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To be sold eventually to strangers: 1
My dad’s dresser, top drawer on the left. Camera body, a couple of watches, several lens filters, his Tau Beta Pi key from 1947, batteries, instruction manuals. And a tiny white envelope with, in his engineer’s printing, the words GOLD CROWN, that contains a gold crown.
This house was new when we moved in, over Christmas 1964. And now it’s time to clean it out, to let it – and all the stuff – find new owners. The state of that drawer is indicative of every drawer, cabinet, shelf in the house. All full, all a jumble of crap and stuff that may not be crap, things I ought to be sentimental about and things I’m not.
How am I going to decide what to keep? What to throw out? What to leave for the estate sale?
But before that, how will I even know where to start?
And how can I dispose of everything my dad accumulated for his whole life, and still look him in the eye when I visit him at the assisted living center?
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 8.13.2013
Many horizontals
When I took photography in college (which was a LONG time ago!), my professor didn’t permit us to crop our shots: everything had to be printed full-frame. I’ve long-since abandoned most of what I learned in that class (Zone System, anyone?) but for some reason the Do Not Crop rule is nearly always in play.
But this shot – I cropped this one. It felt daring, like I was really getting away with something. But mostly it felt like I was improving the shot: I wanted to emphasize all those horizontal lines and the original version, which had the entire building elevation, wasn’t doing that.
Know the rules, so you can break them, right?
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 4.28.2013
Do the math…
…you’ll save 60¢ on each meal with the #3 combo.
Or, to look at it another way, you can save yourself $14.99, since Burger Boy #2 appears to be out of business.
And, then, if you add in the savings in fuel costs by not even driving over there…well, you can see how the savings are just adding up.
East Broadway
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 12.1.2012
#1 Meal
“#1 Meal Load Out” sounds like it might be some sort of express line at McDonald’s. This shot was taken at Pyco Industries, a cottonseed oil mill, and it turns out that cottonseed meal is a by-product of cottonseed oil processing. It’s used as a nutritional ingredient* in cattle feed, so I guess there IS a connection with McDonald’s, after all.
Oh, and those clouds? In the past four years or so that I’ve been relatively serious about photography, this part of Texas has been in a drought. So, in spite of all my practice with taking pictures of all kinds of things, I never have learned how to photograph clouds: there haven’t been enough of them around to practice on. (Thanks – I feel better having gotten that off my chest.)
Lubbock, Texas
photographed 4.28.2013
* I know – it doesn’t sound that nutritional to me, either. But that’s what Pyco says on their website.
First Friday Art Trail
Sometimes you have to just suck it up and ASK.
The First Friday Art Trail here in Lubbock is sort of a big deal. And I’d been wanting to have some of my work shown on a First Friday.
So I overcame the tiny bit of shyness that I’ve not yet conquered and asked Larry Simmons, the proprietor of the Tornado Gallery, if I could have a spot at a First Friday. He said yes, and so I am very happy to announce that on August 2, I will be on the Trail.
Stop by, if you’re in town.
(And my deepest appreciation to Larry Simmons for giving me a spot. Not only is he a great guy, but he is my exact birthday twin; every year on our birthdays we agree that we just keep getting better and better.
The photo above is a detail of the windows on the north side of the gallery space.)
One Day | One Image 