The Etiquette of Dog Days

Posted by dkrashb on May 21, 2013

Twiggy keeping cool but not still

When I was a child, I preferred to wear dresses. My mother was constantly trying to get me to wear pants, but I was insistent on my own sense of fashion. I have no recollection as to why I would have wanted to wear dresses or even that I did, but I know that all the photos of me up until I was in about the first grade prove my mother’s story.

In most of these photos, I have skinned knees or knees marked with the white residue of a white-painted fence we used to climb. I my memory, I spent most of my time outdoors running around, frequently falling or managing to bang myself up in other ways.

Tisen enjoying a rub

This was not, however, the concern my mother had with me wearing dresses. Rather, it was the constant battle she had going on in her head between wanting to preserve my childhood innocence and wanting to help me learn to conform to some social norms. While I’m sure someone somewhere has written a book that tells parents when girls should stop being allowed to run around climbing on things when they’re wearing a dress, my mother hadn’t read it. Even if she had, she might not have agreed on the cutoff point.

In any case, eventually my mother did convert me to wearing pants. Had I been born a generation or so earlier, she might have made me stop climbing trees and fences and kept me in dresses. I feel pretty fortunate that pants afforded me freedoms that might otherwise have been denied to me.

Twiggy does not wear dresses or pants. She goes out in fur every day of the year, although her parents were kind enough to have her coat trimmed for her as the temperature rose, she otherwise dresses the same every day. As a dog, we humans don’t expect her to have adopted our own hang ups about sitting primly with ankles crossed. Yet, Twiggy frequently does sit that way. She assumes a sphinx pose, crosses her front pays, and holds her head in a pose that makes you think she might be Cleopatra reincarnated. She truly is regal.

Tisen takes Duck to the other side of the room

But the other day, when our inside temperature was pushing 80 (yes, I am trying to make it to June with no A/C), she had no qualms or self-consciousness about flopping down on the floor in as unladylike a pose as imaginable. And I found it so amusing that I had no qualms about taking a few photos (using the Camera! app on the iPhone) to share with you.

Tisen, who was happy to opt for a belly rub when Daddy was available, didn’t seem quite as comfortable with the whole belly-twist pose Twiggy assumed. Although, I don’t know how much of his shyness came from my with the camera vs Twiggy sprawling across the floor. All I know is Tisen took Duck and moved to the other side of the room.

Tisen decides to hang out with Duck. Photography note: backlight seems to create a very hazy effect with the iPhone

The Face of the BDC

Posted by dkrashb on May 20, 2013

It must be odd to be face-to-face with yourself

My husband is an expert in vintage guitars. He’s been buying and selling them for about 20 years or so. But he was always passionate about building replicas. While it’s really cool to play a collectible vintage instrument, they’re rare and irreplaceable. They’re also really expensive. So, if you can’t afford the real thing or don’t want to risk damaging it, you might choose a replica instead. Replicas are usually force-aged to look like they’ve been through years of use like a favorite pair of jeans.

My husband is one of those genius people who can figure out how to make or build anything. He invented a 3-dimensional routing machine about 18 years ago and had been collecting parts to build it since before we moved in together in 1997.

A big grin for my iPhone Camera! app

He would periodically pull our cars out of the garage and set up shop, turning our over-sized 2-car garage into a woodworking studio.

He built custom guitars when he got this itch. Usually he did it as a favor to a friend. But he periodically would come to me and start talking through a plan to build guitars to sell. I felt he needed to either be a vintage guitar dealer or a guitar maker, not both.

Ultimately, he agreed with me and he kept guitar building at the hobby level until one fateful day. That was the day he googled guitars shortly after we’d moved to Chattanooga, looking for potential places where he might find collectible guitars to buy.

A very special custom guitar project incorporating wood from a very special tree

He discovered there was a guitar shop in the large, mysterious building across the street from our apartment call the “BDC.” One evening, we went in the building to look for the guitar shop. What we learned was that this was a Business Development Center and the guitar “shop” was actually a guitar builder. They made original-design electric guitars.

