some paintings, and perhaps more to a story

just a few pix of some paintings i finished recently...and while feature hunting today i came across another grandmother who is taking care often of any combination of her 20 grandchildren....so, here's a few to look at if you're bored.....

"oh, these children," Janie says, clutching her forehead as she watches them playing outside their East Orchard neighborhood home 

with her granddaughter, "baby girl"

--then, some acrylics--

"wisened"

"the house that dog built"

"all in the family"

clunkers, a wild gospel (church) chase, and jazz

what do these three things have in common, you might ask? and just what IS a wild Gospel (church) chase, anyway?! well, well, i'm glad you asked...

these were the theme of my friday night shift...i got in - nothing on the board, so i figured i'd just go feature hunt or something - perhaps go back also to the family i shot a couple weeks ago with all the grandkids - then one of the copy editors came over to relay a call to our head editor about a car sticking out of a dumpster - a local dealer's promo for Monday's launch of the "cash for clunkers" program - it's crazy what a deal people can get, if they can do it before the well runs dry - not sure where all of this money is coming from, nor how Chrysler can possibly afford to match the highest offer from a competitor - essentially doubling the trade-in value they'll give on a new car - just wish i could come up with all that extra money in a cash-strapped world!!!


anyway, on my way back, i saw these guys standing on the corner with signs for a revival at the Full Gospel Church - didn't have a date or time, so i assumed it was tonight....came back to the office to get the clunker pic in, then i looked up the church in the phone book - the only listing was for a small church on the eastside, and i remember seeing tent revivals in a lot in that vicinity in years past, so i headed that way - turns out that's just the Gospel church, not the FULL Gospel Church - but, i knew i'd seen this church before, and i thought it was somewhere south of town, so i went south on Telegraph- but the church i had in mind there was an evangelical one, so i cut farther down and over to S. Dixie, but that was a Baptist church, so i stopped home, googled the place and found it - it was just farther east on the road i'd cut down between the 2 main arteries...so, back i went, and there was nothin there! BOO! what a waste of time, light and gas...and that, my friends, is what constitutes a "wild Gospel (church) chase!"

....now, onto the third part of the equation....

so, back towards town i went, really NOT wanting to go make something of people/kids hanging out in their front yards AGAIN - i mean really, between that and the moonwalks, i feel like i'm living in the movie "Groundhog Day!!"
i remembered that there was "Jazz on the Square" tonight - runs a few Friday's as a prevue to the big jazz festival in a few weeks....spotted this couple and hung out with them for a bit - they were cute - nothing earth-shattering obviously, but still, at least a departure from the norm of my feature hunts of late...and i got to listen to music while doing it - not so bad!

i was sitting outside doing my sudoku last night after work, and i looked up at the now-dying sprigs from a flower i'd potted that broke off in the process - they were mid-bud, so i just stuck them in water, and they continued to bloom - but, their life span has now waned, and as the hanging petals blew in the soft breeze, i thought, ooh, this is in need of lens baby, and i've been wanting to shoot more film, so i got out the f3, and the d3 since i wanted some color, too - so here are the results - the big light circles are actually light reflecting off my car windows, parked in the background, and with the macro and flare from the lensBABY, it made for some interesting effects, which i tried to work in both venues...anyway, more fun with photography and film, and i hope the results make for enjoyable viewing!!

this one actually was shot a month ago - it's called the "sensitive plant" - when you touch the leaves, they close in upon themselves, like an accordion, and the flowers are these puffy, galactic looking things - just thought they were cool, and liked the whole idea of its sensitivity - ironically, neither wind nor water make them react this way, just touch - how fascinating!

--on film--

--on digi--

 lovin the lensBABY forever!

find a picture that says what something is not

this was essentially the crux of the feature hunt - story to run in a day or two about how it's not hot - it's not exactly cold - the weather has actually been beautifully moderate - if i could live in a permanent atmospheric state, this would pretty much be it - mid 70's to mid 80's, little to no humidity, very light occasional breeze - what's not to love?!
but, it is pretty unseasonable, and so voila - there's your story...still, a little tricky to illustrate - i mean, you can visually show people being overheated, and you can visually show people braving the bitter cold, but how do you show people just being comfortably unaffected?
any feature will do, per the powers that be, so, basically, go find a feature...and then i had to go back to the road where the memorial to the little girl who was killed has continued to grow - not posting any of those pix - essentially people leaving massive amounts of stuffed animals perched on the guardrail and hanging in the trees and piled around the 4-foot tall wooden cross that has been erected there -- i have to say, it's a little creepy in a way, and i have kind of mixed feelings about the whole thing - i don't know, can't quite put it in words, there's just something that makes me feel a little uneasy about how people have become so completely kind of obsessed...like i said, can't really articulate exactly what i'm feeling, so i probably shouldn't even comment -- anyway, i drove out to a town west of the site, so i could stop there on the way back, and also i wanted to go feature hunt somewhere i normally don't and try to avoid the kids playing in their front yard thing....
i found this family fishing in a park - hung out with them for a while, and hopefully made a few decent frames - not sure that it says "i'm not hot," but as a feature it's okay i s'pose - another one for next week's community page if nothing else...


just like these better in black&white, especially this last image, which at least has come closer to me making a picture that has the "feel" i have been trying to shoot and feel like i've not quite achieved in my work the last few days...wanted to work this more, but the kid was pretty freaked out by the little blue gill his grandpa caught, and he pretty much bolted as the fish started flopping on the line - poor blue gill!!

fair ball

shot the tournament final of fair softball monday - this was the final final, as opposed to the final held sunday - apparently the rules regarding winning the tournament for county fair ballgames is pretty complex....anyway, just a few from the sidelines and game celebration that i liked - i'm thinking the black&white image above should be a still life perhaps - will have to figure out what the mood is and find a good quote!



not sure if this works or not - i think it was another of those had potential, but just didn't quite come together as i'd hoped, but it'll work for the community foto page

flying solo

last week felt like one of the longest weeks in a long time - one of those weeks when it hit me at the end of the day tuesday - god, it's ONLY TUESDAY!!! Mr. Bosch was off on vacation, so it was just myself and Jenny holdin down the fort - i just felt like i was by myself the whole time - no real interaction from the rest of the staff - i was shooting and doing deadline, and i never had a budget or any real communication from anyone about what was going on, so i felt kind of out of the loop - just trying to make sure i didn't miss anything, and always with the uncertain feeling that i was and just didn't know it - not too cool...

nothing great shooting-wise either - i really wanted there to be - i went out everyday thinking i just wanted to hit it out of the park, but things never quite seemed to come together...oh well, that happens, i know, but it's still disappointing....but, that's what this week is for, right? ooh, i'm so glass-half-full today!

anyway, here's  a smattering from the week, with the really mundane left out so i don't completely bore whomever is looking....

went out early one morning to shoot a business networking group's weekly breakfast meeting - kind of a pyramid schemish thing - south county people are trying to get enough biz owners in there to start their own chapter of this international org. - not the greatest visuals, as you might imagine, but i kind of like the challenge of these assignments

later that day, i got a note about a sports feature on a kid who's organized a stickball league that plays in his backyard - pretty sweet set-up they got here, and there were a lot of kids there and they were having fun - i kind of wanted to play....then it was back to the homeless bridge, which is now the homeless-less bridge, since they cleaned it out, including the clan of rats that apparently were teaming beneath the bags of belongings piled on one of the beds....nice!

wednesday, my assignment fell through, and with nothing else coming in, i just went out and feature hunted - finally found these kids out playing with their transformers - not the greatest pics, but the boys were really nice - they were the kids that look at you with the big eyes and are like, i've never been in the paper even once before - do you think you'll put my picture in there? awww!!!!

the annual teddy bear picnic in Flat Rock - basically, kids bring their stuffed animals and have a picnic in the park, complete with face painting and a moonwalk....now, hmmmm, why does that sound so familiar?! again, one of those where i wanted to make a cool pic, and well, never quite got what i was hoping for

the week wound down with shooting guys building a ramp for a handicap family (well, someone in the family, not ALL of them probably) - it's a volunteer thing, and of course they had the kids from Boysville there - the home for troubled kids, and you can't show their faces, which is fine, have had to work around that before - but when they're the ones in there doing the work, or mixed right in with the carpenter guys, it gets a little tricky....

so, like i said, all in all, not a real stellar week - but, i did go down and paint for almost 3 hours last night - completely lost track of time, which is a very beautiful thing! today, i want to paint more, and i have an itch to take more lensBABY on film! so much to do, so little time - i think i need a vacation!

