Melancholy Baby on Wheels

June 27, 2010 By

Because being in the passenger seat lets me play with my camera settings, I can make high noon on a cloudless summer’s day into a moody twilight.

I have no idea why those cars had their headlights on unless they were foreign made cars like my old Saab where the lights just never turned off.  Never.

The headlights also burned out every two years as well.

But, on this beautiful, sunny early summer’s day at around 10:00 AM in the morning crossing the Newport/Pell bridge into downtown Newport itself, darkness was falling and the span of the bridge, at least for some of us, yet to be crossed.

Moods.  They travel with me over hill, dale, and Newport Bay.

©Pat Coakley 2010

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

**Select photographs from this blog and my wider archive can be purchased or licensed at www.patcoakley.com

Print Friendly
Filed Under: AUTOMOBILE, BEHIND THE WHEEL SERIES, Blurred is Good, DRIVING PHOTOS, Melancholy Baby, Passing of Time, technology, Transportation Tagged With: , ,

The Beauty of Weather

June 22, 2009 By

HEADLIGHTSREV2F

I am leaving the house in a moment to got to the wake of the 95 year old mother of my friend of over 45 years.  It is raining– as it has been raining for the past days–or has it been weeks?  It seems forever.

I’ll drive through twilight and stop at intersections and return to taking  photos in the rain which I started last year.  When I started they dazzled me–the headlights, the traffic lights, then, with taking too many of them, I seemed to capture less magic.  Perhaps. I was trying too hard?

I am a year older, closer to that purported burst of spectral white, so I think I’ll try again for weather magic on my way to bear witness to a natural beauty who did not have to try hard to dazzle.

Her name was Mona.

Sometimes thinking back and going back to beauty is the best way to honor a soft, sweet soul as she passes through the lights.

©Pat Coakley

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

©Pat Coakley 2009

Photographs Cannot Be Used Without Written Permission

Print Friendly
Filed Under: Aging, Beauty, Creativity, DRIVING PHOTOS, Life, Personal, Photography, WEATHER Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

On Route

April 15, 2009 By

sunrise495sh

When you travel rural roads in the early, early morning you forget that there are other travelers.

You feel you have the world to yourself for a few brief moments.

Then, you notice the sky driving by an unfamiliar parking lot and you drive in behind the building to get a better view.

Click. Click. Click.

It takes multiple exposures to show proof of early morning life: the world does not belong to you.

It belongs to 47 year old Susan Boyle,  a recent contestant on the TV show, “Britian’s Got Talent”.

Watch this and see if you don’t agree:

WATCH

©PAT COAKLEY 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Print Friendly
Filed Under: ART IS WHERE YOU FIND IT, Creativity, DRIVING PHOTOS, Life, Personal, Photography Tagged With: , , , , ,

“Oh, No. I’m Not Going Over THAT.”

March 10, 2009 By

springbridge

There are some bridges I won’t cross.  Like a jumper horse that gallops along full speed and then suddenly rears up, “Oh, no, you don’t—I’m not going over THAT!”

But this gentle bridge in my town is  not one of them.

When there is no one else on the roads, I like to cross it and say, “See.  Look at me.  Bridges aren’t so bad.”

But, some of them are.

Others can go over them talking on their cellphone, eating, drinking coffee, not remembering they are on a bridge.  There’s a bridge in Mackinac, Michigan (webviews) that is five miles long and they have to employ “drivers” at the toll booths at both ends for those cars that “rear” up at the last minute and confess to the toll collector their fears.

I guess they have found out that there are many folks who lose nerve right at the last minute  and if they rear up in any number they clog  bridge  traffic.

I wonder if that infamous “Bridge to Nowhere” had monies for surrogate drivers “to nowhere”.

Maybe if it was a bridge that went nowhere, I wouldn’t mind going over it.  It’s fear, of course, that makes a horse refuse to jump, or a driver refuse to cross.  Irrational or rational fears feel the same, by the way.

What I can’t figure out is whether it’s fear of the journey or the destination.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

©Pat Coakley 2009

Print Friendly
Filed Under: 1, ANXIETY 2.0, BEHIND THE WHEEL SERIES, Creativity, DRIVING PHOTOS, Life, Personal, Photography Tagged With: , , , , ,

Truth

February 5, 2009 By

twilight

There is very little left about winter that I am enjoying except driving home at twilight.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Print Friendly
Filed Under: DRIVING PHOTOS, Personal, Photography, Winter Tagged With: , , , ,

Rapture Gone Wrong

February 4, 2009 By

storminterstate2

Rapture.

From the Latin, meaning “carried away”.

I got carried away alright.  Not for the first time, I might add.  But, this is the first time I have posted something that never in a million years would I ever post.  It would have been “deleted” or  marked, “Rapture Gone Wrong”.  What is the equivalent of tearing up an 8X10 in the digital world?  I would have done it to this image.

I began with an idea in mind: SAPCC ‘s theme this week was “Rapture”.   My idea was to take a perfectly nice non-rapturous object like a Regency truck (what better way to be carried away than in an actual carrier, I said to myself) from my Trucks and Train series.  It was turning to go north on the interstate that cuts through my town.

Then, I set about to make it rapturous and, realized, in the process, that I got so carried away that I should enter this in the “Rapture Gone Wrong” contest.  I went through stages of realizing that the image simply wasn’t any good no matter how much time spent or how many tricks I applied to it.  I had made a fundamentally wrong decision early on in the process and then spent the bulk of the time trying to work out of a hole by digging it deeper rather than simply starting over.  I actually did another image that did meet my approval standards in the rapture department but decided to post this one– as it is more important in the long run, in one particular life lesson way.  I am going to keep a picture of it (albeit a small one) visible near my computer so I remember it.

