kelseybacon.com

I cannot believe it is April already, and the end of it at that!  Where have the last 2 and a half months gone?  I have of course sold off some of the Hasselblad gear, and have moved into a basic Nikon set-up.  By basic I mean I have a decent camera and some basic lenses, though I have just picked up my first Prime, a 50mm f/1.8.  Wow!  Was that ever worth the price!?  It is the most perfect lens I have ever owned apart from my Hasselblad 80mm.  The shallow depth of field has been so amazing and such a treat and a pleasure to work with in the week since I bought it.  I have to admit that it is difficult to figure out just what I want to get next; a new flash for location work, or another prime lens for architectural work?  I have my eye on a 20mm f/2.8 that should prove wonderful for buildings, weddings, and for some indoor shots, especially in these small British homes.  Whatever the case, I am sold on the 50mm!  Here are some samples!

I ask this question because I get occasional e-mails from Classmates.com, telling me that someone signed my guest book.  Naturally, almost everyone on there is a stranger to me.  So I wonder, am I more forgetful than I remember, or do these people actually remember me? 

Or is it just Classmates pairing random people who might actually have known each other in order to cause me to log in to see the ads on their page and increase their viewers, and hence their potential ad revenue?  ‘Cause let’s face it, the site is crap, and I hardly ever go there. 

Just a question… 

There is a dude with a video of a guy getting run over at a Monster Truck Rally at this link:

http://jallen285.blogspot.com/2009/01/monster-truck-accident.html

Don’t go and see it, whatever you do. But if you do, remember kids, this is why you should always look BOTH ways before crossing the Monster Truck Rally! You may remember this story. It was the guy who was promoting the safety of Monster Truck Rallies just after a part flew off and hit that kid in Seattle. This guy must have had a bumper sticker on his car that said “My other Karma is a Monster Truck!”

Far away thoughts sometimes fill my mind like clouds on a stormy day.  They are dreams, not of being someone else, or being someplace else, but of doing something else.  I dream of changing the landscape each day, of doing what makes me happy and of making a substantial enough of a living at it that I can come home after half a day of work and be with the ones I love.  I dream of being able to move my family to a better neighbourhood, and of being able to spend time with my friends.  The centre of all these thoughts?  Photography. 

I wish only to be able to photograph things, to see them in a new way, and to capture that vision for others to see.  It could be a dream car, a dream girl, or a nightmarish scene in an old house, but be it what it is, I want to envision it and capture it and share it with the world.  I want to escape shame and capture the sights that my mind conjures up without the judgement of narrow minded people and short sighted ideas.  I am not talking about making dirty pictures, but making creative ones!  I am on about seeing outside the box, and capturing images that spur the imagination to seeing things in a new way, unconventional to modern society.  Why shouldn’t  a cop and a prostitute be seen dancing on the ceiling of a basement room?  Don’t they do that in their own way now?  How about a priest and a choir girl?  How about a crucifixion with a bull on the centre cross?  Whatever the idea, how about truly creating it in a hard format that others can experience?

I often find that the true medium when expressed fully is judged for content that is in a single image what a book might be with all of its chapters and words to tell of a single controversial thought.  If the story is too harsh or stirs too much inside other people then it is rejected under the form and label of pornography, or some other thought limiting broad brush that paints the black swath of censorship across it, hiding it from the view of others who might judge it fairly. 

The thoughts swirl around like a hurricane, and with them comes the force of the hurricane.  For the rebellious, the wall against which we beat our heads only makes us want to beat our heads harder against it, knowing that one day it must be beaten down, and we must be free! 

Kelsey

This is a source of pain for me throughout my life.  When I was a kid it was neighbourhood kids in packs chasing me around for being the new kid, which I often was, of because I was a little different to them, which I always was.  Was I that different?  No.  Mostly I just never understood the pecking orders, and did not adhere to them.  Stuff that in the grand scheme of thing just don’t matter. 

Currently neighbourhood kids are a nuance because out house is down an embankment.  The road is almost up to the ceiling of our living room, so when we look out the windows, the fence out front prevents most of our view of the road.  That also means that when a ball is kicked off the road, it almost invariably hits one of our living room windows.  We were out in the street for three years or so asking the kids to please go find another place to play, or just kick in the uphill direction because when they did, the ball would not pound someone’s window. 

Finally a year of quiet has passed us with the ball issue.  But that is just the ball.  Some years ago we were out in our back yard as a family; one of the rare times we go out because we are much more inclined to be indoors due to weather or preference, or disgust with the idea of our neighbourhood.  I saw the little girl who lives behind us looking through the back fence.  After a while I looked again, and she was still there. 