As Pat learned more about the BDC and the support they provided to new businesses, he decided maybe it was time to make the shift from being a guitar dealer to being a guitar builder. So, he launched Coop Guitars in January of 2012.

He recently was asked to be one of the people included in a collage used for a banner advertising the BDC. He gets teased about this now. His fellow BDC residents like to tell him they just saw a group of beautiful young women standing around giggling over his picture. Or that a bunch of people were there earlier waiting for autographs. One of them told him he’s “the face of the BDC.”

An S-style body with curves to die for (photo by Pat)

He is taking it in stride. After all, it’s just a banner in the lobby of a building. I have to say he is looking mighty fine on that banner, though. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if they were having trouble keeping girls from lurking in the lobby hoping to run into him. That’s probably what I would do if I were single. 🙂

A collection of coop guitars (photo by Pat)

Backup Plan

Posted by dkrashb on May 19, 2013

Book ends

Tisen is a one-human kind of guy. Or, at least, he has trouble showing affection for more than one person at a time.

Twiggy, on the other hand, seems to treat everyone as her new best friend. Her dad commented that she didn’t even seem to care when they went out of town,–she didn’t miss them. I laughed and said, “It’s not that she doesn’t miss you, it’s just that she always has a backup plan.”

As I watched Tisen stress over whether he was losing out on any portion of affection that he felt was his while Twiggy lied contentedly on the floor, I suddenly wondered if Tisen was living whole-heartedly while Twiggy lived with one foot out.

Book ends looking the other way

Let’s face it–Tisen is all-in. He’s put everything he’s got into me. I am the the center of his universe and if I’m gone, or even if I’m there but paying attention to something else, he feels anxious. While this seems extreme and dysfunctional, at the same time, when I leave and come home again, Tisen goes nuts. He experiences a euphoria of joy that his wagging tail cannot keep up with. He throws his body against the couch and runs along it, thumping his tail down the length of it. He grabs a toy and is so joyous, he cannot stand still. Eventually, having burnt off the burst of energy that comes with me returning home, he climbs into my lap and has trouble deciding if giving me kisses or flopping over for a belly rub is his first priority.

Twiggy’s demonstration of how interesting she finds me

Twiggy, on the other hand, looks up when I come home and wags her tail a few times. When I sit on the sofa, she stands, stretches, and then climbs next to me and demands to be petted. She occasionally looks curiously at Tisen, as if she’s trying to make sense of his antics. I am just a friend that passes in and out of her life periodically. But, her reaction is not far from her reaction to her parents coming home from a trip.

This seems to be the core difference between having a backup plan vs being all-in. If you have a back-up plan, you don’t have to worry about what happens if the current situation changes. If you don’t, when you’re all-in, when things go your way, it’s a huge celebration. But when things don’t, it’s conversely depressing.

I remember playing Canasta with my family once when I had an incredible hand. I was ready to lay down my entire hand and win the game except for one card. I just needed a good draw on my next hand to be able to go out and win. I started sweating waiting for me next turn–if someone else went out first I was done. I had no backup plan.

And boy, when I won, I felt like I’d just won the lottery!

Renaissance

Posted by dkrashb on May 18, 2013

Looking down the sidewalk that runs along the long side of The Ramp

Renaissance Park is appropriately named. The riverfront on this side of the river was lined with large manufacturing facilities. I am having trouble remembering what exactly was where Renaissance is–I guess I need to stop and read the signs in the park again.

Whatever was on the 20+ acres that now make up the park, it left a mess.

Looking up at some of the brightest blooms backlit by the sun

Rather than haul the mess off and dump it somewhere where it could be someone else’s mess, the people who designed the park (which is apparently this firm, who has posted some cool aerial photos) created a way to “store” the waste that supposedly prevents toxic waste from reaching the Tennessee River. According to the signs in the park (which, yes, it’s been a long time since I’ve read), the mounds we regularly refer to as “the Sledding hill” and “the Ramp,” were created as part of the program to encapsulate and stabilize the industrial waste.

