Saturday Shot 31 JAN 2009
by Lynn Daniels on Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 8:11 am
Today’s a busy day for me — LittleDude’s got a red belt test in the morning and a cub scout pack meeting in the afternoon. Somewhere in there, I have to find time to clean and do a bit of laundry. And I should probably plan dinner at some point, as well.
All that, added to my under-the-weather condition of late, explain today’s shot. I got this one Presidents’ Day weekend while down at SoundGuy’s studio as part of my Project 365 set. This is one that wasn’t used for Project 365, but I did process and post it on my Flickr account anyway. I thought it was cool.
They’re still working on that build-out at the studio (part of me wonders –quietly– if they’re ever gonna finish) and have construction materials scattered hither and thither. Mostly in the back of the building so they don’t get in the way of any recording. Anyway, I had just spoken to SoundGuy, who was doing some construction in the warehouse portion of the building. I started back toward the front, heading through what will someday be the “A” room. I dodged insulation and sidestepped lumber, and nearly crashed headlong into a worklight.
Once I righted myself, I saw that the worklight was on (which totally brings how I could have nearly run into it into question) and throwing amazing shadows across some metal piled on the floor. Of course, I had to shoot it. From every possible angle. With different focus points. And varying depths of field. This shot was the best of the lot.
I love the lighting. Who knew metal could be so mysterious?
Back?
by Lynn Daniels on Thursday, January 29, 2009 at 11:35 pm
~*~
I’ve been sick. After my kids go to school in the morning, I’ve been crawling back into bed to try and get extra rest for recovery. Even though I’m still feeling a bit rough in the evenings, I’m hoping I’m far enough along the road back to be able to spend time on the internet again.
Fingers crossed!
Put Her in a Diving Helmet
by Lynn Daniels on Monday, January 19, 2009 at 5:08 pm
~*~
Saturday I was witness to brainstorming of the songwriting kind. During NaNoWriMo I was a participant in brainstorming of the book writing kind. They’re both very similar. A lot of back-and-forth. Ideas put forth and rejected. Thoughts that make eyes light up. Suggestions that result in tears of laughter. Regardless of the end product, the process is frustrating and time-consuming and great fun.
For some reason, Friday evening MiniMe and I got to talking about SpongeBob Squarepants. I’m not sure why, but then again, who knows why conversations get started? So anyway, we got to talking about the absurdity of the cartoon. The contradictions. And then it occurred to us.
Wouldn’t it be great fun to be a fly on the wall during SpongeBob brainstorming sessions?
I mean, think about it. Imagine the initial pitch of the idea:
Person 1: I have this idea. Let’s do a show, a cartoon, that takes place under the sea.
Person 2: You mean as in 20,000 Leagues?
Person 1: Nah. Too realistic. Let’s do sea animals. The main character can be a… a… a sponge!
Person 2: A sponge? Sponges don’t talk.
Person 1: Neither do fish. But in this, they all will. Matter of fact, let’s not just make him a sponge, let’s make him a–
Person 2: A sea sponge?
Person 1: Ha ha. No. Too easy. Let’s make him a kitchen sponge.
Person 2: A kitchen sponge? Under the sea?
Person 1: Yeah. A bright yellow kitchen sponge. Wearing pants and a striped tie.
Person 2: *shaking head* Yeah. Sure. And the local fast food joint is owned by a tightwad crab and their burgers are actually made of crab.
Person 1: Yeah! Yeah! Now you’re getting it. I like that. Mr. Crabs sells… Crabby Patties! Give me a pen. Let’s get this all down.
Person 2: Cannibal sea creatures? Are you out of your mind?
Person 1: No, it’s perfect! *giggles to self* And our sponge has a squirrel for a friend.
Person 2: Squirrels can’t live under water.
Person 1: Oh, yeah. *thinking* So what. We’ll put a diving helmet on her. What else?
Can you imagine what fun that must have been? And the amount of imagination that must have been in play? I did something similar when brainstorming for NaNoWriMo. Came up with some of the most ridiculous sounding stuff. Ran with it. Had fun.
