Birthdays & Acid Reflux

Today is the Better Half's birthday. Tomorrow is my brother T's birthday. Next week my celebrity brother A has a birthday. Brother T is having a birthday party at The Last Call, a bar in the village of Evans Mills this evening.



It's 3:30 am. I was suddenly awakened by an acid reflux attack. Something I have not experienced in about five years. How terrible! I thought those days were over. However, I know what happened. I have let myself get overly tired lately. Sinmply not getting enough sleep. That coupled with the birthday party tonighyt. I over drank ( but was not drunk), and the real troublesome thing I did was drinking right up to bed time. I have not done that in a ong, long time. Usually I do not eat or drink anything for 2 or 3 hours before going to bed. What an idiot I was. It's been so long since I had such an attack I had completely forgotten about them. A lesson learned.

Wedding Today

I awoke this morning to blue sky and bright sunshine pouring through the Maple trees in my neighbors yard. It's Friday and I am photographing a wedding this afternoon at the the Tug Hill Winery in Lowville, NY. But now the day has gone overcast and downright dark. The weather man calls for heavy rain. That's a shame because it will move the wedding indoors.

The photo here was made at a wedding in Mexico NY in May of 2009. Notice the relationship of the foreground and background. This was not an accidental photo. As I was photographing the bridal couple dancing I was keenly aware of what was happening in the background. This photo is just what I hoped to show. The foreground / background relationship is one of the things I try to convey to make a photo interesting.

25 Years On The Job

Tonight I am attending a reception for employees of the Post-Standard newspaper that have been employed there for 25 years. That includes me. I am rather busy prior to that. I have to place an ad for wedding photofraphy in the local paper here. I have one guitar lesson, and, I need to stop by the North Country Arts Center and pay an entry fee for this years Fall art show. I hope to have a photo of some sort to place here today too. But I am simply pressed for time.

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So the event honoring 25 year employees at the Post-Standard went well. With one exception. When my name was announced and a little blurb read aloud about me, I was introduced as Gary Waits. That's W-a-I-t-s. Not Wa-L-ts but Wa-i-ts.

I pretended not to notice. However, I felt like the character Sue Heck on the TV show The Middle.

Foggy Morning

There was a heavy fog this morning in Northern New York. I love how fog makes the world look. I had to drive to my mother's house to take her to the eye doctors. As usual I was running a bit late. That caused me some disappointment because the combination of the Sun, the fog, and the Autumn colors created one magical scene after another. But alas, I had no time to make photos. If I were to stop to make a picture late delivering my mother to her appointment. I get to her home in the hamlet of Calcium and I see the photo presented here. This scene is behind her house. So in the end I was rewarded for my puncuality.

Pictures From A Walk

I take lots of pictures. One of the big reasons is simply to see what something looks like photographed. Another reason is to see how the camera handles certain situations. Particularly certain lighting situations such as night photography, indoor scenes with harsh, contrast lighting. The more pictures you take and the more you experiment with your camera, the better prepared you will be when you see something that you REALLY want to make a good photo of. Or, how to handle a situation that someone may be paying you to photograph. So I am always snapping away. The photos presented here all came from a short walk I took from my house to a general store about three blocks away.

Overhead Wires

These utility wires are on the same block as my home. I have lived here for 20 years. For some reason that I cannot explain, during this walk the wires "caught my eye." Why have I not noticed this cluster of wires before? Or did I but just wasn't inspired to photograph it? I don't know. I do know that I was attracted to the sense of confusion they suggest5. This was the first photo I made on this walk.

A Neighbors House

The next thing that caught my eye was the orange reflector on this tree and the blue wall in the background. I was struck by the colors and somehow thought I might make something of the foreground / background relationship.



As I am exploring the foreground / background relationship I am keenly aware of the blue wall, the window, and the objects against the wall. They look to me like a sort of still life. I'm pretty sure that who ever placed the objects there had no intention of making an artistic statement. This is just a spontaneous juxtaposition of items that I find very interesting.

House Connected To The Grid

By the time I take this photo I am back on my street, on my block. This is a neighbors house three doors away from me. I liked the awning over the window. Then I started thinking about how the house is connected to the electric grid. I started snapping away, studying the composition until I came up with this. It's sort of conveys an idea that the house is a living entity, the wires are the umbilical cord that feeds it energy. If I had shown the entire house and wires the message would have been far different. What we include and exclude in our composition of a scene helps convey the message and/or feeling of the photograph.

A Couple Of Test Photos

The next two photos I simply took because it was dusk. The light was getting interesting. I snapped these two photos just to see how the camera handled the situationn. The camera, by the way, is a Nikon D7000.

Today is October First. I was sxcheduled to have four students come in for guitar lessons. Only two of them showed. One of the non-shows had allready paid so I don't know why they didn't show. It is cold here in Chaumont NY. I have a fire in the wood stove. Also had a squireel or some other vermin running around in the walls and cielings. I know

Mom Has Cataract Surgery

I took my mother to the hospital today to have cataract surgery on her right eye. It went smoothly. We got to the hospital at 9:00AM and were back to her house at noon.

This photo is her and her great grand son JJ, this afternoon.

