Yep, yesterday at St. Francis Methodist to hear the Cary Concert Singers perform “Breath of Life”.
The program included “Come To Me, My Love” by Norman Deila Joio. I’d told my neighbor/soprano/dog rescuer/recipe sharer about a vivid dream, with my late Sweetheart & Boss Lady. She said during rehearsals, she thought the lyrics could be about me. Which sorta explains two prints I recently had made from my photographs, made in Paris. It was the best of times for “vieux amants”.
Somewhere, I have a NASA Causeway Pass, given by friends and hosts of my late Sweetheart, to witness the maiden launch of the Shuttle Endeavor – STS 49, in May of 1992. They worked for NASA and lived in Cocoa Beach. This is a photograph of the launch, copied from the NASA web site. “Endeavor” replaced “Challenger”. Riding the rocket is incomprehensibly risky business. And gives new meaning to the phrase “The Earth Moved”.
Mid May 2008, an airport rental car got us from Seattle to Vancouver, British Columbia, where I made my photography transition to Raw Image File format. My complete kit kit was a Pentax K10 DSLR and a Tamron 28-75 f2.8 lens.
Most Camera brands have a proprietary Raw file format: Pentax “PEF”, Nikon “NEF”, Canon “CR2”, etc.. Each require software specific to the Make & Model of camera. My Pentax camera also offered DNG aka Digital Negatives, an open standard, originally published by Adobe and which they tried to give away to a standards body. It was supported by the free software I had on my laptop, Google’s “Picasa”. So the day after leaving Seattle, I switched to DNGs and have used them exclusively ever since. It’s like cooking from scratch vs a TV Dinner.
My Sweetheart and Boss Lady showed me Vancouver, a place she knew. A Taxi took us to the wonderful Vancouver Aquarium at Stanley Park. Next day, a car ferry took us to Nanimao on Vancouver Island
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2008 was a busy travel year. Tokyo in Feb., UK in Mar. and Seattle in May, to visit old friends of my Sweetheart & Boss Lady. I’d been commuting for business to Beijing and had a LOT of Air Miles, so RDU to SeaTac, in First, was a freebie. It was a place she wanted to show me.
Before our trip was completed, I changed my camera to record RAW images vs the JPEG default setting. These were the last JPEGs I ever captured. It was one more step on learning to take control of my work
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A photography neophyte, I had enthusiasm and no confidence to leave the camera on “M”. Fixed all, by year end. Stirling Castle, March 2008
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The news today was of a massive fire here . Long ago, for a week, it was my daily commute start & finish while on a business trip. I cannot imagine the loss.
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Glasgow Central Station, March 2008
A few months after returning “camera less” from Paris, I added a newly purchased DSLR to my laptop bag for a business trip to Japan. I’d bought a Pentax K10D and a Tamron 28-75mm, 2.8 Lens. I still have and use the lens. Still use Pentax bodies but I’ve proved the axiom “you date your cameras but marry your lenses”. It’s been on been on 12 or 13 DSLR bodies. Even replaced the rubber zoom and focus sleeves that I wore through.
Tokyo Tower, Feb 2008
I’d read the camera manual front to back but was still using “Picasa” and shooting JPEGs. That didn’t last long – within a year, I had a calibrated monitor, Wacom Digitizer Tablet, Photoshop and had switched the camera to DNG’s aka Raw. It was Step One of of my photography journey.
And before my flight left from Narita, my work Boss Lady told me we were okayed for travel to Scotland. So about 12 or 14 hours later, between flights at O’Hare in Chicago, I called my real Boss Lady and asked her if she would like to go to Scotland. And she said yes!
Our first non-business trip to Paris, made with a 3.2 MP Sony Cyber shot. The camera was obsolete but what I had. Days later, a skilled Paris pickpocket “liberated” it from my jacket, hung on a chair back while I went to the loo in a Bistro. Which post travel, triggered my justification to buy a replacement and the discovery that was the basis of my post-corporate photography career.
I owe him. Also proved the wisdom of daily downloads from camera to storage. He did get my Metro Sign photo. Bless his heart!
Tour Eiffel, Paris 2007
Woke to a Carolina “Window & Screen Open” March Day – 76 & sunshine!! Dreams had brought vivid memory of my late sweetheart. Later, post caffeine and fully conscious, I thought about the question I hear when I tell folks I’ve retired – “Are you traveling”? Nope, already did that! A lot! Some for business, some for us. Some for both. While we could.
My Boss Lady & Sweet Heart – Bastille Market, Paris 2016
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