Old friends
…Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be 70… Old Friends, Simon & Garfunkel
Andy is my high school buddy. Colleen? We met in the third grade and orbited together `for five years without truly knowing one another. But, I never forgot her. And, never will… Chicago, AANS national meeting. Ethiopian meal with the cousin. When did we lose our hair and get old and fat? Who’s fat!? American Gothic, Van Gogh’s bedroom? Classics! I have seen them?! I was in their presence?! Memories fade. Colleen still checks the weather constantly. Me? I forget to wear socks.
Incomplete
Information? What? I have a Lightroom catalog titled Images 2016 – meaning 2016 onward. This is distinguished from “all digital images” “slides” and so forth. It is a rough divider to allow for easier search of the many many images in each catalog. This catalog has nearly 500k images. Repeats? There are not supposed to be any. It is a one way – forward – catalog.
So, the beginning of the catalog is anything but 2016.
It seems that I took stray photos/slides/images and just mashed them into this catalog. Logic? I do not know what logic. The end of the catalog – now – is current images, digital, of course.
What?
My first digital camera – Canon G3. The Nikon D70, my first digital DSLR, and a pictrure of the digital clock; I was working late (neurosurgeon) and got home to open the new box and shoot the clock among the first. I dropped Dave off in college long before 2016. Jules helped build the slide cabinet I would not need. Drawers – we built a lot of drawers on the deck. Of course, with digital, who needs drawers to store slides any more? The drawers are full. But more than half are not slides.
Julia and dad at her track meet; gee I was a good attentive dad. The rope swing was lost when the tree trimmers cut down the branch above it. We never spoke about it (the swing) again after that. Face painting – they were but kids. A dramatic graphic of tulips – striking against the tile floor of the Long Island kitchen. Nice. Iconic for me! … English child, street photography in the ‘70’s.
It was, this is, a hodge podge of a collection of photos digital and scanned. I suppose they followed me from computer to computer on each successive hard drive to form a core of what I could store given the supplied hard drive memory with each laptop.
I am so organized. And not! All the images slide and digital reside on multiple redundant hard drives. I wonder who will sort thru them when I am gone? Will anyone bother? Historical. But worth preserving? Ah! An external drive is so small nowadays. Who knows? I won’t.
Tulip
The tulips are an easy target. Spring! Focus! The stamens are the key. If you can get them in focus, the rest of the pattern of the spots will fall into place. Lately I shoot them in singles rather than opting for a pattern of color.
First shot…last shot
First, middle, or somewhere in between. It’s funny. I sometimes get ‘the shot’ right away and then try to improve upon it. Or not. With digital, I just shoot and shoot. When I shot slides that cost time (for me to develop) and money (film cost). Nowadays I just shoot first. I do notice that I don’t shoot as many vertical compositions. It is awkward on my computer screen. Certain composition or framing is standard stuff for me now – like low angle, wide angle. Different day different flower. The graphics are still striking.
Tulip
Graphic. I like graphic images now. The plain old tulip is. You need something to catch your interest. Graphic detail always gets my attention. Dead on straight, a snap shot is angled. But a good graphic is eye catching. Focus!
Tulip
There are tulips and then there are tulips. The pattern of the petals was striking. It’s graphic art. It helped that the sun was bright. I know it’s high contrast and I should go in at high noon. I guess that if you follow the rule you don’t get this shot. The macro setting is really convenient. I suppose the DOF ruins the ‘bokeh’ for those knowing photographers. Hey, I like the shot.
photobackstory 