I always find myself particularly tickled when I think about the kids sledding down a hill that’s simultaneously protecting them from the pollutants it houses inside. I just hope we don’t learn sometime down the road that it’s having ill-effects on anyone. I have to imagine the ill-effects are less than if the pollutants were continuing to leach into the Tennessee River.

A mixture of bright flowers and native grasses rises up to a deep blue sky

In any case, the thought of an industrial dumping ground being turned into park that’s not only lovely, but also effective at removing pollutants from the water that flows through the property is pretty inspiring. It truly is a renaissance.

The hill we call “the Ramp” is particularly clever innovation. It’s landscaped as a cleanly angled plain running up the front, planted in grass and kept mowed short. It’s one of those things that you see for the first time and wonder what on earth it’s for. Then, you walk by when there’s an exercise class out on it and you realize someone really did have vision.

The ridge the runs up the spine of backside of The Ramp

The popularity of outdoor fitness classes in the park is amazing. There is not one thing that appears to have been purpose-built for fitness classes, yet the giant steps down to the wetland, the Sledding Hill, the Ramp, and even the concrete bases of park benches all provide great equipment for the most ambitious exercisers.

But it’s the other side of the Ramp that caught my focus on this day. Or, the other 3 sides. The Ramp is only a ramp on one end. The rest of the hill is long and rounded and covered in native flowers and grasses. Many of the plants produce bird seed, making the hill a favorite for many seed eaters like Goldfinches and House Finches. It’s also a favorite for a large collection of voles who like to torment dogs passing by.

Right now, the Ramp’s backside has burst into blooms. Looking up its slopes at the flowers backlit by the evening sun makes me think every spring is its own renaissance.

The Ramp makes for an awesome display of wildflowers

Up

Posted by dkrashb on May 17, 2013

Orange flowers viewed from below

It’s funny how looking up at something can change the way it looks. The paths of Renaissance park have many elevations. Some of them run parallel to one another in what is an accidental switch-back. The effect is that, in one direction, you look up a small slope that leads to a flat area where plantings line the sidewalk above–you’re looking up at the same flowers you look down on when on the other walkway.

Even the volcano (as some call it) or the sledding hill (as I usually call it) is elevated so that the lower sides of the slopes seem more prominent and obvious.

This effect reminds me of what happens when I think I’ve cleaned the house (yes, that is something I’ve done on occasion). I walk around looking at every surface glowing and I, in turn, glow with pride. Then, inevitably, I trip on something and end up on the floor where I am suddenly looking up at the same surfaces. They just never look clean from the other direction. The vertical surfaces I thought were spotless suddenly reveal just how dirty they are when I find myself looking up from the floor.

Evening primrose climbing up a slope

Fortunately, not too many of our guests lay on the floor.

This is not to imply that looking up the slopes revealed dirt. Rather, it just called my attention to some things I hadn’t really taken in completely before. The collection of primrose at the base of the tree basking in the sunlight seemed to be standing at attention from this angle. The bright orange flowers among the grass appeared from no where–I can’t recall having seen them before. Even the sledding hill with its abandoned cardboard sleds seemed somehow more appealing than usual–and far taller.

Inspired by the new view, I decided to get bold and attempt to shoot a sculpture I have yet to capture an image of that I like enough to share. Every time I shoot it, I think it looks really cool when I’m standing there and then deleted the image when I got home.

The sledding hill shot from below

I noticed the evening sun was creeping towards the horizon behind the sculpture. I thought I would try to get a sot of the sun sitting on top of it. This might have been a good time to use HDR with a tripod. However, I winged it.

Sometimes an image that really sucks makes for a lot of fun when playing with the possible ways to adjust it in Aperture. The curves feature is especially fun. It can turn an image into something completely different. This was my favorite image of the various takes and edits. I’m not thinking I’ll be hanging it on the wall, but I like how the completely blown out sun turned gray when I used the recovery tool, with its rays shooting over the top of the sculpture. But then again, I’m easily amused.

A sculpture I have yet to capture a decent image of, but had fun playing with this

Hope and Clover

Posted by dkrashb on May 16, 2013

Fleabane (I think) filling a small meadow

I have been taking the time to try to identify the flowers in my images. It’s a little hard to tell because the images I’m finding online do not have good size comparison.

