I am still here...

Ho boy, have I been ignoring this blog lately. It is partly because of the photographic doldrums I have been in since Janet’s last fall and part of it is the time I have been spending on the Discussion Blog and the blog’s celebratory First Anniversary Issue Magazine I have been working on.

We have finally put the Anniversary magazine to bed, how’s that for publisher talk, and I should be receiving thirty copies tomorrow by FedEx. I can hardly wait to see the finished product since I was thrilled with the proof copy. I corrected a number of design errors that I had made and did a few other corrections so I am thinking that the magazine is going to be much more impressive than the proof. At least I am hoping.

I have also got the first bi-annual or quarterly issue of the Discussion Blog magazine well underway with almost twenty pages already finished, the Anniversary Issue was only twenty pages altogether. It appears that the magazine is going to become an obsession. The Anniversary Issue was a learning experience and I believe the first bi-annual/quarterly issue is really going to rock. It will be much more colorful and since I have learned the limitations imposed by the final trimming of the magazine I am able to utilize more of the page.

I am calling the new issue a bi-annual/quarterly because the magazine is limited to one hundred pages and at the rate I am going I am going to run out of space well before the end of the year so the bi-annual may become two quarterlies. This issue is going to be devoted more to learning whereas the Anniversary Issue was celebrating the blog and what it has meant to reach the one-year mark with still a good amount of participation by the blog team members.

I have also volunteered to conduct a discussion of non-competitive prints during the judging of the monthly competition at the NWHPC. It was an idea that I threw out to better utilize the down time during the judging. I do not know whether or not that is going to fly. Either way is okay. Me and the club, actually, me and any photographic club do not exactly see eye to eye. If I do the discussion it will be with the understanding that I will be able to introduce different ways of thinking about photography, much the same thing that I am trying to do on the blog. It will be much tougher to do at the club than on the blog because the attitudes will be different.

I finally did get out and take some photographs last Saturday evening. On the 17th the International Photo Walk took place and for the first time I signed up to join in the group. I ended up taking photographs by myself, which is a little ironic.

There were three or four different walks scheduled in Houston. The one I signed up for started at Discovery Green a new park in downtown Houston. We were supposed to leave the park at about 7pm, wander throughout downtown and then meet back at the park at 8:30pm for a greet and meet and to discuss the experience.

I had hit very heavy rain driving into downtown but by the time I arrived the rain had pretty much subsided. However, I had heard on the radio that another cell was heading into Houston along I-10, which skirts the northern side of the downtown area. As we were leaving the park, the rain hit. I was with Jerry and Susan Pierson headed for Annunciation Catholic Church and was less than a half block away from the park pavilion when all heck broke loose. The rain was coming down in sheets and the wind was gusting very strongly. I suppose that if I had not had a camera in my hand and such a determination to take photographs I would have been a little concerned about the storm. Any really heavy rain in the downtown area can develop into flash flood conditions without much warning. Working at Southwestern Camera on Main Street on several occasions we had to sandbag the front door because the water, unable to drain fast enough, had filled the street and was up over the sidewalks.

Jerry and Susan were parked nearby so they headed for their car. Having heard the report of impending rain I had prepared by carrying my previously unused poncho purchased for such an occasion.

Jerry missed the shot of a lifetime when he didn’t photograph me trying to put on the lightweight poncho in the strongly gusting wind. It felt like it took five minutes and required removing the poncho and beginning again at least three times. I still got it on inside out. Our DI in Marine Corps bootcamp had a very colorful term for such awkwardness but unfortunately I can’t share it here. On Saturday night in the rain I definitely saw a parallel between my actions and his description. I did finally get the poncho on well enough although not perfect.

Jerry invited me to join them in the car but I had wanted to shoot downtown in the rain for a long time and I saw this as my opportunity. I thanked him and said that I thought I would head over toward the Metrorail on Main Street instead. Jerry exercised much better judgment. Concerned about getting stuck in a flooded downtown, they left in the middle of the heavy rain.

When I said I wanted to shoot downtown in the rain I was thinking a summer shower. This was a full-fledged electrical storm that dropped at least three inches of rain in the downtown area in less than an hour. I generally avoid being outside when lightening is playing about but like Eisenstaedt, with a camera in my hands I knew no fear.

I was thoroughly soaked under the ill fitting poncho and was wading in calf deep water crossing the streets. Water was gushing out of the storm drains like the geysers at Yellowstone, a sure sign of impending danger.

I could grip the poncho around the camera so that when I was not shooting at least it had some minimal protection. I say minimal because the poncho was just about as wet on the inside as it was on the outside. Most of the time I tried to find some overhead protection while I was shooting but to really get rain shots it did require shooting in the downpour at least occasionally.

In my trek from the park over to Main Street to shoot Metrorail and back I probably saw less than eight people outdoors. I got photographs of at least five of them. It took me a little over an hour to make my way over to Main Street, a distance of only about five or six blocks, and back. Of course it wasn’t straight over and straight back; there was lots of zigzagging. Fortunately I had planned ahead and had several dry towels in the car to dry off the equipment and myself when I returned to the park. I hung around with the group of bone dry photographs, that I do not believe ever left the protection of the pavilion, for a few minutes. Then since the rain had dissipated made a short circle around the northeast side of the park.

The light was getting very interesting with the setting sun coming in under the dark storm clouds. However, I had left Janet at home alone and really felt that it was more important to get back to her than it was to join in the meet and greet after the shoot. After all I had accomplished what I had set out to do and that was to take photographs.

I decided to go home over the Elysian viadock rather than getting on a busy freeway where the heavy rain might hit again. As I passed the Annunciation Catholic Church from a block away I glanced over and noticed the light of the setting sun hitting just the tower and steeple and how the white structure stood out against the dark clouds. I quickly turned around and found a parking spot about a block away. I rushed as fast as my decrepit legs would carry me and made it in time to get what was for me the photo of the day.

I hung around for a few minutes more and shot the sun setting behind the buildings of the northern end of downtown. I really liked most of the photographs I shot but the ones shot when I stopped for the photo of the church are really the most spectacular photographs of the night.

I told Paul Saltzman in an email later that it really felt good to be shooting photographs again with enthusiasm, something that I had not done since Janet’s last fall in early June. I had gone from shooting almost on a daily basis to shooting less than once a week so the Photo Walk combined with the rain really picked up my photographic spirits.