“If you want to, you can.”
Our Young Son Logan inherited his Dad’s athletic genes and he has Asperger’s Syndrome but he loves performing and always gives 110%.
This is from the summer before last. This move was really hard for him but he nailed it.
If you have the “Want to’s” as we say in the oilfield, then you can do it one way or another.
Six Word Fridays
When I take son to school we drive past our neighborhood greenbelt. The sun is starting to peak up right at the far end so I’ll be aggravating son a little bit so I can stop and grab a quick pic with my cell phone camera. Poor kid, it is a trial being a bloggerdad’s son.
Last Saturday for one reason or another I ended up some time to myself in the afternoon between dropping the kid off at a friend of his and then picking him back up a couple hours later. So off to Turkey Mountain I went.
The weather was good and I had my running stuff but I didn’t want to run. I had my geocaching gear but I didn’t want to go geocaching. I just wanted to walk.
Somehow I felt guilty because I wasn’t running or bushwhacking through the brambles. I was just walking. I wasn’t strolling I was walking at a pretty good pace.
By now I know my way around the mountain pretty well. Not as well as some people I know but good enough that I think I know all the main trails pretty well and am familiar with the secondary trails and paths.
There is nothing like going through the woods. You can see a lot and hear a lot. It is amazing how loud some of our fellow people are and how quiet the animals are. Sounds travel far in winter woods.
You can hear squirrels skittering through the woods a long way off and birds coming off branches.
Turkey Mountain, an urban wilderness is in the middle of South Tulsa. There are two power lines criss crossing it (remember two lines is north and south, one single line is east west) and you have a great view of downtown from parts. And there used to be an oilfield up there and farms, and moonshiners. There is still some mysterious things that go on up there.
You’d of thought that it was an early Valentines Day. I saw several young couples ambling along hand in hand. You can tell by their slow step and general uawareness of their surroundings that they were more wrapped up with each other than the mysteries of the mountain. Good for them is what I say.
(I’m turning into the Picasso of shadowselfies)
Anyway I pondered these things and others while walking the trails as the late afternoon sun went to shadows.
The sun was getting low and the moon was rising. Time to go pick up the kid.
Daytime moons have always been a good omen for me. What is a good omen for you?
As some of you know I am attracted to cheap offbeat cameras. My latest project is a pinhole camera that my Mother in Law gave me. I posted a few pics yesterday.
As much as I enjoy that camera and as much as I plan on using it some more I have my sights set on something even more ambitious but still relatively inexpensive.
I subscribe to National Geographic and a few months ago they had a photo spread that blew my mind away. It was photographs taken by a man named Abelardo Morrell and he used a “Camera Obscura” to take the photographs. A Camera Obscura is a fancy name for pinhole camera except in this case he used a tent as a camera and a periscope as the “pinhole.” On National Geographic’s web site they showed some photographs he has made where he used hotel rooms and other small rooms as his “camera.”
This is an image of Central Park by Morrell showing the upside down image.
And the following is a video put together by National Geographic showing how they made their own “room camera.”
So my next project is to make a room size Camera Obscura. Our house has an open floor plan plus lots of windows and I don’t think that Heather would appreciate me turning one of the rooms into a camera. We actually have a couple of rooms that would work except they don’t look over anything besides a picket fence in our side yard.
So I have fixed my sights on a hotel room in Dallas in April. I’m attending a convention there and I have already made my hotel reservations. It will be on the 37th floor of a hotel downtown. So, unless opportunity presents itself somewhere else that is where it will be.
Of course I have a few things to work out. First off of course is that my employer sends me to conventions to work and learn not build room size cameras. Plus I’m not sure how the hotel feels about it. Can you imagine the maid opening the door and seeing that I have overlaid plastic over the windows except for a small hole? They might want to discuss the situation. Plus I’ll have to have mastered my “good camera” for low light. long exposure because what the naked eye sees is really very dim.
So whaddya think? Am I off my rocker? Should I go for it?
I think it will be fun. I just don’t know how I’m going to bring the camera home with me.
National Geographic Online Feature on Camera Obscura
Abelardo Morrell website Check it out. The man’s creativity is awe inspiring.
I’ve been experimenting some more with my new pinhole camera. This time I loaded it up with some ISO 100 speed film which is pretty slow. Some of the shots required up to 45 seconds of exposure time. Sunny shots required about two to five seconds. Needless to say a tripod is required. Keep in mind there is no lens. Instead the camera has a whole 0.25 mm in diameter. Which of course is pretty small. So it takes a while to get enough light in there to take a photograph. The PinHoleMeter iphone app that I have on my Ipod Touch is invaluable for this process.
First I went to Centennial Park on Friday. It was quite overcast and so the exposures were taking a while. I know the pics are fuzzy but I like them anyway. I am not saying that they are good, just that I am seeing some possibilities. I think they have a timeless quality about them.
Another pic that makes me think that I need new glasses.
