was after 9 a.m. when I pulled myself out of bed. I got myself together, grabbed my keys and headed to Covington to return the tuxedos from Patrick's wedding.

I stepped outside into a light drizzle that turned into a raging downpour the moment I put the Jeep in park half a block away from Rooklin's Department store. I returned the tuxedos at a dead sprint that still left me soaked. After seeing to a couple of things in town I came back home to do a little housework, process some photos and continue the job search.

Now it's a perfect rainy day. The sky is completely overcast and the rain is falling straight down with just enough breeze to bring the cool summer air through the open windows. All the splashing and pitter-patter of the rain is a perfect counterpoint to the all instrumental, all jazz radio station that I've found on one of the upper digital music channels on the television.

After Bethany comes home from lunch I'm going to hit the gym and spend a couple of hours on the free weights and the basketball court. Then I'm going to settle in to processing wedding photos. We're two weddings behind and one of them absolutely has to go out this week.

But on a day like this, I can handle it...

After The Holiday

I hope everyone out there in blog land had a great Fourth of July weekend because we certainly did. We even shot a wedding Saturday that had some of the best reception food ever...barbecued chicken, pork barbecue, ears of corn roasted in the husk and just about any side you could want.

On the even better side, I purchased a copy of Lake Wobegon: Summer 1956 for just a penny. That's beautiful stuff right there.

Bethany had yesterday off so we headed to Roanoke to check out Eclipse. While Dick and I disagree a bit over the quality of the acting, I thought it was a pretty good movie overall and a definite improvement over the last one. The Twilight Saga films have been very well done and have stayed true to the original novels better than any other film I've seen yet. It's hard to be disappointed with them when they stay so true to the author's original vision. I'll grant you that these actors won't be taking home any Academy Awards for these roles, but I still think they handle to roles fairly well for the most part.

I can't say that I have much to report on any of the current projects I have waiting and being two weddings behind in the photo processing probably means I won't get much else done this week.

In the meantime, however, I am really enjoying Imager's Challenge, the latest in L.E. Modesitt's new fantasy series. I highly recommend the Modesitt's Saga of Recluse and Imager's Portfolio. Recluse is over a dozen books long and full of great characters and plots. Imager's Portfolio is only two books long at the moment, but so far they've been great reads.

Something New To Eat

I've just about decided we're in a food rut. Now I like to eat. That should come as no surprise to those of you out there in blog land who know me. While some people regard eating as just something they do for fuel to get through the day, I personally thing eating is one of the highlights of my day.

I'm not the greatest chef in the world by any stretch of the imagination and I have a lot to learn. And while I'm not a bad cook either, I think I tend to get caught up in cooking the same old things over and over and over and over and...

You get the idea.

Since the unfortunate cessation of my work related activities way back in February has lasted a lot longer than anticipated, I've spent a lot of time around the house slowly working on various projects. Most of it has been writing. Some of it has been cleaning, reorganizing and things of that nature. In the back of my mind I'm always interested in new foods and cooking methods to try and I've become pretty familiar with the ol' grill on the back porch.

Now I think I'm going to turn my attention back to cooking for a while. I've been given some great culinary books (they're a little more in depth than just cook books) as gifts and three of these are going to be what I focus on in the next few weeks (or until something shiny diverts my attention again).

The first of these is Mastering the Grill, which my parents gave to me two Christmases ago (being the Christmas I can barely remember for everything that happened the day after). The second two books were gifts from Bethany, Stirring the Pot by Tyler Florence (my favorite celebrity chef) and The Bread Bible. Though I've used Stirring the Pot just a bit, all three of these culinary books have languished on the end of the island in the kitchen for far too long. So don't be surprised to read a little bit more about my culinary explorations in the next few weeks.

On an unrelated note, the bird feeder continues to draw a pretty big crowd of hungry song birds and an even bigger crowd of Starlings. The smaller birds adjusted to my presence fairly well, so much so that I could walk within ten feet or so of the feeder without spooking them. The first day that I took my camera out with me was the day that the flock of starlings appeared. They've been there ever since and they just will not adjust to me getting close to them. At all. The first squeak of the door sends them flying for safety, which in turn sends to the smaller birds darting for cover.

So that's why there haven't been any bird pictures up here yet. I'm still working on it though.

From The Inside Looking Out

I was looking out the window of my house today and found this little fella looking back in at me. I just couldn't pass up a photo opportunity like that.

Quickly I grabbed my macro lens and slapped a fresh memory card into my camera. For those of you who don't know, a macro is a special type of zoom lens designed to make really little things look really big. The macro lens has the ability to allow the camera to capture what it sees at a 1:1 ratio. When I print something off as a 4x6 photo, the subject is then nine times life size.

