One Picture, Two Impressions.

The Color Version, 2012

I know it’s painfully obvious. But I still find it interesting how many different interpretations there can be of the same scene.

I’m not talking about the kind of different interpretations you learn about in Psychology 101 where ten people witnessing the same event tell ten different “true” versions of the event.

Rather, I’m talking about how easy it us to change the meaning of a photograph by just changing one thing. And again, I’m not talking about editing out an ugly sign or other obtrusive elements.

I took the picture above a few weeks ago while out in the car on a rainy day. I hadn’t taken any pictures in a few days and was carrying the camera with me to a meeting just to see if having the camera at hand would inspire me to see something fresh and interesting.

I didn’t see anything fresh and particularly interesting. But I did come to a standstill at a stoplight long enough for me to lift the camera to my eye and take this picture of the blurry scene through the windshield. I was initially drawn to the colors. I focused on the windshield so that the colors would be purposely blurred.

That should have been the end of the story. I should have downloaded the picture from the camera, given it a brief “Pfft!” and sent it to the trashcan.

But I happened to be refreshing my Adobe Lightroom skills and grabbed this picture to play around with. I made a few basic adjustments and then, just as I was about to sign off, converted the picture to back-and-white. In that brief moment, by simply removing those warm blurry reds, I took the focus off the colors and instead made this picture about the raindrops on the windshield.

No great revelation here. Just another example of how a single simple change can change what you thought was interesting into something that’s arguably more interesting.

 

The B&W Version, 2012

For the Want of a Nail

A Three-Ladder Job, 2012

 You probably recall the old proverb about how “the kingdom was lost…for the want of a nail.” I was taught when I was young that if you don’t take care of little things as they occur they tend to grow into bigger things that can overwhelm your ability to address them. I haven’t always heeded this lesson. But it has never proven less than true.

Years ago I discovered that my mother had been driving around for a couple of years in a car with a malfunctioning air bag system. When I asked her how she had passed Virginia’s mandatory annual vehicle safety inspection she shrugged and said the guy who did her inspections said not to worry about it. (Nothing, apparently, a little duct tape across the flashing dashboard warning light couldn’t resolve.)

I wasn’t half as concerned about the air bags as I was about what else the guy might have overlooked.

Closer to home, the picture above shows the team of guys who’ve been swarming around our house the last few days. Living where we do we have to be doubly mindful of moisture, mold and rot. We take care of our house. Still, little things get by you from time to time.

Like the flying squirrels I wrote about not long ago. They’d likely been wintering in our attic for years. But it was only when the larger gray squirrels followed them in and started munching on the woodwork that I knew I had to so something. 

It’s not like I didn’t know work needed to be done. Several springs ago I started noticing pileated woodpeckers pecking away at the wooden fascia boards that trim the roofline and corners of our house.  They’re pretty birds. But they were eating our house! I thought they were eating the wood. But it turns out they were pecking through the wood to reach the wood bees that had gone unnoticed burrowing into the fascia boards.

At first I’d just stick my head out the window and yell at the woodpeckers to scare them away. This is the kind of ridiculously foolish mitigation Rebecca Costa describes in her fine book, The Watchman’s Rattle, which I strongly recommend, by the way, if you haven’t heard of it.

The flaws in my mitigation strategy were pretty obvious. Consequently, the woodpeckers left the fascia boards on our house looking like Swiss cheese. 

My second, and also futile, mitigation strategy was to fill the holes made by the woodpeckers and then repaint. That’s when I discovered that the damage was larger and deeper than I could see from the ground.

That’s when I also realized just how uneasy I am working on tall ladders. The peak of the roof over the main part of our house is so high that I’ve been told I could fit a third floor underneath it if I wanted. I don’t, but the fact remains that our roof is higher than I want to be.

So the bees and the woodpeckers continued their annual picnics on the house. I knew I should be doing something. But it was just too easy to overlook. Then a couple of hurricanes did some more damage and the gray squirrels joined the demolition team. I had no choice but to get serious about this assault of nature.

It turns out contractors don’t like my roof, either. The actual repair carpentry involved is relatively easy.  Doing it nearly forty feet off the ground is another thing.

But it seems that if you throw enough money at the task you can find a reputable contractor whose crew will tackle the job.

There was talk initially of placing scaffolding around the house. But everyone agreed that while that would be the most comfortable approach it would also be inefficient and costly overkill. So the contractor’s team settled on a multi-ladder strategy. They even make it look entertaining, which at this price makes me think I should have invited some friends over to watch the show.

 

A Four-Ladder Job, 2012

A Little Higher, Please, 2012

Stuff Around

Yellow, 2012

That title isn’t a verb. I’m not talking about stuffing anything.

Rather, I’m referring to the stuff that you find “around” on a rain day when you don’t want to go outside to take picture.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks. I know I’m the one who’s always going on about “doing something creative every day.” But I was so distracted much of the time that most of my creativity was going into making client reports into something worth reading.

“I’ll make it up on the weekend,” I told myself. But then the rain set in. And when it wasn’t raining it was dark and gloomy, so much so that Mrs. B and I sought refuge in the movie theater.

We also took advantage of the gloomy weather to upgrade our cell phones. This means there’s a new woman in my life named Siri. With a name like that, I like to think she’s a young exotic beauty from, say, India or Indonesia. But in truth Siri’s voice sounds more like that middle-aged lady in Kentucky who is the voice of AT&T, Bank of America and a bunch of airports.

One of the other benefits of the new phone is a better phone camera. I hope this also means I’ll have noticeably better quality images when I use the iPhone while traveling. (Of course, it’s the camera that got better. The person taking the pictures is still the same old me.)

