The Original Oyster House on the Causeway is the launching point for airboat rides along the delta. Above the launching area, there is a banquet room for large parties and such. A few times we've been at the Original Oyster House for dinner, I've eyed the deck on the banquet room as an ideal location for shots in the evenings of the distance Mobile, Alabama skyline.
Finally, last week I got permission from Original Oyster House staffers to camp out on the deck with my tripod and a Sweetwater-420. I think it's important to be a customer at a place when imposing to use their property for photography stuff.
The sunset wasn't bad/wasn't the best but we enjoyed our meal as always and I'm glad to have gotten a few shots from the outing.
I can't stand commuting.
With election season over, on this Veteran's Day I'm hopeful that our government can set aside partisan politics to make the decisions necessary to work for the American People and the American Idea.
I was troubled to hear about a Veteran's Jobs Bill that was reduced to political fodder back in late September. The bill aimed to set aside Government funds to help soldiers get back into the private workforce upon returning home. Instead of working together, the two parties came to an empasse and the bill died. The Republicans say it's unconstitutional, incorrectly proposed and not within the funding policy. The democrats say the Republicans are stonewalling the legislation.
I think most voters you speak with would say "c'mon guys... work it out."
I've heard it said that you can be a Medic in a war-zone for a branch of the US military and prepare/stabilize critically injured soldiers for the next echelon of care but those same individuals, once in the private workforce, lack the credentials necessary to be a school nurse.
It seems as though bridge-certifications, taking those soldiers credits in an experiential fashion would help things along.. But, I presume there is no room for common sense in Washington, DC. :|
The owner of this boat came to the Gulf Coast to cash in on opportunities in the BP Oil Cleanup. At those times, rumors flourished that basically anyone with any type of craft could get paid a per diem for oil cleanup services, with little supervision as how they spent their days.
Sure, plenty of well meaning folks put their boats in the water and checked in with coordinators, working their butts off in oil-cleanup related tasks. But, disasters are distractions and it's easy to make a buck in the frenzy of moments like that. Some, got paid a fair daily rate to go out on the water and spend the day, accomplishing very little work.
Did this boat owner do this? Who knows. What I DO know, is he left his craft in this slip, unmaintained until the point that it sank. He created a mess for the really nice folks that run the Marina to deal with. As the dockmaster told me, "He got his BP check and left town."
I've always been drawn to the classifications that some people trully intend to leave the world a better place through their actions while others are simply here to take what they can.
When I was younger, I was a taker, for sure.
My parents would do whatever they could legally get away with and often some things, they didn't. From their example I learned that being smart was my weapon and I could wield it freely and unexpectedly to "get" what I wanted from people.
In my younger times I was a manipulative little creep and nowhere near as smart as I thought I was.
In my personal life, through exposure to my father in law, I found a model for integrity. Through my career life, I worked for one of the most honest and decent human beings to ever occupy Earth. At first, my exposure to these guys was more of a curious novelty. I was fascinated and generally confused that they would do things for other people completely unphased by imposition and unexpecting of something in return.
Years later, my father in law passed away unexpectedly. (On April 1st, no less.)
The line of people that came to see him into the next life was something like I'd never seen before. His funeral procession spanned two towns. It was in the wake of those moments that I looked back at my own motives and learned from the model of his life.
If I scratched and clawed,lied and cheated my way up the corporate ladder, I'd gain the forced respect I always sought after but the victory party would be a lonely one. If I touched as many lives as possible through random acts of kindness, not only would I find the respect I sought but I would gain lifelong friends along the way...
To Fred, I say -- Thanks for living a life of example.
And to the creep that left the mess pictured here, in Fairhope -- "dude, not cool." :)
I went out this evening to shoot the October Moon through the telescope with an iPhone 5.
It was a mild form of disaster.
I back out a eyepiece thumbscrew out too far and drop it in the grass. After fumbling around in the dark with a flashlight for twenty minutes, I declared martial screw-it-ness and went on with the project.
As I pointed the telescope the Azimuth lock-down nut on the telescope broke off at the base. (sigh)
With my Sony NEX cameras, I'd always shoot in quadrants and then stitch the imgaes together as a composite in Photoshop. I did manage to shoot about 9 shots of the various quadrants before I put the telescope up.
Now, as I sit trying to stitch the images together the natural light fall-off totally 0wns photoshop's stacking algorithm.