It works out great for wasps, as you can see here. I've never seen that little honeycomb in their eyes before. That was pretty neat. And despite having this photo I still can't tell you how he hangs on to the smooth glass of a window.

A Pattern I Can't Picture

The waterfall at Douthat State Park puzzles me.

It's a man-made cascade of the overflow of the lake. I don't know how high it is, but forty to sixty feet shouldn't miss the mark by much. It's just a cascade across stones that sometimes dries up during the summer.

But photographically, it puzzles me.

There's a path that walks right along beside it. I can't get down to the base of the cascade but I can get along side it pretty easily. The water flowing over the stones is beautiful. There's a pattern to it that I just can't quite seem to catch with my camera.

I took an hour in the blazing heat of this afternoon to see what I could so with some motion blurs. I left my cable release at home (it's next to impossible to do without it) but I was able to improvise with a longer lens and my ND400 filter. This is a vertical panorama of four photos (though I cropped most of the fourth one out since I blew the exposure badly). It comes close, but what I'm trying to get just isn't quite there. I can't put my finger on it....Every time I pass by the falls I think about it. Maybe one of these days I'll capture it.

Looking For Love In The Shoe Department

The great thing about photography is that there really are no rules, merely suggestions. There are the basics of how the camera works, but beyond that, anything goes. Like taking pictures of shoes and feet.

Believe it or not, the photo above came from an engagement shoot Bethany and I did a couple of weeks back. We traveled two and a half hours to the family farm and spent the afternoon roaming around looking for photo opportunities, of which there were plenty.

I believe that feet can be just as expressive as faces. I first took a shot of someone's shoes at a wedding a few years ago before Bethany and I struck out on our own. I liked it, though it was completely by chance that I came across the idea and had the perfect black and white set up. Bethany laughed at me then, and so did Lesley, who I was working for, but the "feet shot" is becoming more and more popular and requested more often.

This couple did, in fact, request that I take a picture of their boots. Naturally, I was happy to oblige them since I was going to do it anyway. Can you see the personalities in the boots? I can, especially now that I've spent more time getting to know the couple.

Now that I've blogged for the day I'm going to hit the laptop and start processing through the weekend shoots, which seemed to pretty well. I haven't looked at the results from either yet, but I'm feeling pretty good about them. I've thought about going out to Roaring Run or somewhere closer for some photos, but it's way too hot and humid out there to inspire me to do much in the way of that. Instead, I think I'll just stick close to home, work on photos and maybe even start cataloging the birds at my feeder.

I've started to make them accustomed to my presence. By moving slowly, a little more each day, I've managed to make it within 10 feet of the feeder before they fly off. This week I'll start taking the camera out and seeing what I can photograph if all goes well.

Whoops

Whoops. Apparently I didn't play by the rules with the Beautiful Blogger. I'm supposed to tell you ten things about me that you may not know. Hmmm. Let me fix this....

1. Once I wanted my career to be Tigger at Disneyland. In all honesty, if that would pay the bills I might still give it a shot.

2. I have a personal library of nearly 1,000 volumes, even after some trimming down and gifting of duplicates.

3. I really hate doing yard work, but I have enough experience at it to make your lawn look really good.

4. The best concert I've ever attended was in Orkney Springs, at the Shenandoah Valley Music Festival, in an open air barn on a summer's evening.

5. When I was in elementary school I had a 63 mile per hour fast ball and it was a miracle if I threw a strike.

6. The Harry Potter movies make me sad and angry.

7. If I were a character in a fantasy novel, I would most definitely be a hobbit.

8. I think it's incredibly cool that the word "hobbit" is actually in the spell check.

9. I do have a bucket list and one of the things I'm most determined to check off on it is to go sailing in the ocean, perhaps all the way to Europe. And I mean sail.

10. I really hate running. With a deep and abiding passion. If I'm running, it's only because: 1. I'm going toward food; 2. I'm chasing someone who stole my food; 3. There's a ball of some kind involved.

Now, to nominate ten more people...I don't even think I read that many blogs on here, though I do have to say I appreciate Jeff Mallet's blog (the illustrator and author of one of my favorite strips, Frazz) over at Jeff Mallet and justf8inaround tends to have some interesting photos. The Writer Unboxed is a great blog for authors and I have to give a nomination shout out to my illustrator, Heather Gladden, at both Deviant Art and heathergladden.com.

That's five if you count Heather twice....

