“Lucky" Photographer...

I’ll never be a professional photographer. I just don’t have it in me to walk up to total strangers and ask if I can take pictures. It’s even more unnerving when that stranger is a St. Petersburg Police Officer outside of the headquarters in downtown. But that’s what I did. “Hi. I have a photo assignment, can I take some pictures of your car?” "Do you have a class assignment?” Well, not really for a class, but it was an assignment, if only from myself.  

That’s how I found myself in the dirt parking lot with all the off duty police cruisers on Tuesday morning.

Honestly, the officer was very nice, and since she needed to test her lights anyway, she turned them on for me. “It works better at night,” she said. Makes me think she’d had this request before. 

I still did everything wrong. My camera was still set up for the previous shoot. Wrong shutter, wrong aperture. Bad light, bad exposure, really nervous. All my classic mistakes. And trying to capture flashing lights is harder then it looks. I think I only got one shot with both lights lit. But that’s what I had. Maybe a little post-processing could save it.

Make that a lot of post-processing. I cropped the picture a little, changed the exposure level some. Then started playing with filters. I settled on one called “Oil Paint”. Oil Paint smoothed a lot of the gritty dirt on the car roof, as well as the mount for the light bar. The trees in the background warped a little becoming somewhat surreal. The picture is for Edward’s poem Remember.  The quality is somewhat dream like, the way memories sometimes are. The only other adjustment was to tone down some blown out spots in the red light. Not the best way to do it, but in this case I was able to take a bad shot and turn it into something kind cool.

I consider myself to be more of a “lucky" photographer. I’m trying to change that. I’m trying to be more prepared when I go out for a shoot. Trying to get the angles and framing right the first time, as well as the lighting. But I don’t think I’ll ever get past the part where I have to ask people about taking pictures. I’m just not that extroverted. Maybe that, too, will come with practice, but I don’t think so.

Read Edward's poem "Remember" here.  

Hope...

Hope. It is why we are here tonight. Hope for others, hope for ourselves, hope for the future. It is a group none of us want to be part of, and yet, with each new member, we open our hearts, our arms and our lives. Hope walks around around this track all night. You can hear it in our voices. Hawkers calling wares to raise money. Babbles and games... Cakes and coffee. All for a good cause, the cause that brings us together at this time, on this night, for this purpose. In many places, on this night, there are walkers. In each place dark skies hover over lit fields. The lights, like a barrier against fear, comfort our hearts, warm our spirits and accompany our steps. We are many people, we have one purpose: Victory. And on the way to that victory we share love and companionship, support and strength, joy and peace, and sorrow for those who can no longer walk, those in whose place we walk together... with Hope for a Cure.

Avian Paparazzi

A bald eagle is a marvelous creature. Especially in flight.

There is an eagle's nest on the way to work. It resides in a cemetery in St Petersburg, FL. At a time when our wild lands are disappearing, being torn down for development, this nest sits in a place where no one dare disturb it. Generations of guardians stand silent vigil, on sacred ground. In the middle of a city, calm prevails. The pair could not have picked a better spot. They laid their eggs on Dec 12. The stake out began then.



I had seen a number of pictures from a friend who had been visiting the nest. Finally I asked him where it was. Turned out I drive by all the time. I visited the nest for the first time on the morning of the coldest day of the year, before sunrise. It was worth it. The sky was clear and the moon a sliver in the brightening sky. One of the birds was perched in a dead pine tree a few yards from the nest's tree. He sat there, noble and graceful, waiting to greet the sunrise.










Since then I've stopped by once or twice a week. More often then not, one or another of the adults is perched nearby. Posing. At the beginning of February we stopped by the nest with visitors from Massachusetts. The sun was out, the pine tree the nest is in a striking green against the crystalline, cloudless, blue sky. When I offered to show our guests the nest, I had crossed my fingered that at least one of the adults would be there and visible. They didn't disappoint. In fact, both adults sat near or on the nest. About a dozen photographers stood on the ground near by, an assortment of lens pointed skyward, hoping to catch the perfect shot. Our visitors loved it. They had never seen an eagles nest, nor eagles that close.

Most days I visit the nest the adults are nearby, without feeling a need to be anywhere else. Generally this is good, because it gives me a chance to get a number of shots, and to sit an enjoy the view. It wasn't until a week ago I actually saw one of the fly off, on some errand only he understood. I didn't have the camera that day. I was going to have to come back.



Two days ago, I stopped by the nest on the way home from work. It was another crystal blue day. When I got to the nest site, two other photographers were there. Both of them had much larger lenses then I did. They looked like pros, and I felt a little like an amateur, hoping for a snapshot, while they were there for portraits. I didn't see anyone on the nest at first, but wandered over to the two fellows anyway. "Anybody home?" I asked. "You can see the chick..." and I could, from their vantage point. "... the adults should be back soon, they just flew off". I got a few pictures of the chick and waited, I didn't have any more then 5 minutes. Then it started, "Here he comes." one of them said, pointed east, and we were off like paparazzi snapping pictures of an approaching celebrity. Each one of us jockeying for position as he got closer, ducking behind trees on the way, dropping his feet for balance as he wheeled first right then left. My camera was set on multi-shot, full auto. Press and hold the shutter button, 3 frames per second, the camera does the rest. The sun was behind us. The light was perfect. 5 seconds later, 10 shots... with each one the eagle flew closer... He banked around an oak tree with a flash of great brown wings and I lost him. He was only checking on the nest.

There's always a tradeoff when watching life through the lens of a camera. You can miss the details right beside you while focusing only on what's in front. But sometimes, you can use that camera to get a different perspective. One you might not normally see. And find yourself a member of a group you never expected to join... hunting national symbols in a graveyard, through the lens of a camera, capturing the beginning of life, while you're surrounded by memories of the dead.