It’s the Friday night before the first Auburn football game and it’s become sort of a tradition with Deborah and I to walk around downtown and eat dinner while we watch all the “out of towners” stroll in. Last year it was Hamilton’s on Magnolia, this year it ended up being a very crowded Mellow Mushroom. It’s always interesting to see our quiet southern town turn into a crazy madhouse, but that’s fall, and that’s what makes Auburn such a unique town. It also makes for some great photographic opportunities. At this point I’m not sure how many times I have shot Jordan-Hare Stadium (one of my favorites came right off my iPhone), but it always seems to have another look, another angle, or different colors that I haven’t found or seen before. What’s even better are the countless shots of Jordan-Hare on Flickr and other places that seems to find even more looks to this great stadium.
If you are in Auburn take a walk down to the stadium and see the new black and white banners that went up in the off season, they look great and once again they changed the face of Jordan-Hare. So here is hoping Gene Chizik and the Auburn Tigers have another fantastic season down here on the the plains.
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I finally put together everything to get a print actually hung on my wall. Amazing what a process that has become. I’m so use to posting and shooting digital that it just felt like quite a task, and took 4 years if you count when I purchased the frames, or 2 months if you count when I decided to get a print ordered. Anyway, I love the shot and how it turned out, and today it makes for the Photo of the Day.
This black and white of the First Baptist Church of Opelika was taken handheld on the corner of the block just about at high noon, when I would never seek to take a photo since everything normally gets washed out and contrast goes to nothing. In this case I love how the final result turned out, and the photo reminds me of lunch I had that day with a friend of mine, David Olive. On a side note, to me, that’s one of the great things I love about photography. This photo may just be a photo of an unknown church to most, but, to me, it’s a reminder of exactly what I was doing, where I was, and what was going on that day. I had just finished lunch with David and was on my way home and just decided to stop see if I could get anything at all in this 100 degree glaring sun. As soon as I stepped out of the car a huge cloud came over, covered everything in shade, took away all the harsh shadows, and left me with a shot I love of this historical church in Opelika.
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This 4th of July holiday weekend seems to have snuck up on me. I didn’t realize it was the holiday weekend until about mid-week, days just seem to be flying by at such a fast pace, can’t believe we are already basically mid-summer. I tried out some test shots on Deb tonight, something she is always thrilled about. I picked up this used lens (10-12 years old by the serial number) for my Uganda trip. I decided last year that I was going to forgo the big expensive, heavy, pro, zoom lenses and opt for shooting with prime lenses (a fixed focal length lens). They are cheap, fast, and extremely sharp, when you shoot them well.
This is Nikon’s Nikkor 20mm f/2.8D classic prime that came out back in the late 1980′s (see photo below), which converts to about 30mm on my DX crop sensor. Not the best portrait focal length in the bag for a crop sensor but it worked pretty well. Not so sure about the focus, it seems like it might be off front or back a bit but it will do the job. I shot some black and white film with it too but of course I can’t see that yet. It hasn’t been easy getting use to using primes, but it has forced me to look at shooting more creatively. Somehow shooting those big fat pro zoom lenses years back made me lazy. Primes may take a bit more work but I love the end result.
Hope everyone is going to have a chance to relax and enjoy the 4th of July weekend. As hot as it was today we may not leave the air conditioned house until the fireworks go off on Monday. Have a great weekend.
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Did you notice the fog this morning? Fog is really cool to me. It doesn’t happen all that often but usually occurs when the relative humidity comes close to 100%, is more commonly around the 40° temp range and happens when the temperature and dew point converge within about 4° of each other. If you were in the southeast area of Alabama we had a wonderful blanket of fog covering the area last night and this morning. For those of us who love the humidity, especially in the winter, breathing the thick air is great.
It did add one more weather image to my tree portfolio (see below) but it got me thinking about what other things in our lives can converge to make something rare, unique, perhaps fleeting, and burns off and disappears when hit by a little heat? That may be a little too philosophical for this time in the morning but there are many things that change molecular structure when heat is applied, including our own lives. How often do we change our mind, our convictions, our principles, and forget things we have learned when a little heat is applied then all those things just evaporate? Hopefully not to often.
