barnard, nc

These were taken in Barnard. Its a quiet place located on the banks of the French Broad River just upstream from Hot Springs. Not much to see in Barnard, the main area of interest is that there is a nice put-in for rafters and kayakers. Like the two previous posts, these photos were made in October on our way back from camping. We stopped and talked to a really nice gentleman who was sitting out in front of the building with his dog. After talking to him for a while and getting some history of the place we were unable to convince him to let us photograph him. I did sneak a picture of him when it started raining and he scrambled to put away his small tractor that he painted to look like a John Deere. He seemed to take a lot of pride in his tractor and a riding lawn mower that he had fixed up with some interesting attachments. I liked both the bowling trophy topper and the safety tips on the antlers that he mounted to the front of the mower. This was a great trip!

fall color

This is the second post from my October trip to the mountains with an old friend and hiking buddy. When we got back to the car it was still raining, but not very hard at that point. We decided to cruise the back roads looking for interesting photo subjects and fall color. These pictures, simply put, are fall color in the NC mountains near Hot Springs. I think the rain actually added to the color saturation. Oh ya, the pic of the turkeys was made as they ran through the valley just below where we were taking pictures of pretty leaves. And this barn was right on the side of the road. It was covered with really cool rusty old license plates. Some of them were pretty darn old!

max patch

Back in October and buddy and I finally got together, after months of planning, and hit the trail to do a little backpacking and picture taking in Western North Carolina. We got a pretty late start on hiking, but made it to the top of Max Patch Mountain, a bald, located on the Appalachian Trail. We got our tents set up and made a few pictures before the sun set and the full moon rose. We decided to camp in the woods below the summit since there was a threat of storms coming through the area. This is the same place where a woman died after being struck by lightning 16 months earlier. We set alarms to check out the sunrise, but the clouds decided to make it pretty un-photogenic. Slept in, and then made a few more pictures of the fall color before the rain started. Since there was some thunder accompanying the rain, we took the short way back to the car and explored a couple of nearby areas. Max Patch is an easy trail hike and a must see if you are in a hiking mood and in the Asheville/Hot Springs area. Check it out!

guardian angels

Webster’s defines Guardian Angel as an angel believed to have special care of a particular individual.

I believe I have several guardian angels. You see, the last couple of years, money and gift cards have mysteriously shown up on my door step, both figuratively and literally. I am so blessed to have people looking out for my wellbeing. I just really can’t explain how thankful I am for the wonderful people who have blessed me both by their prayers and financially.

This Christmas we had several guardian angels looking out for us. I hope you are reading this right now and that you know how sincere my gratitude is. One gift was hand delivered on behalf of an anonymous giver. Thank you so much! Another gift I found on the way out the door on Christmas morning. This very generous financial gift was surrounded by a bunch of nuts and candy. I have to say, this was quite a surprise and extremely generous. Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

I think my guardian angels have been watching for quite a while. A couple of years ago, I racked up a very large medical bill at a local hospital, that I as very worried about how I was going to pay. At first, when the bills stopped coming, I thought the hospital had made a mistake. But, after thinking about it, I think there was an angel who may have paid my bill on my behalf. I don’t know this for sure, but hospitals rarely make mistakes in favor of the patients. So, if you are out there and read this, please know how thankful I am for your help!

After thinking about it, I guess I am a somewhat proud person who doesn’t like to ask for help. When I got laid off from the newspaper in May 2009, it took me a couple of months to start collecting unemployment, partially because I didn’t fully understand the process, but also because I felt like it would be a handout, which I wasn’t interested in. I feel differently now, I understand that in the 25 years I worked previous to that, I earned the right to collect unemployment. I also understand that without it the last two years, my family would not have been able to fully pay bills.

I have been blessed to be able to do a fair amount of freelance photography the last couple of years, which has financially helped out a lot, but still not enough to pay all the bills. I recently just started a part-time job with about 20 hours a week, which will help, but with my unemployment running out in the next couple of weeks, I will be back to square one again, needing a full-time job.

There have been numerous angels who have given us gift cards as well. I even found one under my windshield wiper one year. I don’t know who you angels are, but thank you so much for looking after me and my family. Please know that we are very blessed to be on the receiving end of your generosity.

