Category: Cary Citizen

From my work as a contributing photographer to Cary Citizen: https://carycitizenarchive.com/

Serendipity: Santa Claus 2011-2015

3 Dec 2011, I expected to visit the North Carolina Museum of Art with timed Tickets to a Van Gogh Exhibit at the North Carolina Museum of Art with the company of dear friends and house guests, visiting from Toronto. Phone rang: Lindsey Chester of “Cary Citizen”.

“Our photographer called out sick, can you come make photographs with Santa Claus?” I stalled, said I would call some folks I knew in Cary Photographic Artists. Did and got zero response. Sweetheart said, “Oh just go do it, we’ll be fine.” So I loaded my truck with what I thought I needed and headed to Downtown Cary. Courtesy of Joy & Dan Pike, found a pop up tent and chair in Chatham Street, in front of what was then Ashworth’s Drugstore.

Putting up a 9’x20′ Vinyl background I used for dancers in studio, wind was an issue. An energetic and diminutive lady in the next booth graciously lent me a roll of gaffer tape!

And until 2015, I made photographs of Santa for the Heart of Cary Association.

It was wonderful!

Saturated Fat

Journalism Photography was different from my work at Cary Ballet Conservatory. My Press & Fair & Parking Pass to the NC State Fair via Cary Citizen was to tell a story. I never made photographs to laugh at anyone. With, yes. At, no.

So seven years later, I still struggle with this image. The hat says “Navy” which as an ex Submariner, still really bothers me.

2018 North Carolina State Fair – Photographed for Cary Citizen

Aboard USS Andrew Jackson SSBN 619, there was once a a crew member who ate so much during a two month patrol, he could not fit through a hatch to leave the ship. Literally, stuck aboard.

Solution was to: 1. Not feed him for a couple of of days 2. Strip him down to skivvies. 3. Oil him up (don’t remember if it was vegetable or Shell Tellus Hydraulic). 4. Put a few pounds of air pressure in AMR and pop him out out the hatch. He probably had a waistline north of 58″, triple the diameter of a 19″ hatch.

Not humorous. Not at all. Yep, he got out. Before stuck making another Patrol

Bonds

The North Carolina State Fair, besides rides and crazy foods (delicious fun), is essentially about farming. A hard, uncertain life. My Fair & Press Credential permitted access to the barns behind the Show Rings. I was careful to be respectful. Click images for full size.

2015 North Carolina State Fair – Photographed for Cary Citizen

Today’s Opening Day Fair News!

Not News: “Traffic worries driving some crazy as NC State Fair begins – WRAL”

2012 North Carolina State Fair

This is news: “Food Vendors not returning to the NC State Fair – Raleigh N&O”.

2014 North Carolina State Fair

Photographed for Cary Citizen

Blue Hour

“Blue Hour” isn’t an an hour. It’s 15 or 20 minutes of Twilight. In mornings, before Sunrise. Or Evenings, after Sunset. And borderline magical.

Yep, I’d consulted the almanac. And watched my watch. And wrist compass.

2011 North Carolina State Fair – Photographed for Cary Citizen

Deja Butt

The news this week reminded me of an embarrassing incident I caused as a photographer, so focused on the image, the ride was was stopped!

The 2016 North Carolina State Fair featured a new “SkyRide” transporting visitors high across the Fair. Fascinated, I used my Fair & Press credentials to talk myself into the passenger loading area. Solely focused (no pun) on making a dramatic image, I (innocently and ignorantly) backed my butt up to the “Emergency Stop”. And it worked! And I got highly disapproving looks from the folks working the ride. Sheepishly, I slinked away.

So watching the video of a videographer riding an escalator backwards, ahead of the President & First Lady – yeah, no way he’s going to ‘fess up to the butt stop.

Almost Fair Time

The North Carolina State Fair begins next month, 16 to 26 October.

This gallery from 2009 was my first visit and I was overwhelmed. It is color and crowds and noise and crazy food and animals and rides and wonderful.