Anxious to see what this new phone camera can do, I took a quick spin around the house yesterday afternoon with the new phone to see what sights I could see. No great visual miracles, it turns out. But a few interesting colors, shapes and shadows.

Must go. I think I hear Siri calling me.

 

The Illusion of Light, 2012

 

Crisp, 2012

 

Nature’s Forest, 2012

Roar like a Lion!

ARRRRRRR!!!!

While looking for some software in an old desk drawer yesterday I came across a clutch of old family photos. Most were once jammed into something of a collage that hung near my mother’s bedroom dresser for many years. Calling it a collage gives it greater artistic intention than was ever intended. It was really just a dozen or so snapshots taped to a piece of cardboard and held in a flimsy frame by more tape and gravity. When my mother moved from her last apartment to assisted living about seven years ago the whole affair fell apart in my hands. The glass in the frame was long gone, the tape had lost its hold, and the edges of the photographs were dry and warped.

Most of the photos in that frame, like the one above, are yellowed from fifty years of exposure to the sunlight. (The right side of this photo holds its color better because it was covered in the frame by another photo all those years.) That any semblance of the original color remains in this photo at all is more a testament to the quality of even the most basic Kodak processing of that era than any attempt on my family’s part to preserve these images. I don’t know if it’s possible to restore the yellowed side of this photo. I might give it a try when I get a chance.

In the meantime, here I am in Virginia Beach at the Cavalier Beach Club in July of 1953, sixteen months old and full of myself, no doubt yelling at the ocean to stay in its place.

I’m still tilting at windmills.

More Things I Just Can't Ignore

Blue in Bala, 2012

Last week’s travel included early, early mornings and late, late nights, with just a few minutes in between to catch my breath. I didn’t carry a “good” camera because I knew there’d be little time for serious photography. But I was aware that just because I was distracted by some intense “day job” work I couldn’t let my photographer’s eye go unfed. In fact, the few stolen moments I had in which to take pictures with my camera phone were just the thing I needed to get break up the week.

Sometimes it’s big things that catch my eye. Gorgeous landscapes or nature. Last week it was little things that caught my eye, like Blue in Bala, above. This is nothing more than the shadow cast by a tree on the backside of a ground level sign in front of a hotel in Philadelphia. The sign occupies only a tiny part of a much larger landscape. But as I waited for my car to be brought around it was the play of the shadows on the sign that caught my eye. I dropped my bags long enough to run down to the edge of the driveway and grab this shot.

Later that afternoon I found myself on the 22^nd floor of an office building in suburban Chicago. Despite the elevation, there wasn’t much interesting to see from the expansive range of windows. Instead, I happened to glance back into the interior of the room and notice this little tableau of shapes and shadows. Nothing special, but for me an interesting moment.

 

Shadows in Schaumburg, 2012

The next afternoon in suburban Dallas I happened to look out the window of yet another office building and notice these scallop-shaped reflections on the building across the way. They changed as the sun changed its position. (Or was the earth that was changing its position?)

 

Dialog in Dallas, 2012

By the end of the week I’d taken a bunch like these. Most weren’t worth sharing and were quickly discarded upon review. But even the ones that weren’t any good reminded me yet again that there are little moments of awareness and elegance in even the most hectic everyday life if you care to look for them.

Would it kill them to....

Some Hotel Somewhere, 2012

Back when he was riding the crest of the In Search of Excellence popularity wave, author and management consultant Tom Peters came to Norfolk, Virginia, to give a speech. I remember very little about the speech. But I do remember the story he told at the beginning.

It seems that Mr. Peters doesn’t like to have to entertain or be entertained by the local burghers when he goes someplace to give a speech. Accordingly, when he came to Norfolk he arrived the night before his presentation and went straight to his hotel.

Upon entering his room, Peters found a giant fruit basket and personal note from the hotel manager. He appreciated the gesture, especially the thoughtful handwritten note.

As he contemplated the fruit basket, Peter’s eye was drawn to a large and luscious looking strawberry atop the mound of fruit. But when he reached to grab the strawberry he found that the half of the berry that wasn’t visible from the outside was mushy and covered with mold. As you might imagine, that sight deflated any interest Peters might have had in digging deeper into the pile. And like many of us who look for experiences to pull into our presentations, Peters used this experience as a lesson in how a good idea can turn into a bad customer experience all because of a small detail not being executed carefully.

I’m not a celebrity, so I don’t expect hotels to shower me with ambrosia. I used to be impressed that the desk clerks at Doubletree hotels gave me freshly baked cookies at check-in. But then I learned that they do this for everyone.

I like to think that I don’t expect too much from hotels. But last week’s travel reminded me very quickly that I’m pickier than I thought. To wit:

·      Why is that hotels can’t seem to find radios that have controls that are intuitive, that work well for FM stations and that have decent fidelity?

·      Why is it that the “hotel that loves business travelers” doesn’t have a desk big enough to actually work on?

·      Why is that so many hotels that cater to business travelers can’t seem to come up with desk chairs that don’t make it necessary for me to stack up three bed pillows to reach desk height?

·      Why do hotels that cater to value travelers offer free wireless internet service and hotels that cost many hundreds of dollars more a night charge you an extra $14 for the same service?

·      Do you suppose the people who specify and purchase those little courtesy shampoo bottles with round screw-off tops have ever tried to open one when their hands were wet or soapy?

I don’t travel every week. But I do travel frequently enough to be a minor connoisseur of hotel design, wayfinding and ergonomics. Let me suggest that the people who design hotels should be made to go spend a few nights in one of their hotels. If they did we travelers might have a much better time.  And while they’re thinking about that, maybe they could do something about the radios.