I wish I had the ability to be able to bless others financially the way I have been blessed. Hopefully one day we will be back in the position to be a guardian angel for someone else, but in the meantime, I know there are many of you out there who are looking after us. Thank you!

big ron hunter

I love this mans voice. This is Big Ron Hunter, whom I had the privilege to photograph during the Warehouse Blues Concert Series last summer. Cool thing is, he will be back for a performance again this summer. You can check him out in Durham Central Park on Friday, July 29, from 6-8pm.

kelley and the cowboys

As the Warehouse Blues concert series approaches, I wanted to get up some pictures from last years shows that are long overdue. Kelley and the Cowboys, fronted by Kelley Breiding, performed on October 3, 2010 to close out the four Sunday concert series. These pictures are from that show. Big Ron Hunter also performed, and hopefully I will get those pictures up in the next couple of days.

This summer's Warehouse Blues concert series, the 8th annual, moves to Friday nights from 6-8pm in Durham Central Park. The summer schedule is as follows:

July 22 - John Dee Holeman and Pat "Mother Blues" Cohen
July 29 - Captain Luke, Big Ron Hunter, Whistlin Britches and Ironing Board Sam
August 5 - Alabama Slim and Boo Hanks
August 12 - Cool John Ferguson

periodical cicadas

Recently the periodical cicadas, Brood XIX, started arriving in my backyard. They have arrived by the thousands, maybe more. I am not the only lucky one to have been inundated with these strange little creatures. They seem to be quite plentiful in northern Durham. I last photographed cicadas back in 1998 when I was working at The Herald-Sun. You see, periodical cicadas only arrive once every 13 years around here. I became fascinated with these red-eyed creatures when I started researching caption information back in '98. OK, I say I last photographed them in '98, but there is actually a photo on this blog from June of last year of a cicada messing with the exit hole of its exit tunnel. I'm not sure if that one was a year early and decided to go back underground or if it was one of the annual cicadas that sometimes frequent the area (it did not have the characteristic red eyes).

This year, my wife noticed a couple of exoskeletons on one of her ferns in the front yard. The next night I happened to notice several white newly emerged cicadas dangling from a maple tree around midnight when I let the dog out for a late night pee. I frantically rummaged through the garage looking for my tripod. I ended up making most of the pictures on this post around 1am that night, using a flashlight as my light source. The camera was mounted on the tripod and I used a two second exposure for all the night pictures, with the flashlight as the only light.

I touched base with my former editor at The Herald-Sun, and pitched the idea for running my photos and daringly pitched the idea for me to write a story to go along with the photos. I say daringly because I don't particularly enjoy writing and have a bad habit of procrastinating until the last minute when writing. The paper accepted the pitch and gave me several days to produce a story. I have read a ton about these crazy bugs over the years, and already had quite a bit of knowledge and background for a story. I had a blast writing the story, and enjoyed talking to a couple of experts/entomologists about the subject. Interesting side note is that one entomologist told me I had told him a couple of new things about cicadas that he did not know.

The day after I did the initial photos, the idea passed through my brain to figure out how to do a time lapse of an emerging cicada. After some research, I figured out that I had the needed equipment, I just needed a photogenic subject. After about an hour of setting up and finding the right cicada in the right place, I started what would end up as a total of 2700 pictures taken over a period of seven and a half hours. A picture was taken once every ten seconds until just after 6am. I was able to use something called a Pocket Wizard, a device that allows you to trigger a camera or flash remotely. One of the settings on the remote allows you to set how many times you want the camera fired and how much time in between each picture. I didn't want to freak out my neighbors with a flash going off in my backyard 2700 times, so I used a light from the top of one of my aquariums as the light source. For those of you that care, I used a shutter speed of 1/50 of a second at f/4.5 with a 100mm macro lens on a Canon Mark II body at 400 ISO. I unexpectedly had to recompose a couple of times when the cicada dropped down too far and its wings were cut off in the pictures. Other than that, the whole process went pretty smoothly. I slept on the sofa for the night, with an alarm waking me to check on things every 60-90 minutes.

I used Quicktime Pro to convert all the pictures to a video format. I ended up editing the pictures down to around 1500 since there were several periods where the cicada really didn't move or change. Plus there was a little bit of wind at one point and the branch moved up and down quite a bit and made it look really jumpy, so I cut some of that out as well. I recorded some audio of the males singing and looking for mates to use as background music for the video.

All in all, I haven't had this much fun photographing bugs in years, something that I really enjoy. Here is a link to the story that ran in The Herald-Sun.