Monthly Archives: November 2012

Bowl Games

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Many moons ago, I taught an Essay and Research class.  One of the things I taught my students was to narrow their focus.

Every time a student was stuck, it was because they were overwhelmed by a big subject and didn’t know where to go with it.  Creating a more current, hypothetical example, a student writing about the economic crisis of 2008 would get as far as “it was awful”  and then not know what else to say.  If they wrote about what caused the economic crisis, they would have something to go research.  But, since none of them were interested in writing a dissertation, that would also lead to writer’s block.  If they wrote about one cause, they would get further, but were usually bored.  But if they wrote about one family and what happened to them, suddenly, they would not be able to stop writing.  As you narrow the scope of what you write about, you often find a nugget of inspiration.

Taking a lesson from my own class (although, I shouldn’t take credit–there was probably a teacher I’ve forgotten who shared this wisdom with me), as I look for photographic inspiration, I switch from thinking about every possibility in the world to giving myself a highly constrained assignment:  shoot one bowl in one place as many ways as possible in about an hour.

As I clear off the largest surface I have available to work on, creating a space about 2 feet by 2 feet (how I miss having a big table), and place a weathered copper bowl under a light, my husband watches me.

“Do you know what you’re going to write about?” He asks.

I ignore him because I, in fact, have not a clue what I’m going to write about.  I am only worried about what I’m going to shoot; the story will come.

He watches me spend my hour on about 40 shots of this poor, beaten bowl.  I start with my 24-70mm lens on a tripod with a simple light bulb behind the bowl.  Then, I try it with my flash with an 1/8” grid strapped on top.  Not satisfied with the spread of the light, I try it with a softbox attachment.  This ruins the contrasting shadows.  I try with a snoot (I still love that word!) and hold the snoot in various positions to create a spotlight effect on different parts of the bowl.

Finally, I ditch my flash and switch to my 100mm macro lens.  I get up close and try to get as much depth of field as possible (not much) across the gleaming rim of the bowl.

“Have you decided what you’re going to write about?” my husband asks again.

I give him a look.

He says, “Well, you’re over there taking all these pictures of that bowl, I assume you know what you’re going to write about.”

I still haven’t told him.

Cow Tipping and Sky Scrapers

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As the holidays approach kick-off, I find myself searching through old photos more frequently.  I’m thankful for old photos–they remind me of where I’ve come from and refresh the memories I’ve taken with me.

These images are from a photography workshop I went to back in Columbus, Ohio (I have to add “Ohio” now because when you live in Chattanooga, they usually assume you mean Columbus, TN or Columbus, GA).

As I review the images and look at the metadata, I realize just how many mistakes I made.  That, too, is a reminder of where I’ve come from.  Sometimes it’s nice to realize I am learning even if the process seems slow.

I ponder why these images all seem to have been shot with a wide open aperture, resulting in out-of-focus foregrounds and/or backgrounds.  These days, I like to see the entire scene in focus in most landscape shots.  The difference between having lots of depth of field and the images in the gallery probably comes down to the want of a tripod and low light conditions.

But what jumps out at me as I peruse these photos is that in over 40 years of living there, I had never really seen downtown Columbus before this day.

I had walked the streets more times than I can count.  I’d been to theaters, restaurants, shops, meetings, museums, and even two courthouses.

But I walked the streets with purpose, my mind busy with the reason I was there or the things I needed to do, focused on what was ahead or behind and not on what was around me.

I wonder if I returned to my home town how I would see it differently.  I think back to vague memories of the Columbus skyline from my childhood.  There was one sky scraper then, the Lincoln LeVeque Tower.  It remains the most interesting of the tall buildings in the Columbus skyline even though its height has been eclipsed for many decades by its neighbor, the Rhodes State Office Tower.

As I look at these images and see blocks and blocks of big-city buildings, I realize how much the town and I grew up together.

My family arrived in 1970 when Columbus was still called Cow Town.  In fact, even when we left, there were still cows grazing on the OSU Agriculture campus pastures well within the city limits.  It would be hard to grow up in Columbus without knowing what cow-tipping was.

At the same time, Columbus invested in revitalizing some of its worst neighborhoods, developing its downtown riverfront, creating an awesome metro park system, and attracting large businesses that built up the Columbus skyline.  In retrospect, I realize that Columbus grew up without me noticing.  It turned into a real city with real attractions.

None of that makes me regret our decision to move to Chattanooga, however.  Perhaps a mid-western metropolitan lifestyle is less important to me than views of Lookout Mountain.

