End of the season...

So the fall is upon us and it is a week until Halloween, and this week I put my motorcycle away for the season. It's always a bittersweet thing to do, because I wish that I could ride year round.
Not so much because I love riding that much, ( but I really do!) but because it is MUCH cheaper on gas than driving my truck. So I put the fuel stabilizer in the gas tank and got all my stuff out of the back pack, and put my helmet in its storage bag. Then I cleaned the floor where I was going to put it, and worked it into the back corner of the shop. There it will sit for the winter, taunting me, with the promise of spring and what we will be able to do in the coming spring. In the middle of January while the wind is howling outside the doors and the driving snow is piling into sculpted drifts across the driveway, the bike will sit quietly in the back of the shop, and I will look back there and think of the spring that is to come, and of the adventures past. My motorcycle will be the dream that keeps me from giving in to the depressions of February, and get me through the last snows of March. When we get the warm weekend in April I will get it out of the corner and take it for the first ride of the spring and the feeling of freedom that comes from the wind and the road and the shifting of the gears will give me dreams of the hot, hazy weekends of summer and riding along through the NY terrain.

One of the things that drives the average NYer nuts is snow removal. I'm not one to worry so much about it, because I have the tools for the job. I plow the big open parts with my 4 wheeler, and for the walks and drifts, I have a great snow-blower for my garden tractor. It works great for opening up drifted in areas that the wheeler can't blast through. Between the two pieces of equipment, I have to shovel only a very minimum, and usually only the stairs that I can't exactly plow!

But before winter gets here, there is still the autumn to enjoy, and in Western NY one can never tell what the season really holds in store for ya. From golden trees and fresh cut fields, new green showing in the field of winter-wheat and the piles of pumpkins glowing various shades of orange in the farm markets, every turn is filled with colors and scents and dreams.
Halloween parties loom and the thoughts of what costume to wear, do you dress as a pirate? Maybe a Pimp or a gangsta. Whatever you chose, you can pretty much count of at least 10 other people having the same Idea! It never fails, the more original you think you are, the more likely it is for someone else to have the same exact thoughts. The only difference is in the execution. Details are the key. The more detail you put into the costume, the more likely you are to win the prize at the party! The fall wouldn't be complete without a few haunted hay rides, and a trip to the Maize Maze. And, what about a visit to the cider mill? One of my favorite things about fall, is the promise of some fresh apple cider. Coupled with some fresh, warm donuts and it's just about as close to heaven as a guy can get without a broad in the room with him! Fresh apples too, nothing like a fresh, crisp apple crunching with it's sweet/tangy taste reminding you of the difference between the store-bought, storage apples and the orchard-fresh apples.

One of the best things about fall in NY is the colors. The pumpkins, the straw bales, the Indian corn, and the trees. The foliage in NY can be so diverse and amazing and each year I find something that just stuns me with it's brilliance. Sometimes it is the neon-orange glow of a Maple tree in the sun, and sometimes it is a particular shrub that glows in crimson. When the day has been rainy and dreary and you look out at the world and it all seems grey, the sun can peak out from behind the clouds and light up a Birch tree, it's white trunk catching the golden cast of the sun, and the leaves of yellow looking like little drops of gold shimmering in the sudden sunshine and it will lift the spirit like any good drug. But it's not a drug, and if you're smart you will grab a camera and take a picture of that perfect scene. You never know when you will see it again, and preserving it is the best we can do. I am always amazed at how you can look at a row of trees and one can be bare while another has barely changes colors and one looks like a super hero decked out in gaudy colors waiting for the chance to take to the sky on a wing and a prayer looking to rescue someone from a dastardly villain. And they do rescue us, at least for a little while, because the color that they show the world give us an appreciation of the work that nature does. We can see the colors and be reminded of the cycles of nature and that we are privileged to be able to witness it again. Each fall, I look at the colors and I am happy to be here to see them again. Just as I am happy to get through the winter and see the return of the spring blossoms. I know that the gray skies of winter are coming, and so I appreciate the colors of fall all that much more.
Each season has it's place in my heart. I may complain about each one, but that is one of the privileges of living in Western NY, we get all the seasons every year, even if we get three of them on one week!! But the truth is that I have a choice and I wouldn't live here if I didn't truly love each season for it's individual pleasures. I have lived n the south and I know what it's like to wear shorts and a t shirt on Christmas day, and to tell the truth, lights in a palm tree just aren't the same as the standard fir tree decked out and smelling up the house with it's oily pine scent. The same as the warm spring breezes of April aren't appreciated as much when you haven't suffered through a blizzard in February. And as the fall does what it must, I can appreciate all that it has to share with me. ( Even if our summer did suck!)

