Month: August 2025

“Saturday, I go out to play”.

1947, T-Bone Walker wrote this lyric. My hearing of it is Eva Cassidy.

Today, this old carcass got out to the Cary Downtown Park to test drive some new gear. A monochrome only sensor (take that Bayer Filter!) and some colored filters traditionally used on B&W film. I was today, a novitiate.

Another gray hair did a presentation at Cary Photographic Artists and I hit that thing like a bass to a lure! Turns out, odd duck that I am, been using Pentax gear forever. So I already had the glass.

Weather turned from ugly to wonderful. So test drive today aka “play” with a monochrome only sensor and colored filters (it’s a physics / visible spectrum / traditional B&W film thing). Saturday, in the park. Click each for full size.

A Horse, Of Course!

Halfway through a new edit of four (ok, five) photography sessions for an ex co-worker & /friend from my corporate days. Roughly a year before my exit/nearly fired by mainland China Managers, I’d been self teaching photography after a 2007 incident in Paris where a skilled pick pocket “liberated” an already obsolete Sony P&S from my jacket, hung on the back of a bistro chair while I went to the loo. But that’s not what this is about.

May 2009

A trusting co-worker and horse owner bought into my photography enthusiasm! We set up a shoot session at the stable where she boarded her horse. It was my first introduction to:

A. The inexplicable bond between horses & women.

B. Discovering all Stable owners are crazy.

C. I had a LOT to learn about making photographs. A lot!

So with enthusiasm and naivete, we made some photographs. Which I was embarrassed by. So I asked for and got a d0-over. Looking at the photographs I made for her 3, 7 and 11 years later (different horses), I can see the difference made by the experience of a wearing out s bunch of camera bodies and maybe 6oo to 700 K clicks. How to get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice!

Showtime!

Today, finished editing and posting (including a play I mis”played”) all the dress rehearsals of Cary Player production I photographed for Cary Citizen between 2011 and 2016! Online galleries are here, just click on the name: Cary Players Galleries.

And 2016 was, “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever!

Dress Rehearsal – Cary Arts Center – 28 November 2016

In Quiet and Peace

USS Andrew Jackson SSB(N) 619 – U.S. Navy Photo

Long ago, three addresses and two houses and one widower hood past, a summer visitation to Grandmas settled one evening to watch “Band of Brothers”. A grandson by marriage, left to his room while watching, finding it too violent. Which I thought was, “good on him”.

I cannot, not remember the scene where Dick Winters is portrayed on D+1, of 7 June 1944: “I would live this war one day at a time, and I promised myself that if I survived, I would find a small farm somewhere in the Pennsylvania countryside and spend the remainder of my life in quiet and peace.”

As an old man, I cherish my quiet and peace. And understand how much of modern noise is exactly that, just meaningless noise. I remarked today, to my very young neighbor and dog rescuer, that as much as her dog has learned to trust me, she still suffers from unimaginable treatment before her rescue as a puppy, from a Dumpster. Some scars are always felt.

Principals

Oct. of 2010 found me floundering, looking for a raison d’etre. Newly decoupled from an IT job at Lenovo nee IBM PC Company, south of Social Security and burnt from the inanity of self absorbed navel gazers who professed omnipotence, my tank was empty. Which properly worried my sweetheart about how we were going to get along.

So trying to find my bearings . I got a legit press pass from “Cary Citizen” and went to photograph “Celebration of The Children In the Arts”. Which was, unknown to me, a gateway spiritual drug. I found my artistic North Star!

100% naive of Ballet, Deanna Seay (who’d I had no idea had just retired as Principal Soloist at Miami City Ballet or had any idea of what that meant) was very kind and supportive and invited me to just come and watch classes.

And I remember thinking “This is hard – really hard – way harder than than Football or Basketball!” And I got to meet and photograph Principals who were very kind to my endeavors

Deanna Seay Master Class – February 2011

Maria Chapman Kennedy with Mimi Staker – August 2012

Elizabeth Gaither & Class – July 2014

The Upside of Age 75

No, this old carcass can’t do what it used to do. Just like the stuff I couldn’t do as a child, before adolescence, teens and adult ages. So we are, I think, on a journey, whether we wish to or not!

3D Jazz Project at Cary Ballet Conservatory – Cary Arts Center, April 2013

There is, in my widower dotage, a blessed quietude and relief from worry. I shopped today for what I had on my list, knowing the budget was okay.

I am blessedly relieved from the incessant noise of oxymoronically “Social Media”. I have no concern or involvement with Door Dash, FaceBook, Uber, TikTok, Amazon Drone Delivery or the really oxymoronically named “Artificial Intelligence”.

I did grow up with and make a living with and from digital technology and yeah, hook up an inference engine to a knowledge data base -you’re still left with what you already know, ya’ know? Just convenient- like a calculator.

So this blessed relief, to borrow a Thomas Hardy title, of being “Far From The Madding Crowd”, is my luxury. I’m good with that.

Sea Story -And This Is No Sh*T!

It is nearly an obligation to relate the experience of the previous generation to the latest. Which explains my relating the experience of a then, very young Submariner to my young neighbor last afternoon. I told her about “Kiddie Cruises” aka Annapolis Midshipmen ordered to the USN Fleet, in summer.

USS Andrew Jackson SSB(N) 619 – U.S. Navy Photo

I was crew aboard a Lafayette Class Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine. We operated from a tender in Rota, Spain.

Weapons Gang is also Deck Gang so I was top side when a Midshipman (not lying, blonde good looking boy) crossed the brow and announced to the Chief Steward, Senior Chief Petty Officer Willie Jackson (who NOBODY messed with and whose shoulders blotted out the Sun) his bags were on the Pier. Chief Jackson rolled his eyes while our XO, LCDR Russell took his cigar out of his mouth and explained to the Midshipman how much time he would be allowed to retrieve his bags and report to the Wardroom where the errors of his ways would be explained, in plain language.

Submarines are a meritocracy and nobody cares about your rank. And no one aboard was going to sign that Child’s Qual Card.