I said “Hi Charlie, ” to her, and she vanished.  That was a starting point of her harassing our home or our family every time we saw her, and sometimes when we did not see her.  For example, my wife was pregnant last year, and on crutches.  As we walked a few streets over, Charlie came past us in the other direction.  We ignored her for the most part, except to avoid stepping on her as we went.  Her little nine year old eyes met mine for a second and she said, “fucking twats.”  That is an example of a typical encounter with her.  We have also had to deal with her standing out in front of our house yelling obscenities to our windows, and when we try to chase her off, she and her family use the excuse that it is a public street and she can play in it.  Her parents stand behind whatever she says, so if she says she was not, then she was not.

Fair enough, you would think this is just a matter of bourdon of proof.  Try filming something or taking pictures in the UK if it is off your property.  You will get everything up to the accusation of being a pervert for taking a picture of a child throwing stones at your windows.  Sadly, I know this from personal experience.  I am told I can put in security cameras, but if they can see the footpath (sidewalk) in front of my house at all, then that is not allowed.  Where do you think the kids are when they throw things at our windows?

So what now?  I have mud pelted all over my house, and as of yesterday at 3:30PM, they have upgraded to eggs.  The most aggravating thing is that fir the first time in a long time I actually saw a silhouette of a child in the act.  I could not tell you if it was Charlie, or if it was another boy who is pissed off at JJ because he pushed JJ into his little sister, and now says that JJ pushed his little sister.  Or it could be Dylan, as he is really the only one in our house that makes contact with anyone who lives in this neighbourhood. 

Or it could have just been for fun because our windows are so easy to hit. 

Kelsey

Worcester, England

Oh good, the end of the world is finally drawing near (again!).  As it turns out, at the winter solstice in 2012, the Aztec calendar runs out, so that apparently means it is the end of the world.  So I am very seriously considering the possibility that the world may actually end on the 31 December 2009.  After all, that is exactly when my calendar runs out.  Really, what makes the Aztecs so damned smart?  Who says the guy in the sweat shop who made my calendar is not smarter?  He certainly is a lot more contemporary, and has a lot more of an idea what is going on nowadays than the Aztecs could have known.  Nostradamus was not an Aztec was he?  There was that whole war against America thing that Orson Wells talked about which was waged by a middle easterner just before the end of time.  Could that guy have been Osama Bin Laden? 

Well, what ever the case, the end of the world is undoubtedly here, just like it was when Hale Bop last passed, or in 1890 when Joseph Smith was supposed to have seen the face of Christ, but instead, Polygamy was dumped in favour of statehood for Utah, or 1975 when the Jehovah’s Witnesses sold their houses because Heaven was full of its 144,000 (Don’t bother asking them, I am sure they forgot this little fact by 1980), or the year 2,000 when God or something was going to shut off all the traffic lights and we were all going to die in 18th century darkness.  (Oh how terrible that all the cause of the problems suddenly correct themselves by shutting themselves off.  Kind of like suicide bombers.)

But just in case, I am NOT going to cash in my retirement account and build an End Of The World shelter under my house.  I am somehow sure that the Aztecs knew nothing of our time just as I know nothing about the robots at the end of A.I. that were on an archeological dig in the ice when they found David.  I like to keep on plodding along till the great big bus of time kicks me off the mortal coil however it does. 

I have had the D300 for 18 days now, and have seldom had the chance to get outside with it.  That is mostly because of the extreme cold temperatures here in Britain for the last couple of weeks.  I don’t think it is too cold for the camera, or for me.  It is my six month old baby girl I am concerned about. 

One of the big changes from the Sony or the Hasselblad has been the addition of more settings than the standard B&W or Sepia settings the Sony had.  (Obviously the Hasselblad required a change of film for these results.)  The D300 has quite a few setting that affect the colouring of the image, and some require me to shoot in those settings, while others can be edited in camera post shooting.

Naturally, if you forget what you had set in the day before, and you walk all the way up Fort Royal Hill, shoot some pictures, then walk down again with a hungry baby howling for food, well let’s just say the results may not be what was expected. 

I have now got hold of a Polarizer filter for the lens, so that should help out with sky; window, water, car, and other shots.  Also on the way is a spare battery to prevent me running out of power in the middle of a shoot.  I also have a spare CF card now.  I got an 8GB last week.  I ordered an Extreme IV from Bigpockets.co.uk, but they sent me an Extreme III.  It doesn’t give me the full speed of the camera, but I can hit 6 frames per second for 15 shots running before I get lag.  I will still keep my eye open for an Extreme IV, but I got this one with a partial refund for the wrong item sent at only £5.00, so I can’t much complain. 

