Photobombed

I love this picture, which is actually a still snagged from a video shot with a GoPro camera that I bought just before I went to the Keys last September. I look like I'm photobombing my own photo! I'm underwater (hence the snorkel mask) and if you're at all familiar with the GoPro family, you'll know that you have to look at the *front* of the camera in order to turn it on, then rotate it toward what you actually want to shoot - which in this case were some cool fish around a dock near the apartment I was staying in. All over the world there are GoPro vids that start with the same bemused "is it on yet?" expression on the users' faces.

This trip - last September, so you can see I'm a little behind - was a four-day lightning strike just after Labor Day weekend. I spent the four days tooling around the middle Keys in possession of my very favorite object: a rental car. Really, you cannot beat the feeling of reliability and utter abandon that you get with a vehicle that only has two thousand miles on it and you get hand off to someone else at the end of the week. It's like a short term romance on wheels - all enjoyment, no regrets, and someone else has to rotate the tires.

When I wasn't in my automotive fling, I was in or on the water, since the Keys - especially the Middle Keys, including Marathon, where I stayed - are all about the ocean. Talk about being a stone's throw from the beach - I was in a place where even I was capable of jogging from the west coast (the Gulf of Mexico) to the east coast (the Atlantic side).  At it's broadest point the island I was on was all of 150 feet across, surmounted by an endless bowl of blue sky, and fringed with palm trees - the Tahiti effect, without the inconvenient airfare issues (but with plenty of sarongs, thanks to the lovely people who rented me the apartment). And with a dock reaching out into the silvery sea right off the edge of the property, and a kayak available, I did a fairly good mermaid impersonation for most of my stay.

 A mermaid with a camera. Is this thing turned on yet?

Photo of the Week - The Easy Way Out

This week's photo - again, embarrassingly, shot with my cell phone - is from a project I am working on that is sort of an experiment in spontaneous image-making. Twice a day - at 8.45 and at 2.15 - my phone alarm buzzes, and I'm supposed to take a picture within five minutes of something interesting around me. Depending on the day, this is either difficult because I'm sitting at my same desk for the eleventh day in a row, or easy because I'm out on a shoot and there's all kinds of stuff around. I seem to be getting a lot of photos of my cat, since he's usually draped over the nearest surface.

These were some florist-shop daisies, the kind that have their heads grown so heavy that they come with a little plastic green sleeve around their necks to hold them up during shipping, so that they don't nod like a loaded sunflower. I like the way this one is sort of peeking into the sun, but staying mostly in the shade - a prudent course in the southern summer, no matter what your species, as I'm doing it myself - and the direct sun is giving the bottom petals an almost molten glow.

I called this post "The easy way out" because when I pulled up to do it,  I really didn't have any idea what to write about today, and I realized how much I use the photographs I post as a starting point for my writing. Even though my blog is very photography oriented, I primarily consider myself a writer, not an image-maker - but someone who's very focused on visual stimuli. I would never do a purely photography-based blog, but I can't imagine doing one that is strictly text, either. I need the photos for inspiration - to let the writing genie out of the bottle. Nothing earthshaking in that realization, just something I was pondering today :)

Photo of the Week: Savannah's Talmadge Bridge.

 This bridge went up a few years ago, and a lot - A LOT - of people hated it, because they felt it didn't match Savannah's older, antebellum style. I've always liked it though - it seems spidery and ethereal, and glitters in the sun like something made of a delicate, precious metal (Elven technology?) rather than boring old iron and steel. I suspect that years from now, once it's had some time to settle, people will feel about it the way they feel about I.M. Pei's Pyramid at the Louve - a shocking contrast to the setting, yes, but beautiful in it's own right, and somehow fitting for the space.

That being said, this bridge is almost impossible to photograph well - the area around it is kind of cluttered and there's no good sightlines, like you see in some of the famous night photos of bridges in New York or San Franciso - and I am really stoked (do people still say stoked? Am I a complete dork here?) that I got such a good shot, by taking an excursion boat out to the middle of the river. Thinking outside the box, you see. Or the boat. Whatever.