Oh. Right. One more thing you probably didn't know.

11. I don't follow direction well. (Then again, most of you probably know that).

The Wake Up Call

A few years ago, well not that many really, my parents owned the house that Bethany and I now own and live in. Mom always had these great flower gardens and hummingbird feeders and bird feeders full of seed. They were a photographer's delight.

When she moved out, I quickly discovered that I just don't have my Mom's green thumb, or quite the interest in working outside that she did. The past two summers have been very hectic and, while this summer is going to be busy once July rolls around, I have a bit of a slower pace to run this year.

So I've decided to get some of that green thumb back. Just last week I purchased (OK, so Bethany purchased it, but give me a break. I'm still temporarily unemployed ;) a 50 pound bag of bird seed. I cleaned off the bird feeder that my Grandpa made and my parents installed at the end of the porch. I filled it up with seed and a day later I started having birds return to my feeder.

I do have birdhouses up in the yard and I plan on hopefully adding some more this summer. The old clothesline (that we rarely use) supports two houses, one single and one three bedroom condo. Both of these are full. And as I was coming back in the house from cleaning my feeder, I looked to my left and saw two little heads poking out of the single bird house.

This morning I woke up to the sounds of a dozen or so birds chirping and flying around my feeder. I managed to make it to the window and peep through the blinds without scaring them. I think that maybe this week I'll fill up the feeder for finches and hang it off the post as well. Hopefully I'll be able to make the birds accustomed to my presence long enough for me to take a few photos to share here. When I first purchased my camera, I would sneak over to the fence and photograph the birds off my neighbor's feeder. As cool as birds sound, they're even cooler when you can capture them in mid-flight.

Now as I'm blogging this morning, I happened to look over at the "Blogs I'm Following List" and see where my buddy Sarah was given the Beautiful Blogger Award for her blog, The Student Knitter . In reading her post, I see that she nominated me for the same award, so naturally I have to say thank you and congratulations on your own award!

Bethany and I met Sarah and her husband (whom I'll call Mr. Pie on the Web because she does) when we photographed their wedding almost two years ago. We became pretty good friends and we're even having dinner together Sunday. They introduced us to the world of playing Dungeons and Dragons, which, yes, can be just as nerdy as it sounds, but it sure is a whole lot of fun.

Road Trip & Reading

As much as I hate breaking a Commandment, particularly one that involves a Holy day of rest, Bethany and I had to do a little work today. Since yesterday was booked and our client only has every other weekend available, we had to make the best of it and take some engagement photos.

Boy, were those photos worth the two and a half hour drive to Dorcas, West Virginia (which is exactly as small as it sounds). The scenery was incredible, our subjects were photogenic and willing to go out on a limb (almost literally) to post for a good photograph.

The last two weekends have been great for shooting. I believe some of my experience is finally starting to pay off. Shooting in manual has been much easier and much smoother this year, which is odd considering I haven't really touched a camera until last weekend.

Most importantly, though, I'm finally beginning to feel more comfortable with posing people and having a little better luck finding those "real" moments in between the poses. Those moments make for absolute perfect photographs if you're watching for them.

Honestly, that was a big part of my gripe with wedding photography. Yes, it's stressful and there's only one shot to get it right. But once upon a time, I was a reporter and I lived for that. No, I've realized that a big part of my gripe is how polished and fake wedding photos so often look. Couples see the "show pieces" that photographers show them and they want photos just like that, yet they don't understand the time and effort it takes to create those shots. It's easy for weddings to become too formulaic and all the same. My goal now is to ignore all that and start looking for those real moments that get looked over too often.

I'd post some photos here to show you what I'm talking about, but our clients haven't seen them yet and I'm not the kind of photographer that debuts a couple's photos by uploading them to the World Wide Web.

It will be a busy week, even though Monday is a holiday. We have to big shoots to process, one of which must be done by the end of the week. I have a ton of fresh writing to do for the new novel since I'm meeting with Heather at the end of the week to discuss illustrations.

And somehow in the midst of all this, I have to find a copy of Patrick O'Brian's The Reverse of the Medal. I finally worked my way  up to The Far Side Of The World and polished it off just a few minutes ago. That ended my initial exploration into O'Brian, since I bought that title along with Master and Commander without realizing that I was buying books one and ten of a twenty-one book series. I just wanted to read them before I watched the movie that, for some inexplicable reason, took parts of books one and ten and made one movie out of them both.

A reviewer wrote that O'Brian was "...an easy taste to acquire and a hard one to shake..." or some such. I have to agree with him. I'm already dreading reaching the final book and I have eleven left to go.