That said, I’m fairly certain that the tiny flowers with the fringe of petals in white are fleabane. It’s a native wildflower in the aster family (which perhaps I am the last person to learn). I found its photo on the uswildflowers.com website; the image was taken in downtown Chattanooga.

Tighter view of fleabane

I was able to find many photos submitted on the website by the same photographer and even one image in a local Chattanooga newspaper. However, I was unable to locate a website. I find myself curious as to whether I have met this photographer or not. Not that I have met every photographer in Chattanooga, but I have run into quite a few now.

I digress. The final flower I identified was, I believe, the oxeye daisy. It seems quite a bit larger in the image on the website than the ones I saw in person, but I can’t find anything else that looks like it.

Oxeye Daisies?

These are not native. They were introduced and are now becoming invasive–they’re officially listed as invasive in quite a few states now, although Tennessee is yet to be one of them. Fortunately, only a few clumps of these appear in our little park.

They have been working to gradually remove the invaders and seem to only plant natives in the park, so it’s been fun to watch the transformation.

I wish there were a way to send romantic young couples seeking flowers after the invasive species. The young couple I caught picking evening primrose (see 2 posts ago) might have been put to good use neutering oxeye daisies!

Follow the curb

As Tisen and I slowly made our way past the meadow of fleabane and daisies, I stopped to catch an angle that interested me looking back at the aquarium. I didn’t quite get what I wanted, but maybe a little later in the evening when the sun is low enough to light the front of the aquarium would be better.

On our final stretch towards the more landscaped part of the park, after crossing the wetland, we paused to look up the stairs at the sledding hill. I couldn’t help but notice with surprise that the sledding hill is growing large clumps of clover all over its Eastern face. This struck me as both improbable and fascinating. After all, it’s a sledding hill. Not a northern sledding hill, but a southern one that gets slid upon, climbed up, skated down, run up, slept on, and even bicycled on every day of the year with very few exceptions. That clover had found a purchase on the side of this hill and somehow evaded cardboard sleds, trampling feet, and rolling children seemed quite an achievement for a living thing bound to the earth by its root.

Stairs lining up with the sledding hill–clover clumps just barely visible on right side

The clover made me feel surprisingly hopeful.

Footprints

Posted by dkrashb on May 15, 2013

A wide view of the Evening Primrose in a meadow

I was walking in the park about a week ago. It was probably a weekend day fairly early in the morning. As Tisen and I emerged from the building, we spotted a young couple in the shadows of the hillside in the early light. I suspect they had been out all night behaving romantically. At the moment I saw them, they were gathering a bouquet of flowers from the hillside. Flowers that had magically appeared almost overnight after holding out through one cold snap after another.

A clump of evening primrose

I felt bad for those flowers–to be heartlessly neutered after having waited so long for the chance to procreate. It struck me as ironic that the young couple who were clearly caught in the throes of hormonal influences would be the ones to remove the sexual organs of the plants carrying on their own romance on the hillside.

Part of me was tempted to ask the couple how they would feel if they were quietly carrying on wooing one another and some giant came along and plucked their genitalia, but I thought better of it. It’s hard not to come across as insane and potentially dangerous when you start using words like “plucked” and “genitalia” in the same sentence.

A couple of blooms filling their cups with light

I glanced at the sign that read, “Flowers are here for everyone to enjoy. Take nothing but photographs; leave nothing but footprints” posted about 20 feet from where they were gathering their bounty. I considered lecturing them on the inconsiderateness of taking flowers, not only taking from this season, but also stopping the offspring for future seasons to come. Once again, I decided to hold my tongue. Perhaps the act of thinking about saying something but not caused me to stare at them in some way that made them uncomfortable. Whatever the cause, they made their way off the hillside and stopped their pillaging.

Not quite macro with my 24-70mm lens

Having witnessed this act, I was doubly happy to notice the sea of flowers taking over the hillside this week. The evening primrose, a lovely native, seems to have found its way into every space between the other grasses and flowers growing in the park. They seem to have reached some sort of equilibrium that allows space for a wide variety of flowers at the same time.