I still have to finish Chester and Rube, but once I do, I’ll have to go back to the stories I already had in progress. And the main two I’m thinking about, well, they were both stalled. I’m wondering if I should start by throwing out the most outrageous, silliest ideas I can think of for scenarios, write them into the story, and then rein them back in later.
If nothing else, it might make writing fun again for me. Like it was during NaNoWriMo. 
Funny — this post went nowhere I was expecting it to go. But it did give me ideas. Cool! 
Saturday Shot 17 JAN 2008
by Lynn Daniels on Saturday, January 17, 2009 at 9:18 pm
Today’s shot comes from a marathon photo session that took place yesterday. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve decided to immerse myself in Project 365 this year, which means a large part of my day has turned into thought about my photograph for the day: Have I got the shot yet? Should I shoot this, that, or the other thing? Do I have a camera with me? Will this work for a picture? Can I get a good angle on that? The amount of time this project has ended up consuming is remarkable.
Almost every Friday, SoundGuy goes down to his recording studio. He’s put two musicians together and they’re trying to get some songs written. They’re laying scratch tracks, lobbing ideas back and forth, and trading barbs. When SoundGuy suggested we all go to the studio yesterday (since the kids had the day off from school), I jumped at the chance.
Are you kidding? The chance to shoot musicians at work? Hell, yeah! Plus they’ve been doing some construction in that building, and even if I couldn’t get anything out of the musicians, I knew I’d find good shots with everything else going on.
Today’s Saturday Shot only just barely missed being my Project 365 shot for the day. It came down to this one and the one I posted on my Project 365 blog, and the other one won. But I knew I had to use this one here, so it all worked out in the end.
This is Jeff. He used to sing with a Christian rock band. Here, he’s trying to sing his idea for Bradley, the guy in the other shot. As I watched both men work with their guitars, I became fascinated by their hands, and thought it might be interesting to let their motion blur the shots.
Some attempts were epic fails, but this one…this one was a win.
Another Tree?
by Lynn Daniels on Thursday, January 15, 2009 at 9:24 am
~*~
Sometimes the kids and I like to get a rousing game of “I Spy” going when we’re in the car. At some point in our history, and I sadly can’t remember when or why, we kind of changed the game a little bit. It could have been to make it easier for LittleDude when he was younger.
You know the game. You say something like, “I spy something red with eight sides,” and everybody guesses that you’re spying a stop sign. For some reason, we changed it so that every answer was the same.
“A tree!”
The game for us became figuring out different ways to spy a tree:
I spy something tall with branches…
I spy something brown with bark…
I spy something with a sign nailed to it…
…and so on. I know it sounds weird, but sometime after the fourth or fifth time of everybody yelling, “A tree!” we all get the giggles. Bottom line — our strange “I Spy” games make the ride more pleasant.
Anyway, LittleDude and I were playing our usual game of “Tree Spy” last week, when he decided he’d rather play “Real I Spy”. So I agreed. And we spied all sorts of things: signs, cars, roads, flags… But at one point, LittleDude said, “I spy something curvy.”
I wiggled my hips and yelled, “Me!”
Everybody laughed, and SoundGuy rolled his eyes.
I don’t understand. Why did everybody laugh? 
(I promised you a more pleasant post, didn’t I? 
)
“Sweetie”, We’ll Miss You
by Lynn Daniels on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 11:33 pm
http://www.fuzzyfaces.com
I’ve been trying to come up with something to post today, but topic has been elusive. Unfortunately, it’s entirely because something that recently happened to some of my kids’ friends. I’d just heard about the incident yesterday, and it’s bothered me deeply every since.
If you’re not in the mood for a sad story, feel free to stop reading now and come back another day when I’m in a better mood. I’ll understand. No hard feelings; I promise!
My kids have some friends that spend a lot of time at our house. They’re a sweet bunch of kids, and I enjoy having them around. When they come over, they’re usually accompanied by their dogs. It never bothered me; their dogs were very sweet and gentle.