Finally, the definitive photo of the Talmadge Bridge! Let the haters hate. I like it.

Photo of the Week: Misty

Misty morning in the woods beyond our house, taken a few weeks ago when  the weather turned on itself and gave us a last few cool days before the true heat of the southern summer lays in. Shot, appallingly, with my cell phone. C'est la vie.

Silouetted

I pulled this photo this morning to do this entry, because I love the way the statue is so crisp against the soft, bright stone of the building behind it. I didn't realize until I went to re-size it that there is a huge piece of netting on the stone wall at the corner where they are repairing the stonework. Arrgh.

Something made me keep it in though - it sort of crystalizes my mood today. I'm in the middle of moving, and everytime I look up from one of my (many) boxes, I find something else that needs doing/fixing/attending to.  There's a lot of stuff we missed on our first look around, and now we need to make some adjustments so the house can be exactly what we want.

So this photo reminds me that things can be pretty, and pretty good, even if they aren't perfect. Which makes it perfect, in it's own way.




Photo: Statue outside Louvre Museum, Paris. Copyright Tracey Brower, 2009

Photo of the Week: One Way? or Another?

Photo above, from a street corner in Montreal, where I visited last fall. You cannot tell me there is only "one way" to love cheese.

I have a friend who is contemplating taking a full-time job right now, after two years or so of freelancing. She's done the pros and cons list, contemplated the positives (weekly paycheck! whooo) and the negatives (telling HR your grandmother died, again, to get a day off), done the pros and cons. It probably seems crazy, in these unstable economic times, to not leap on a permanent, full-time position like a lion on a wildebeest, pinning it to the ground and refusing to let go, but we come from a freelance tribe, and it's hard to give it up - the flexibility, the challenge, and the allure of possibility, that the next client or job will be the coolest, most lucrative project ever. I can see her on the balance beam now, trying to decide which way to tip, and I desperately want her to make the right decision - the one that makes everything come out right, in the end, like a perfectly wrapped up movie.

I thought of that, and of this picture, and how frustrating it is when it seems there is only "one way" to get to where you want to be. What do you keep, and what do you shed along the way? Time? Safety? Security? Control?  I have the same issues she does - the constant concerns about money, the worry that you won't get paid for work you've already done, the thought that the boring but lucrative project will eliminate the awesome cheapie someone wants you to do. Or, worse, the dread that there will be nothing but boring cheapies.

I don't have a neat wrap up for this one, no finishing point that ties up the loose ends and rolls into the credits with cool music. I just wait and cross my fingers for her, and try not to wish in one direction or the other. She'll find her way.

Photo of the Week: The Snowbound Edition

So if you have been hiding under a rock in an undisclosed tropical location, A) I hate you, and B) you may have missed the news that it's winter. You cannot miss it in Atlanta, which is currently paralyzed by 4 inches of snow and ice. It looks wonderful, pristine and fluffy, until you realize you are out of beer and the football game is on, and it takes an hour to go to the corner store a mile away.

Cars are skiing across the highway and people are sledding down the hills with broken down cardboard boxes as we take in the strangeness; not of snow (it usually snows here once or twice a year) but of snow that stays. Usually in Atlanta it snows about a quarter of an inch and then melts within 8 hours, but the friendly weatherman assures us that this may stick for a WEEK. He's enjoying his moment in the sun, I think - no pun intended - and is determined to stretch it out.

We went out for a walk yesterday and took some pictures just in case Friendly Weatherman is wrong, and I got this photo of a neighbor's yard. There's something very romantic about the magnolia tree covered in snow - it's my favorite tree, so very emblematic of the south, all iced tea and linen dresses and fanning yourself on the porch - so to see it dressed up in winter wear is always something of a surprise. The tire swing seems to long for winter to pass and these silly sleds and snowballs go away, so the children will come play on it again. Until then it whispers to the magnolia, and they wait patiently for spring.