Tomorrow The Fog Will Clear

Tomorrow we who are employed at the Post-Standard in Syracuse, N.Y. will learn our fate. For a month we have been working in a cloud of uncertainty as to whether we will have a job or not come January 1, 2013. Supposedly all employees have been going through an evaluation. Tomorrow some will be offered a position in a "new" company and others will be laid off. This is a result of the company betting it's future on a stronger digital, internet presence. The daily paper will be printed only three days a week.

I snapped this scenic photo yesterday on my drive home from doing some errands. It was taken with a Nikon D300, 17-55mm f2.8 lens. I do hope all is well in your world.

Are You Better Off Than You Were Four Years Ago?

The price of gas here in Chaumont New York remains above $4.00 a gallon. Today it was $4.04 a gal.  The photo of the gas price was snapped at the neighborhood market a couple of blocks from my home. It was taken on September 11 (of this year). On the morning of September 10th I bought gas there at $3.96 a gallon. I drove off to work. That evening when I pulled back into town the price was $4.04 / gal. An 8 cent increase. The next morning (Sept.11) it was as you see in the photo: $4.09  which amounted to a 13 cent increase in 24 hours. I was outraged at that. THEN:P The next day it rose to $4.11!!  What the HELL is going on?  Search the internet and you can find President Obama actually saying he would like to see the price of gas at $5.00 or more a gallon. He feels that would spur research for alternative energy. He welcomes this  price. As a result I maintain NONE of us are better off than we were four years ago. Prices of all goods have gone up accordingly.

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Gas Price in 2008

I dug out a reciept for gas that I purchased December 30, 2008. The election was over and Obama had not taken office.
How can you be better off if a tank of gas cost you $35.00 four years ago as opposed to $70.00 now? An a aquaintance of mine said he and his wife were doing just fine. That may be, but he cannot be better off. He simply has the resources to absorb it. He metioned his son was a contractor and spends a huge ammount on fuel for his trucks and machines, but he didn't care because he just charges his customers more to off set it. DUH! That's what everyone is doing and it's driving up the prices of all goods and services but most folks pay checks are NOT increasing. Fine or not fine, you and we as a country are not better off.

On a personal note I also had my job hours cut to 20 a week in January of 2009. Four years later I still work only 20 hours a week and this is my 26th year with that company. I have had to bust my ass to make up the difference and with God's blessing and my ambition I have been able to hang on. I too can say I am doing fine, but I am far worse off than I was four years ago. And, guess what? Next week the company I work for is going to layoff a lot of people. Numbers I am hearing is about 100 people are going out the door. Isn't that lovely?  I will not be voting for Obama.

Birds of Autumn

September is fast drawing to a close here in Northern N.Y. A sight I am most fond of is the gathering into flocks multitudes of black birds. Huge numbers of them forage the farm fields along the roadways. Then fly off suddenly in great moving shapes.

I assume they are preparing to fly South for the W\inter, however, I have not fresearched it.

I have always wanted to spend some time photographing them, but so far have not gotten around to it. This photo was a quick snap made with a Nikon D300 and 17-55mm lens. I was driving and simply held the camera up to the wind shield (without looking through the view finder) as I passed by and through the flock, holding the shutter release down.

Street People

I am an all around red blooded American male. I am walking down the stret with camera in hand (as usual) and I see the photo presented here today. What do you expect me to do when I encounter such a sight? I snap it.

Dark Days Are Looming

Once again things are becoming uncertain at the Post-Standard. In January they are going to publish only three days a week. I soon may learn that I will no longer be working there after 26 years. It sucks.

People Pictures

As many of you know, I like to snap photos of people. I was at a party recently that was honoring volunteers for the Thousand Islands Art Center in Clayton, NY. These photos were snapped while I was there. I hope you find them interesting.





Photos were taken with a Nikon D300, 17-55mm f2.8 Nikon lens.

Nature Photography: Gray Tree Frog (Hyla versicolor)

Tonight, near dusk, as I was preparing to cover our Easy Set pool, I saw an unfamiliar looking frog on it. I grabbed a camera, in this case a Nikon D300 and snapped some shots of it. A Google search revealed it to be a Grey Tree frog which is wide spread through out New York State. In all of my life I had never seen one before. I didn't have a macro lens so these images are cropped from much wider originals. Hence, it is limited upon how large I can make them.