The last, but maybe the best

The evening primrose was looking particularly sparkly about 2 hours before sunset the other day. Like the blades of grass in yesterday’s post, I had a hard time not shooting it and an even harder time reducing my rather redundant set of photos to just 1. I guess this was my way of gathering my own bouquet.

Bridges and Blades

Posted by dkrashb on May 14, 2013

Market St Bridge with grass foreground in Renaissance Park

The weather seems to be as confused as ever, but at least we had fabulous weather today–the kind of weather that reminded me of a late September day in Columbus. The kind of day where, after months of heat and humidity, you take a deep breath and think, “Ahh.” Interestingly, it just isn’t quite as refreshing when everyone is waiting for spring and it’s acting more like fall.

A pair of budding something shooting above the juvenile grasses

At least the flowers had finally reached the same point they were at by the end of March last year. I figured it was a good time to get out with the camera. Since I was walking Tisen, I opted to just take my favorite walking-around-lens, the 24-70mm. It’s a nice range for shooting both landscape and getting pretty tight when close to the subject. It does not, however, do well at macro. That I will have to save for another day.

Closer to out-of-the-camera than the earlier image. I really like the tree on the right

It gets a little old shooting landscape in the same 100 yards or so along the riverfront. While I’m sure there are an infinite number of angles to take, at some point, I just get bored.

Glowing blades of gras

I decided to try for some new angle on the Market St bridge. It was about then that I discovered a bunch of grass that had been allowed to grow to it’s maximum height and was in the middle of going to seed. I thought maybe it would make an interesting foreground for the bridge. It wasn’t quite as interesting as I hoped, but making some extreme adjustments in Aperture helped at a little pop, at least.

I had a hard time choosing between the grass images–I might like this one best

Tisen had other subjects in mind. He quickly pulled me across the walkway towards some fresh green grasses that, for a long time, I thought was bamboo. I’ve been told by someone who is much better with plants than I am that they aren’t bamboo at all but are a native grass in Tennessee. I will take their word for it.

More of the Market St Bridge

On this particular day, the sun was hitting them at a really interesting angle that made them turn into glowing blades of green. They were being backlit by an early evening sun. I couldn’t help but take about 100 images of these glowing blades. While I did crank up the volume slightly in Aperture on the contrast between the background and the blades of grass, they really looked pretty much like this in person.

One last look at the grass

Tisen was not, it turned out, impressed by the blades of grass for their aesthetic appeal. He sees them as a superior communication medium. He can mark along the clumps of grass and get both height an breadth that cannot be achieved with tree trunks or other grasses. A little secret–I couldn’t get Tisen to hold still so I could get a shot of him carrying Jack. So, I snuck a shot when he stopped to mark and just cut the back end out of the frame. I guess it’s still pretty obvious what he’s doing.

Can you tell why Tisen is holding still in the this photo?

Birdathon Awards

Posted by dkrashb on May 13, 2013

The winner with the most observed birds in the elementary age group celebrated with his family, but his sister wasn’t so excited

Our first annual Birdathon to raise money for the Chattanooga Audubon Society came to close this Saturday when we gathered together to award prizes. Due to the fickle weather that fluctuated between sunshine and pouring rain every half hour or so, the event was moved into the visitor’s center.

This little one wasn’t a birder, but she sure enjoyed modeling

The event kicked off with hot dog roasting over the fire. However, the use of the fireplace had to be timed carefully–the Chimney Swifts nesting in the chimney are only out so long in the evening and we wanted to make sure we didn’t asphyxiate them with smoke when they came back to roost for the night.

We didn’t have to worry about the heat–the fire didn’t get hot enough to roast the marshmallows at the end of the evening. This was probably for the best.

It was a lot of fun to meet the kids who participated and discover how much they and their families had learned about birds in the process of Birdathoning. They had a similar experience to what I think most birders have when they get started–the sudden realization that we’ve been missing an entire world of incredible creatures that surround us every day.