The lesson for me is simply put:  the same process that brings us something valuable also leads to crap.  Creativity, like rapture itself is described and defined,  can feel logical at the same time it breaks all the rules and it is a powerful state of anarchy.  You feel the wind is at your back.  And, it is.  Until, it isn’t.  And, then you are simply in a fundamentally chaotic state that performs a coup d’etat on your sensibilities and tosses you around like a cork on fifty foot seas.  When the storm blows over and you assess where you are and what you have done, one hears the familiar post-rapture refrain:

“Now, what in hell was I thinking?”

Like the little girl with the curl, when rapture is good it is very very good but when rapture goes bad, well, it’s really just…dreadful.

Onward.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Check HERE to see who managed respectable rapture  submissions

Print Friendly
Filed Under: Creativity, DRIVING PHOTOS, Failure Tagged With: , , ,

BRIDGE LIMBO

January 31, 2009 By

lowclearance2

“Low Clearance” the train trestle said.

Yikes.

No kidding, Dick Tracy.

I suggest they repaint the trestle to “Bridge Limbo”, a engineering version of the African dance meant to symbolize the whole cycle of life.

In Bridge Limbo, if you don’t make it under the bridge, the cycle of life ends in a nasty crunching crashing steel jaggedy sound followed by a simple:

Booooooingggggg!!

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Print Friendly
Filed Under: BEHIND THE WHEEL SERIES, Creativity, Dance, DRIVING PHOTOS, Humor, Life, Personal, Photography Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

TRUCKS and TRAINS, THE SERIES

January 26, 2009 By

012809fedexl

Trucks and trains.  I love them AND  I live in a town with two industrial parks and two exits off a major interstate and commuter rail.    I’ve got trucks and trains coming and going all day long as well as most of the night.  Photography for Shut-Ins 202 shall be Trucks and Trains.

I am going to try and take the best photos of trucks and trains in the coming month that I can.  My friend who came for lunch on Saturday loves Schneider National trucks and thinks I should sell my motion photos of trucks to them.

Good idea!  But, first, I have to find a Schneider truck!  They are bright orange so I should be able to pick them out.

This morning, I begin this series with FED EX.  They can never sneak into town, can they?  Their logo emerges through snow, sleet, torrential rain and practically jumps out at you in the early morning sun.

Tomorrow, who knows?  Maybe a Schneider or a Regency, the latter has a hub here so my chances for coming across a Regency or two are high.

My future as a trucks and train photographer begins one cab and caboose at a time.

Caboose.  I love that word.

Do you have a favorite truck?

(You have to admit—it’s a refreshing question and not often asked!)

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Print Friendly
Filed Under: Creativity, DRIVING PHOTOS, Life, MOTION PHOTOGRAPHY, Personal, Photography, Photography for Shut Ins, THE SERIES, Transportation, Trucks and Trains

The O Train

January 18, 2009 By

otrain

Passing by The “O” Train on my way to DC.

This is the fourth in my series called “Driving to the Inaugural.”   I am driving from my computer with the assistance of memory and past images and television and internet. Triple A doesn’t have road service for this journey even though I have a premium membership.  Here are the others in the series:

Day One

Day Two

Day Three

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Print Friendly
Filed Under: Barack Obama, BEHIND THE WHEEL SERIES, DRIVING PHOTOS, Driving to the Inaugural Series, Photography, Train Travel Tagged With: , , ,

Arlington National Cemetery

January 17, 2009 By

jfktax09

This is the second in my “Driving to the Inaugural” series.  I am driving from my computer with the assistance of memory and past images. Triple A doesn’t have road service for this journey even though I have a premium membership.  Here are the other post in the series:

Day One

_________________________________________________________

Arriving in DC before an inaugural (and before they close the bridges to automobile traffic)  gives you time to take a taxi to Arlington National Cemetery.  That is Lee’s Mansion up on the hill through the windshield.

In the course of one year, four million people visit this cemetery.  This weekend alone might account for an additional million if crowd estimates are at all correct.

It was first consecrated as a national cemetery in June 1864 by then Secretary of War, Edwin M.  Stanton, a former rival of President Lincoln’s, who pronounced immediately after his death in April, 1965, “Now he belongs to the ages.”

There are 300,000 men and women interred in Arlington including military from the Revolutionary War right up to today’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert Kennedy.  Included in the three hundred thousand, located in Section 27, are more than 3,800 former slaves, called “Contrabands” during the Civil War. Their headstones are designated with the word “Civilian” or “Citizen.”

There shall be no burials at Arlington on Monday and Tuesday of inaugural week as there normally would be.

But, on Wednesday, January 21 2008, twenty burials are scheduled as the nation resumes bearing witness to our dead and Citizen Obama takes up the official business of the living.

As he gives his inaugural address if he looks just slightly to his right,  I believe he might be able to see Lee’s mansion and the grounds that contain our history.

If this is not poetry, people, I do not know what is.

©Pat Coakley 2009

PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION

Facts about Arlington National Cemetery available on the official website:

Arlington National Cemetery

Print Friendly
Filed Under: 2009, Creativity, DRIVING PHOTOS, Driving to the Inaugural Series, ELECTION 2008, Inauguration, Life, Personal Tagged With: , , , ,
«Older Posts