Ohio Class Fleet Ballistic Missile Submarine with USCG Escorts – Straits of Juan de Fuca – 2009
This boat is a lot bigger than the one I was aboard for four years. And we sailed from a tender in Rota, Spain. Their home port is Bangor. Longer range Birds don’t need to be deployed close to targets.
Sometimes, Old Men (moi), think about being Young Men. And what would be different if War had not been a consideration.
My Draft Notice arrived at my parents address while I was at Navy Recruit Training in Great Lakes. I was 18 in 1968 and like most of my peers, clueless. Except for the older brother of a classmate, a Marine Corporal home on leave who told me without drama, his experience in Vietnam. So I joined the Canoe Club.
The idle time of a an old widower inexorably leads to Google searches of first loves. And wonder about, what if there had been no War. And then I see photographs of children in Ukraine and Gaza. And feel guilty for my good luck.
It was just luck that I met a co-worker in RTP who owned and rented an apartment in the Marais District of Paris. I promised my sweetheart photography would not disrupt our visits. And the good part about a non-business trip is, you can live in the ‘hood. The Marais is a good ‘hood.
Place Ste Catherine – 24 Sept 2016
Musee Carnavalet Memorial Wall Plaque – Lycee Victor Hugo
It was the last day of our fourth visit. On Friday afternoon, the day before our flight home, in late afternoon, well before our dinner reservation, I took the Metro, with my camera bag, from the St. Paul Station near our rental apartment to Champs-Elysses and then Montparnasse Station. It was, like most cities, busy and there was no way I was schlepping my tripod on crowded cars.
Atop Tour Montparnasse ( which most Parisians regard a very large sore thumb sticking up in the sky), 630 ft above the street, slots through thick plexiglass panels offer a sort of tripod.
That evening, we had a fine Parisian restaurant dinner. Next morning, our prearranged shuttle took us to DeGaulle Airport. And next day, Sunday, I was making promotion photographs for the “3D Jazz Project” Dance Company at Cary Ballet Conservatory. Life was very good.
The Boss Lady had me make a 5 ft wide canvas print of this that hung over our stairwell. Stupidly, I had it mounted on too light of a frame and it warped. I disappeared it after she died. The next version will be much smaller (apartment sized) and robustly mounted
In early 2021, the tickets we booked in late 2019 for our last planned Paris visit were refunded, after I sent the airline my sweethearts death certificate.
We will always have Paris.
Post Script: Our third visit (same apartment in Marais) was in the fall of 2016. I’ve no explanation of why it took nine years to return. But a few days after we got home in 2016, we both sort of danced around the idea that we really needed to go back – the kitchen renovation could wait until 2018. And we and it, did.
Late Sept. and early Oct. in Paris is glorious. And the new season at the Paris Opera has begun! This month, I’ll finish the punch list (cabinet trim) from the 2018 kitchen reno. In preparation for sale. But nothing I could do would replace holding hands on the Rue de Rivoli or our corner hangout at Le Bucheron or …
It was our first non business trip. I had an obsolete Sony Point & Shoot which got “liberated’ by a skilled pickpocket soon after. Who I owe -gave me a reason to buy a new camera. And Sabrina was right, Paris is always a good idea.
Cary Ballet – “Celebration Of Children In The Arts” Oct 2013
I was 100% ignorant of Ballet when I discovered Cary Ballet in 2010.
Deanna Seay, seen above, invited me to just come and watch her classes. And I thought “This is hard – really hard! Baseball and Basketball and Football is easy compared to this.” Then I surfed the Web-O-Sphere about her and discovered how much I didn’t know. She was very kind.
Reading the news, I wish this for young people. Not Hate, Hunger or War.
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.
In November 2020, at UNC Chapel Hill Med Center, about 1 AM, after an earlier call from a Nurse explaining my wife was now in a semi-ICU and Covid Visiting Hours wouldn’t apply to me, my sweetheart told me she didn’t want to talk about her illness, she wanted to talk about the Ballet, the 50th Anniversary of “Jewels'”, at the Paris Opera and dinner afterwards. And we did. It was the last lucid conversation we ever had. It was, as Rick told Ilsa in “Casablanca” when she asked “What about us?”, something we’ll always have.
With some hours before the irresistible hoopla of the Super Bowl and desirous of no more examples of inhumanity in the global news, I surfed over to a camera forum dedicated to the brand I used in all my work.
A poster asked for help with the abysmal results he got from a newly purchased, expensive camera featuring the latest auto focus automation – in this case for birds (it’s always birds). It hit a nerve about a relatively recent eBay sale and the fallacious belief that automation will trump understanding and skill.
I made this 13 years ago, with #3 of 12 DSLRs I’ve used since. Hardly current technology.
The technique is straightforward. Reassign Focus from the Shutter button to a button on the back of the camera aka “Back Button Focus” – it’s free! Yes, it does require (horrors) reading a page of the manual. Or watch a You Tube video.
Set the focus function to “Continuous” (mfrs call it different names but it’s still a Rose). Leave it with a single center point . Then point at what you want in focus while holding the rear button with your thumb and track it. Mash the shutter button when you see what you want. Disclaimer: 60 to 80 K of Dancer images per year may result in a callous on your thumb.
Static subject, on a tripod? Just release the back button. Or change the focus mode to “Single”.
Back to eBay. I honestly listed a “Bargain” condition camera body with the real shutter count, some 6OK shy of the mfr. rating. A guy bought it and two hours after he picked it up, e-mailed me it was no good, couldn’t focus on birds in flight. I had set it to mfr defaults. But I’m pretty sure he didn’t read any of the manual.
I immediately refunded his purchase, realizing any explanation was pointless. He did return it. Kept it and another copy, as my retirement gear. Haven’t experienced any issues.
As for the birds, this from camera either #6 or #7 (always kept two of the same model), in 2014
Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina – 16 July 2014
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