Charity for the rest of us!

Remember when you spent too much money and to make the months rent you would throw a party and charge by the head, so you could get together enough money to pay the rent? How many times have you been to a fundraiser for some charity organization, or for someone who is in dire need of some financial assistance? Ok, now take these two ideas and merge them into one thought. Perhaps the time has come to throw a few " get someones ass out of hock" parties!!

The idea is this: throw a party like any fundraiser for charity, charge at the door, do 50/50 raffles, and some door prizes. But each person will have the chance to be the beneficiary of the party. by putting their name in the fishbowl along with one bill that they must apply the money to. Somewhere near the middle of the party the name is drawn. On Monday morning the deposit is made in their bank account and the check is written to the designated creditor. This person then must attend the next party for the next name drawn from the bowl. In order for it to work, each winner must continue to help the cause. One may not win and then not help the next party. no selfish bastards allowed!

If by some miracle of the divine winds, someone is not in need of assistance, they may put in the name of somebody that they feel is deserving of the assistance. These days there are far too many people who are on the edge, and helping a few of them is a great idea. Why do you have to be sick to get some help? why not help some of the working stiffs who are barely making it?

It sounds odd, but for most people, just getting one big bill out of the way, could free up the finances enough to make the ends come together again and keep the knee breakers from knocking on the door.

So who's in? and rememeber the bigger the party, the bigger the benefit!

None of the above...

The more I think about it, the more it makes sense to me. None of the above.... What the heck am I talking about, you may be thinking. Well, let me elaborate.

I am talking about the ballot, to be specific the American election ballots. If you vote, ( and you really should!!) you know that in far too many cases there is no opposition to the incumbent candidate, and so they win by default. But what if you don't want the incumbent to continue in this position? What if they have managed to rig the system ( this is not a conspiracy theory, look up "gerrymandering" in the dictionary) so that they can pretty much keep their office until such time as they decide to give it up? Well, then we have no recourse except to continue to fight a losing battle to try and get these slackers and losers out of office with candidates that have no chance of winning against the stacked deck.

So why not a "None Of The above" slot on every ballot in every election? For every office up for vote, there should be the possibility that none of the candidates truly meet the community standard, and therefore we should not let them win simply by default. Give the American people back the power of the voting booth. Rather than a race when there is no actual race, it is up to the politico to be responsible and do a good job, because we can actually vote them OUT of office without the need to vote someone else in. Of course this would mean that there must be occasional times when there is nobody to do a particular job. Depending on the job, this could result in either a new election, with completely new candidates (anyone voted out by the" None of the above" vote would be automatically barred from running again for at least 2 election cycles.) Or perhaps the job is eliminated, thereby saving the local coffers the expense of the salary. Another possibility is that the duties of the eliminated position be spread around the local government offices. Not all government jobs are essential after all! ( Especially elected ones!!)

The important thing here is the chance to make REAL change in a government that has become far too bloated and ineffectual for the people whom it is supposed to be serving. By adding the "None Of the Above" Slot to the ballot, we would no longer have to make the choice of the lesser of 2 evils, and therein lies the true possibilities of change.

Until we have the choice to actually say, " no", we will not settle, we want better choices, we will continue to get screwed over by the system that we want, and expect to help us.

100 posts...

I was looking at my post count and I realized that this is # 100! Wow, if my teachers could only see me now!! To be honest it has taken a little less than a year for me to get here, but That's ok, It's not like I am changing the world here, I'm just venting a little piss and vinegar and sharing my views of the world. Sometimes I have something really important ( to me) to say, and other times I just feel like rambling about a variety of topics. But looking over the last years posts I notice that I have hit on a few topics more than others. Travel, religion, politics, and family to name a few right off the top of my head. Friends seem to come up a few times, as well as the future, the past and technology. I have hit on topics of entertainment , death and food. Education and taxes seem to have a few big mentions as well. So I guess that I hit on the things that most directly affect me, and the people in my life.

Number 100. It seems like I should be looking deep and trying to find some special, deeply meaningful topic to get all philosophical about, but the truth is that I don't have anything really pissing me off more than usual today, and since I haven't taken any great pictures so far this week, I don't even have any of those to share. I'm working alone this week, so it seems that coming up with great topics is a little beyond my mental capacity with all the other things on my mind.

