As I noted in the White Sands post, the Army gave me plenty of opportunity to travel. Imagine going to language refresher training in Provo, Utah and your carry-on airline luggage is a 12”x18”x14” white carrying case with a rail-type 4x5 camera, 24 film holders, two lenses, a light meter, and a couple of boxes of film, and your check-in bag is a military duffel bag (the only thing I had that was long enough) with your clothes for two weeks wrapped around your huge wooden tripod with the tripod head removed. That was me. Check out whether it was worth it.

Apologies for the juvenile nature of the caption, but there were no grassy knolls in the photographs and, while not quite illegal, grass isn’t actually legal in Portugal (it’s complicated and has more to do with how the country has decided to treat drug addicts [not by locking them up, but by offering addiction services] than with the substance itself), so I had to resort to a saying I used a lot growing up in the late 60’s and early 70’s . . . not that I’m much more mature today than then, but . . . to attract your attention to the theme Ann and I used in selecting the images to develop and print this weekend. That theme is grass.

One of the things being in the Army gave me was an opportunity to travel. And while I didn’t always have my camera gear with me, sometimes I did. Check in to find out about one of the most incredible 24-hour periods (note - I did not say “day”) of photography I’ve ever had.

I guess being retired and locked down at home has some advantages. Like culling through your old images to shrink the gigabyte size of your Capture One files. At least that’s what Ann’s been doing lately while I’m working (all along totally ignoring my suggestion to work on some images for printing - avoidance behavior, even in retirement). Well, the other day I get an e-mail from Ann with the subject line “Wild Water at Brice Creek” and a photograph of me from 2014. Looking at the image, I immediately knew I had a corresponding image and therefore a shooting the shooter post.

Zanzibar. It’s perhaps the most exotic sounding place I’ve been to. Baghdad might compete for that honor, but I didn’t have the freedom of movement there to add to the mystery of the name, and its recent history leaves much to be desired. I guess Zimbabwe falls into that category too given I went camping in the wild while there and had an elephant walk thorough my camp during dinner, hippos wandering around my tent at night and hyenas destroying our neighbor’s cooler. But I went to Stone Town, Zanzibar with the express purpose of photographing and despite spending only one night there, it was a success. So much so, I’ve started the process of building a portfolio of the trip.

Call me a glutton for punishment, or just plain stupid. Or maybe blame it on that determination I developed from playing soccer, “So what if they kicked our ass last time, it doesn’t mean they’ll do it again!” (Yeah, I know you’re probably thinking, “Well, it doesn’t mean they won’t do it again . . . and remember, that’s what they did last time.”). But fresh after that demoralizing defeat that was my futile effort to scan 4x5 images, the very next day I decided that we should try printing for the first time ever on our new printer. Given some of the frustrating printing experiences we’ve had in the past, it really was a risk. Fortunately, things turned out a bit better than my scanning disaster. Quite a bit better.

I didn’t anticipate posting another musings blog post so soon after the last one, but a couple of things have arisen that deserve an update. I guess the primary trigger was another sizing mistake. Can you guess what it was?

REM has a song on Lifes Rich Pageant [not a punctuation error] (arguably one of their best albums) called Begin the Begin. Beginnings. It’s sometimes difficult to know when you’re in a new beginning. All too often it’s only because you’re looking back in time that you realize that’s what it was. Join us for a discussion about a new beginning . . . or not.

It seems like such an easy thing to do. With the wonders of modern technology to make gross technical mistakes almost a thing of the past (not to mention the gizmo you can buy and put on the top of your camera that tells you if your photograph will be “good” or not) and the ability to capture the world before you in ways unheard of even a couple of decades ago, you would think making a good image is easy. It’s not, as I was recently reminded.

This should post on Christmas Eve. It’s probably the only present we could give to everyone, so why not make it a long one. It’s time to sit back with your cup of coffee, tea, hot cocoa or glass of Scotch and settle in for a lengthy, hopefully amusing, read.

Ann’s finally getting around to realizing that she is, in fact retired. She still acts like she should be keeping busy doing stuff all the time instead of doing “fun” things (as “fun” as can be while pretty much locked up at home), but I think she’s finally easing up a bit (don’t let her know I told you). Well, this week we started chatting about a gripe we both have about Capture One, the photo developing software we use, and she decided to try and figure out a solution to our problem. In the process I was reminded that Ann is indeed a photographer.