From 2010 to 2019, I had Press Credentials from the Fair & Cary Citizen! Which included a Parking Pass to the Vendor Lot at Carter Finley Stadium and a Shuttle to the Fair! Plus, before opening day, I would select two images from the previous Fair to enter into the Photography Competition. Winning “Best Fair Scene” in 2016 with a Ribbon and a Check, I think made me an Official “Tar Heel”!

Re-visiting those galleries is a project I hope to finish by the start of this year’s Fair. Meanwhile, here is my skimpy, amateur maiden voyage. Click each for full size

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

Thursday Night Opera

Tonight, 3 July 2025, is Don Giaovanni on WCPE. Long ago, after teaching a Photography Class at Page Walker Arts & History Center, I listened to Thursday Night Opera on my drive home. Usually, understand not a word.

Soprano Lora Fabio – Page Walker Arts & History Center, 24 November 2013

Yet, it was a comfort. A connection to humanity. Across generations and centuries. And once, at a Winter Concert at Page Walker, ostensibly making photographs for Cary Citizen, after I thought I had the story, put down my camera and – I didn’t know a human voice could do that. Later, unable to speak – she understood. I was jelly. “Song To The Moon” from Rusalka by Dvorak – oh my.

Recantation

Couple of posts back, I wrote “Taking a hiatus/retreat/sabbatical/down time/hiding out for awhile. Time to write, carefully. It will be a quiet time. Here and at home. Maybe, as Shirley Horn sang, September.”

I lied! True, ‘cept, like Lisa Lamont in “Signing In The Rain”, “I can’t stan it”.

Too much life going on for me to be quiet – as much as I treasure my new found quiet. And maybe, at 74, pushing 75, I’m shedding my Catholic upbringing aka “Our Lady of Perpetual Guilt and Responsibility”.

I am gonna write and edit my past work. Curated a Cary Players performance today, from May of 2011, in Jordan Hall – which pre-dates the opening of the Cary Arts Center and before it’s conversion to the Cary Fire Dept. HQ.Gallery is here: Puss In Boots, May of 2011

Wednesday Work – 2011 Diwali

Diwali, also called Deepavali or Deepawali, is the Hindu festival of lights. It symbolizes the spiritual victory of light over darkness, good over evil, and knowledge over ignorance. Photographed for Cary Citizen, 22 October 2011.

Gallery here.

Back To Work Monday

I’m gathering speed on the array of photo editing & writing projects in plan! Today was editing and posting another Koka Booth Amphitheater event I photographed for Cary Citizen, in 2011. It was my sophomore year covering Town of Cary public events, which explains a lot more “keepers” than my freshman 2010 attempt. I was learning.

Eid al-Fitr is a holiday celebrated within Islam. Eid al-Fitr is the end of the month long, dawn to sunset fasting of Ramadan. It follows a Lunar calendar, so this year, 2025, it falls on 30 or 31 March, depending on location. Fourteen years ago, it fell on Aug. 30/31. The Town of Cary Festival was held on 8 Oct. 2011

Gallery here.

The Wisdom of Children

I’d forgotten that the 2010 EID Festival at Koka Booth Amphitheater was my first attempt at making photographs of an event for Cary Citizen . Eid al-Fitr is a holiday celebrated within Islam. Eid al-Fitr is the end of the month long, dawn to sunset fasting of Ramadan. It follows a Lunar calendar, so this year, 2025, it falls on 30 or 31 March, depending on location. Fifteen years ago, it fell on Sept. 9/10. The Town of Cary Festival was held on 9 Oct., so pretty close.

I had zero knowledge or understanding of Eid. Like nearly every community event I photographed, the children made sense of it for me. Gallery here.

Moms Just Wanna Have Fun!

Today’s news included Washington D.C’s Annual Snowball Fight! Which coincided with last nights onset of insomnia and finally, beginning to organize and curate a dozen years of photographs. This is, a favorite.

Bond Park, Cary, North Carolina – 4 Dec 2010 – Photograph for Cary Citizen

In The News Today

I made this photograph a dozen years ago. The performance was part of a music festival headlined by the Brussels Chamber Orchestra. My enthusiasm and Cary Citizen Press Pass allowed me to spend a lot of time in Cary Arts Center with them. A collaboration with NC Opera brought this Countertenor to a performance.