I guess that thing that is most on my mind right at this moment is coincidence. It's like when you have been saving that particular thing for some unknown theoretical future use, and then you finally throw it away, and then 2 days later you find the perfect use for it! Some people call it irony, but it's mostly just annoying. Ask anyone who deals with inventory, the longer something has been on a shelf, the more likely that the day you sell it, there will be 4 more people looking for that very piece. It seems to be the oddest force in the universe, Coincidence. If you are waiting for a delivery, and you have to use the bathroom, the delivery shows up at the exact moment that you get your cheeks planted on the toilet seat! right? You know that it has happened to you! It's a matter of the phrase, "It never fails!" and it seems to hold true more times than not, like when you are in a hurry, and what happens? You get stuck behind the slowest person on the road. Some people call it Murphy's Law, the old adage that whatever can go wrong will go wrong, but in truth that's not really the case. The fact is that even the things that can't possibly go wrong, will go wrong at the most inopportune time. If you have looked at every possibility, then you must look for the impossibilities, because they will be the things that will bite you on the ass. A friend of mine used to have a great saying, "You can't win the lottery, but you'll get struck by lightening!" I have always loved that saying, because it is such a truism, you can be sure that if it is a one in a million chance for disaster, it will happen, but if it's a one in a million shot for a happy ending, you will miss for sure.

Life deals lemons so much that we have come up with the old saw, about making lemonade. It's a coping mechanism, just like most of the best cliches are. Life is imperfect to say the least, and too many of us spend too much time worrying about the things that we can't control, trying to live with the illusion that we can take control. We are nothing more that the results of our choices and our circumstances. Each choice we make, brings us to another choice and so on until hell freezes over. In the end we can do what we can do and nothing more, but we continue to try and harness the wind. It's in our nature to try and gain control, even when we know that we can't. Some of us figure out that the best we can do is hold on and ride, and follow life wherever it leads us, and those are the happy people. I hope that I am one of the happy people when it's all said and done.

Ah Fall...

The aptly named Season of Fall is upon us and the leaves are doing their part, and beginning to fall from the trees. The colors are emerging from their summer camouflage of green, and the edges of the forest are beginning to look interesting. The Virginia Creeper is hanging in crimson drapes across the landscape and the purple grapes are showing in the vines. Along the roadsides and in the fields the goldenrod is turning, first brown, and then fluffy white with seed fuzz. The purple asters and tiny daisies are fading away and slipping into their seed faze. The Corn fields are quickly losing the green hues of summer and the stalks are drying out and turning that soft tan color that signals the coming of Halloween. Orange pumpkins lying in the fields are being gathered up and brought to the roadside stands to be oohed and ahhed over by eager children anxious to carve their jack-o-lanterns and put on their masks to go trick or treating. The mornings are crisp and the days are cool, soon the frost will kill of the annual flowers and the perennials will be going to sleep. The Apple trees are loaded with fruit waiting to be picked and the cider mill is ready to squeeze. Soon the flavor of fresh sweet apple cider will mix with the tast and texture of fresh warm doughnuts and it will officially be the Start of the Cold season. Enjoy the smells and the tastes and the feel of the fall. Take some time and walk in the leave and smell the fresh scent that they give off. Revel in the cool evening and build a fire to share with friends. Indoors or out! Get the garden ready for bed with the same care that you get your children ready, and when spring comes it will wake up easier. Gather in the seeds that you wish to save for next season. Cut the grass one last time and don't forget to put some fuel stabilizer in the gas tank before you run it. Get the snow blower ready, before you actually need it. Fill the windshield pisser in your car and get a couple of spare bottles now so you aren't scrambling in the dead of winter to find it to get the salt glaze off of your windshield. Fall is both a time to put things away, and to get things out. Enjoy the season while it lasts. I feel sorry for people who don't have a fall season. They don't know the beauty of the earth getting ready for winter.

odds and ends...

So as you can tell it has been a few weeks since I have done much on this page, and believe me it's not for lack of ideas, but more for a lack of time. I have to sleep, so somethings suffer, and since this place is not something that is actually making me any money, I have to back burner it now and then. A couple of other things have also kept me form being a busy blogger, namely Facebook and my new camera! You can see from the last few posts that I have been a busy little photographer.