Kyle MC’d for the Evening

Birding can be addictive. It creates a sense that someone has been pulling one over on you and you become determined not to let them get away with it anymore. Like you’ve been part of a big cosmic joke because you haven’t noticed the Hooded Warbler singing over your head or the Scarlet Tanager feeding in the tree tops.

Most Bird Species Identified Award (prize of a bird feeder not shown)

It’s a great analogy for how many of us live our lives–so busy and so worried all the time–thinking, thinking, thinking–that we don’t notice where we are or what’s around us. For me, listening for birds, watching for birds, spending time looking at them carefully and listening to their songs to really see them, really know them is not just a process of identifying a bird; it’s an experience of seeing and hearing with intention and purpose. Of seeing with intensity more of the world that is and less of the world in my head. And being rewarded with wonder and awe in return for paying attention.

The top fund raiser award (who also got a bird feeder)

All in all, it was a satisfying first go. We raised a fair amount of money for a small band of 23 people. We got 19 children interested in birding and their moms got excited about it, too. We had a lot of fun in the process and some of us added many birds to their life-lists (myself included). I got to bird with several talented birders who taught me new things, and I even got a couple of decent shots of birds in the process.

Certificates were also given to “judge” participants who weren’t eligible for prizes–Linda identified 123 birds during the event

If that wasn’t satisfaction enough, I was given a really nice gift by my fellow organizers for importing the event from Columbus and helping to plan it. They even gave me flowers. I felt a little guilty, but it was nice to be appreciated.

Dogs and Pillows

Posted by dkrashb on May 12, 2013

Tisen looking ridiculously comfy

I thought today’s collection of iPhone images (shot using the Camera! app) made for a good comparison–perhaps even providing an explanation between shooting action and shooting a still subject.

For anyone who has been keeping up with this blog long enough to know that I often post photos of Tisen (my dog) sleeping and far less frequently post photos of him doing something more exciting, perhaps the comparison of what iPhone photos of an excited Tisen running around with Big Dog vs. a sleepy Tisen enjoying the comfort of pillows will make my preference for Lazy Tisen photos understandable.

Yes, that is a custom-made American Leather throw-pillow my dog is propping up his butt with

There are several things that make the iPhone as a camera challenging when shooting Excited Tisen. First, the iPhone is slow. One thing to remember is that it will start taking the picture at the point when you let go of the volume-up button or lift your finger from the screen–not when you start. This is important when you’re trying to take a picture quickly. When Tisen is prancing around with Big Dog in his mouth and I’m trying to get an adorable image of Tisen carrying a toy that’s almost as big as he is, getting the camera to take the image at the moment I want it to is important. Otherwise, I end up with images like this one, where Tisen is not caught carrying Big Dog, but rather the moment after he dropped Big Dog and started sliding to to the floor relatively gracefully.

Tisen sliding into the down position

This is called missing the shot.

I do this a lot with the iPhone. It’s hard for me to retrain my brain to release the volume-up button after spending so much time learning to depress a button to take a picture. Some day I will be able to switch back and forth

Another way to increase the odds of catching something like an Excited Tisen with the iPhone is to use the Fast Burst setting in the Camera! app. While this reduces the resolution of the images, it allows for the camera to shoot multiple images in rapid succession. While it’s still a lot slower than, say, rapid fire with a DSLR shooting JPEGs, it’s still a big improvement over the normal amount of time between shots, when you use this feature, you push the button and hold and it will shoot until you stop or the memory fills. It does not, however, help freeze the motion of Excited Tisen–that is dependent on shutter speed, which is a different issue.

An almost sharp shot of Tisen carrying Big Dog

Shooting Sleepy Tisen is a much easier option in many respects. He holds still, I get to try different angles. It’s easier. However, one of the short comings in this scenario is how the iPhone over exposes his white fur. There’s not much that can be done about this other than using the flashlight feature to try to brighten up his dark spots. This has the disadvantage that once the flash starts, Tisen quickly turns into Excited Tisen.

Tisen licking the fur fuzz off his lips after dropping Big Dog

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Monthly Archives: May 2013