The Photography Corner

It seems like the proliferation (I had to spell check that one!) of the digital camera and the camera phone combined with the fact that everyone and their granny has a blog nowadays has created a culture where the recording of an event is more important than the actual experiencing of it. I am not one of those people. Cameras mostly just annoy me and if I'm spending a day at an amusement park or attending one of my nephews' birthday parties or hiking through the majestic Blue Ridge Mountains where I live then I just want to be doing that thing and not worrying about getting the perfect shot of it to share with the world wide web. That last example in the previous sentence was a total lie. I don't hike. I feel that if God had intended us to hike he wouldn't have invented the Interstate Highway system. I also do not go anywhere near the woods for the woods are the breeding grounds of the fearsome and satan worshipping tick, a creature which feeds upon a man's very soul and gets his scabby little head stuck beneath your flesh whilst doing so.

The above rant was meant to show you that if I do go to the fuss and bother of taking a picture of something then it must have been of great interest to me and therefore worthy of your complete and undivided attention. So sit up straight and swallow your gum 'cause you're about to bear witness to three random pics taken over the last month or so, each of which show you just the tiniest little glimpse of my tickless soul. You're welcome.

For those of you who might live at one of our planet's frozen poles or a lighthouse on a lifeless slab of rock off the coast of Wales that purple thing in the picture above is called a 'flower.' I am not usually the sort of person who takes pictures of flowers. A flower is just a flower in my opinion and no matter how pretty a certain flower might look there are sure to be far prettier examples available in books or magazines or art galleries or the Internet. So unless the flower in question is right in the middle of eating an adult bull moose I'll just say "Pretty flower" and move right along. This flower was an exception due mainly to circumstances and less to aesthetics. It was taken only a couple of weeks ago, past the usual flower budding season around these parts and right in the midst of several chilly and gloomy days. I forget exactly what I was doing, but I was standing in an out of the way area alongside of a steep river bank (I assume that I was up to no good) and happened to glance down and notice this small flower hidden in the overgrowth. I kind of felt sorry for it or something 'cause it had gone to so much trouble to bloom in such an odd place and at such an off-schedule time and I just thought that the least I could do for the effort was to take it's picture. Luckily, my car (and camera) was only about five steps away from me at the time. Ten steps or more and I would have grown bored with the idea and moved on to other things.

There is a park near where I live that is split sort of down the middle by a river that is spectacular in it's slimy green-ness. The green-ness is almost like a special effect. The only thing connecting one half of the park with the other is a narrow metal foot bridge spanning the green ooze. I do not like this bridge because of the sound it makes when you're crossing it. The bridge is made of many, many connected squares of metal grating that clang and rattle and make all sorts of noise as you cross over it. It's so loud that every time I step on it I just know that every person in the park is stopping what they are doing to turn and stare in my direction. To avoid this I try walking very slowly and on tiptoe across the thing. Anyone who has ever attempted stealthy-ness through slow tiptoeing knows that it just amplifies the sound of everything you step on, thus ensuring that you draw even more attention to yourself. This bridge causes me nervous distress.

None of that is important, but that picture above was taken looking down through the grating at the river at the very crest (apex?) of the arched bridge. I took it to show both the green-ness of the water and how high above it the bridge rose. Neither of those two things show up in the picture. Crap.

In Lexington, Virginia there is a shop who's name I believe is Rail's End Wood & Metal Crafters. I jotted down a sort of short hand of the name on the back of an envelope and it's only half readable. I had taken a wrong turn and was executing a u-turn in their parking lot when I spotted this very large piece of scrap metal sculpture hanging over the shop. I snapped a quick picture because I like very large things, things made from scrap metal and things hanging over shops. There seemed to be other interesting things scattered around the building so I plan on going back sometime to take a look although it will have to be on a day when they are not open for business otherwise I will be guilted into buying something from them and I'm really not in the market for a pile of old railroad ties.

These three pictures are very much a story of me. A story that you would have to self-publish through one of those 'pay-per-copy' companies and that your local library wouldn't bother to catalouge even if you donated a signed copy with a dollar bill stuck between every page.