There’s a long path east to west through our little town, extending a couple of miles past the city limit in each direction. Jeanne and I walked west after dinner, with the sun casting long shadows. These are the big bales that put high school kids like me out of the hay-lifting business 35 years ago.
I spent some portion of my childhood trying to climb all the way up that water tower before my grandmother looked out her window and saw us.
I’m fond of pointing my lens directly into the setting sun, filtered by flower beds–or in this case, some kind of pointy red stuff.* It couldn’t be farther from the advice given by real photographers–compose carefully, get your exposures right in camera–these are the sort of fellows who cough delicately and look at each other when someone says, “I’ll fix it in post.” This kind of photo you take only to have something to fix in post.
*Meanderer says the pointy red stuff is berberis.
The kids had their eyes on the cupcakes from the moment they appeared onstage.
The photographer had his eye on cupcake bokeh.
And the adults had their eye on how many cupcakes were left.
There was a fireball of setting sun last night as I rounded the curve to home. I knew by the time I fetched the camera it would be gone, and it was. I had to call on the leaf to testify that it was so.
This is not the Blue Frog’s sign–this is the gallery across the street. And it’s not 69 degrees today, but its transliteration. Still, it’s an accurate depiction of a summer Saturday mid-afternoon in the heart of the commercial district. That’s the center of town–Linden and Main–and this is the number of shoppers.
I didn’t take the photo to illustrate the no-one-here-ness of the place–that obvious fact didn’t emerge until just now, as I looked at the photo again to see what it’s about. I do admire the sense that even the photographer is not here–I can’t feel him there, trying to show you something.
I’m so delighted to know the name of the blue flowers halfway up this alley: chicory. I’ve photographed them a lot, and I like to know the names of things, but that’s like saying I’d like to play the guitar–as in, “Yes, but not enough to practice.” Yesterday I posted a photo from that patch you can see in the alley, and two people commented that they liked the chicory. Ah! I’d heard of cowboy chicory coffee, but I had no idea this is what the plant looks like.
On the other hand, I might have known what the grain elevators in the middle of this little town look like–I spent the first 21 years of my life walking by them every day, noted when they were processing grain by the chaff that fell from the sky all over town, and listened to the roar of the dryers through the fall. But I never looked at them. In fact, earlier in this paragraph I had to pause to come up with the words to name them. They have just always been there–the tallest thing around, hanging over us all–and therefore somehow unnoticed. I was bent over the chicory, immersed in the chicory, working my way back up the alley through whatever those pink flowers are called, and when I emerged back on Main Street I looked back and then it was that I saw framed in the alley these serious graphic elements. It was the frame that did it, of course. They’re so big they escape every frame.
What’s different about coming home is that this time I’m here for it.
rpdpod 