I thought these were scallions with couture stems from the House of Chanel until I was told they were wild leeks.
Prime Numbers
July 1, 2012 By
I am now on my fifth scale in four years, the top one: FitBit Aria WiFi scale. ( The fifth is not pictured because I gave it away.) The new one has already given me the wrong number but this time it is recorded instantly in my wireless “cloud” account and I can’t pretend I didn’t see it. Fitbit doesn’t offer a delete function.
I’m trying to keep myself honest and it is humbling.
I prefer pie.
Guitar Man at Inaugural Concert
January 19, 2009 By
I am posting a series of photos today of the Inaugural Concert performed in front of the Lincoln Memorial on Sunday, the 18th. I am not a concert goer so photographing performers is a new subject. I have the advantage, though, of loving music and having a HD set in my living room that allows me to zoom up and down with my camera with no one obstructing my view!
Hey, maybe I could have been a rocker.
Nah.
But, I enjoyed taking these shots and was glad I was alone so no one would be passing by the living room giving me worried looks as I appeared to be dancing while photographing the TV screen.
Photography for Shut-Ins. I’m not kidding. It’s my niche.
I hope you enjoy these but most of all I hope you heard the concert.
©Pat Coakley 2009
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This is the sixth post 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:
At Last, The Sun
December 22, 2008 By
At last, the sun and with it, sub zero temperatures.
The ride yesterday was two hands on the wheel blizzard driving. This morning after deicing and warming the car, god bless the battery, I left for home and before the windshield was covered in road goop, I realized what taking photos behind the wheel with the sun out actually looks like.
I think this is my first motion, non stormy day, behind the wheel photo. Seriously, light sure makes a difference in photography, doesn’t it?
I’ll have to try it more often.
©Pat Coakley 2008
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Passenger Side
December 20, 2008 By
I am home after an early morning shoot that produced an almost filled 8G card. Most will not see the light of day again. This is my third post of this card and I probably only have two more that I like. If your goal is motion photography behind the wheel, you need to take a chapter from the police chief in the movie, “Jaws”. He was the first one to actually see the shark and he staggered into the boat cabin to tell his mates, “We need a bigger boat”.
In this type of photography, you need a bigger gig card and equal size humility. You have to throw out images that are close to what you want but not quite all there. You are tempted to say, “Oh, that’s OK” and its not. I have about 400 that fall in that category on this card alone and only five that make the real cut.
If this were still analog photography, I couldn’t afford to do it.
B&H has good deals on gig cards but so far the humility card is not for sale. We’re on our own for that one.
©Pat Coakley 2008
AFTER THE STORM
December 20, 2008 By
It’s 7:30 AM and technically the storm is over. 12 inches as they predicted. Three more in flurries supposed to fly the rest of the day. Another storm is predicted for tomorrow. The weather men and women on the TV are so damn happy you’d think they had been dipped in chocolate.
©Pat Coakley 2008
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
Before the Storm
December 19, 2008 By
If you live in New England, you know this sky. It means a snow storm is coming.
As I went out around mid morning to do a few last minute errands and to do my daily shoot, I wanted to capture that “before the storm” sky in some way that captured both the physical sky itself as well as the smell of steel in the air that also is a sign that significant snow is imminent.
I passed by the town cemetery and said well, here we have our steel, our sky, as well as the ominous feeling that is attached to the first of the season’s storm warnings as well.
I drove in and while I was taking the photo, a school bus went by filled with students being released early from school.
Click. That’s just about right for there is always that in a storm in New England: No School.
Yea!
You never forget what a great feeling that is no matter how many inches fall nor how many years have passed since you last rode the bus home.
©Pat Coakley 2008
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
Pedestrian
December 12, 2008 By
Well, baby, it’s raining outside and how!
Third day. Today it’s raining so hard that it sounds like sleet. Wait. It is sleet. I must be on the rain/sleet line.
Whatever. It’s been raining so long I’m now into portrait photography in the rain behind my wheel.
The good thing? I won’t have to get a model release.
The bad news?
Who would want it?
The car is waiting for me, my camera bag and robin’s egg blue Maine rubber slicker that gives me the senior Darth Vader look. Chic.
I am a sight to behold. My neighbors who don’t know me must think I’m a forensic photographer called out to photograph traffic accidents caused by the bad weather.
