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Learning the New Camera


I’m learning a new camera again. My longtime camera began to malfunction and it took me a while to acknowledge the problem, get it diagnosed, and find out that the manufacturer no longer makes the part to fix it (errrrrggghhh!) I am learning to use a camera that is made by a different company so the controls for every function are slightly different.
These are some images I made recently while visiting my friend, Julie.


Red Maple

maple
Here’s how my red maple looks today.

Tomatoes Ready to Roast

It has become my habit to start Saturday morning with some cooking. Typically, I am prepping for later meals. Today, I needed to roast some tomatoes for a Fennel Compote.

Richard decided to grab the camera when he saw the tomatoes lined up in a row.

tomatoes ready to roast

Wolfsnail Classroom Visits

The lush green days of Spring are here and I’ve been talking about wolfsnails. I visited Spencer Loomis Elementary School in Hawthorne Woods, IL, very near Chicago. Alex D., the daughter of my college roommate, Sarita, goes to Spencer Loomis. We had a great time with private eyes and some garden snails and slugs. Some of the snails were reluctant to move around, but we nudged them with water. The slugs seemed more eager to move; we wondered whether that’s because they have no shells to hid under.
visit to Spencer Loomis
Also, my former neighbor, Shirlene Phillips, found a wolfsnail in her yard so I brought my book to The Redeemer’s School to talk with her students. It was pretty much the same size as the snail I photographed for the book. The 4-year-olds, kindergartners, and first graders had really good questions.

Earlier this month, I spent a few days at the Fay B. Kaigler Children’s Book Festival with Julie Owen. We presented a session titled Photography and Place: Engaging Projects for Libraries. We pulled together materials related to our presentation on Pinterest here.

 

All The Way at New Stage Theatre

All the Way PosterI watched the Tony Award-winning play, “All The Way,” last night at New Stage Theatre, and I enthusiastically recommend it.

The events of the play take place during the first year President Lyndon Johnson was in office and center on the passage of the Civil Rights Bill of 1964. Watching interactions between Johnson and the other major characters in the drama — from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to J. Edgar Hoover to George Wallace to Fannie Lou Hamer — made me think of the famous quote attributed to Otto von Bismark: “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.”

The language ranges from raunchy, vulgar, and vitriolic to the elevated discourse of a Nobel Peace Prize speech. I joined many others in the audience in laughing out loud (Johnson’s hardball tactics with unsympathetic characters like former Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett), and feeling a part of an Amen corner (during Dave Dennis’ speech at James Chaney’s funeral and Fannie Lou Hamer’s testimony at the 1964 Democratic Convention in Atlantic City).

Director Francine Thomas Reynolds has staged an excellent production of this first rate play with a large cast, including many local actors. There is a tremendous amount of history packed into just shy of three hours, but the play never drags.

One thing that this play makes crystal clear is that Johnson knew the risk to the Democratic Party of pursuing the Civil Rights Act (losing Southern white votes for at least a generation), but he did it anyway. “We have talked long enough in this country about equal rights. It is time now to write the next chapter – and to write it in the books of law.”

I left wanting to ask more questions:

  • How much of the dialogue from telephone conversations was from White House recordings? I thought Oval Office recording began with Nixon, but I’ve heard conversations between President Kennedy and Ross Barnett in other documentaries.
  • What was the final outcome of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party compromise at the Atlantic City convention? I know how the confrontation changed the Democratic Party’s rules for delegate selection.
  • On what does the playwright Robert Schenkkan base his dialogue among various factions in the Civil Rights Movement? Conversations between the NAACP’s Roy Wilkins, SCLC’s King and Abernathy, and SNCC’s Bob Moses and Stokely Carmichael are lively and detailed.

Thank you, New Stage for bringing this play to Jackson. It is especially relevant in this year when we mark the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, the Civil Rights Act, and the Atlantic City Democratic National Convention. And, in our run-up to the mid-term elections.

 

Vacation: Maine chapter 2

Our final stop in Maine was with the Mayher/Martins. Garrett ‘Boo’ Martin joined Hope Enterprise Corporation in 1999, and he and his wife, Jenny Mayher, moved to Jackson, Mississippi, that year, shortly before their first child, Essie, was born. They moved to Maine before Essie started school. It’d been six years since we’d seen them. Once again, the drone featured prominently in our fun.

Vacation Maine Boston New Hampshire-1221In the back yard.

e

jo jo Unfortunately, Jo-Jo was feeling pretty terrible. He was having fun, though, I swear.

e w droneEssie had to be talked into flying the drone.

e with j

 

e with boo

group without boo

D with Sparky
This is the tiny little car that got us from Boston to New Hampshire and back to Boston. We called it “Sparky.”

Vacation: Maine chapter 1

After New Hampshire, we visited two families in Maine. The first were the Turgeons. Elizabeth is Richard’s youngest sister and she and her husband, Jon, have three girls, Amelia, Juliet, and Violet. We had two lovely days with them, including a trip to Freeport for supper and a walk around the LLBean main campus.
diner in Maine
diner 2

bean boot
D front
Vi
Vi swim
Julie
Vi

Vacation in New Hampshire

Richard, Douglas, and I recently spent a few days in New Hampshire in the White Mountains. Richard took along his DJI Phantom II drone and GoPro Hero 3 camera.

R and D at waterfall

This meant I was carrying the Nikon D7000.
waterfallWe spent time at a waterfall.

D taking shot

R1

D1

R2

 

R3Anybody wondering who I still have eyes for after 24 years?

up the mountain

 

We then climbed a (short) mountain.

resting

Where we first caught our breath.

droneAnd then Richard fired up the drone.

drone up

 

Here it is in the sky.

viewsI took a few of these landscape shots, but I didn’t like some of the blown highlights. He reminded me to take bracketed images. So, I did.

landscape3

 

landscape4

The video Richard shot with the drone is pretty amazing. And he didn’t lose the drone down the mountain!

Family in England

I’ll be sharing a few photos from our recent (unanticipated) trip to England. We went to see a family member with health concerns.

 family in living roomThis is my favorite photograph from the batch. Richard’s Mom, Silvana, is just left of center in a green cardigan. She is flanked by her daughters Sophie (on left of photo) and Ariane. The young man is Ariane’s son, James. He is holding his daughter, Taiya. Richard’s Dad, Tony, is behind Ariane. Four generations!

Richard & T

Richard can never resist teasing a gigglebox.

R & S and cameraRichard brought his Canon C100 to show his mother some of the video stuff he’s been working on and how he does it.

Richard Sophie Eth and Harriett

We drove down to Illminster to visit with two of Sophie’s kids, Harriett and Ethan.

tony

Tony Campbell.

Reasons to Keep the Second Best Shots

Deciding whether to save non-optimal images is something all photographers face. Back in the days when photographs were captured on rolls of film, it was a no-brainer to keep the negatives at the very least. Nowadays, it is tempting to delete the images we don’t immediately recognize as good ones. After all, high quality digital images take up a lot of space on hard drives. Here’s yet another reason to reconsider hitting the delete button. Yesterday I shared an image from a PTA meeting about 40 years ago. In the “best image” many faces are obscured. When I consider the sequence of images, however, I can identify many more people. You can see what I mean.
alternate view 1
alternate 2
alternate 3