New Volunteer at the Gallery

Gallery sitting this evening (doing my volunteer thing) with quite a crowd going through before the performance of Pirates of Penzance. Reminded me of Billy Hester from Savannah, GA and his story of how he and Cheri met. He told how he first saw this vivacious blonde across the room at a church meeting, and he admitted that he wanted to meet her but didn't have the courage. Weeks later as he was preparing to go to rehearsals in upper New York, the director called and asked Billy (since he had a car) if he would be willing to pick up the female lead. Billie found the address and parked the car and knocked on the door. And who should open the door---but the girl that he had seen across the church weeks before. He was speechless, but not for long for they starred in the musical, dated, and married. And now they have an amazing, art-filled, and gracious ministry at Asbury Memorial in Savannah. I told all this because of the mixture of gratification and awe I had this evening as I watched people go through the gallery and stop to admire different pieces of art work. I noticed one person who paused at my photographs. Rather humbling to have a stranger appreciate one of your photographs. It is a blessing. Wow!

River Dance, Step One

Last week, Judy and I made a quick tour of the east side of the state to photograph the remaining three rivers. I suspect I will find other opportunities to photograph all ten rivers in the future during different seasons, but I completed the first step so that the web site can display banners of each of the district rivers. The challenge is to be able to drop them at a 5 to 1 ratio for the web banner. That aspect has required a change in the way I compose a photograph. As a slide photographer for many years, I was aware of the entire frame. Consequently, all of my photos filled the 24mmx36mm frame. I became conscious of elements that either needed to be included in the frame or excluded. But these web banners suggested an entirely different approach of filling the width of the frame so that it could be cropped to fit. However, I found that within the picture, there were several crop possibilities each of which could be an image with impact. Digital unleashes the imagination. There is no one right composition or one right possibility. Some of my friends would not be surprised that I end here with a wealth of possibilities. Sounds like life!

An Amazing Morning

I admit that before I went to bed last night I thought about getting up early for a photo trip, but I didn't really think about it too intently and fell asleep without any substantial plans for Labor Day. But we awoke early. The house might have been too warm and we grew restless. For whatever reason, we awoke at 3:45 a.m. I wondered what time sunrise was and how far it might be to drive north and take photos of the Illinois and maybe the Spoon. You see, I have a project of getting photos of 10 rivers in Illinois for the Conference Web Site. I already have the Sangamon, Cache, Mississippi, and LaMoine. I have one as well of the Illinois at Peoria, but it was rather lackluster and could not be cropped well for a banner. So, in the dark, I pondered if this might be an opportunity to get some river pictures. So we loaded up the car and drove north in the early morning dark. While there are few cars at 4 am, it is still surprising that some folk are out on the road so early. After a Hardees stop in Havana, we crossed the bridge and drove along the western edge of the Illinois. It was surpising to see fog in the lowlands and I contemplated what a picture might look like. The sky was rather plain, no clouds, but a nice rosy color from the sun below the horizon. I took a few preliminary photos along the road of the intermittent fog, but I pushed on to the little town of Liverpool that I knew from the map sat right on the banks of the Illinois. We parked just as two fisherman came to launch their boats in the dawn mist. The sun was coming up just over the fog and turned the river golden and the fisherman started on his quest and I pushed the shutter. Actually, I took a lot of photos from that site and surely one will be appropriate for the web. I know I was glad I got out of bed.