Thanks For Noticin' Me....

Wow!! Over 5,000 page views in March, up 543% since March of 2005. I've been doing this little blog for 19 months now, and have had over 40,000 visits. Thanks to everybody for stoppin' by, and I hope you're enjoying the show. Now if I could just get a few click-throughs.... (I'm joking, of course)

Barn, Early Morning, Early Spring

OK, just a fun little exercise in Happenstance. I shot this from my car window, on the way to work (while driving 60mph +/-)... Not exaclty the "right" way to do it, no tripod, no careful composition, nothing. Auto settings, Aperture priority, wide open to get the fastest shutter speed. On a dark, looking-like-rain morning. I posted this to the “before and after” discussion area at BetterPhoto, if you want to see the “before”, click HERE. .

"A man's errors are his portals of discovery."

James Joyce

Daylight Savings Time

It's funny the things that will bug you. A little over a year ago, we bought an inexpensive wall clock to put in the kitchen. You know, 10-12" diameter, analog (moving hands), runs on a couple of AA batteries, 15 bucks or so... Anyway, I'm reading the box, and it says it automatically detects daylight savings time. Sure enough, this silly little clock, with no evident means of communicating, does indeed spring forward and fall back. My $600 Bose waveradio clock/CD player doesn't do that, nor any of the other alarm clocks in the house. But the dorky little WalMart clock sure can. This fall, I think I'm going to stay up till 2am, and see if it stops for an hour, or winds it's hands backwards, or what. But it doesn't set the time, or do anything else funky. Just that spring-forward, fall-back thing. errrrrr

Art!!

As we approach the end stages of a long running backyard project, the time has come to get the birdfeeders back up. After some discussion, we decided that we'd look for something cool, new and different, to supplant our "normal" feeder. A little internet investigation brought me to the backyard bird company, and this VERY cool Copper feeder from Vogeli. Handmade by this guy in the western VA. Hopefully it'll hold up to the midwest winds......

Take It Easy

from R'n'R Hall of Fame site: on this day in 1971, Linda Ronstadt recruits Glenn Frey, Don Henley, Bernie Leadon and Randy Meisner for her touring band from among a pool of musicians centered around the Troubadour, a Los Angeles club that is the center of the nascent country-rock scene. Thus were the Eagles born...

High Contrast

High contrast for BP’s April theme : “Black and White”. It looks better in a larger version…
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Art??

Quote of the day, from Thinkexist.com:
"What distinguishes modern art from the art of other ages is criticism. " -
Octavio Paz, Mexican poet, writer and diplomat 1914-1988

CLEARANCE!

It’s the end of the month, thought I’d clean out the inventory of unpublished shots. 3 / 4 of these were posted over at Better Photo, and the last….. well, it’s an idea that didn’t turn out like I envisioned. Anyway, Happy Last Day of March! . .

- untitled -

Not sure why this one didn’t show up here before now. This was one of the first in the “tree in lake” series… Maybe because I couldn’t think of a title?

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- Glen Carbon Library –

A shot of our local library, just a little “slice of life”… I really like this kind of shot. These shots always get overlooked, but I keep on shooting them, they please me, and that's the key.

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- Drop In the Bucket -

A leftover from February, when the Yahoo group did a “water drop” theme. This was my second choice back then, and didn’t get posted on BP until earlier this week. I could never get that worked up about the whole water drop thing, but some peopel really love 'em...

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- no title -

As I said, this one didn’t work. I was trying to catch the contrashing textures of the pine needles, the cone and the bark. I suppose I could go back and re-shoot it on a less harshly lit day…. But it was just something that caught my eye while wandering in the park, and the moment has passed…..

Fading Farms...

I live about 15 miles east of St. Louis, but communte 20 miles further away from the city for work. Not so long ago, the drive was all fields and forest. Slowly but surely, it is all being converted to bedroom communities. It's still mostly farmland, for now, at least. This is just one of the places I pass on the way to work, lots of the land along this road (Rt 143) is starting to show "For Sale" signs....

Like the Lynyrd Skynyrd song says:
I can see the concrete slowly creepin’,
Lord take me and mine before that comes

Roller Hockey

I was up at the Edwardsville YMCA this weekend, at the groundbreaking for the new swimming pool. I snuck a few minutes to watch this pee-wee roller-hockey game, and snap a couple of photos….. . .

Driftwood, River Style

Out and about on Saturday, coming home from the St. Charles, MO area. We took a backroad (route 94) home, a scenic run through the floodplain between the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Before crossing the Mississippi at Alton, we stopped for a short expore, and I came across this driftwood along the river’s edge. . .

You Don't Know Me But You Don't Like Me.....

Buck Owens passed away over the weekend, at the age of 76. One of the true innovators of country music, Buck is probably best know by the general public as one of the hosts of Hee Haw. But he pioneered the “Bakersfield” sound, cranked out over twenty #1 country hits, and was immortalized in the lyrics of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Lookin' Out My Backdoor". The title above is from “Streets of Bakersfield”, which he re-recorded a few years ago with Dwight Yokam.

I came here looking for something
I couldn't find anywhere else
Hey, I'm not trying to be nobody
Just want a chance to be myself

Conoco / Goodyear

Old age had a great sense of calm and freedom.... Plato

This is a new version of a shot first taken in late 2004, before I had my D-70. . . That one had significant digital manipulation. This one is straight on.

Standin' In A Crossfire....

"Feel like I'm in the middle of a 4-lane Highway.

Things are moving so fast on both sides of me...

Right now I've got the feeling, I don't want to see

what might become of me..

So I duck and hide, Hopin' not to fade away...."

Crossfire - Henry Paul Band (from Grey Ghost)

Henry Paul was one of the original members of The Outlaws, one of the southern rock bands to follow Lynyrd Skynyrd out of Florida. He left The Outlaws to fade away after 3 albums, and formed HPB. I saw them on their 1st tour, '79 or so, in Pittsburgh. HP had a broken leg (or somesuch), and played propped on a barstool. But they still rocked. Crossfire is from the 1st HP album, Grey Ghost, which is an outstanding disc. Later on, HP had some more success fronting the country band Blackhawk.... Crossfire popped up on my itunes playlist this evening, so I thought I'd share....