A Little Whimsy

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I’m in the mood for some whimsy.  And what better place to find the whimsical than Key West, Florida?  I am not there.  But, I have photos from the last time I was.

We went to Key West the long way.  We drove from Columbus, Ohio through Shenandoah National Park over the Blue Ridge Parkway to Congaree National Park in South Carolina, to Everglades City, to Key West.

I am not one of those people who goes to a city and immediately wants to know where all the art museums and galleries are.  Don’t get me wrong.  I enjoy art.  But I’m easily overwhelmed.  Even more so when the art is violent and bloody.  There are entire eras of art that I prefer not to know about.

The Custom House in Key West might be the only art gallery I’ve ever gone to where I managed to walk through the whole thing and still felt so fascinated, I peeked in at an upcoming exhibit that wasn’t open yet.

What kept me interested was whimsy.  If ever there were going to be a place with an art and historical museum full of whimsical wonders, Key West would be the place.  Even before we made it inside, we were amused by the life-like sculptures outside performing day-to-day tasks ranging from sweeping trash to taking pictures.  We kept getting confused as to who was real and who was art.  I guess that means we were all art.

Inside, we found more life-like sculptures, all by Seward Johnson, of scenes from some of the most famous photos ever.  Like the WWII guy kissing the girl at the end of the war.  Or Marilyn Monroe with her white dress over an air duct in the Seven Year Itch.  Can you tell who doesn’t belong in that image?

There were also several sculptures based on famous art.  The girl with the pearl earring was there (not pictured) along with The Landlady (based on L’Arlesienne by Van Gogh) who was hanging out on the porch of the Custom House.  She was even more amusing because of the plastic outdoor chair positioned on the porch next to her, implying that she had just been visiting with someone.

But, above all, my favorite sculpture was called “Day Dream.”  This was a bigger-than-life sculpture of the Matisse painting called “Dance” but with the addition of an adolescent boy laying on the ground as the naked ladies dance in a circle above him.  At first, I thought the boy was real, perhaps because there were real people going in and out of the sculpture as well.  I thought it was rather bold of a guy to lay on the ground in the middle of a sculpture of dancing naked women.  Turns out being bold was what the artist had in mind all along.

Hot Spots

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Sometimes love hurts.  When I was young, the pain associated with love came in adolescent dramas mostly created by massive fluctuations in hormones.  These days, it comes with loving a creature who depends on me for protection.  When he hurts, I hurt.

This, of course, is my dog, Tisen.

I like to think we provide the perfect home for him.  We buy him special food.  We feed him more vitamins than we feed ourselves.  We walk him at least 2 miles every day.  I work from home–he is rarely left home alone more than a few hours a week. We take him to doggie daycare twice a week just so he gets to socialize with other dogs.

We take him to dinner with us when weather and patios permit.  We socialize with friends who invite him to come along.  We drive him places.  Sometimes, we put him in our van and drive about 100 feet away to our favorite breakfast joint and let him hang out in the van while we eat just so he doesn’t feel like he was left behind.

We also provide gentle training and positively reinforce that he is not at the top of the hierarchy in our house.  He does not seem confused on this point.

Although, he does still get quite upset when I leave, he’s handling it much better.  When we go out without him, we put his portable bed by the door so he has a comfy place to lay and when we come back, he’s still laying there, right next to the door.

We take him hiking and backpacking too, when we go.

I can’t imagine life for a dog gets a whole lot better than life with us.  I guess he could long for a fenced yard to run in.  But, I recently learned that when I drop him off at doggy daycare so he can run free and play with other dogs, he finds a hiding place where he can curl up and take a nap.

Yet, in spite of all these things, Tisen is chewing on himself.  It starts with licking.  Then, the hair starts to dissolve.  Next, the skin becomes a bright red, raw sore against his white fur.  That’s when he starts chewing.

I cannot help but get upset when I see pink irritation in his skin or when he wakes me up scratching in the middle of the night.  I don’t know what more to do about his allergies.  We’re waiting for his latest test to come back.  This one will hopefully tell us what he’s allergic to.

In the meantime, I decide to make a video.  Ever since I made the jump to my 5D Mark III, I’ve been spent my time on still images.  I literally forget sometimes that it even has the capability to shoot videos.  Tisen is perplexed by me constantly pointing the camera at him, but at least it distracts him from the itching for a while.

