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.
Meanwhile, what other songs about motorcycles? There must be hundreds. Here's a couple, leave your thoughts in comments!
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 :
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.
Continuing the series of hits -of-the-month, moving to June 1972. Fifty years ago (Yikes!)
There were 4 weeks in June of 1972, and there were 61 songs that spent time in the Top 40. That's a good bit more than the prior months of the year the rest of the year. And over those 4 weeks, only 2 songs topped the charts: The The Staple Singers started the month at the top with "I'll Take You There", and the rest of the month was dominated by Sammy Davis Jr's "The Candy Man".
Here's the top 10 songs of the month, ranked by average chart position over the 4 weeks of the month.
Meanwhile, Twenty (20) made their Top 40 debut. And time there's some great stuff headed up the charts that will be making an impact in July:
Funky little flowers, from a short visit to Silver Lake Park, Highland, IL. I really liked the wide crop...
Another from the archives of unprocessed photos. This is from June 2021, last year. Taken on the same excursion as this one. but never processed or presented... until now! This si Southern Illinois, just east of Millersburg, IL.
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nd for comparison, the straight Out Of Camera version :
This was processed on the computer, in Photoshop Elements, and using Topaz Labs' Black and White conversion. As usual I didn't record my workflow, it's all jazz.
I was poking around my unprocessed photos the other day, and came across several that never got processed or posted to any of the internet places I frequent. That happens occasionally, especially when travelling and lots of photos get taken in a short period of time.
So I picked a couple, imported them to my iPad, and did dome quick edits, using the Snapseed AP. I'm pretty pleased. I'll try and post before and after here (or really after and before!), so you can see how my brain works. First is a photo from our trip to South Dakota back in 2020, as the pandemic was just hinting at going wild. This is the back side of the Mount Rushmore monument, taken from the road to the visitor center.
Here's the final version:
And the "Straight Out Of Camera" version:
What do you think?
Jim Seals, who was 1/2 of the duo Seals & Crofts passed away Monday 6/6/2022. Jim Seals was 79, cause of death was reported as a “chronic ongoing illness.”
Seals and Crofts were one of the singer songwriter explosion of the 1970s, along with everybody from James Taylor to Jim Croce to Gordon Lightfoot, to Paul Simon and countless others.
Seals and Crofts had a nice run of 8 Top 40 hits (in USA) between 1972 and 1978, including 3x Top 10. Quite respectable. And they were really big in 1972-73. GREAT harmonies. I wasn't a huge fan, but have their greatest hits album. And Summer Breeze is one of those songs that's pretty close to perfect. Side note: when my (now adult) son was pre-school age, Seals and Crofts' song "Hummingbird" caught his attention and he would request it often.
I learned a couple of things about the duo when poking around the internet:
Seals and Croft's second album includes the song "Cottonmouth", which was recorded 2 years later by The Doobie Brothers. Its a really good song, that I had not previously realized was a cover. Here's the Original, and the Doobie Brother's version.
In 1974, Seals & Crofts released a song called "Unborn Child" over their record company's objection. The song was released shortly after the Roe V Wade decision. Unsurprisingly it created a stir, and probably hurt their career. Later Seals would say "If we’d known it was going to cause such disunity, we might have thought twice about doing it. At the time it overshadowed all the other things we were trying to say in our music." I didn't remember this controversy, but thanks to Youtube, I was able to play it. And I kind of remember it, so it must've been on the radio in Pittsburgh. As a 13 year old kid, I didn't have a clue about the lyrics at the time. Not: I'm not intending to be political, or imply support for either side of that issue, which continues to stir emotions almost 50 years later.
Anyway, rest in peace, Jim Seals.
So, last Friday evening (May 27, 2022), we went to see Michael Martin Murphey at the Wildey. I knew Michael Martin Murphey (MMM) primarily from his 1975 album "Blue Sky – Night Thunder", but I knew he had done a lot of other stuff, so it seemed like a good show. And it was; very good!
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The show was announced with semi-short notice (~5 weeks) sold out pretty quickly. By the time I went to buy tickets there were maybe a dozen left. I decided to try out the balcony, the first show (at the Wildey) I've seen from above. but there are no bad seat at the Wildey, and the balcony is no exception. In fact, my wife said she prefers the higher angle. The view from our seats, before the show:
Al Canal did the introductions (as usual) and pointed out that this evening was the 50th anniversary of the release of Michael Martin Murphey's first album, and he added this show to his tour to play on the anniversary. Thus the short notice. [Aside: Wikipedia says it was released 5/25 rather than 5/27, but I'll take the artist's word for it!].
"Average photographs are the result of thinking about average things in average ways." - Alex Kilbee, The Photographic Eye
I really enjoy Alex's YouTube channel, highly recommended.
"...next time you're out photographing, try as much as you possibly can to be present in the moment. To put all of the other stuff aside. I mean, photography should be a release from the pressures of day to day. And the more that you are kinda like almost, almost like a Zen sort of thing going on with it, you know, then the more you are open to seeing the possibilities, to starting to see the world photographically. Because you are paying attention to the everyday things that often people just ignore"
That resonates with me....
The photo below is mine:
Late posting this month, sorry...
Continuing the series of hits -of-the-month, moving to April 1972. Fifty years ago (Yikes!)
There were 4 weeks in May of 1972, and there were 54 songs that spent time in the Top 40. That's pretty much on pace with the rest of the year. And over those 5 weeks, only 2 songs topped the charts: Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" continued at #1 for the first 3 weeks of May (for 6 weeks total atop the charts). Tge Chi-lites took over the last week with "Oh Girl".
Here's the top 10 songs of the month, ranked by average chart position over the 4 weeks of the month.
Not really that great a Top 10 (IMHO). But not every week can be awesome.
Meanwhile, Nineteen (19) made their Top 40 debut. And this time there's some great stuff headed up the charts that will be making an impact in June:
The Billboard Charts were released on Saturday 5/6/1972... Which fed directly into the American Top 40 radio show. I enjoy looking back at the charts from 50 years ago to revisit the soundtrack of my youth. I've been doing a monthly rundown for about a year and a half, usually posted sometime mid/late in the corresponding month. As I was updating my 1971 spreadsheet this morning, I decided to do a quick look at this week, the first week of 1972. We'll see if this becomes a regular thing. ughts / comments welcome.
Let's get to it:
At #1 this week was The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face, bt Roberta Flack. In its 4 week at the top, equaling the 4 week runs fir American Pie and Without You from earlier in the year.
So, there's a photography thing, Capture52, where they provide a weekly topic and you're challenged to take a photo based on it. I discovered it on 365project a couple of years ago, and have dabbled with it a couple of times. But I've never made it far into the year, never close to all 52 weeks. But I'm giving it another shot in 2022. It'll be interesting to see. Besides their Facebook group (which has almost 2,400 members), and 365project, there's an Instagram hashtag, I'm trying to post to all three. You can see how my year progresses by clicking on my tag: 52weekchallenge2022 - 16 weeks and still rocking!
Week 16 (16 April - 22 April) Tell a story This week your challenge is to capture a compelling image that tells a story