I have now had the camera for about 5 weeks and I noticed the frame count today was nearing 3000. Yes, I am a prolific snapper. Not all of my snaps are collectible photos, but each of them teaches me something, and therefore they are valuable. In fact, today I have decided that I wished to try and get a better understanding of exactly how flash compensation worked, and so I sat down in the shade and shot a few geraniums at various settings to see how the various flash settings affected the shots. And I recorded the data for each shot in my little data book so that I may later refer to the data to help me perfect my technique. The truth is that I much prefer to use natural light and the shadows that it casts, just as it casts them, however there are times when I do and will need to understand how to use a flash to eliminate certain harsh shadows or to even the light across a subject. Thus I have to learn how to do it, when the situation is controlled and I can learn without the pressure of the shots "counting". Getting a grip to be sure.

Facebook seems to be slightly addictive, and I am trying to find ways of interacting a little more with people and getting some feedback. There are certain people who constantly give feedback, and I do appreciate it to an extent, but there is a limit to good wishes from people. Sometimes rather than simply telling me how much they like my stuff, I would like it if they told their other friends how much they like it, and get me some more eyes and maybe some eyes looking to buy! I have been putting up various pictures that I have been taking, especially with my new camera, and The hope is that eventually I will be able to start selling prints. I am not looking to get rich, honestly, I would love to be able to make a living at photography, but I know that it is a long way to get to that point. I know that I am not the best business mind, I am much more creative. That said, in order to make a living at photography, I have to figure out what my niche is. Am I a nature photography, or an action shooter? Am I a concert portrait maker, or do I capture the raw emotion of an event? I have been taking pictures at fire scenes, and I have shot some youth sports. I love taking pictures of plants and flowers and trying to capture the peacefulness or grandeur of landscapes. A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to take some portrait style pics of my niece for her senior pictures. What did I like best?

Truthfully, I liked doing all of it. I like nothing better than looking at the world and seeing what I want to capture and then the satisfaction of getting some shots that turn out to be exactly what I had in my head when I initially looked at the scene.

I have this dream of doing a book about barns, as any longtime (longtime being since last fall when I started it!) reader of this blog can tell you, I love barns, and especially the old gambrel roofed style barns. Sadly, they are a disappearing structure in the American landscape, and the history that they hold is disappearing with them. How many times have you driven down the road and seen a lone silo standing sentinel over an empty field? You can bet that lying below that silo is the remains of a barn, whether collapsed into the ground or burned in some tragedy or demolition, it is the barn that raised the silo. The lone silo is the orphaned child of the barn. I don't know if I will ever have the drive to actually finish the book, but perhaps someday I will get much closer to getting it done.

I have been taking pictures yes, but I have also been writing about them. In more than one place. I have the pictures on Facebook and each one has a little something with it as an explanation, and in some cases I use the pictures to illustrate some narrative about what they are or why I took them. Recently someone was looking at some of my pics and asked me why I took a particular picture, and my immediate response was to ask, why not? In the age of digital cameras, there is no good reason NOT to take a picture. True that in many cases you only get a snapshot and not what the professionals call a "picture", but what is a picture but a well staged,placed and/or planned snapshot. By definition the BEST pictures of the last 100 years have been lucky snapshots when someone was in the right place at the right time shooting the scene. "The Execution" in Saigon, "Napalm girl", The flag raising at Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima. Granted the most famous one is a staged event, but the original was a snapshot. Part of the photographers job is being in the right place at the right time, and knowing where to look when the action is taking place. The guys on the sidelines of the big league games, they have earned a place there, so that they have the chance to get that special shot that becomes iconic for a particular athlete, like the crestfallen look of Scott Norwood after he missed the field-goal that lost the Super Bowl, or the moment of triumph when Lance Armstrong crossed the finish line for his 5th consecutive Tour De France win. The guy who was positioned to capture the flight of Richard Petty along the fence at Daytona when he went airborne. These guys have only one chance to get that particular iconic shot, and if they miss it or screw it up, they will never get the chance again, and we, the public, will never be able to review it and see if it is like we remember. In these days of video, and cellphone cameras, it is likely that someone got the picture, but what would you rather see, a picture that you have to squint at to see the details, or a giant glossy poster of that perfect shot? Yeah, that's why I took that picture, because eventually no one will have to ask why I took it, because they will be able to see in the frame why I took it, whether it's the tears of defeat, the joy of victory, the gossamer wings of a dragonfly skimming across a lily pond, or the spectacular colors of an August sunset. They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I truly believe that the story behind the picture is what makes the picture with it.