Sometimes the kids would put all the dogs together in my backyard to play. Sometimes the dogs would just hand around my garage. But the dogs were always there.
Yesterday, MiniMe came home from school with horrible news. Their larger dog, I’ll call her Sweetie, had been put to sleep. From what I gathered from my children, there was another dog in the neighborhood that had been bothering Sweetie. I’m not to what extent, but LittleDude says that at one time, the other dog had knocked one of Sweetie’s family down and skinned her knee. I guess Sweetie had a good memory, or maybe this was an ongoing thing. At any rate, Sweetie bit the other dog.
It seems that Sweetie wasn’t up to date on her shots, so our county required that she be quarantined for ten days. So off Sweetie went to Animal Control for her quarantine period. When the mom went to pick Sweetie up at the end of her quarantine, she was told that the staff couldn’t find her paperwork, and asked her to come back again the next day.
There were three black Labs at Animal Control at this time. Two were scheduled to be euthanized. The mom received a phone call the day she was supposed to go back for Sweetie — there had been a mix-up. Sweetie had been “put down”.
Animal Control blamed the mistake on a problem with the paperwork and admitted that policy had not been properly adhered to. They “offered any assistance needed in replacing or adopting another dog and securing needed vaccinations”, and comment that “the owner declined”.
On the TV news, her comment was, “I don’t want another dog. I want my dog.” Gotta say I understand completely. Sweetie wasn’t a shirt or a television set. She was a member of their family.
Even worse are comments I saw posted on the TV station’s website. Comments that blame the family for not having Sweetie’s shots up to date. Some even go so far as to say Sweetie’s family shouldn’t be allowed to have pets at all. Some excuse Animal Control. And that makes me angry.
I guess it bothers me because I know this family. Because I knew this dog. And I can’t help but look at my own dogs and imagine how I might feel in Sweetie’s family’s place. It hurts me way down deep.
I’m hurting and I’m sad. Can you imagine how Sweetie’s family must feel?
Thanks for letting me get that off my chest. I’ll be happier tomorrow.
If Only I Had Hemingway’s Typewriter…
by Lynn Daniels on Tuesday, January 13, 2009 at 7:29 am
~*~
From my favorite online comic strip, What the Duck.
Yeah. I don’t do a thing. It’s all the camera. 
I’m so using that line!
Sometimes it’s Hard
by Lynn Daniels on Monday, January 12, 2009 at 7:44 pm
~*~
It’s parenting I’m referring to. Parenting. Get your mind out of the gutter. 
Shame on you. 
MiniMe’s an exceptional student in school, always has been. More often than not, she brings home report cards with straight As. She’s an extremely bright kid, and while that’s a wonderful thing, it often works against me.
Today while she was at her pre-soccer tryout conditioning session, my cell phone rang. It turned out to be her Language Arts teacher, who was calling to give me fair warning about MiniMe’s grade.
It seems my child has been slacking off in school: socializing more than usual in class and not turning in her work. According to her teacher, her current grade in Language Arts is a 78.
78!
To say I was shocked would truly be understating my reaction. Disconcerted would be a better word. Horrified would be extremely apt. A 78? How could she be getting a 78? Luckily, her teacher was willing to fill me in.
The good news is she can bring that grade up. But she’s going to have to work at it and do a couple things she’s not going to want to do. And she has until the day after tomorrow. I thanked the teacher profusely for taking the time to call me, and promised I would be having a serious discussion tonight.
Here’s where the hard part came in.
My daughter and I have a wonderful relationship. We’re very much alike in our tastes, thinking, and sense of humor, and we have a lot of fun when we spend time together. I can honestly say that I like my daughter as a person. Which is why it’s that much harder to come down on her when I need to.
I had that discussion with my daughter when we got home, and predictably, she didn’t react well. Her argument has always been that we come down too hard on her about her grades. That we get upset over a B when most parents would be ecstatic over a B. She posed that same argument tonight.
I agreed that most parents would be happy with a B, but in her case, we can’t be happy with a B because we know she’s capable of straight As. A B would be settling.