Though my lens is low end, I figure I can get started with it, it makes a great travel lens, and it is low cost if anything goes wrong bashing it around.  Further, I can rent for this camera at a reasonable price.  Plus, it has a decent wide angle view to it for those round town shots I want here in the UK before we leave for America.  Here is an example of a shot I took just over the road from the Slug and Lettuce in Worcester. 

Again, it is not a perfect lens, but for my personal photos, it beat waiting another year before I can afford high end glass, leaving me with nothing to photograph with.  There are a lot of people out there who are great photographers that advise people to go for good glass first, then worry about a high end camera.  I took it in, then felt I needed a camera I would be excited enough to buy glass for.  Plus, it had to be able to last long enough, not just against future upgraded models that will be released, but also physically in the demanding environments I tend to end up in.  We are headed from rainy England later this year towards the deserts of Nevada, and California.  The Mojave is no mystery to me, I know it is a hell on earth for gear like this.  The D300 has good seals and is water resistant.  I think that will help.  I don’t have the advantage of being able to run back to a car in a sudden downpour.  I am usually on a bike, or worse yet, on foot. 

So there are a few tings I need to work out for myself before I can give a full view of how happy I am with this beast.  Mine came out of the box with a dead pixel that I will need to resolve under my UK warranty.  That means I will likely spend a week or more without it when I am willing to give it up for such a repair.  I need to be sure to get in the habit of checking my shooting settings for every new subject, and I should set up the custom shooting styles for what works best in the situations I find myself in.  All that done, I think I will be able to give a good review of the camera.

Following are some shots I have down with the D300 so far.  Some are with a Gorilla Pod DSLR.  Some are with on-camera flash ( I do not yet have an attachment flash).  All are with my hundred pounds eBay lens.  Many are hand held.  Most are shot at ISO 200 because I like clean shots, and I use tripods to make them rather than high ISO’s most of the time.

Photography is one of my favourite things in the world to do.  I would do it for free.  There is nothing better than having a great camera in hand and taking a look for those exact moments when the elements culminate in the exact image that I have in mind, or sometimes even better, the image just happens.  That is one of the reasons I do it.  The other reason I do it is the same reason I write.  I do it so there is a record of the life that people have lived for the ones who come after to have a window to peer into our time. 

Here are a couple of shots of my beautiful daughter!

.

Writing is a daily thing for me.  I try to write something every day, no matter how simple the topic, and no matter how little I think there is to write about.  That harkens back to those youthful days in school when the teacher would assign an open writing topic and many in the class, myself included, would complain that we did not know what to write about.  Finally in college, I decided that was just silly, and committed to myself that I would always be able to write something about just about anything.  Take for example, this topic.  Here I go writing away about nothing really, but making a topic out of it.  Now if I could just teach my kids how to do the same.

I have written for this Blog every day for the last three days.  There has never been a shortage of things to say.  What was lost seems to have been the "Publish" button.  I have not actually posted anything.  That’s because I felt that the things I was writing about came across as being too preachy.  It is bad enough being long winded, but preachy as well? 

Kelsey Bacon

I write for a lot of reasons.  I set out to explore the most specific reasons this morning, and found that the biggest reasons was the preservation of a legacy.  Obviously writing tells about the author.  But it also tells about the reader too.  Charles Dickens tells a little about where our society has been, and while works like Oliver helped to reform the work houses, they also remind us of how we have become better, and where we don’t want to return. 

One of my favourite family stories was a written down by my great-great grandmother, and it tells of her mother dying in childbirth in a tiny hamlet in Idaho.  The greatest thing is that I have a recording of my great-grandmother reading her mother’s story.  These were tragic events, and writing them down or recording them may not have meant too much at the time, but over an hundred years after Eliza King Kemsley died, those words have guided me as I have been able to explore Sublette, Idaho, where Eliza died, and Maidstone, England, where her husband came from, and his family lived for generations before.

I write in part because the stories I have to tell may not mean a lot to me, but they may to someone else.  I never know who, and I never know why.  But the things I write are here for whomever, and they are here to hopefully provide inspiration, or help.

There is one other really good reason for me to write.  It is practice.  I have always felt that writing is one of the most important skills a person can have, along with comprehension.  So I also write just to hone my skill at writing. 

I would guess that writing is my second love after photography.  I do both for many of the same reasons, to tell the future that I was here, and that this is where they came from.  It is my way of philosophising,  and finding the meaning in life, to preserve it as I see it, and to hopefully leave something that really should be remembered.

Kelsey Bacon