Sunflowers Near Sunset

 Sunflowers Near Sunset

Columbia Bottom Conservation Area plants fields of sunflowers, which are very popular.. This photo was taken about 1 hr before sunset, the crowds were really rolling in, I had a little challenge getting an angle without people posing amongst the flowers!

I did a square crop of the same image for Instagram, which do you prefer?

There's actually a fair bit of digital darkroom here, the lighting was pretty challenging.  In a perfect world I'd've had a tripod, and done separate exposures for the flowers and the sky.  Another option would've been a graduated neutral density filter.  But I selected an exposure that split the difference, then adjusted both in photoshop,  Along with some other "typical" tweaks.

Here's the original, straight from camera shot:

July 1972 on the Music Charts

   Continuing the series of hits -of-the-month, moving to July 1972.  Fifty years ago (Yikes!)

There were 5 weeks in July of 1972, and there were 59 songs that spent time in the Top 40.  That's a fewer than June, despite the extra week.  And over those 5 weeks, there were 3 songs topped the charts: Neil Diamond's "Song Sung Blue", followed by Bll Withers' "Lean On Me", which held #1 for 3 weeks.  The month was closed out with Gilbert O'Sullivan's  "Alone Again, Naturally" at number one.

Here's the top 10 songs of the month, ranked by average chart position over the 4 weeks of the month. 

• The Candy Man - Sammy Davis, Jr. - 1.75
• I'll Take You There - The Staple Singers - 2.5
• Oh Girl - The Chi-lites - 4.5
• Song Sung Blue - Neil Diamond - 5.25
• Nice To Be With You - Gallery - 5.75
• Sylvia's Mother - Dr. Hook And The Medicine Show - 7.5
• Outa-Space - Billy Preston - 8.75
• (Last Night) I Didn't Get To Sleep At All - The 5th Dimension - 9.25
• The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face - Roberta Flack - 9.75
• Morning Has Broken - Cat Stevens - 11

Another so-so week at the top, but lots of good stuff bubbling up.

Meanwhile, Twenty-Two (22) made their Top 40 debut. And time there's some great stuff headed up the charts that will be making an impact in next month:

• Brandy (You're A Fine Girl) - Looking Glass - 27
• I'm Still In Love With You - Al Green - 30
• You Don't Mess Around With Jim - Jim Croce - 31
• Happy - The Rolling Stones - 31
• Long Cool Woman (In A Black Dress) - The Hollies - 33
• Alone Again (Naturally) - Gilbert O'Sullivan - 34
• Coconut - Nilsson - 34
• Baby Let Me Take You (In My Arms) - Detroit Emeralds - 34
• The Happiest Girl In The Whole U.S.A. - Donna Fargo - 35
• Sealed With A Kiss - Bobby Vinton - 36
• Breaking Up Is Hard To Do - The Partridge Family - 36
• Gone - Joey Heatherton - 37
• Small Beginnings - Flash - 37
• Mary Had A Little Lamb - Wings - 38
• Goodbye To Love - Carpenters - 38
• Lookin' Through The Windows - Jackson 5 - 38
• People Make The World Go Round - The Stylistics - 39
• The Runway - The Grass Roots - 39
• Motorcycle Mama - Sailcat - 39
• Hold Her Tight - The Osmonds - 39
• We're Free - Beverly Bremers - 40
• Hold Your Head Up - Argent - 40

Film!

 Over the past month or so, I've shot a roll of Tri-X (black and white) on my 1980's vintage Nikon FM-2. I just received the digital files this evening. Clearly, I'm out of practice in the old ways, quite a few misses in exposure and focus. But there will be a few keepers. I quite like this one. Only slight post-processing, a tweak of levels and a minor crop.

I'll probably shot some more, but most likely color. It was a little hard to find a place to develop B&W.

Sailcat - Motorcycle Mama

 Anybody remember this song? Motorcycle Mama by Sailcat... The band and song name seemed familiar, but I couldn't quite remember. I pulled it up on YouTube and I kind of remember... Entered the Top 40 (at #39) this week in 1972, on it's way to an eventual peak at #12.

Sailcat - Motorcycle mama

Meanwhile, what other songs about motorcycles? There must be hundreds. Here's a couple, leave your thoughts in comments!

• Motorcycle Mama - Neil Young
• The Motorcycle Song - Arlo Guthrie

Old Barn, Ohio.

 

Old barn, Before and after. Or perhaps after and before. First picture is after tweaking, second is the original straight-out-of-camera. An oldie, from March, 2021. Taken along a back road, not far from Luray, OH. This has been festering on my hard drive, I decided to pull it onto the iPad and see what I could do with Snapseed ap. I’m satisfied. 

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And for comparison, the straight Out Of Camera version :

Butterweed in the Woods - BetterPhoto 2nd Place Winner, May 2022

 

BetterPhoto announced the winners of their May 2022 contest yesterday (5/1) and I managed a 2nd place.  I only uploaded 15 images to BP in May, and 13 of them received some recognition:  8x Editors Pick, 2x Staff Favorite, 2x Finalists, 1x Second Place.  Hard to complain about that!  

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Columbia Bottom Conservation Area is one of the local spots I frequent for photos. Located at the confluence of the Missouri and Mississippi Rivers, but across the Missouri from the actual point of the confluence (which is in Edward "Ted" and Pat Jones-Confluence Point State Park). The park is a bit up these days, several of the roads and trails were damaged in floods a few years ago, and haven't been restored. Including the road to the actual confluence, which is about 1 mile from the turn-off.. On this day, I decided to walk down the closed road, just to explore. I didn't get far before finding a scoured out area that was too wet / muddy to walk though, and too overgrown to edge around. So I headed aff the road along an open swath and came to this area where the trees were a bit thinner and the undergrowth was exploding with bright yellow butterweed. A nice bit of happenstance.

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Camera: Fujifilm X-T3 Exposure: 1/500th sec Aperture: f/5.0 ISO Speed: 400 Focal Length: 48.4 mm (72.6mm equivalent) When I took this, I was planning the full ETSOOI treatment (edit the stuffing out of it). But when I pulled it up in digital darkroom, I decided NOT to to go the heavily affected route. This is just "normal" tweaks.