Additionally, we absolutely would be happy with a B if that B came as the result of her best efforts. If she worked as hard as she could and brought home a B, we wouldn’t complain. But this grade her teacher called me about was not the result of her working as hard as she could, nor was her B on her first report card. On the contrary, these Bs were the result of her slacking off and not doing her work when she was supposed to. She wasn’t receiving a B (or in the case of her current grade, a C — I think) because she worked hard to achieve it. She was receiving it because she wasn’t doing all she was supposed to, and that’s unacceptable.
She didn’t want to hear that.
And now my kid’s pissed at me.
It’ll blow over; it always does. In the meantime, I’m standing my ground. As long as I do that, I’ll have a kid who’s angry with me.
Sometimes it’s hard.
Stop! Wait a Minute!
by Lynn Daniels on Sunday, January 11, 2009 at 7:59 pm
~*~
As I was getting dressed this morning, I caught an episode of Biography on the A&E Network about Meat Loaf (the singer, not the entree). It was an interesting show, and I learned quite a bit about him. Enough to gain a bit more respect for him. Anyway, as a result, when the kids and I left the house to get haircuts and do some shopping, I grabbed my Bat Out of Hell II CD to listen to for the ride.
When we hit the track called “Wasted Youth”, all three of us laughed out loud then listened to it over and over. One thing they mentioned in the Biography episode was the great wit of the Steinman songs; this wit was absolutely evident in this track, which was entirely spoken word. A monologue. Much of it involving a Fender guitar.
MiniMe and I decided we were going to have to make a ringtone from a line near the end: Stop! Wait a minute! Stop it, boy! What do you think you’re doing? That’s no way to treat an expensive musical instrument!”
Gold. Pure gold.
Hope you had a wonderful weekend!
(For the curious, the full text of the track can be found here.)
Saturday Shot 10 JAN 2009
by Lynn Daniels on Saturday, January 10, 2009 at 7:33 pm
I called this photo Wish I Were There because, well, I wish I were there. Simple as that.
Since I’ve started doing Project 365, the number of photos I take has more than quintupled. How could it not; I’m shooting every day. Most of these pictures are with a different camera — a small point-n-shoot I feel comfortable schlepping everywhere without worry it’ll be stolen or broken. Through this project, I’ve found the confidence to experiment a little more and work outside my regular landscape/soccer comfort zone.
Today’s Shot is one of the couple dozen photos I took for today’s 365, but I ended up choosing another (to see the one I chose, visit Lynn’s Project 365, and if you go, tell me if you spot the jack-o-lantern face!). It was a hard choice, I really got a lot of good pictures even though I was waaaay out of my comfort zone!
SoundGuy was buying a motor, and we drove about 45 minutes away to pick it up. Our destination was a Corvette garage, and I think it must have been the cleanest dadgumm garage I’d ever seen. I was looking around and saw abundant photo opportunities — I got excited. And somewhat disappointed I only had my point-n-shoot (named Oliver, BTW, after the Brady Bunch character); I would have loved to have seen what I could have done with one of my DSLR bodies (Fred & George).
One of the builds they had in progress was for a Corvette magazine. I didn’t want to step on any toes, so I obtained permission before I started shooting, then worked with the equipment I had.
I found lots of opportunities for depth-of-field shots, colorful groupings, monochromatic subjects, and interesting angles. Obviously, not every shot worked. One picture I took down the side of a gorgeous blue ‘Vette would have been perfect if not for the doormat and orange extension cord reflection. I’m still going to see what I can do with that one in Photoshop.
Anyway, I got this photo early in the shoot. I was just pointing the camera in different directions, seeing what worked and what didn’t, when I stumbled on this shot. I took it two ways: the way you see here with the sticker straight and the house crooked, and the opposite with the house straight and the sticker crooked. I liked the straight sticker better. I wish I had tried one with the house sharp, throwing the sticker out of focus, but I didn’t think to. Hm. Something to consider for next time.
I’m having fun experimenting, and I’m looking forward to what I can play with next. (That didn’t quite sound right, but you get the idea.) 
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