"love is like a monkey on my back"

this is one that i think i've finished last night - not my favorite, necessarily, but the others are very close, and hopefully will be done tonight, or soon!

filmBABY!!!

fourth of july - sparklers and flowers and lensBABY

i recently got the sudden urge to shoot film - found some B&W C-41 in my fridge, and i thought, god, i wanna shoot this, and i wanna do it with the lens baby, and i wanna be totally manual - so i got out my f3, got some batteries for it, and off i went.....

having no motor drive, having to crank the film through, it just all felt so cool, and my shooting was so much more deliberate - after all, i couldn't motor through, i can't afford to process a ton of film, and each frame just had to count, the best i could....really interesting process, and i love the rich texture of the pix, even with the grain of the film....so, that all being said, here are the results of what i have made in my reunion with the beautiful realm of the non-digital...

a week's worth

i think i'll have to go easy on the text part of this, as i have a good week's worth of stuff to post...guess i'll just start at the beginning, with a shot from our local summer minor league football team - it helps not to be too delicate when you have to shoot these guys - the term "potty mouth" comes to mind - since the story was pretty directionless, i just tried to shoot more graphically - this isn't what we ran, but just an outtake i liked for some reason....

this seemed to be the week of camps - i only had to shoot a couple of them (and NOT soccer camp, thankfully, which i have shot more times than i care to remember it seems)...here's a couple frames from skateboard camp.....

on my way back into the office later that day i was waiting to make a left and saw these guys up there working on replacing the street lights - shot a couple frames in the car and then pulled over to try and make something better - the guy framed inside the empty holes of the fixture as he worked, etc, didn't get anything super cool, but as i was getting the guy's name from his co-worker, i glanced up and saw the row of new lights set along the edge of the truck - Red & Yellow! ha!!!!! what a cool find - the project lives on!

among the crazy events of the week - we've had a few lake rescue calls/drownings - 2 fatal hit and runs - fires -- early in the week a man was beaten to death down by the river...he was one of a few homeless men who have been living beneath a bridge for years, and 2 other guys who frequented there but didn't always live there killed him after he apparently tried to take some other guy's bottle - anyway, these guys have been down there for years and years and they're pretty well hidden from the general public - well, since this has happened, obviously that's no longer the case - a reporter found a rev. and some other people involved in the free community dinners who periodically check on these guys, take them food or blankets, etc, and they brought us down there to talk to/photograph them and how they are living.....we had no idea if they'd allow any of that, so we just went and were playing it by ear....it was pretty crazy - most of the guys there (including the one over whose bottle this guy - his friend, he says and seemed to be pretty broken up over) were okay with us being there and with me shooting and giving names - but there was one guy - very drunk, very belligerent and very PO'd about us being there - who just kept coming up to us and screaming at us, and grabbing on me and on my arm and at the camera as i was shooting a couple people - funny thing is, he's not even from here - none of the regulars knew who he was, he'd just shown up and was drinking with them - but he was pretty out of control and obnoxious....one of the guys, who's been in poor health, started going into respiratory failure and maybe having another heart attack while we were there - so there's his friend leaning over him, crying, telling him to hang on an ambulance is on its way, and i was kind of shooting, but i thought maybe he waved at me to stop (he's also deaf and can't really speak), so i backed off, but he motioned at me to come back, to keep taking pictures, so i did, which belligerent guy REALLY didn't like, by the way - when the emt's came, the reporter and the rev and all left - we had a prior interview set that we had to get to anyway, though it would have been cool to stay, so off we went - and then we talked to a local guy on leave from the Navy whose next deployment will be to fight off the pirates in the mediterranean/african region waters.....crazy little work day!!

switched up to day shift Friday, and after deask duty, i went down the street to catch the tale end of theatre arts camp - luckily, they were in the dance instruction part of the program....again, nothin to write home about (but apparently, it's somethin to write to the world about???!!! lol!), but just the work o' the day....