I’m a rough old cob but I had no idea a human voice could – you had to be there.

Cary Arts Center 8 August 2012

Coda – Blue Sky Day

Goin’ to Carolina, it won’t be long and I’ll be there

Disclaimer: The previous post is a predicate to making any sense of this one.

It was December in 1998. Driving on I-77, from northern Ohio to my new job with IBM in Research Triangle Park. I was excited and hopeful.

Ohio was my cradle, where I achieved escape velocity with a Navy Enlistment. And returned to, seeking refuge from a typically poor, youthful marital decision. And left, following the death of both my and my wife’s parents.

North Carolina was my choice. Oxygen for the spirit. As  Mary Oates Spratt Van Landingham described it on 6 Mar. 1900: “A Vale of Humility between Two Mountains of Conceit”, referring to North Carolina’s location between South Carolina and Virginia. I was far too familiar with South Carolina.

Twenty five plus years later, I’m at peace. Like at the Coda of a Ballet. As a Widower, the Pas de Deux is necessarily spiritual but still, genuine. I wish that was so for all.

Blue Sky Day

Photographed for Cary Citizen

Another excuse to get outdoors on a sunny, early spring day. Like today!

It was a Town of Cary sponsored “Kite Festival” at Bond Park. And I was surprised to get a request from “Our State” Magazine to run this -which they did – in the March 2014 issue. My first published photograph! Yeah, yeah, they had pages to fill.

Which doesn’t diminish my delight in being outdoors now, watching the top of a Long Leaf Pine, sway in a gentle breeze in a Carolina Blue sky.

The Allman Brothers explain in this freebie at the Internet Archive: “Blue Sky”


A Very Lucky Day

Kids Together Playground Cary NC, 16 October 2010

I was floundering in the Spring of 2010 after an earlier than planned exit from a corporate career (as Yogi so eloquently expressed, we “agreed different”). I was trying to figure out my place in the Sun. Got a Wake County “Certified Pool Operator” Certificate and earned a modest paycheck, running our HoA Pool that summer. But it was sort of a “Lady of Our Perpetual Responsibility” guilt avoidance – “Yes, I have a job.” Another I/T job would’ve had me in counseling.

Money wasn’t the immediate issue, we’d put away enough acorns in mast years to get along. The real issue was, I was 60, burned out on corporate I/T (IBM/Lenovo) and had no clue about where I’d lived for a dozen years. Life had been commuting on I-40 to RTP and conference calls. A highly paid bubble.

I’d been learning the craft of photography since a Parisian pickpocket boosted an obsolete Point&Shoot in 2007. That was my “justification” to buy a robust DSLR and a good, non-kit lens. The Art part or “Why” was latent (wife #1 did not want to be married to a Painter & Teacher). I was learning the Craft of Photography or the “How” part. Read the manual until I understood the tool. But I had zero clue how to make any kind of business from that.

Looking for kindred spirits, I joined Cary Photographic Artists. Which led me to a new, hyper-local, online publication where they advertised their Open Competition – “Cary Citizen”. Which led me to a coffee at La Farm with the Editor, Hal Goodtree, where I pitched me being a “Contributing Photographer”.

So armed with a legitimate Press/Media Pass, I asked to cover small events, with heart. It was a raison d’être to explore my community. And I’d have to figure out how to tell stories with photographs – no excuses.

The above photo is from my very first assignment at Kids Together Park “Fall Foliage Walk”, not five minutes from my house and which I didn’t know existed. I began to learn about where I lived. That was Saturday morning.

That afternoon was my second assignment, “Children’s Celebration of The Arts” at Cary Ballet Conservatory. Which I also didn’t know existed.

And there, I found what I was looking for. My photograph, below, had nothing to do with the event. And everything to do with the next dozen years.

Until I wore out. But it’s a really good worn out.

Cary Ballet Conservatory – 16 October 2010