Many Bridges

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Many years ago, about 6 months after I started learning how to use the manual controls on my PowerShot G3, I was sent to Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on 3 separate trips for several days at a time.

I took my camera with me on the 2nd and 3rd trips after seeing how interesting the town is.  As I browse through the photos now, I am reminded of Chattanooga.  Harrisburg is about the same size as Chattanooga, has a river running through the heart of downtown (the Susquehanna River in the case of Harrisburg vs the Tennessee River in Chattanooga), and even has a Walnut Street Bridge that’s been converted to a pedestrian-only bridge.

Like Chattanooga, the riverfront offers endless photo-ops, although it seemed as though Harrisburg might not have created as many destinations along the riverfront as away from it.  Harrisburg has more bridges that cross the river within a short section.  But Chattanooga has two giant advantages:  mountains and warmer weather.

It’s not really a competition.  They are both cool towns with great architectural features and lovely rivers.  I really enjoyed walking down by the river when I had the opportunity in Harrisburg and working on capturing an interesting view of the bridges.  While I was able to improve these old photos somewhat by reprocessing them, they were taken with a point-and-shoot camera with 4 megapixel resolution 8 years ago.  Digital photography has come a long way since then.

I, also, have learned a few things.  For starters, shooting with the sun high in the sky was not optimal.  Making sure the water is level before pushing the shutter button was another big miss–I had to straighten these in software.  It’s interesting that with experience, the world acquires less and less tilt.

I particularly enjoyed shooting through the bridges to see more bridges behind.  There are so many bridges that from the right angle, the bridges seem endless.  I had a good time playing with different angles, but as the light faded, I learned why one of my photographer friends kept urging me to buy a tripod.

I learned quite a few things that trip.  For one, having a camera on a business trip can be quite entertaining when you’re traveling by yourself.  For another, taking a warm hat on a business trip is a requirement if you’re planning to entertain yourself by shooting a scenic river in January in Harrisburg.

I left Harrisburg after my last trip there feeling enchanted.  Having made the round of the downtown cathedrals and the state capital building, I was pleasantly surprised by the historic buildings and the overall grandeur of the town.  I suspect that had I spent more time there, I would have continued to discover wonderful secrets about the place.

 

King of the Hood

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I needed to get outside, I needed exercise, I wanted to shoot, and the dog needed to go for a walk.  The perfectly logical course of action was to take the camera, the dog, and go for a long walk on a beautiful fall day.

The dog has his own agenda.  He’s determined to claim the neighborhood between our neighborhood and Stringer’s ridge.  It’s a neighborhood full of dilapidated chain-link fences and scary looking dogs who bark at us endlessly.  Tisen ignores these dogs.  He takes a cat-like approach to tormenting these fenced-in dogs.

He takes his time sniffing every blade of grass, marking each clump taller than 6 inches–he does this so slowly I expected him to sit down and start grooming himself.  The poor neighborhood watch dog goes ballistic throughout the whole show and I try to get Tisen to move on quickly.

Having two hands free might have come in handy, but letting go of my camera and bending down to reach Tisen was not an option–at least not without risking knocking Tisen in the head with my swinging camera.

At the ridge, I sit on a tree log placed at the overlook to shoot the view.  Tisen pulls on the lead and I knock the lens hood off my camera and watch it roll halfway down the hill.  I manage to leave Tisen at the top leashed to a branch in full view as I slide my way down to retrieve my lens hood.  Being a klutz and a multi-tasking photographer are probably a bad combination, but I make it safely back to the top where I am treated to exuberant adoration from my dog who apparently had little faith I would return at all, let alone safely.

As we return home, we pause once again in front of the barking dogs.  I look around and realize that if you value having a really affordable place to live with beautiful surroundings, this is a great neighborhood.  There are nothing but colorful trees on the three hillsides that nearly form a bowl around this little valley.

But then, we pass a house with a porch covered in glass objects.  They were scattered around, fallen over, abandoned like the porch was a miniature dump.  This might not have been so disturbing by itself, but the glass was mingled with a child’s toys that looked like they had been left in the middle of play.  It made me shudder.

A motion in a tree above the porch caught my eye and I spotted a Eurasian Collared Dove sitting there, looking at me as if it wondered how long it would take me to notice him.  It’s a somewhat rare sighting here at the edge of their range, and rarer to me having grown up in a part of the world where they don’t roam.  I smile and wonder what this bird thinks of the neighborhood.