Christmas On Bear Mountain

I was a huge comic book fan when I was a kid. My older brother A & I had quite a collection. The DC heroes were among our favorites. That would be Batman, Superman, Hawkman, Aquaman, The Flash and more. I also liked the Disney comics, particularly Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse. I gave my comic book collection to my son to read when he was a teen. He liked them a lot. But I never saw them again. What became of them after him I have no idea. With one exception: A Donald Duck comic from 1947 with the story Christmas On Bear Mountain. I do not remember where I got my copy of it. It was published in 1947, a few years before I was born.

As comic books go it wasn't worth a lot because the cover was missing. It was also well worn from many readings over the years. However, it was my favorite. The story and art were done by Carl Barks. He created some of the greatest comic book stories of all time. So, when I passed my collection to my son I held on to that particular one. I kept it in a desk drawer.

When I bought my home in Chaumont, NY the desk and comic book came along with me. The house was in terrible condition and it took an entire year for me to get it into livable condition. All of that time my belongings were stored in the garage. That was twenty years ago and the desk never did find it's way into the house. So it and the comic book remain in the garage. Over the years I would regularly take the comic book out and look at it. Last Winter I pulled it out and gave it a read. Still like that story. I always meant to one day make a digital copy of the book just for a back up.

Then one day I opened the desk drawer and what do I find? Mice got in there and chewed it all to pieces. The photo is exactly how it appeared when I opened the drawer. What a bummer! However, the internet being what it is I can find a replacement. It has been reprinted more than once over the years. But mine, rough as it was, was a 1947 issue.

I Find A Serpent

It has been rather lovely as far as the weather goes here in Chaumont, NY.

You never know when the next photo opportunity is going to present itself. The snake photos are a case in point.


Yesterday I loaded some firewood into my Dodge Caravan. It was from a dead Ash tree that I cut up at my brother T's place in Dexter. The wood has been sitting in a pile undisturbed for about six weeks. As I was handling the wood I disturbed various insects, worms and the like that had settled into the pile. The wood shifted a couple of times. I lift up one large piece of wood and find a small, dead snake. He had just gotten crushed by a piece of the tumbling wood. Anyhow, I load up and drive home. I didn't get to unloading it until this morning. When the last of the wood was all removed I spotted a small snake scurry under one of the seats. I captured him and took his photo.
I didn't have a macro lens so I cropped the lower photo to show off the detail in the upper photo.

Chaumont Sky At Sunset

The nights have been getting cooler here in Chaumont, NY. around 35 to 40 degrees for the past 4 nights. The temperature inside the house in the morning has been 61 to 63 degrees. So I have been starting fires in the wood stove. I stoke it up pretty good to get the house warmed and then let it burn out. It has been rather comfortable.

The photo I snapped very quickly two nights ago as I was pulling into the village.

Yesterday I did some painting under the eves of the house outside my bedroom. I went to m,y brother T's house in Dexter and loaded up some of the firewood I from a dead Ash tree that I cut down a couple of months ago. While tha was happening I also had a pork butt smoking in my charcoal grill / smoker, along with a couple of Acorn squashes. I also made a roast corn dip with fresh sweet corn that I purchased at a farm market in Pulaski. The dip is a recipe from Emeril Lagasse that he featured on his Food TV show.
Here is the link to the recipe:

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/emeril-lagasse/fire-roasted-corn-dip-with-crispy-flour-and-blue-corn-chips-recipe/index.html

It is one of my favorites and I make it frequently in the Summer & Fall. I also make it in the Winter and substitute frozen, un-roasted corn for the fresh. It's still good.

This morning I got up and did my usual two hours of guitar practice. Then I mowed the lawn, stacke some fire wood and at 1:00 headed out the door to go to the Post-Standard. This evening I photographed a field hockey game for them. I should get home tonight around 11:30 or midnight. A long and fruitful day.

Flying With The Red Baron

This is a photo I took of the Red Baron Pizza stunt planes flying over Lake Neatahwanta in Fulton. The pilots of these planes sit in the rear seat, behind the passenger. I was a passenger in the plane at left. The planes have open cockpits so we were exposed to strong wind and G forces. So to get this photo I had to hold the camera over my head, pointed behind me while exerting a lot of strength to fight those wind & G forces. Unable to look through the view finder I just pressed the shutter release and moved the camera around hoping for the best. The photo here was the best of the trip. We photographers call these "Hail Mary" shots because you just have to pray you get something usable. This was also in 1998 so it was shot on film. No way to preview the results like we do today with digital cameras.

State Fair Video

The New York State Fair takes place in Syracuse, NY. The daily paper is the Post-Standard. I work for them as a photographer in a part time capacity. So every year I am at the fair photographing for them. This year I had a Nikon D7000 camera that can shoot HD video. Always intrigued by the masses of people that attend I decided to try the video out on the crowd. I hand held everything as I did not have a tripod with me. The resulting video clips were jerky. So I decided to slow them down with a video editing app. The result was sort of dreamy. In recent days I had been learning & playing a short prelude by the great Spanish composer / guitarist Francisco Tarrega. It's often referred to as Prelude in D or Prelude Number 11. Anyhow, with that piece of music in mind I added the video clips. Here is the result: