Rome wasn't built in a day....

The tomatoes are really slow to produce.... granted I did try the experiment of fewer plants to get more sunlight but the result has been fewer tomatoes....DRATTTT ! I'm very close to pulling them and planting lettuce and cabbage. Defeat is hard to take.... I'll wait a few days as rash decisions are often wrong. Karen and I spent last week in Branson with a friend of mine and his wife form college and it was fun. Larry brought down his new corvette and it was amazing. 

I've had 2 and I really wish I had kept them. One was a white 78 and the other was a blue 79. I sold each for about 10.000 more than I paid for them so I thought I made a great deal each time. But look at he price they get now and I wish I still had them. Fun cars to drive and great for road trips. Larry took me for a ride and got on it once. The seats are form fitting and I was planted in mine as the car jumped from 30 to 90 in a flash... ZOOOM ZZZOOOOOMMMMM....

Hipster....again...

 Many of you may remember when I was in Carthage in the 70's and 80's I could be seen running on Grand and Main streets after work. I did this for several reasons....one was to stay at a lower wieght and still be able to drink beer, the other was to cycle through the day in my head to get everything into perspective, and the other was because I enjoyed the running effort. I only ran once with other people and that was in 1980 in the Cossville to Carthage run which covered 15 miles. I photographed the Sarcoxie prom that night and Sunday when I went to get out of bed....my legs said, "PARTIES OVER DUFFUS".....and that was the last day I ran.  I finished in the middle of the pack....

However, being a glutton for punishment I started playing racquetball and continued to do so through 2002, until we moved down here to Tulsa. While in Joplin/Carthage had both knees scoped to remove meniscus that I had rearranged while running and playing raquetball, had a short stint with cracked ribs from hitting the wall with my right shoulder, and generally started to notice my knees were headed south. Cutting the whining story short I have had both knees replaced totally with steel and plastic and I followed that with a total right hip replacement several years ago. The recovery on the knees took a good 30 days and was a struggle as I was on a machine 6 hours a day bending  my legs up and down. 

I hated mowing our backyard which was a ski slope until we pit in the two decks and koi pond, getting rid of the grass and replacing it with raised gardens, planting areas, stone walls, and two patio areas. Knowing I could do it myself, and being too cheap to pay to have it done, I put down 4000 pounds of river rock, built 4 raised beds and filled them with good dirt, put in one walled garden area, and laid down two walkways to the "Hidden Garden" and the East Side Sanctuary. Activity that was followed by left hip replacement several years ago. I'm only 16......

The first of the year I had several vertebra's fused at the base of the spine due to a bit of pain and I have now begun to experience a very bad pain in my right hip and have developed a limp that necessitates  my using an Old Man Walker. It's pretty good looking as it is a candy green with metal flakes........but it is a pain to use. This has led me to curtail all photographic efforts and has gotten me concerned that I may be this way the rest of my life....concerning to say the least....

I had an appointment with a new Doctor Tuesday and he is soon to be my Hero. An extremely nice guy with a great patient/Doctor attitude and he is going to schedule me in for a hip replacement. Looking at the X-Ray you can see there is nothing but bone on bone on my right side hip and as a result my right leg is 1/2 inch shorter than my left. I suddenly can relate to the Leaning Tower of Pizza. 

All of this is because of my skipping over several chapters in the book of Getting Old. I'll keep you posted. By the way.....tomatoes are producing !!!

New possibilities in the future....

I'm not ready to let the cat out of the bag but there may be some pretty exciting news in the near future.

I'll keep you posted. It looks like we are in for some pretty soaking rain this week. Oklahoma always needs water but this is perhaps a bit much. The squirrels and birds, Robins, Cardinals, Sparrows, and Blue Jays now all are sporting web feet......Bob Dylan once said a A big change is coming'.....I guess this is it.