True Colors

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As Tisen and I stroll along Stringer’s ridge, my feet drag through a thick layer of leaves.  As they crunch and swirl in front of my feet, I remember what fall meant to me as a child.

Halloween was, of course, central to the fall experience.  Dressing up in some costume that never quite looked as glorious as I expected it to (except the year my mother cut and sewed her wedding dress into a Cinderella gown for my costume), parading through the yards of our neighbors to go door-to-door for halloween candy.

Even though it was a special occasion, we were only allowed to walk through the yards where adjacent neighbors had their porch lights on and were giving out candy.  Some yards, we got to crunch our way through un-raked leaves while other yards were sparsely dotted only with leaves that had fallen in the past hour.

Stringer’s ridge has no gardener to obsessively clear the leaves away.  They fall and create a weaving of color over the broken and dilapidated asphalt that marks the ridge’s recent history.  As we leave the nearby urban residential area and enter into the preserve, the leaves become denser and the views become more colorful.

Tisen has taken his time getting here.  Me with my camera stopping to shoot frequently had nothing to do with how long our walk has taken, I’m sure.  Tisen needed to sniff and mark every mailbox on the way through the neighborhood.  I tried to coax him on his way, but he insisted in at least making an attempt to leave his mark, even if it was only a gesture by the time we got to about the 10th mailbox.

As we crunch our way through the leaves now, I don’t hurry him, but I do occasionally try to get him to sniff a yard or two in one direction or another so I can shoot while he sniffs.  I wonder how many photographers struggle to get the angle they want because they are walking a 70 pound dog who doesn’t always cooperate?  Sometimes it makes me wonder if I’m the one on the leash.

Given the slowness of our progress and my need to be somewhere in the near future, we take the shortest route to the overlook.  It’s not an overlook in the sense that anyone built a structure or anything.  But, they did clear a few small trees so the view of downtown was unobstructed.

I love this view.  You can see the best part of the riverfront as you look across a sea of colorful trees.  It’s hard to believe there are so many trees between me and home as I look down the ridge and across the neighborhood Tisen and I have just walked through.

I say a silent thank you to the good people of Chattanooga who had the foresight to make this a preserve and then we turn to walk home.

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Fall Impressions

Posted by dkrashb on

With no yard, no rake, and no worries, I was feeling a little detached from the experience of fall.  But a long walk up to Stringer’s Ridge, currently peaking in color, got me back to a childhood full of crunching through leaves.

As Tisen and I made our way up to the ridge, I looked up and there was an oak tree shaking its top like my grandmother shaking out a rug.  It looked like it was trying to shake its loose leaves free like a dog shaking water out of its fur.

By the time I was ready to shoot, it stopped.  I stood still and waited.  I could hear the wind, I figured it would start again.  I just had to be patient.  Tisen pulled at the lead, catching a new smell just out of reach.  I took a step forward to give him something to do and then stood still again, waiting.

We were still at the edge of urban neighborhood and nature preserve, standing in the middle of a residential street.  I had to step to one side when I realized a car was barreling down the hill.  We walked a little ways further and I stopped again, Tisen stopping and giving me a puzzled look as I once more turned my eyes to the tree top.

Eventually, I turned and shot some brilliant leaves across the street until I realized there was a car stopped, waiting for me to finish so it didn’t drive through my shot.  I smiled and waved and turned back to my tree.  It was starting to wear me out.  I checked my watch and realized I couldn’t afford to stand there waiting much longer; we were going to run out of time for our walk.  I sighed and off we went with no shots of the swirling cloud of leaves.

Somewhere between that uncooperative tree and the start of the Stringer’s Ridge trail, I thought of trying to pan with a falling leaf.  I don’t know exactly what made me think about trying it, but I sure did amuse myself in the process.  It’s not easy to pan in general.  You have to start the motion of the camera so you’re smoothly following the thing in motion, then press the shutter while you continue to smoothly pan.  This is more difficult than it sounds.

A falling leaf is not predictable.  It gets picked up, shot off course, and suddenly picks up speed when the edge starts slicing through the air.

I didn’t think a single one of my panning shots turned out when I was standing there reviewing my shots.  But when I looked at them on the computer, I was actually quite pleased.  These are minimally processed, although in some cases I brushed in adjustments to the single leaf I was panning with to make it more noticeable.

I am beginning to see a wall covered with images of falling objects in my future.