The stock market appears ready to take another dive today. The apocalypse, weather wise, already appears to be here. My 63 year old anxiety multi-layer cake has all the ingredients to explode in the oven.
But, I feel this crazy flicker of hope as I don my slicker. My attitude is a creative battle every day, and that war I am winning. Not because my output is anymore definite than the features of this pedestrian but because I’m out, in the frame not the margins, every day going out and stalking the ordinary. Some days, like the past two, stalking in a robin’s egg blue slicker.
My latest shots are zooming while stopping or starting for a stoplight. C’mon, isn’t that why the invented a zoom lens?
I call them my “hope” shots as in hope I don’t get in an accident shots.
I’ll post some later.
©Pat Coakley 2008
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More Fun Than Monkeys
December 11, 2008 By
Seriously. Why wouldn’t any photographer want to have their car washed every day?
The question is more along the lines of how can we afford to do it.
But, I’m now asking all my friends and family to save their ValPac coupons (they come in the mail weekly) and I am going to create “Art of the Car Wash” Exhibition. Coming first (and perhaps only) to this blog but I do not care.
Join me, would you, wherever you are in the world? You have an automatic car wash near you, right? Drive on in. It’s more fun than a barrel of monkeys.
And, barrels of monkeys are alot of fun.
I hear.
©Pat Coakley 2008
PHOTOGRAPHS CANNOT BE USED WITHOUT WRITTEN PERMISSION
Now Playing
December 10, 2008 By
The theme for SPACC this week was from one who says he likes to stir things up: the challenge was”Cleavage” but specifically no chest shots. Say, what? What else is there?
So, I took the spoon and stirred to an alternate meaning more to my liking: “separation” “distance” and “fissure”. To separate from reality is my take, a subject more or less visible most of the time in creative people.
My first petty thought, however, was to take the low road and respond to what I thought was a needlessly cumbersome challenge with a photo of my toe cleavage because I have one nasty looking big toe. (Yeah, I’m single for a reason, people, not all reasons attributable to the “other” by any means.)
Then, vanity and better angels of judgment (do “gotcha” games ever really contribute to contentment?) nudged my creativity to where it should have been in the first place: focus on whatever nuance of the word does spark my imagination. This freed me to turn off low road onto creative road (which was the goal of the pot stirrer in the first place) and I just chose a meaning that had resonance with me: separation from reality.
So, early Sunday migrainy morning, I went in search of anything quite frankly that would make me feel better. I was not thinking of this challenge.
I passed this long abandoned Drive-In movie screen, drove on about 500 yards, and then turned around. The SPACC photo radar had beeped.
I believe I had me some fissure and reality separation.
It is now pretty much deserted but off to the left of the screen was some earth moving equipment and piles of well…earth. Perhaps, the beginnings of a new place of business was underway? I decided to park in front of the screen as if I had come for a movie as we used to do “back in the day”.
The movie I remember seeing for sure at the Drive-In (We would see first run movies at Drive-Ins all the time in the fifties for you kids out there) was Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” with Janet Leigh, a mammary delight to be sure, if I recall correctly. We had a full car so some of us sat along side the car in lawn chairs. This photo would be better in my mind if there were some lawn chairs. If I had Annie Leibovitz’s budget and assistants I would have snapped my fingers. But, alas. Reality bites. No lawn chairs.
I left the car running for a sense of presence, the “reality” part of the separation. “Now and Then” came to mind. The immediacy with the brake lights and the exhaust fumes seemed a natural way to suggest “now”. The expressionless gaping white screen, pock marked, battered by years of weather and lack of use, was clearly “then”. So, frissure and separation elements complete. Check. Check. Somewhere outside of the car and beyond the screen lay the truth.
Fissure Feature Top frame (for me) is this: here we have someone who is waiting for a show to start that is so not going to start ever again and yet here she sits: waiting. ( I think I feel that way about the stock market, too–but let’s not get started on that!)
Fissure Feature Bottom frame is this (again, for me): when reality fails you, use your imagination.
Perfect for the arc of this challenge, me thinks–and a slap to my tousled head to keep my eye on the plus sign, not the minus. It’s what you had in mind all along, right, Mt. Brooks?
There are two shots and two blends of black and white and color because, of course, this is a Freakin’ Double Frissure Feature.
Say that three times fast. It sounds like cleavage.
©Pat Coakley 2008
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Here are other participants:
