Oklahoma City National Memorial - YouTube Video

 Last week we made a trip to Oklahoma City, and we stopped by the Oklahoma City National Memorial. Honoring the victims, survivors, rescuers, and all who were affected by the Oklahoma City bombing on April 19, 1995.  Hard to believe it was 30 years ago.  After some thought, I decided to try another YouTube Video.  So here it is, what do you think?

Oklahoma City National Memorial

For a few extra giggles, I asked ChatGPT to review it, here's what it said:

What works well

1. Emotional resonance & subject choice

   • The Oklahoma City National Memorial is inherently powerful — the location conveys weight, memory, and gravity. Using it as a subject shows ambition and respect for telling serious stories.

   • The visuals, when combined with pacing and the memorial’s architecture, help evoke reflection and quiet remembrance.

2. Pacing & transitions

   • You allow moments of silence or slower movement, which give the viewer space to absorb — that’s essential in memorial / contemplative work.

   • The cuts and transitions (fade-ins, dissolves) feel respectful rather than flashy, which matches your photographic voice.

3. Use of visual detail

   • Closeups of structural elements, textures, inscriptions, or architectural geometry help anchor the emotional weight in concrete visual form.

   • You balance wide shots (showing place and scale) and detail shots (giving intimacy).

4. Cohesive tone

• The video feels stylistically consistent — you’re not bouncing between wildly different styles. That consistency reinforces your aesthetic identity.

• There’s restraint: you don’t overuse dramatic effects, which keeps the focus on subject rather than spectacle.

Rating (10-point scale, in context of your work & intention)

8 / 10
It’s a strong, respectful, emotionally grounded video. With refinements in sound design, pacing, and narrative framing, it could become a compelling signature piece in your video work.

No time to feed

 

As we near the time for the hummingbirds to migrate, I'd expect them to be feeding constantly.  But they still seem to spend most of their time guarding the feeder, and chasing each other away...

On the other hand, the female seems to be pretty bulked up, so maybe she's getting enough food...  or perhaps it's a juvenile?

Pittsburgh Steelers need me!

I was thinking today, and have decided that I'm the good luck charm the steelers need.  

Why do I say this?  Look at some numbers, over my lifetime:

Note also, that during the years where I lived in a town with an NFL team other than the Steelers, those other teams won 3 Super Bowls.  That's 9 total Super Bowl wins for either the Steelers or my "local" team, or 23%.

Statistically, the Steelers play best when I live in the 'Burgh, and better when I at least live in an NFL town.  But, there is no NFL team where I currently live.  Clearly, somebody need to move me back to Pittsburgh...  I think I could convince my wife if the team offered me the NFL practice squad salary...  and 2x season tickets!

Note:  I'm considering the time I was in college as "Pittsburgh resident", since I still had a PA driver's license and voter registration, still went home for breaks and holidays.  And where I went to school had no NFL team.

Let's Go Racing!

Earlier this month, the NASCAR guys were in town to race to World Wide Technology Raceway.  It has been years since I've been to a race, and I've never been to a Cup race, so we decided to go for it.

Lots of fun, but a jam packed weekend.  Here's a few photos, maybe I'll post more all along.

Festivities started Thursday afternoon at Ballpark Village, a pretty low key event with a show car and a couple of Xfinity Drivers.  But we were able to chat with a couple of representatives from the track who helped sort out some logistical questions...  and took a photo of us with a mock trophy.

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Friday was another low key day, including a driver appearance (at a local grocery store), Xfinity practice, and a track walk.

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The real action started Saturday:  driver signings, Xfinity qualifying, Cup Practice and Qualifying, and the Xfinity race...

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Sunday was the main event.  More driver signings, driver introductions, the Cup race, winner circle.  Bands and vendors and displays all along.  And a flyover, of course.  And lots, and lots of people!

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Great fun, good father-son time with my adult son (who travelled in for the occasion).  And more than 2x my normal steps/day!

  

A Journey to Mundane - YouTube Video

So, I made another YouTube Video, a photo-essay of the hotel photos that I've taken this year.  Many of those have showed up here, but this is a different presentation.  This is the second of these I've done, following Midwest Static, published in late July.  I'm interested to see if these get any traction... if people like them.  So let me know if you have an opinion!

A Journey To Mundane

As with the last time, I ran the photos through ChatGPT and asked for a summary.  Here's what it said:  

“A Journey to Mundane” documents the overlooked interiors of hotels, tracing the transition from public spaces to private rituals. Through chairs, lamps, signage, and reflections, the series maps the architecture of absence — how comfort is staged, identity is reduced to numbers, and light carves geometry from the ordinary. Each photograph isolates a fragment of the temporary, assembling them into a quiet narrative of transience and repetition

Haiku for Indian Summer

 Wow, it's been 6+ months since I thought about Haiku.  But this morning I did, and came up with this.  Not from a Haiku generator, just from my brain:

Indian Summer

Temperatures rise again

But Autumn is near

Is it me, for a moment?

 Over the past month or two, I've played around with ChatGPT, getting ideas for photo captions, instagram hashtags, photo ratings, etc.  All in good fun, none of it to be taken to seriously.

So this morning I asked:  "Based on all the photos I've uploaded over the past several months, who would you say are my major influences, and how would you describe my style?"

and here's what it said:

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Based on everything you’ve shared over the past several months — from storefronts and apartments to shorelines and rural details — your work sits firmly within the lineage of American documentary and vernacular photography, but with a poetic restraint that makes it your own.

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Major Influences (Likely Lineage)

• Walker Evans — The clear, frontal studies of storefronts and signs echo his American Photographs and FSA work. You share his interest in the ordinary as artifact.

• Stephen Shore — Especially his early Uncommon Places images, with their quiet street corners, muted color, and typological flatness.

• Robert Adams — For the silence in your beach and landscape work, and the way human absence still hangs in the frame.

• Alec Soth (early work, Sleeping by the Mississippi) — In the way your photographs balance documentary fact with melancholy, understatement, and occasional irony.

• Bernd & Hilla Becher (indirectly) — Your frontal compositions and attention to typology (doors, facades, signs) carry echoes of their method, though you apply it with more warmth and locality.

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How I’d Describe Your Style

• Documentary-Plainspoken: Your photographs resist drama, leaning instead on direct observation. They rarely editorialize — they witness.

• Quietly Poetic: Silence is your dominant mood. Whether in a vacant lot or an empty shoreline, your work draws power from what is not present.

• Irony at the Margins: Small contradictions — “SMILE” on a For Rent sign, or worn numbers on a door — act as quiet punchlines, discovered rather than staged.

• Frontality and Restraint: You often photograph facades head-on, flattening them into grids. This gives a typological feel while underscoring stillness.

• Absence as Presence: People are not shown directly, but their traces — signage, wear, the numbering of apartments, empty chairs — serve as proxies for lived experience.

• Dual Environments: Your storefronts and apartments form one register (built environments), while your beaches and horizons form another (natural stillness). Together they balance enclosure and openness, decay and continuity.

---

Signature Description (Critic’s Voice)

Lawhead’s photographs belong to the lineage of American vernacular documentary — echoing Evans, Shore, and Adams — yet they are distinguished by a muted lyricism. His storefronts and facades flatten into quiet grids, while his shorelines open into silence. Across both built and natural environments, he finds presence in absence, and beauty in the overlooked. His style is documentary in method, poetic in tone: a sustained meditation on the quiet margins of American life.

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Now I know that ChatGPT isn't going to come right out and say "you suck", but that's kind of cool.  At least I know that AI doesn't hate me!!

In a motel, baby, like the Holiday Inn (08-2025d)

  Continuing my informal series of photos in and around hotels/motels, here's a few from a recent trip.  This is the Holiday Inn Express in Versailles, KY.  We stopped in Versailles, to visit a distillery on the way home from our trip to NC.

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See the whole series by clicking the hotel tag.

R.I.P. Rick Davies (Supertramp)

 We lose another one:  Rick Davies, co-founder of Supertramp passed away Sept. 6, 2025.  Rick Davies was 81, after a lengthy battle with multiple myeloma.

I first became aware of Supertramp when "Bloody Well Right" was on FM radio, probably early 1975, a really great song.  Along with "Dreamer", which anchored the "Crime Of The Century" album.  And "Even in the Quietest Moments" is a brilliant album (and song!).  Their landmark album "Breakfast In America" came out in early 1979, and was massive.  To the point that I felt they were overplayed.  But it's still great.

So Rest In Peace, Rick Davies, and thanks for the music.

By Ueli Frey - DrJazz.ch, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63021869

In a motel, baby, like the Holiday Inn (08-2025c)

  Continuing my informal series of photos in and around hotels/motels, here's a few from a recent trip.  This is the Holiday Inn Express in Boone, NC.  

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See the whole series by clicking the hotel tag.

In a motel, baby, like the Holiday Inn (08-2025b)

  Continuing my informal series of photos in and around hotels/motels, here's a few from a recent trip.  This is the Holiday Inn Express in Winston-Salem, NC.  

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 Winston Salem is where my mother was born and raised, and where all her siblings stayed.  I spent a lot of time there as a youth, with Aunts and Uncles and cousins, cousins, cousins.  This trip was for the funeral of my Aunt Dot.  It was a nice celebration of life, and was good to see all of the (remaining) kin...

Woodford Reserve

 Last week, we visited Woodford Reserve Distillery during a cross country drive.  We were passing through the area and decided to stop at a distillery.  I like Woodford Reserve, so we picked them.   

And it was a great tour, highly recommended.  We've previously toured Jack Daniels, Wild Turkey and a couple of micro-distilleries, and WF was very good.  Here's a few photos:

The ticket, laid on a barrel head...

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Display of bottles, at the tour start.

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The still room

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Each batch goes through 3 steps of distilling, from the back still to the front

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The barrels are rolled along these tracks

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The distilling building

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Aging...

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Waiting...

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A random door...

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The best part of any distillery tour is the tasting!

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gift shop

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Distilling building

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In a motel, baby, like the Holiday Inn (08-2025a)

 Continuing my informal series of photos in and around hotels/motels, here's a few from a recent trip.  This is the Holiday Inn Express in Hurricane, WV.

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Our stop here was just "in transit", we split a trip to North Carolina.  But we've been here before, including staying at this hotel, for visits to Blenko.  We had a really good dinner at the nearby Fireside Grille, too!

See the whole series by clicking the hotel tag.