Greasy Spoon Comfort Food

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The Longhorn is a long-standing tradition.  It’s not the steakhouse chain, although people show up with gift cards and expect to be able to use them there.  I think if they’d ever been to the steakhouse chain, they would realize immediately that this place isn’t part of the same chain.

I’ve never asked why it’s called the Longhorn, but the building seems to have been architected to simulate longhorns with the roof.  Who knows if the building or the name came first?

It’s been around since the 50’s and the minute you look at it, you know it.  This is true both outside and in.  It’s possible the counter and stools have not been replaced since the restaurant was originally opened.

But that’s part of its charm.

Its real charm, though, is the wait staff.  It only took going in there twice in one week before they started looking up, smiling and saying, “Hey, Guys!” when we walked in the door.  By our fourth visit, 2 servers had our “usual” pretty much down.  There’s nothing like having someone remember you, look happy to see you, and manage to remember even part of what you like to eat considering how many people these ladies serve every day.

When you’re in the mood for a down-home, greasy-spoon, fill-you-up kind of breakfast, the Longhorn is top notch.  If you’re trying to lose weight, don’t go there.

But, if you’re in the mood for eggs, they’ll be cooked to order perfectly (assuming you know what you’re ordering–I’ve heard people complain about over-easy eggs being runny, someday they’ll figure it out).  The “scattered tatters” are crispy, traditional hash browns (shredded potatoes, fried) and are always tasty.

The bacon is usually perfect, but can be a little overly crispy if you get there at the wrong time.  But whatever you order, prepare yourself for grease.  There’s a lot of it.

Unless you order pancakes.  The pancakes are awesome and not greasy.  But don’t expect anything fancy like real butter or genuine maple syrup here–this is a place that pays tribute to its 50’s heritage with whipped margarine served in a cup and corn syrup with maple flavoring.

This is the kind of place you go when you feel like being low maintenance.

When you walk in the door and Sandy and Terry pause in the middle of slinging food because they’re genuinely glad to see you, you remember there are more important things in life than having real butter.

I love the food.  For better or worse, it’s comfort food to me.  But what keeps me coming faithfully back is the sense of belonging to a community of regulars.  We update one another on weekend events, discuss what haircuts will look best on me, the server, or someone sitting down the counter.  We trade barbs and tease one another.  When people are waiting, we scoot down to make space.

It’s a nice place to eat.

Foggy Moments

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The fog comes

on little cat feet.

It sits looking

over harbor and city

on silent haunches

and then moves on.

–Carl Sandberg, 1878

Fog whispers secrets in barely audible hisses

Hinting of terror shrouded in its mist.

I watch as it crawls and creeps

Rises and disappears

Revealing nothing.

I love fog.  Now that the weather has been cool long enough, the water temperature has dropped.  This results in a giant, natural fog machine running through downtown.

At sunrise, if I happen to be down at the river at the right time, I love to watch the tiny wisps of fog swirling off the water’s surface, rising and joining the large cloud of fog above.  It’s so fascinating to watch the formation of a cloud that I may have to figure out how to make a video of it.

Eventually, a large cloud forms over the river, with strands of fog still connecting it to the river like a balloon vendor at a carnival with an endless collection of monochromatic balloons.  From up high, the fog looks so thick you wouldn’t be able to see your own hand in front of your face.  But when you’re actually down on the ground, the fog just looks more like an low-lying cloud.

On this particular morning a day or two ago, I had been meaning to go up on the roof to try to shoot some of the fall colors at sunrise.  When I saw the fog, I figured it would be a good morning to go shoot.  I shot from 3 corners of the roof.

I’m still trying to figure out how to shoot Stringer’s ridge well.  There’s a lot of crap between our building and the ridge that I can’t quite figure out what to do with.  I also seem to end up with more sky than I want in the frame.  I’m talking myself into shooting it with my 70-200mm so I can get in much tighter.  I’ll have to try that before the leaves fall.

I’m amazed how long the leaves are lasting down here.  They just keep getting brighter and brighter in color (still not as bright as midwestern color, but getting pretty close).  I keep thinking one morning I will wake up and all the leaves will be gone.

Of course, I couldn’t stay on the Stringer’s Ridge side of the roof for long.  Switching back to the opposite side of the roof, I tried to get an angle on the smoke monster crawling up the river.  It almost looked like it had a head on the other side of the smoke coming out of the chimney.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a great angle.

As I watched the fog shift, the BlueCross/BlueShield building peeked through a sudden window that appears in the fog.  It looked like it had been hung in the sky and was floating on a cloud.

It was a lovely morning.