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I just got a knock on the door at 10:30 PM.  It was the woman next door.  She said that a guy over the road said that I was shooting pictures of her window.  Having not been out there at all this evening I could not think at that moment what they could be on about, and as I never take pictures of her windows, I certainly had nothing to relate it to or explain it clearly, so I did say that I do shoot scenery which he may have seen me doing.  We live on a hill, and the views are pretty good over the Faithful City. 

After thinking on it a bit more, I thought of what the guy over the road could be on about.  I have lived here for eight years, and have taken thousands of pictures of the scenes around here, being careful of my neighbour’s privacy because I know already how uptight they are.  What’s more, the window I would have to be shooting pictures of are covered by shoe polish and plastic bags all the time as a sign of how paranoid this neighbour is.  (Why they can’t just buy drapes, I am not to know.)  And the guy over the road, WHO is he?  I don’t mean that like, “who is he and I am after him,” but literally WHO?  I have never met a “Wayne!”  But that is no surprise here because I do not live in the kind of neighbourhood where you are going to be getting a housewarming party from the neighbours and a Fourth of July BBQ. 

So, without further adieu, here is a copy of the picture I think is in question…

I am often doing negative image shots of this pole as practice.  The light and the moon of course made this day a wonderful time to shoot.  The line at the top of the frame connects to the the neighbour’s house at left.  This was shot 4 November 2009 @ 7:50 AM.  That is apparently the same time that my neighbour over the road is peeking outside looking for paparazzi.  Clearly, none of my neighbour’s house is in the image, or you would be able to see what was holing up the phone line to the top left of frame.  As for the house that is in the photo, I do not consider that to be a highly invasive photo. 

Do I expect another knock on the door?  This time from the police?  Actually, yes, somehow I do.  People in the UK are just that petty, narrow, and prejudicial. 

The real killer?  The knock came from the woman whose sons are selling pot out of the house, and causing a constant flow of traffic out in front of our place.  There are the smells, and of course the occasional beer canning incident where they lads get drunk and throw their cans into our garden.  It is all really conducive to our raising children next door.  Can we move out now?  England is pissing us both off. 

People, not everybody who has a camera in hand is a seething pervert, and for fuck’s sake, say ‘hello’ to the people who live around you rather than just watching them out your windows and reporting them to everyone when you have no clue what they are doing! 

England sucks!

I think it is a funny thing how I am sat here for the last week watching the prices of camera equipment on eBay.  I have a lens listed that I am more than happy to get rid of.  It is in perfect condition and barely used two months, but I don’t really need or want this particular lens, and would much rather put the money to use on getting a lens I do want, and need.  The price on my lens went quickly from £0.99 to just over £100.  Now it is sat at £155, and has remained there for several days.  I would really love to get £250 out of it.  It should go for more, but I set my expectations and hopes lower. 

Then there is the lens I want to get.  It is a genuine Nikon lens, and it zooms from 17-55mm.  It also stays at f/2.8 through that entire range, which is G-R-E-A-T!!!  The only thing is, it retails for over £1,000!  I have found one new on eBay for £800.  Would I love that lens?  I think so!  I have tried it out in a shop, and WOW!!!  The focus is so fast, and dead silent.  It zooms beautifully, and feels like a rock hard piece of kit in my hands. 

So, I am watching the prices of the dream lens, hoping it will stay down while watching the price on my lens, hoping for it to go up! 

Yesterday I went out to shoot a wedding party, and though it was full of surprises, nothing was more surprising than when the entire party lined up against a wall to be shot. 

Really, they were a lot of wonderful people!  I wish I was better with names, and could have remembered everybody’s.  That is a skill I will have to work on.  But going back to the group living up to be shot, I was really surprised at how easy it was to get the whole group to do one thing or another.  I simply suggested at one point a semi circle behind a flower planter, and they all did just exactly that with no trouble at all.  They were all very easy to work with, and I am glad I was able to do it! 

I have reviewed all of the images, and I think just about every one of them will be workable in one way or another.  Today I am opening files in Photoshop and correcting colour casts, and clearing up some softness that I despise one of my lenses for.  What was I thinking buying a Tamron lens when I bought into this system because of the reputation of Nikon lenses?  I definitely must buy into the more expensive, but worthwhile Nikon lenses. 

I tried yesterday to fight against my habit of cropping too tightly.  That is why I kept hold of the Tamron 10-24 mm lens.  But even so, there were a couple of times I did crop it in my traditional manner, and of course, those shots are very satisfying, even with the imperfections that I pour over that nobody else may ever notice. 

