Photography advice: Just do it!
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After a visit to Apple's Genius Bar in Reston, I walked on down to the ice skating rink in the Town Center. Watching the skaters, I wanted to get a shot showing movement. If I was lucky, I’d get skaters blurring, somewhat like ghosts.
Well, the brightness of the ice was so great that it wasn’t possible to shoot at a slow speed (to get the blur) without greatly overexposing.
This image is essentially out of the camera, taken while I fiddling with the aperture and speed and ISO and what not. Call it a lucky shot.
It's not over until the guy who lives here says it is
/The Christmas Spirit is alive at a bungalow near Tysons Corner, Va.
I heard the rain at 4 a.m.
/"The best way to take a beautiful picture is to put yourself in front of something beautiful," is something Scott Kelby said at his Shoot Like a Pro workshop in DC in October. So, at mid-morning today, despite heavy rain and low-40s temperatures, I drove to the Lincoln Memorial.
I was not alone.
There were dozens of tourists. Some had arrived on tour buses, many were wearing raincoats.
Most were posing with, or taking selfies of, Mr. Lincoln.
Spring?
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Friends e-mailed they arrived in midcoast Maine yesterday afternoon, just in time to be sleeted-in today. "But we don't have to go anywhere. We have food, firewood, etc! It's beautiful - in a monochromatic kind of way..."
Meanwhile, here in Va., it's in the mid 60s. This is a shot taken earlier this week at Great Falls Park, a few miles from home.
Not the 'last picture show'
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The Saco Drive-In has been part of summer in southern Maine since 1939. It claims to be America's second-oldest drive-in. But 2013's could have been its last season.
For several years, major film producers have been pushing theater owners to convert to digital projection equipment. Computer hard disks weigh a lot less than 70 pounds of 35mm film. The studios were looking to save money on shipping while also at the time offering movie goers a sharper, clearer movie experience.
The conversion equipment can cost anywhere from $25,000 to $60,000. For a small theater charging $3 a head, or a summertime drive-in asking $10 a carload, that' s lot of money.
As summer 2013 began, there were four operating drive-ins in Maine. Saco, near Portland, was one of them. It was managed by an energetic, focused, barely-out-of-college, self-starter, 20-something entrepreneur, Ry Russell.
Two years ago, I did a photo project on Maine Diners, another disappearing 'institution'. Now, here was another. I thought I'd better get to drive-ins sooner rather than later. I met with Russell and he welcomed me. For a few nights in July, I roamed his several acres, talked with folks, and took pictures.
It did not turn out the way I thought it would. After my first night of shooting, I realized this was not going to be like diners. No their neon signs, formica counters, ornate tiled floors, fresh doughnuts or comfort food and warm waitresses.
Nope. Memories of drive-ins have nothing to do with the snack bar and projection bunkers. My wife spent many a summer night with her grandmother, at a drive-in in Pennsylvania, watching numerous westerns and gorging on candy and popcorn. And it is one of her fondest memories of growing up and being loved.
So, my next nights at the Saco Drive-In focused :) on the people, couples and families, enjoying being together on a summer's evening, enjoying a movie and, sometimes, fighting the mosquitoes.
The drive-in, by the way, will NOT be closing. In the middle of July, Honda launched a promotion offering digital conversion equipment to five drive-ins across the country. The winners to be determined by online voting. Ry Russell smelled opportunity and grabbed it. Radio, Facebook, newspaper articles - he pushed every promotional button he could.
And Saco was the first drive-In to win, as the Portland Press Herald reported.
See ya at the movies next summer, Ry!
Rain in Reston
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Reston's holiday decorations get wet.
One of the 'joys' of living in the Washington, DC area is the reaction when the weather forecast turns wintry.
Early Monday afternoon, the news anchor on WTOP was almost giddy as she announced the National Weather Service said it could get nasty within 24 hours. Possibly "an inch of snow" (!!!!!!!!!) could be on the ground Tuesday morning.
Within a few hours, the federal government announced its 'liberal leave' policy would be in effect.
At dawn Tuesday, with an overcast sky and no rain, the radio station was leading with "Federal offices are open".
And so they are, says the Washington Post.
A gentle drizzle began at about 9 a.m., and the weather folks promised the rain would get heavier later in the day.
Vegas, baby!
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Four days in Las Vegas ought to be enough for anybody. It was for me and a few others taking a class organized by the Santa Fe Photographic Workshops. It was also enough time to get some great shots.
But we didn't spend much time on the Strip. Rather, we were focused (!) on Vintage Vegas, the original part of Las Vegas - replete with lots of old-time casinos, classic signage, and equally-classic people.
Julien McRoberts was our guide. She did a great job: encouraging, patient, original and inventive.
Cuba
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Cuba, outside Jose Marti airport.
HAVANA, Cuba (January 2012) -- The Caribbean island is in amber. Fidel's forces may have wrested power from the dictator Batista in the '50s, but most of the island looks the same today.
The gorgeous, deteriorating, Spanish-influenced architecture is home to government workers, residents, state-owned restaurants and hotels. You walk the streets and hear music from the bars (many sounding like the Buena Vista Social Club). Children play in the streets. The best GM cars of the '50s still ply the roads, albeit triaged with homemade parts and with a lot of belching smoke.
While it looks the same, it's not. The communists took away private property and put people to work. The average Cuban earns $18 a month. Despite free housing (in those collapsing buildings), free medical care, free education (What do you do with a Master's degree?), and food rations, life is still tough.
I visited Cuba on a tour led by world class photojournalist Peter Turnley. We traveled under an educational/cultural expedition license. The intent was that we would meet Cubans, and experience their culture, and their country.
For me, and I suspect and the other half-dozen fantastic photographers on the trip, the primary attraction was to be able to take photos of this dramatic, colorful, vibrant, sensuous place. But for all of us, the focus of the memories of the trip are the warm and welcoming - and incredibly positive - people we met.
Diners
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Coffee break at the A-1 Diner in Gardiner, Maine
A few years ago, I sparked my interest in photography after taking classes at the Maine Media Workshop.
Frank Lavalle, Christine Collins and Jan Rosenbaum encouraged, guided, and prodded me overt the course of several summer workshops. Then last winter I told myself, "Enough learning - time for doing!" Get out there and just shoot.
I pursued a theme: Maine Diners. I considered almost a dozen and settled on three within an hour of our summer home in Wiscasset.
The first one, the A1 Diner in Gardiner, is an authentic gem of the golden days of diners. It's been featured on Guy Fieri's Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives. Mike Giberson, son of a previous owner, has co-owned and run the operation for more than 16 years. He arrives at 5am each day.
The menu is traditional diner comfort food, to which contemporary offerings such as a curried chicken wrap, grilled pesto chicken and roast beef/red onion w blue cheese. Patrons start lining up at 7 a.m. most mornings and Mike has a killer Sunday brunch.
The diner was built by the Worcester Lunch Car Co. of Worcester, Massachusetts, of the major diner manufactuers of the era and retains its original character. The A1 opened for business in 1948 and has not been renovated, modernized, or 'improved'.