the big thing they told us they were doing was realigning and checking all the cameras on the fleet...each bus has a front and rear camera/audio installed - kids ain't gettin away with nothin on a monroe public school bus! shooting-wise, it was tricky - here's this guy working on buses (with no interior lights on) inside the garage - of course, he couldn't be doing the ones outside where, you know, there's light - sort of a critical element to the whole photographic process - so, instead of writing with light, i was writing with, well, let's just say, not so much - good thing i'm steady at longer exposures! as if that wasn't a challenge enough, what he's doing entails him standing either right at the very front or right at the very back of the bus - so, there's the additional issue of how to physically shoot this without just showing the back of a head...did the best i could - kind of liked just showing him as recorded on the laptop screen while working on the rear camera with the other school buses visible thru the window to give some context...anyway, bit of a challenge......
later, there was a group meeting for their weekly dog agility training - mostly 4-H kids who do the dog shows - nice night, nice light - and i liked some of the images of the kids just hanging out, moreso than the pix i made of them running their dogs thru the jumps and hoops....
so, today - went out to a greenhouse farm business that is closing after 85 years in operation - i was expecting just your average family greenhouse business, but i pull up and holy cow - this place was a huge complex - 12 acres of fields and greenhouses of varying styles and materials - this whole assignment is a story in and of itself, in terms of negotiating shooting it with the reporter, and i'm not even gonna get into it, but anyway, i was going there to shoot whatever work was going on - which is pretty minimal since they're about 90% shut down in preparation for closing and auctioning off the whole kit and kaboodle in a few weeks...but one of the family members had me hop on a golf cart to go thru in search of workers - i kind of wished i could have just roamed, but she was cool and gave me the full tour and wasn't really rushing me thru, so it worked out okay i suppose - just wasn't expecting a guided shoot experience - interesting aside, when her grandparents started it all, and branched out from farming to the greenhouse part, they had the idea they might could sell some of their flowers thru this new store that just opened - a little shop called K-Mart....how funny is that?! within a few years they were providing the flora and fauna for all of their central Michigan stores.....they weren't able to handle the national level of business, but still, that just struck me as so crazy - just having no context for K-Mart being this one-store little start-up business - i'm sure none of them on either side at the time were expecting K-Mart to be, you know K-MART! (or K-Marts, as they call it, cos here, EVERYTHING is pluralized! you don't work for Ford, you work for Fords, and you don't shop at Kroger, you buy your groceries from the Krogers)...i just liked this view from the back side - the colors and saturation...
got back from there after making a brief stop by the river - saw a few guys fly fishing as i drove over the bridge and thought i'd check it out for InSight - those pix were pretty lame, but i liked all these gulls lined up atop a streetlight - one flew in, driving another off its perch - later, i noticed how it seemed funny like the 2 lamps were these industrial wings juxtaposed with the outstretched wings of the landing gull - or maybe i'm just reading into things.....
so, yeah, back at the office, i was about to edit the greenhouse stuff when a reporter came over to tell me about an update story on a community garden that a church started this spring - it's in full harvest and yeah, there are people out there right now picking - she was just gonna call and tell me what was going on out there later, but knowing the weather forecast, i said, why don't i just go right now since people are there and then i can try to match up the people we photograph with those whom you interview....so, out again....good thing, too, because they were about done and then it started raining, so no one else was likely coming - and the extended forecast this week is for more rain and chilly temps.....what's even crazier better is that, the church started this "garden ministry" to help those in need in this tough economy and named it after one of their new parishioners, a young woman who was murdered early this year, and the people that were out there working in the garden were her mother and 2 cousins! how nuts is that! so glad i just went when i did!
after that, i was checking out the sunflowers someone had planted (i'm a total sucker for sunflowers! live sunflowers, dead, dried sunflowers - doesn't matter, i just love them!) - they were absolutely some of the HUGEST i have ever seen - i swear, there were flowers on there as big as my head! i should have done the hail mary self-portrait thing so there would be some scale, but trust me, they're BIG! and the bees were all about being on those fat head plants, too!
Bryan and i liked the last one, cos it really does look like a rag doll with the yarn hair - sunflowers - such personality!
1 comment:
Great stuff Kim. I love reading about your daily happenings. That K-Marts does have a lot of flowers. Why do we pluralize ? !!! It's so true !
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