I’m kind of in a bare branch tree mood these days.
They next day was Saturday. The sun was out Saturday and brightened up everything. Plus I had a cable release in addition to the tripod. I was having to hold the shutter open before and that adds to the unclearness. Anyway Saturday I was at Swan Lake Park in midtown Tulsa. With the extra light the colors pop out a lot more.
And again, I like the timeless touch and feel to these photographs.
And I like the deep colors.
Anyway, I’m still having fun with my new camera. It is amazing to me that one can get photographs without a lens just a tiny hole.
Lessons learned so far. I think that I get far better results with the 400 speed film rather than the 100. So I’m going back to the faster film for my next roll.
Have you been amazed by anything lately?
Happens Everyday
You know what happens every day? Eating, that’s what. Lucky’s here in Tulsa makes great burgers and those fries. Those fries have truffle oil on them. I don’t share them. Southern Living voted Lucky’s as being one of the great food values in the south. What took them so long? Everybody in Tulsa knew it for years.
Upside Down
I have several film cameras made by Lomography dot com. I love doing double exposures with them. One of my favorite things to do is take a picture and then turn the camera upside down and take another pictures. It’s a crap shoot on the results.
Natural
Encountered this beauty while hiking in Mount Rainier National Park in Washing. Nothing more natural than a deer.
Man-made
I found this example of Ozark Okie civil engineering at Natural Falls State Park here in Oklahoma. It barely looks strong enough to support itself but it works.
Looking Down
This is another shot from Natural Falls State Park looking down to the pool where the Falls drop. The Park is beautiful and generally deserted. Scenes from the movie “Where the Red Fern Grows” where shot there. I have posted previously about the park.
I had a day off today so Heather and I went to see August: Osage County with Julia Roberts and Meryl Streep. It is a movie about a dysfunctional ( I mean really dysfunctional) family living in rural northeast Oklahoma. It is based on a play by Traci Letts (that we saw about four years ago).
We loved the movie. Meryl Streep playing the drug addicted matriarch dominated the movie. She owned the mean old bitter cynical character so much that I almost began to hate her.
Julia Roberts as the oldest daughter could almost match the mother for meanness and cruelty. The movie, like the play, is almost explosive in tone. You feel that thing could get violent very easily. Decades old lies and resents me are roiling and simmering just ready to break out.
Of course everybody says that the movie is not as good as the play. Well yeah!! Movies are never as good as the books either. I think you have to judge a work for its own self not compared to what it was derived from.
I’ll be honest. I also liked the movie because it was based on a play set in Oklahoma. Osage County is right outside Tulsa. The play was written by an Okie: Traci Letts. I have never met him but I met his mother Billie Letts, author of Where the Heart is. I know that makes me provincial and parochial to some. I don’t really care.
Osage County is a magical place. Home of huge ranches and wide open spaces, oil fields and home of the Osage Tribe. It’s a great place to go to get your head on straight. The movie, more than the play could, provides a sense of place that is Oklahoma.
Anyway, this Okie strongly suggests that you go see the movie if you can.
When Logan and I walked the dogs last weekend we came upon this truck parked in the lot of a gasoline wholesaler’s office just off the greenbelt. I am pretty sure that they don’t use it any more. It is up on blocks and all that. I love it. Old gas trucks like this always bring back a memory from my childhood.
Back in the 60’s we were on a family vacation and we were in Nevada. I forget just how, but Dad discovered that we had a gasoline tank leak. He found out while we were in the middle of nowhere and Nevada has lots of nowhere spots. In fact there is more nowhere than somewhere. So, to keep from getting stranded Dad stepped on the gas. Back then Nevada didn’t have posted speed limits. I don’t remember how fast we were going but it was fast.
We got to whatever little town was next and Dad swung into action. We went to a motel and got checked in and then he went to a gas station. I tagged along with him. Remember gas stations back then. They could actually work on your car way back when. They put the car up on the lift and removed the gas tank and found where the leak was. If I remember right it was in one of the welded seams. I can’t swear to it.
(Geocaching last summer with my Dad and Sister. The shadow is world’s greatest BIL and photographer, Irv.)
The owner of the station couldn’t repair the weld but knew somebody who could. The owner had a gas truck much like the one pictured and he just gave Dad the keys to it. We loaded up the gas tank in a small box at the back of the truck and Dad drove it to the welder’s shop. The fixed it up pretty quickly and then we took it back to the gas station and they put it back on the car. Can you imagine such a thing these days?
Dad at Geronimo’s gravesite, Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Yes, he is smiling. He and I have the same smile. You should see his frown.
Anyway, that is just one reason that I think my Dad can do anything.
Do you know somebody who can do anything? Who?
The weather is certainly up and down these days. This is from last weekend when things were still balmy. That is son Logan and his Dachsund mix Ginger enjoying a walk on a greenbelt close to our house.
How about a Hood Ornament for H this week. This one is from a Model A Ford from way back when.