Pictures are art. Every snapshot, every school picture, every painting, every sand drawing. If it is a graffiti tag spray-painted on a building or the doodling of a child on a notebook, it is art. Art is in the eye of the beholder, it is interpretive and has the distinctive duality of being both valuable and worthless at the same time. Each creation is unique, if for no other reason than it is separate from all others, even the copy has it's own individual flaws that make it unique from all other copies. What we create as artists, ( and we are all artists) we always hope to have accepted by someone. Even if it is a small group that sees the innate value of your work, you always appreciate the acceptance. As an artist I know that my art has value to me, in that it is something that I have put myself into, but I hope that it captures something that gives it value to somebody else as well. When I die and the things that I have made are kept as mementos of my life, then they have a new and greater value, because I will never create or capture another piece with my unique vision. From this standpoint, one can argue that even the electrician who puts the wires in the walls of your house, that you may never see or worry about, is an artist, because his work is unique.

We are all artists, and we all deserve appreciation, it doesn't really matter the medium, or even the message, if we leave behind a piece of ourselves, that is appreciated by someone else, then we have achieved a "masterpiece".

My current favorite pictures

As some of you will undoubtedly remember from a few weeks ago, I have a new camera, and I am loving life playing with it! There is just no stopping the ideas flowing through my brain and the endless possibilities that keep popping up before my eyes. I want to try new things and shoot in different ways. and to show my vision of the world. I feel almost like a veil has been pulled from my creative eyes. I am seeing the world once again in a way that makes me glad to greet each new sunrise. I wait for inspiration to strike, and it seems that I never have to wait very long. Today it was a sunset. Yesterday it was a barn fire!
I am always looking to learn something new, and to refine my own picture style. I am steadily getting my comfort level back with the higher-end camera. I have been using the point and shoots for so long that I have to get my steady hand back for the longer lenses, and to see how to capture the images that I want so that they convey the stories that I am trying to illustrate. Each time I break out the camera I learn a little something that I didn't know before. I find new ways of doing things and especially seeing things. I want to show things in a perspective that maybe nobody else has tried. Although today with all of the amateur photographers out there with high-end, pro gear taking great pictures and trying to be the next Ansel Adams, it's all likely been tried. The odds are that what I do will be noticed by my small group of friends and family on facebook, and perhaps a few friends of friends steered by the linked pictures, and not much more than that.
What I would like to be able to do is to sell my pictures and make enough money to travel and take more pictures. I love to take them and to show them and to have someone tell me that they like them. My firemen friends like the stuff I do for them, at their functions, and after I get a few under my belt and get my technique figured out, I will be much better at the fire scenes too. I have been taking pictures of musicians for years, but this is the first time that I have had the gear to get a good ambient light picture of the guys on stage and not needed flash to keep the fingers from blurring.
The one thing that I don't want to be is the guy with the shingle in front of his house who gets the call for the school pictures. Senior pictures! I like doing portraits of people that mean something to me, I want to show them to the world the way that I see them., I want to be able to capture that little bit of attitude and recklessness that I see in these people. I can only really do that with people that I know. My niece is one of those people. I will give you, that she is so photogenic that it is nearly impossible to get a bad picture of her, but it is still a skill to do it without being boring about it. Catching her being goofy, without being obvious about it, and keeping her in a playful mood makes it really easy to get great shots of her. So what kind of photographer do I want to be? Well, I guess that I want to be the one that people call after an event and ask me if I was there taking pictures, because they are looking for something different, or better than what they have from everyone else. They will know that I will have the background pictures, the pictures capturing real emotion and real action, not some staged, gimmicky, "aww" shot. Not the treacly kiddie shots that most parents take with their cell phone cameras, but the picture of the guys doing the work, the grimace of pain and strain, the dust and the dirt of the events. The stuff that shows how the work gets done, and why people were there.
But then again there are always some really cool "aww" pictures too. They aren't all throw-aways. Sometimes you have to be sneaky to get the really cool pictures. I have been called paparazzi on more than one occasion! It helps that I generally know my subjects and they get accustomed to the fact that I have a camera and they never know when I may be shooting. They forget that the glass is looking for a subject to see, and when they are their most comfortable is the best time for shooting. But there are those who are ever vigilant, lest they be caught being natural, and for those subjects it becomes a challenge to get a great shot. Sometimes you can position yourself in the right place and lie in wait for the right time to present itself, or you just become ubiquitous with the camera and sooner or later you get a great shot of that elusive subject. What ever way works is fine by me, I'm not too picky about the how, I'm much more interested in the "how did it come out?" The bonus of digital is that you can take 200 pictures, be happy with 100 of them, ecstatic about 10 of them and toss the rest and be out nothing but time and experience. A person can learn.

Life is about learning, and photography is about capturing, so a photographers life is learning the art of the capture, I guess.