No prizes for guessing what this is. I actually preferred it in color, but since I’d decided to do the entire series in black and white…
Bathroom pictures 2: Vortex
Bathroom pictures 1: Offset spiral
Another series! An earlier post mentioned a book I recently acquired: Photography and the art of seeing. In that post I said:
I particularly liked the exercises he proposed, mostly in the “Thinking Sideways” section. I tend to get in a photographic rut where I take pretty much the same type of picture over and over again. I know this, but I have great difficulty figuring out how to break out. Some of these exercise offer an opportunity to do so. One example: “Lock yourself in your bathroom with a camera, a tripod, and a standard lens. Give yourself 20 minutes to make 10 pictures. This is an example I have tried with several students – the resulting slide show have been both hilarious and instructive, and the variety of pictures amazing.”
So I tried this exercise. I may have spent more than the 20 minutes allocated, but I did get 10 pictures. This is the first of them.
Howard’s Chicken Shack: 1943
February 1943. “Daytona Beach, Florida. Street scene.” Howard’s Chicken Shack — we’re going to phone 9363 and see if they can deliver to 2016. Medium format negative by Gordon Parks for the Office of War Information.Source: Howard’s Chicken Shack: 1943
Couldn’t resist this – for obvious reasons. And by a famous photographer too: Gordon Parks.
Picture appropriated
While I’ve heard of such things happening it’s never happened to me – although to be honest I don’t usually check.
This time I could hardly miss it though. Our lakeside community has its own Facebook group. I was looking at it the other day when I saw the above picture posted by someone with the caption “Visitors”. I’d taken the picture in October, 2015 and didn’t like all that much, so I didn’t post it to this blog (or if I did I can’t find it), but I did post to the Facebook group. I pointed out to my wife that this was my picture and she immediately posted a comment:
“This looks identical to my husband Howard Dale ‘s photo posted here on Oct.13,2015!”
Being a bit less direct than she is I instead sent a personal message to the offending person:
“This is actually a picture I took and posted to the … group on October, 13 2015. It even has the border that I put around all of my pictures. At the time you commented on it saying ‘nice’. Could you please either give me credit for the picture or remove it. Thanks.”
Before he even read my message he, in reaction to my wife’s comment, immediately added an appropriate credit. I later got a response to my message:
“I added credit. It was in my …file without attribution. Sorry for the oversight.”
So it all worked out ok in the end.
By the roadside 6: Cirsium vulgare (???)
It certainly looks like a thistle of some kind to me, but I’m not entirely sure which type. I think it looks most like “Cirsium Vulgare” (also known as spear thistle, bull thistle, Scots, Scottish, or Scotch thistle, and common thistle. Another possible candidate is “Carduus nutans” (also known as Bristle Thistle, Musk Thistle, Nodding Thistle, Nodding Plumeless Thistle).
While out walking today I noticed that all of the plants I’ve posted pictures of have now disappeared. It seems that someone (I imagine our town) has cut the undergrowth back about 3-4 feet from the road. Since all the pictures I took were “By the roadside..” all of the plants have now gone. Still, most of them are considered as weeds or invasive species and they all come back anyway – the cutting only takes off the tops.