I wanted to get my four dollars worth out of the roses I bought Wednesday so I set them up near a sunny window. I used spot metering and a wide aperture but had not planned to convert to black and white.
I did plan on adding an effect in ON1 Effects and for some reason chose one called Ansel In The Valley. Ansel Adams is famous for saying you don’t take a photograph, you make it. So this one’s for you Debra.
Note: Aldi has very good quality flowers for next to nothing, but you have to bring your own bag and shopping carts cost a quarter. The upside is that the one in Lancaster has horses in the back ready to pose for pictures.
A couple of weeks ago my friend Alena pointed out that what I thought were Alpacas were really Llamas and vice versa. I’m sure she meant well, but I was worried that if I was wrong about this maybe I was wrong about everything.
I forgot about it for a while until this afternoon when I stopped to visit some old friends. There he was, Big Al, staring me down with bright red eyes and a look that told me I was going insane.
Something snapped inside what was left of my mind and I began to lose touch with reality. I started to wonder if I was a man dreaming that I was an Alpaca or an Alpaca dreaming that I was a man.
When I got home and looked in the mirror I saw that my ears looked different and there was hair growing out of them. I was also noticeably uncomfortable wearing sneakers and had a strange craving for a bowl of grass.
The way I see it I have several choices, one is to go back to the funny farm but last time I gained ten pounds and they have limited smoke breaks. Another is shock treatment, which I think I can do at home with a car battery.
The third is to resume therapy, but my therapist is a goat and I think he may be biased. Or I can simply stop photographing animals and shoot trains, which are relatively safe unless they run you over which rarely happens.
I’ve never read The Metamorphosis by Kafka but found this quote which says it all: “I cannot make you understand. I cannot make anyone understand what is happening inside me. I cannot even explain it to myself.” Thanks Alena.
I’m going to be working on another project with my friend Alena Shminke but we’re having trouble figuring it out. This morning she suggested that we make it out of the boredom and sadness of being, which to me sounded perfect.
This is my first take on the theme, only today I had a fantastic day and wasn’t bored for a second. Fortunately I’m Bipolar so my mood changes as fast as a Cheetah on meth.
I got this software free with a photography magazine a couple of months ago and wanted to do a review of my initial impressions. I needed a new photo to use and since it was raining decided on a wet horse in bad light.
So after getting the newspaper and coffee I drove to the back of my local Aldi parking lot where the horses wait, contemplate the meaning of life and stare into space for a while.
A buggy soon pulled up just as it stopped raining and I said hello to two Amish girls, asked if I could take a few photos which they said was fine, and they told me their horse’s name is Firefly.
She’s hard to see because I shot wide but there is a woman walking towards me between the mirror on the right and the small tree. I said hello but was completely unprepared for a lecture on morality.
After standing there with her arms crossed and shaking her head for a while I looked at her and said: “What?” She mumbled a few things I couldn’t hear and I went back to trying to get a decent composition.
Then she said: “This is very disrespectful.” I told her that I had permission but she continued so I said: “Disrespectful to who, the horse?” This seemed to confuse her but finally she said: “It’s disrespectful to the whole culture.”
Now I was mad, my camera was acting up, it was starting to rain again and I had missed the decisive moment. I thought about fighting her but she was big and I wasn’t sure I could take her. Photo shoot ended.
ON1 Effects is fun to play with but in a way it’s a little like Photoshop. There are so many different effects and filters, each one customizable, that after a while you start to wonder if you should take up golf.
For this photo I used an effect called Automagic and one of the thousands of borders. I felt this would be a good one for Firefly to post on his social media and discuss ethics with his friends.
On my way home I wondered if Miss Manners was right, so I told the story to a girl at a convenience store who said the woman was stupid and arrogant. I would have used different words but okay.
Case closed, morality issue solved. Someone once said do not seek the truth, only cease to cherish opinions. Someone else said that opinions are like a wet horse in a parking lot, shoot first and ask questions later.
“Learn to see the big picture. Often times we get tunnel vision and lose sight of the big picture and what we’re really trying to accomplish.” Robert Cheeke
In this case luck is a very talented lady named Alena Shminke who I had the pleasure to work with again on a still life project called Imaginary Road Trip Without Destination.