For increased personal satisfaction, I am working backwards in the sense that I have rated the focus on each picture, and any that are unreasonably soft are the ones I am working on first.  That way when I do the bulk of them, the work on each will be lighter, and easier.  I am also a lot more patient on the first images I work on than I am on the last.  That’s important because after all, it is not the Devil that’s in the details, I am. 

There is a lot on my mind at the moment, but I am so tired I cannot exert much effort into doing anything about any of them.  So, with any luck, I will get a blog post done and say what I am thinking. 

First, on the Healthcare Debate in the US.  We need reform so everyone can have access to affordable care, not just those who can afford the care on offer now.  True it may be World Class, and true it may have all the bells and whistles, but can’t the United States of America lead the world once more and find a way to make it possible?  Something really good, like eliminating the Military and paying that money to care and rebuilding Social Security, and the economic recovery and education and improved infrastructure for travel and power and of source green energy.  With the diverted funds, it ought to take about five years to get everything up to scruff.  Not that I am against the military.  I am not.  But there will hopefully come a time when a country in this world will see military as outmoded and lead the world towards real peace. 

I read an article last night about a 61 year old in Stone Mountain, Georgia who told a woman in a Wal-Mart to shut her screaming kid up, or he’d do it for her.  Many comments followed to the effect of “Hell-No!” in total redneck drawl, and nearly half from my estimate suggested they would have killed the guy.

The friend who had posted the article on Facebook asked along with it, “what is this world coming to?”  I hate to tell you, but it is already at that place you feared it coming to.  After all, how many people walk around with thoughts of killing already in their heads if they really believe they would kill a man for slapping their kid.  I am not saying slapping a stranger’s kid is okay.  I am saying that the parent going to jail over it for ten to twenty years is not really going to do that much for the kid, is it?  Perhaps a more proportionate response would be better? 

Lastly, I get tired of hearing the term “Socialist” being bandied around in America like Communism was back in the 50’s.  Proper healthcare reform is ONLY going to occur when it is Socialist.  If healthcare is ALWAYS kept Capitalist, then there is ALWAYS going to be profit taken.  Maybe it is high time to realize that there are a few fields of work that SHOULD be done for more than profiteering! 

Broomfield High School was a difficult place for anyone who went there.  There were strict social lines that one must comply to, and failure to do so constituted a breach for which the violator risked alienation from the in crowd.  Lines were drawn along economic strata or along the ability to play football or some other sport.  And if you were not in, then you were virtually an untouchable.  To illustrate how bad it was, I draw up a memory of a girl in one of my classes who told a group of us how she had gone to a city in Nebraska with her latter jacket on, and while walking down the street she was stopped by a local girl who asked her what the “B” was for.  My classmate replied “Broomfield.”  The Nebraskan replied to her, “oh, is that that really stuck up place down by Boulder?”  Yes.  How wide had our reputation spread? 

It was in these circumstances that I knew John Adamo, a social misfit like myself, who had no chance of crossing the lines necessary for him to be acknowledged as anything more than general rubbish in the halls of our school.  He was not a quiet kid.  He was never well dressed.  I do even remember him carrying an odour with him that gave cause for other social misfits to avoid him.  He was not a bad person.  He was just difficult.  If you held any opinion different to him, he defended his not by attacking your opinion, or simply differing from it, but by attacking you more directly.  He certainly lacked social graces, like many of us did in that school.  But that was common, after all, since we were young, immature, and accustomed to being attacked directly for not fitting into the in crowd because our parents did not buy us new cars and brand named clothing.  My memories of John are such that it really did not surprise me this morning when I learned that the murder I had heard of some twelve years ago at Denver Wastewater Management turned out to have been his. 

The article in Westward paints John very much as the victim and does a careful job not to step on his grave.  It points out that the co-worker that murdered him had a very good work record for as long as John had been alive at that point.  It seems John had asked his murderer to stop washing his private truck in the company’s wash bay, as per policy.  The co-worker, Richard Brady, ignored him and carried on.  Richard was accustomed to taking liberties such as airing his tires or washing his truck in the convenient and powerful washers at work just like he and his fellows there always had done.  So while John defended company policy, he did so while breaching employee tradition. 

In another incident, Richard told John to stop parking his motorbike in the bays where the company trucks were meant to be parked, as a little tit-for-tat on Richard’s part. 