On a brighter note, I thought the natural light falloff looks kinda cool, so I thought I'd share, anyway..
#firstworldproblems
:)
This week, the County Fair is in town @ Robertsdale. I suppose I'm not like alot of people I know that are bullish on the fair. I've heard alot of comments on the price of admission, the price for ride tickets, etc. In fact, as I scarfed down a $6 nacho, I overheard the people next to me bitching about $8 beer.
To me, if you are going to be a Lemming and drink Bud/Miller/PBR at a fair... Expect to be gouged. :)
At any rate.. I suppose my fond memories relate back to high school. A good friend of mine lived right across from the old fairgrounds. While, for them it was an annoyance in traffic, I always thought it was really cool to have the lights and rides right outside your front porch.
Of course, being a devious sort, fair-time often signalled a week-long war of police tape and any possible thing he could do to keep people from parking in his dad's yard. Toilet paper... was just the beginning.
This time, met up with a photography friend as as always, I had a really fun time shooting over at the fellow troublemaker, Brody, We had plenty of laughs and he showd me some tips on shooting long exposure.
Light-writing for the lazy person :)
This also made for a good opportunity to put the new iPhone camera to work. This shot is using the iPhone 5's internal panoramic sweep mode, adjusted in-camera with snapseed and slightly noise-reduced on upload to smugmug through lightroom.
The result, I thought was pretty respectable considering it came from a camera-phone..
..And of course, I toted around the D800 with a tripod. Received many odd looks but also took a slightly tighter cropped panoramic with it:
I learned in this.. that I really-really want a better wide-angle lens. The 14-24mm is calling me. :)
If you are in Baldwin County, take some time and go out to the fair. Grab some Nachos and enjoy the sights and sounds. You'll have fun -- I did!. The Eastern Shore Camera Club, goes Friday night. Jump on over to their facebook area and hook up with a great/fun group of people that enjoy the call of photography.
As someone who fancies myself a photographer at times and general connoisseur of electron-equipped devices a-plenty, I know very little about light. I mean, I know that light travels in waves and that different wavelengths are perceived on that part of the EM spectrum as colors by the gelatinous orbs in our skulls. I know about some of the various units of measurement that humans have devised to describe it's intensity and other properties.
But to comprehend the movement, speed and dynamics of how light travels? I just don't REALLY understand it.
After Last Month's Eastern Shore Camera Club meeting, the sky opened up briefly for a typical summer shower. I snapped this shot of a park bench across the path -- I liked the water bokeh.
What about you? Does your camera come out in the rain or stay safe in the bag?
Last weekend I sailed from Orange Beach to Fairhope. The straight-out-of-the-north wind made it a 10 hour Journey. I'm not complaining, mind you. It was a beautiful day, we made it safely. Not much broke.
Here's a clip from that trip:
As you sail, expecially with a purpose, you spend alot of time looking up at the Windex. Not the stuff you clean windows with but the little spinning arrow thingy at the top of the mast. It denotes your apparent wind and helps you to locate and manage your points of sail. This is where, when sailing, some finesse can come into play -- you try to balance the heading you wish to travel against the optimum wind angle.
As I'd stare at the Windex for minutes on end, switching between it and the compass, the rolling waves, dancing dolphins and playing gulls around the sails would disappear into the purpose of the moment. Maintain a heading of 315 for 30 minutes, then tack the other direction, rinse and repeat as they say.
I suppose that's the trick of perspective. We can sometimes see only what we let ourselves see.
We measure cold as an absence of hot, bad as a negative good. Everything being relational.
Against my own better judgement, I watched both the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention, this year via selective coverage points. I shouldn't have.
I'm continually amazed how we, nieghbors, brothers and sisters can be so far apart on so many issues. That too, is a trick in perspective, I feel. The Republicans can't be all right or all wrong. The Democrats can't be all right or all wrong. If so, who'd follow them.
In my perspective as an independant, a sailor and a ponderer of things over my head I see things in the most simplistic of terms. If I lived in a town with only two Air Conditioner Techs and my AC broke, I'd call the one with the most compelling offering. If, after only four years, I found that tech's work to be lacking, I'd try the other guy. At the end of that four years, what then?
I know this.. I wouldn't be dumb enough to pay the same two guys to undo each others' work every four years.
Yet, that's where we are headed. Alas, though, it's time for me to switch headings again, from politics to life we go, eyes on the Windex, not too far now...