Next week is going to be a real kick as I have a personal assignment to complete so watch for some new imagery soon. I have more or less learned a lesson...opportunity only knocks once go for it as it appears....there is nothing to lose. Looking over the past 5 decades I have very few regrets. A few, but not an over riding amount.... When I started the business in 1972 I was 22 years old and over educated in the eyes of over 400 companies I applied to all over the country. I was waiting for a positive response from any of them and was living with my parents not working, basically puttering around. Graduate School was paid for by  an assistantship. and I had a few bucks left from that.  I was reading National Geographic and my Dad came into the room and said the words I'll never forget....Get a job, you're out of the house in two weeks...I could tell by his tone he was serious. 

While in undergrad school I had worked for Don Sothern and Ozark Camera Center. Shooting weddings for Don and selling cameras and darkroom supplies for Ozark. I had decided then that the last thing I wanted to do was own a studio. With Dads words there seemed to be no other option. As I was pursuing my studies I had always felt there would be a college job in my future. The draft had ended and college enrollment tanked....there were staff cuts and photography was a non essential class in schools. There were three other studios in Carthage one that had been there since the 1880's. All of them had the standard studio layout three lights painted backgrounds and old furniture. 

I went to the bank and talked to the President and told him that I was going to start a photography business and he said that they had money to loan. I researched Cameras and wanted a Mamiya RB 67 primarily due to the fact that it delivered images in a negative that was the "ideal format" one that cropped in camera to a 4x5 / 8x10 format. leaving no cropping up to the lab. It came with a 127 mm lens and a 120 back delivering 10 negs per roll. I bought a heavier tripod as the camera was very heavy. The beauty of the lens on the camera was that although it was a through the lens viewing situation you could trip the mirror up in the camera exposing the flim but not until you snapped the shutter which was within the lens. This gave you incredibly sharp images.

Although I was used to using a built in metering system in my Nikons the RB did not have that available so I bought a Luna Pro hand held meter which I still use today and love it as it gives precise ambient light reading for exposures.

I found my first studio to rent a the corner of Third and Lyon and luckily enough it had an apartment above it and I was able to rent both for $ 200.00 a month. It however had no studio space...so I did the obvious...started shooting outside-later to be tagged as shooting environmentally. I later heard that people thought I was creative for coming up with the idea....it was necessity not creativity.

I had my logo designed by Rita Swanson from Joplin Printing and am still using it today. Joplin Printing gave me my first really great break with an assignment to shoot a Teledyne Neosho mailer showing Jet engine capabilities in overhaul. BUT...........it had to be shot as 4 x 5 transparencies. Paul Mignard, a commercial photographer in Springfield had 2 Linholf Kardin D 4 x 5 cameras and I purchased one from him. I then had to get a lens board and lens to fit it for the job.

I was more than concerned as this was a really big job and I wanted to succeed. I had NO experience with a 4 x 5 camera and in fact had never loaded film into the holders that held the film. Time to turn on the go for it mode......I practiced loading the film which had to be done in total darkness with the only way of knowing the emulsion side which has the light sensitive coating and the base side is the location of the digits in the film. I had 10 film holders so that would take care of 20 exposures. Bracketing the shots one exposure on the mark, one exposure one f stop over the mark, and one exposure one f stop under the mark should cover all bases exposure wise. Of course that's if the film went into the holders properly. Yes I was nervous......I could only produce 7 different location shots per day. However I had purchased a 4 x 5 Polaroid film holder for the camera which allowed me to shoot and immediately see the image in a 4 x 5 inch Polaroid print. 

The shoot took a week and I tried too let the work station I would be shooting next know so they could get their area ready for the shoot. At that time Teledyne was having some talks with the Union representing the workers and neither side was a happy camper. One of the stations wasn't ready for me....the area needed to be swept, tools placed in different areas and white coats placed on the techs. None had been done. The plant manager came around while the station was getting ready and he asked me why I was drinking coffee...I told him I couldn't shoot til the site was prepared and it was slowly getting in shape. I had swept the area and a tech was getting the right tools in position. The Manager went ballistic.....that was the LAST time an area wasn't ready. The job was completed on time and won an outstanding image award from the Professional Photographer of America of a jet engine in afterburner stage in a test chamber at the facility. It was a very fun time that really launched my commercial photography career. I still love my job......!!!