Ultimately Richard received and administrated leave so an investigation could be carried out to further deal with their arguing.  Four days with pay, the first blemish on Richard’s record in the previous five years that Denver Water keep residual records.  The morning Richard was to come back, he apparently carried a gun in with him.  He and John shared a lift on an elevator.  Richard claimed that John started in telling Richard, “I don’t care what you say, I am going to park my bike in the bay.”  According to Richard, John then hit him with his radio (John was an un-armed guard). 

Richard shot John six times, the disposed of his weapon. 

There is much more to the case than I am stating here, and I certainly don’t know Richard Brady. 

My point is that from the John Adamo I knew in high school, the news of his being murdered does not surprise me.  The John I remember was one who would have enforced company policy not because it was right, but because he could.  He would have broken tradition because it was a way of grating someone.  He may have instigated an argument with Richard in the elevator just before Richard murdered him, causing Richard to kill him rather than scare him, as Richard claimed he was intending to do.  As a character witness, I cannot in any way defend John’s innocence in this case.  But we will never know his side of the story because Richard Brady silenced him forever with gunshots to the head, leg, face, and hands.  I can only speculate the leg was first, the hands were John trying to protect his face as the gun was pointed to it after.  I can only guess John was afraid.  And I can only imagine what was spoken to him between shots to the leg, and then the kill shots in the head.  In all, he was shot six times. 

While John was the kind that could easily hove roused that kind of anger in another, Richard was a man with a wife and children.  He was on the verge of retirement.  Richard threw away John’s life in an obviously premeditated rage, and at the same time, he threw away 40 years of his own life to come.  At 56, plea-bargaining down his sentence from a mandatory life sentence probably didn’t do him much good! 

In the end, this was probably a clash of like personalities.  In the end, it was a tragic waste of two lives.  In the end shooting John only provided immediate gratification for a man unable to deal effectively or intelligently with someone who got on his nerves.  In the end, that never makes sense. 

On the 18th of July I went down to Bristol for a photowalk with other photographers that started in Castle Park at the Bandstand and went on to finally end at the Broad Quay Water Feature.  Our walk was one of about 900 that happened that day, and I was one of about 32,000 registered participants.  Our Walk Leader was Matthew Roach, who funnily enough is an Australian who has only been living in the UK for about a year. 

I came down via train from Worcester to Bristol Temple Meads Station, and hung about in the park and shopping centre nearby for over an hour as I had arrived early.  The next person to show

up was another Matt, who arrived about 15 minutes before any of the next participants.  Others trickled in and finally we got together and I was put in charge of the group photo!  (That’s me on the left looking like the biggest of the bunch!) 

Our walk took us past some dilapidated old buildings two ruined churches and Bristol Meads Station, past St. Mary’s Church, Queen Square, and finally the Broad Quay Water Feature.

This was a great group and I really enjoyed meeting everyone!  Many of the photos taken that day can be seen on Flickr in the Bristol Photo Walk pool.  There were a lot of excellent photographers there.  I would highly recommend this walk to anyone interested in Photography!  I will be looking out for it next year, no matter where I am living at that time!

Cheers!

Kelsey

The past few weeks have been a bit hectic on the personal side.  WE are trying to relocate the family to the United States, and there I plan to go more or less full time with photography as a business.  I will need to be more available to it to do so.  These past few weeks have involved re-working the home education process for the kids, then reworking it again.  But all told, in the end, that has been coming along just fine. 

I have had the chance to go shoot some photos at Stonehenge for the summer solstice in June.  That was a lot of fun!  There was essentially a Rave in the actual henge, and though I am not really that fond of so many people charging over the ancient Neolithic rocks, it was good to see them up close and to have a chance to wonder if the ancient ceremonies were more solemn or less than that.  I would imagine MORE!

On the 8th of July I shot pictures of my wife’s cousin for her Prom.  We expected to go over to find my mother-in-law and her sister primping Sharina up, but as it turns out, there were loads of people there, and the crowd was more like a small wedding than what we expected!  It took a little while to get in the groove of it, and I think I never really got my game on!  Still, we ended up with a few really great photos, and I think Sharina’s mom will be more than pleased. 

The next planned event is actually in September.  We are invited to a wedding, and I am shooting for the couple.  I am afraid for privacy I will be revealing no more than general info, but I am really excited about it and really look forward to getting some great photos of the bride and groom!  I am just sussing out how to gather any last bits of gear I will need to make the wedding photos more, and to give them that little bit of zing!  It promises to be a great occasion.  If the camera holds its end of the bargain the way it did for Sharina’s Prom, then I am sure I will end up with some really awesome photos!