State Trooper at the New York State Fair

This is a photo I snapped a couple of hours ago at the New York State Fair. I was there to shoot a video of night scenes at the fair for the Post-Standard newspaper.I had to do it in a four hour shift and get it uploaded on the web by 11:00, so I didn't have the luxury of wandering about making interesting, artsy still shots.

The Post-Standard Reduces Their Daily Publication

Today the Post-Standard announced they will reduce daily publication to three days a week for home delivery, and a smaller edition on the off days for news stand sales. There will be jobs lost as a result of this. Read more at www.syracuse.com> I have a lot to say about this but don't have the time to devote to it. It's all horse shit. I have worked there for 26 years. I saw the writing on the wall a few years ago. Hence, I remortgaged my house and eventuall nbought three rental properties. Three years and eight months ago my job hours were cut to 20 a week. So I have had all of that time to re-establish myself as a wedding photographer, guitarist, and guitar teacher. I have aggresively been paying down debt. I have been telling my collegues at the Post for some time that they should be laying down similar plans. Well, I don't want to be one of those that loses a job, but it will not as terrible as it could have been. Good luck to all of you out there.

Francisco Tarrega's Estudio Brillante Practice

I have been practicing and trying to polish for performance Francisco Tarrega's guitar composition Estudio Brillante, sometimes known as Study in A. It is a

challenging piece of music. Memorizing it was fairly easy. BUT, the rest of it has been tough. I never dreamed it would be as difficult as it is. It is physically demanding. There are hammer ons & pull offs that require solid technique. Slowly the piece improves. The photos here show how I go about keeping a sort of "Practice Diary" I usually practice a chord change or scale passage or what ever in groups of five or ten. Then I write down that number in hash marks somewhere in the margins or cover of the music along with the date. I usually will do the particular task at hand for 100 repetitions. It is like a body builder who does a series of reps. For instance, I do a chord change 5 or 10 times and stop. Rest a few seconds and do 5 or ten more. Eventually I reach my goal of reps for that part of my practice session. Estudio Brillante has been unbelievable. My notes and record of reps has filled up the back cover and a good deal of the inside cover. Much of my notes would not mean anything to others unless I explained them. The bottom line is that the guitar, at least in my hands, requires constant repetition for me to finally master a phrase, lick, scale passage, chord change or what have you. Estudio Brillante is a long term project. For sure the most difficult piece I have attempted. Why do I do it? Because I love it. The first time I heard it I was smitten by it. I have had the music for over 20 years and only began learning it about 4 years ago. I have had it memorized for a long time, it's just getting it to performance level that has taken so long. For a long, long time my left hand & arm would become fatigued trying to play through it just one. Now I am more relaxed and can get through it 5, 6, maybe 7 times or more before I become that fatigued. Those of you out there who have worked on this compostion know what I mean. Christopher Parkening says the piece is "extremely difficult." I know now that he wasn't kidding.

Today's Practice:

The highlighted section in the above photos shows a segment that I practiced this morning for a total of 100 reps. It isn't difficult, but I am trying to reach a point where I make the chord change / position shift flawlessly and evenly every time, with no clicks, rattles, buzzes or string squeaks. This was "focused practice." You should zero in on something specific such as this when you practice. Slowly but surely it get better, your playing becomes stronger. The following photo is of the back cover that is filled up with my "Practice Diary" notations.

The following photo is a detail of the practice notes I have made in my copy of Tarrega's Estudio Brillante.

The music notation I have written is an exercise I created for the left han. The dates tells me how many times I executed that exercise on that given date. You can see that I worked at it on January 4, 2009,l January 5, 2009, February 2nd 2009. Oh, I also see January n16, 2009. The section of the song that I created ti=his exercise for is still giving me troube, and NO WONDER: I have not been practicing the exercise or the musical passage enough! So you can also see that these notes reminde me of that so I practiced it again on August 19, 2012. And so it goes.

Two More Pix of my Estudio Brillante Music "Diary"

Stage Fright And I

I got away from playing the guitar for people for well over 15 years. Mostly it was becaus my photography career took over. It was just as well because even though I love the music and the guitar, I was never comfortable with performing. The nervousness was terrible. Playing in a noisy bar or at a private party was one thing, even playing in a wedding ceremony wasn't too bad because the focus was not on me. Every time I got into a situation where I was the focus of attention the stage fright was horrible. I think back about performing in a Christopher Parkening master class in front of all the other student guitarists and I wonder how I ever got through it. This has always bothered me because I want to be in CONTROL of my thoughts and actions. I want to overcome stage fright, or "performance anxiety" which some call it. There are two key things in doing so. You must know your material and you must go out and perform as much as possible. In the past four years I have been re-learning my repertoire and putting myself out there playing in front of people again. Last December I played a gig at a musicians Christmas party. All eyes were on me as I played about a 20 minute set. I fumbled in the usual spots in some of the songs, played most of them OK. The listeners LOVED it. I got some really good feedback. However, I was a nervous wreck. I was sweating so much it flowed off my face and into my eyes with a burning sensation. Profuse sweating. I remember experiencing that years ago. On other occasions my hands would shake. Sometimes both would occur. Three Summers ago I played an outdoor lunchtime concert in down town Watertown. I thought people would be sitting around eating their lunch and chatting. I was not prepared for what I got: Everyone sitting quietly, hanging on every note I played. My mind was racing with ways I could excuse myself and flee. The worst part of it was I had to fill up two whole hours! Yikes. But I got through it. Each time gets a little better.

Sor Study #2 Played by Me at Depauville Library August 15, 2012

Anyhow, last Wednesday I played a recital type situation at the library in Depauville, NY. There were about 25 people there. One of the things I did was introduce myself to folks as they arrived and mingled a bit before the show. That was a big help. Then when it was time for the show I stood before the audience and formally inroduced myself and talked a few minutes. I was 100% relaxed, feeling GOOD, comfortable with the situation. They settled down, I sat down with the guitar and formed an A major chord to start a fairly easy etude by Matteo Carcassi. At that moment my mouth went dry. My mind went off somewhere and I couldn't remember what I was about to play. So I said something to the audience, my hands began to tremble, and I proceeded to play an alternate piece (also by Carcassi). Mentally I more or less tried to downplay the anxiety. The shaking hands were not anyway near as bad as when that would happen in the past, and, I managed to not break out into a sweat. Overall the show went well but I simply abandoned some of the pieces I was going to play, I had a few memory lapses, and I fumbled in, once again, some of the same spots in the same pieces that I frequently fumble. That means I must still work on those segments. Some selections I played well and was pleased with how I performed the. Romance was one of them. Lagrima by Francisco tarrega and three other Tarrega etudes came off especially well. I fumbled a spot in Carcassi study #19 that I thought I had down so well i would never fumble it again. That's what is confounding. Playing something well dozens or hundreds of times and then suddenly fumble it or simply have an unexplainable memory lapse. It's akin to singers forgetting song lyrics. Anyhow, I plan to keep at it and learn how to master the stage, stage fright, and gain command of the audience. The Better Half doesn't understand why I want to do that. But it's simple: I want to be in control of myself, not let my emotions and situations control me.

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SU Football Team at Fort Drum

What did I do today?
Well, I had a couple of hours of good guitar practice. I caught up my check book and took care of some other paper work. Then, this afternoon I photographed the Syracuse University football team as they practiced at Fort Drum, NY. Major General Mark Milley and SU football coach Doug Marrone were there and appear in one of these photos.

These photos were made for the Post-Standard newspaper. You can see more at www.syracuse.com

Good night all.

Photoshop Disappearing Act At Boldt Castle

I have been having a busy Summer which includes photographing numerous weddings. The following photo came from a wedding two weeks ago at Boldt Castle on Heart Island in the St. Lawrence River at Alexandria Bay, NY. The castle is an interesting place to have a wedding, however, it is still open to the public while one's wedding is in progress. So passersby can appear in the background of your photos. In the old days of film it was a lot of trouble trying to get unwanted folks removed from your photos. Today it is no surprise that we can do it with the magic of Photoshop. It's still preferable to make a photo the way you want it as opposed to tinkering with it afterward in Photoshop. In this photo I simply used the clone tool to copy stones and flowers over the offending pedestrians.

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On Wednesday I'll be doing a guitar recital at the Depauville library. The following is a promo piece I created for the event.