This other old house...

... is the house my maternal grandmother lived in.

Some of you remember this post about my other grandparents' house. This one is falling down too. We pass this house every year on the way to the cemetary where my grandmother is buried, and every year I wonder "will the house still be there"? It has looked like its ready to fall down for many years, but now look, somebody is working on it. Suckers. Put it out of its misery. It's ruining a beautiful lot.

I've been Instalanched

Glenn over at Instapundit linked to me twice over the weekend. I surely appreciate the links a lot. Now I know how Ann Althouse feels, except for the part about being a woman... and except for the part about being really, really smart. My sitemeter was spinning like a clock in a cartoon. I'm used to 5 or 6 visitors an hour... I was getting that many and more per second over the weekend totalling well over ten thousand visitors. Holy crap. Y'all come back now. This reminds me of my favorite Scrappleface article.

By the way, an "Instalanche" is an avalanche of traffic caused by a link from Instapundit. See the Scrappleface article linked above.

Photo hardware

I had a little plumbing job to do... naturally this meant multiple trips to Lowes.




If you want to do this sort of photography while shopping... as opposed to doing it while getting paid to do it... you really need to have a high tolerance for looking like a fool in public. I used to embarrass easily... not so much now.



This is a sculpture at the entrance to Trace Fork Shopping Center where the local Lowes store is located. The sculpture is by my friend Jeff Fetty.

Grave concerns on a sunny day

Each year, Mom and I go decorate graves in three cemetaries on Memorial Day weekend. When the weather is fine, it's a great experience. I took a camera this year...

This cemetary is way back on a ridge in Putnam County, near Hurricane. It helps to have 4 wheel drive to get there.


I love looking at the very old monuments.


Shooting bees is kinda scary... I can't believe I caught this one in flight. In the bright sunlight the tiny Pentax camera will muster a 1/2000sec shutter speed.


This is me doing a rubbing of a headstone. I'm doing it because we need to put a date on it so I'm going to do a "layout" and try to match the font.

Daisy in the barbed wire... this is trite. I did this exact same shot in high school at this same cemetary. I won some sort of art contest for students with it. I just re-created the shot for my own amusement.

Ladybug on granite monument.
WELCOME Instapundit readers! To see more photos, go to the main page.

Yard Work

I was working in the yard today. I put my little camera in my cargo pants pocket just in case I saw anything worth shooting. Herewith...










Welcome Instapundit readers! To see more, go to my main page.

An Arc of Concentric Colored Bands...

...in the sky. How strange.

Barber Shop or Museum?

The Shearcut Barbershop on Fife Street...


... is more like a museum of useless collectables. I keep telling John that he needs to start selling this crap on eBay but his computer skills are somewhat lacking. I've got hundreds of pictures of the place. I'll post more later.

Clay County Sky

Clay County... hills and sky...

When I'm out driving along the Interstate, I'm always torn when I see a potentially beautiful shot. Should I stop the car or not? If I hesitate, it's too late. I can't back up for half a mile to see if a scene might make a good photo. But I almost always hesitate. I can't just stop for every scene... I'd never get anywhere. After passing a dozen or so possibilities, I shot this one just hanging the camera out the car window.

Produce Blogging #6

Asparagus spears...

... because Thursday night is grocery night.

Foggy Morning on Hunters Ridge

Here it is... it is what it is.

Except that it's not really. I retouched out a house in the background that wasn't helping the photo.

Chopper

Taking a break from the "grab shots" I've been showing done with the tiny Pentax... here's a shot from an actual job I did recently...

This is a fun studio shot of a motorcycle. We set the chopper up on an all black background and did a long time exposure while we walked around it holding a 7 foot pole wrapped with white Christmas tree lights. Interesting effect wouldn't you say? Chopper by Revelation Choppers.

Leave Taking

Not much to say about this one. I shot some rhododendron leaves while walking to the Rite-Aid store.

This is cropped in from the original shot and the color is enhanced a bit in Photoshop.

Mudslinging

I went to Tamarack today. These are Rod Queen's fingers making pottery.

If you're not from around here, Tamarack is a difficult place to describe. You can purchase any sort of traditional craft item, original artworks, great food... watch a blacksmith pound iron, a glassblower make glass, a potter throw pots. I could write a few paragraphs and not really describe the place.

Bug Me

I hate to get too much into a bug theme here... I really don't like bugs that much, but this was on my car this morning. It had a wingspan of perhaps three quarters of an inch and looked really neat in the morning sunshine.

There's an old saying... "If the only tool you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail." My little Pentax Optio S4i has such a good macro function, that I just keep shooting more and more close-up photos. The close-up photos look better than the regular photos with this camera. Look at that face... he looks like Zorak from Space Ghost.

P.Diddy Pundit?

Boy, since getting that gig with the New York Times, David Brooks really is branching out...

... like P.Diddy, or Paris Hilton. But seriously, I'd never heard of this fashion brand before. I can't find it on the web, because Google can't seem to return any hits on "David Brooks" except for the NYT pundit.

What a doll

Mr. bunny says:"Does your mother know you're wearing false eyelashes and makeup?"

I Get No Respect

Doh! Monica Orosz, of the Charleston Daily Mail, whose office is less than a mile from mine, thinks that I'm a Washington DC based photographer. That really hurts. I've only been working in this town for over 20 years. This is all regarding a job I blogged about here.

Be Popular!

Get into photography!

Produce Blogging #5

Because Thursday night is grocery night...

Eeewww... I shot this, and I still can't believe that's actually a close-up of cantaloupe skin. I had to look up the spelling of cantaloupe. The word looks weird, like the skin.

Fair Fairlain

Returning home from Bridgeport I stopped in Flatwoods to get gas and something to eat. I saw a beautiful old Ford Fairlain pass by me on the way up to Wendys. When I got up the hill and turned into the Wendys lot, there was the Fairlain, parked over in the corner with the setting sun off to one side, bathing the hills and car in this incredible light.

My trusty Pentax Optio was on the seat next to me... I picked it up as I rolled down the passenger window. I rolled to a stop and shot this one shot. Wow, what a scene. I couldn't have staged it better. As I rolled around to the pickup window, I saw someone inside eyeing me with a "what the hell" look on his face. I just tried to act nonchalant and kept moving. (Update: I think it's actually spelled Ford Fairlane)

This Old House...

...is the house my Dad grew up in. My Mother and I decided to drive up to Looneyville, WV to see it on Mother's Day... really just to have an excuse to get out in the country on a pretty day.

We didn't expect it to be in good shape because we'd heard from other people that it was not. Neither of us had seen the house in many years, but we didn't really expect it to look this bad. Believe it or not, this house is still occupied. The gate was closed, and from the looks of the place neither of us thought it was a good idea to try to get any closer than the road. heavy sigh

Deer Morning

I know it's not exactly notable in the eastern U.S. to awaken to find deer in your yard...


... but still it's fun. Now that I'm carrying a pocket camera all the time, I'll stop and take a few shots.

Gold Rush

Is it the surface of the sun? ...


... it's a glass paperweight with gold leaf flakes floating in water. It's mesmerizing to watch. The Limoges chick nearby is apparently mesmerized.

Tourist of Architecture

I got some good feedback on the Atlanta architecture photos here. So... here's some more...


These shots above are the Hyatt Regency taken with my pocket camera. The shot below is another of the SunTrust Plaza, next door.

It's an interesting exercise to try to do good work with a tiny little amateur market camera. It's fun to just go nuts and try all sorts of different compositions and wait till much later to sort them out and see what works and what doesn't. When I'm on the job, I shoot and then look at it immediately on the laptop... refine and shoot again (it's always fascinating how different it looks when you view the flat image rather than looking through the camera)... look... refine and shoot again.. (in the old days we'd shoot Polaroids) until we're satisfied we can't make it better, then move on to the next one.

House Dogs

In the comments to this post we discussed the cat in the architectural photo. I promised to show a similar shot with Pugs...

... which were (cough, cough) a good bit more difficult to deal with. The cat was just a serendipitous thing, while I actually did work at getting these dogs to do this. Notice the lack of a fire. I hate it that we didn't build a fire, but I do recall that it was the middle of summer and I think the art director said that she would put the fire in later in Photoshop.

Table Lamps

When shooting for hospital marketing campaigns I spend a lot of time waiting for doctors to show up. I was just waiting in an operating room so I took out my pocket camera and started shooting for fun. Most of the shots were crap but I liked this.

Can you see what it is?

Produce Blogging #4

...because Thursday night is grocery night.

Mmmm... apricots.

Holes?

Not this time...

(see previous post)This actually is bubble wrap... at the bubble wrap factory. Once again, a rather boring subject is jazzed up with lighting and fun composition.

Holes

What does this look like to you?...

If I look at it a certain way, it looks like bubble wrap. It's half-inch steel plate with holes punched in it. It's a screen from a very large coal processing machine. I lit it with orange and blue lights to sex it up a little bit. It's not exactly pulling a rabbbit, but it's along those lines. I live for this stuff. [Update:see next post]

My house would fit inside this room

You know you've got a big living room when you can tuck a full-sized Boesendorfer piano over in one corner.

"Oh look! It's a grand piano... I didn't notice that before".

This picture shows only half the room. My client makes the structural beams for these gorgeous timber frame homes. The house wasn't finished when we needed to shoot this, but the owners were nice enough to throw some furniture in there. There was a guy behind me staining woodwork while I shot this direction so that we could shoot the other direction later.

I'm glad we decided to build a fire. It looked dead with a dark fireplace.

Historic Architecture of Tomorrow

I've posted several times about historic architecture. I can also appreciate modern. In honor of SunTrust Bank coming to Charleston, here is the fantastic SunTrust Plaza building in Atlanta. I shot these photos in February.

It must be love...

... it must be love.
I fall like a sparrow and fly like a dove.

You must be the dream I been dreaming of
Oh what a feeling, it must be love.

Lay down your arms

... or something... gotta be a joke in there somewhere.

Pullman Square Meal

I was working in Huntington today and took the opportunity to check out the progress of Pullman Square...

I must say I'm impressed. There's a lot more to be done, but it's looking good. Regular readers here know I'm interested in historic preservation. The photo above shows the "faux historic" part. It's dizneyfied [I mispelled that to stop Google ads from showing all ads related to you-know-what] historic architecture but who cares, it's a great place. These photos below come from actual historic buildings across the street which are part of the project, but are yet to be finished and occupied.



These buildings have been standing there for over 100 years, but for the last 50 or so they've looked like crap. Well meaning people just painted over the Victorian color schemes with a whitewash of single-color paint. It's simply amazing what a difference it makes to have the old crap cleaned off and genuine Victorian paint schemes applied. For more historic preservation stuff, see here and here.

Silly Produce Blogging #3

... because Thursday night is grocery night.

I don't hate clowns

How could anybody hate clowns?

Awwww.... just look at 'em. Clowns love you.
I shot the "Elephant Bubble Bath" downtown today. The circus is in town. Here's an elephant getting his naughty bits washed...

... right in front of the Town Center Mall. What's the world coming to? You wouldn't see a clown doing that.

Sun, leaf, dew, etc.

I'm enjoying my little tiny camera. It has a very nice close-up feature which allows me to do things like this...

... on mornings when the weather is nice. I like to look around the yard before getting in the car. See also here. The leaf is backlit which makes the veins show up so nice.

That's a switch

Do rockers turn you on?

More time killing photography here and an explanation here.

The View from Hunters Ridge

This is what I see on the evening drive home, just before turning in to my house.

Once I was visiting a friend in upstate NY, who took me on a drive in the countryside to look at fall leaves. I guess I wasn't acting sufficiently impressed because he was prodding me for comments on the scenery. I told him that I was sorry if I was blase, but I could see scenery just as nice looking out my bathroom window.

The Codger Table awaits

The Codger Table at Taylor Books.

I said something to the Earl of Elkview (left) about how I'd be getting my AARP notification pretty soon and he told me how he thought it was funny when he got his... and then he realized that their insurance program was nothing to laugh at. I guess that's some consolation.

Shopping... (yawn)

What do men do while their women shop? I take pictures...


... these are necklace beads hanging on a display rack in Talbots. I think that blue one looks like a scene from a science fiction movie.