Phoctober the fifteenth

Frog and Toad are friends (Blog and toad...?)

What I was supposed to be shooting, when I was gazing moonily at the weeds from my previous post, were a small frog and a toad who I am told is his friend. Both had been constructed by my friend, who is designing the poster for a production of "A Year With Frog and Toad" in one of the suburbs with a grain in the name.

When he first asked me to shoot these, he did not know that Frog and Toad are Friends was the first book I bought from the Schoolastic Book Club when I was in Kindergarten. When it arrived, as the only kid in my class who could read, I was obliged to read it aloud in front of the class. Looking back, I may have had a really lazy Kindergarten teacher, making me read stories all the time as she did. No doubt she was envious of our naptime. On the one hand, making me read aloud when I had crippling shyness issues was sort of mean. On the other, I did spend a fair chunk of my adolescent and adult lives as an actor, so maybe it wasn't so much mean as incredibly early career training.

My friend did a nice job on the figures. I hadn't seen the book or its characters for ages, but they still struck a chord of recognition for me. We walked out into the little wilderness behind his house, posed them, furrowed our brows, moved them, moved the props, rotated things and generally did the things you do when taking pictures of tiny frog statues in a muddy field. I had a thick blanket to lie upon while I got down close to the ground to shoot our tiny subjects, but still managed to get a fair amount of mud on my shoes and pants. It was wet enough that if I stood still for longer than a few seconds, i could feel myself slowly sinking into the earth. Probably not a great day to have worn canvas shoes.

I was not, frankly, completely happy with the results of the shoot. Too many of the shots had focus issues caused by my crappy unfocused eye or from trusting the autofocus to not select a single blade of grass as my subject. Still, there were some I thought were nice, and at least one that my friend liked enough to make into a poster, which is kinda the main goal.

I told him that I would do a better job photographing them for the sequel. When I was told there isn't one, I sat down and came up with several. Whoever owns these characters, let me know if I should proceed with any of the following:

Frog and Toad are Coworkers and Nothing More.

Frog and Toad are Sisters AND Mother and Daughter
"Forget it, Jake. It's Amphibiantown."

Frog and Toad are Friends Until They Meet A Salamander and Each Decides to Vie for Her Affections, Which Causes an Irreparable Breach in their Relations, Despite the Fact that the Salamander is Not Remotely Interested in Either of Them

Frog and Toad are Dead
by Tom Stoppard

Frog and Toad are Two Personalities Housed in a Single Body

Frog and Toad are Metaphors

Frog and Toad are a Dual-Income Family Earning a Combined Total of $170,000 Per Year. Under Which Candidate's Tax Plan are they Better Off?

Snail Goes to Jamaica

*****

This was more for me than an actual part of the shoot. I wish I'd gone back and taken one like this once we had the kite set up. I really like having to look for them a bit.




This is the one that got selected. We cleaned out the wires, and fiddled with it a bit for the final poster.



More or less the same as the select, except in this one their friend the snail has arrived to deliver a letter.


The final shot, wires removed, in poster form. From this I learned that tickets to something like this are far more expensive than I would have guessed. And that a photo credit is a gratifying thing.

*****

Other Phoctobering:

All 2008 Phoctober posts from this site.

Minx finds poetry in a statue.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the thirteenth

Yes, I am behind in my Phoctoberly duties. Apologies. Illness and other things wedged between me and you, Blogreader, but I am returned. And many Phoctober links adorn the bottom of this post. I hope it catches me up. At least it's all of those who came and said to link them, plus one I went and found, from the very talented Jefferson Davis.

*****

Weeds and soft houses

Saturday, I drove out to the suburbs for a couple of reasons. One was to take some pictures of clay amphibians which I will show you in a later post. While wandering around behind my friend's house to see where we might shoot, I came across what seemed to be a man-made lake surrounded by lush plant life, mud and the flesh and blood analogues to the amphibians I was there to shoot.

I kept walking toward the water. I was technically walking through someone's yard. I heard children playing. It was unseasonably warm. I made my way closer, until I stood on a concrete drainpipe at the mouth of the water. I crouched down upon it, bringing myself close to the water, listening to the staccato ploppings of startled frogs seeking sanctuary in the depths.

I never saw an actual frog, but I did see lilypads. And I snapped a few pictures as well. Today, I give you two weeds, and a house behind them fading off in soft focus.

*****

*****

Other Phoctobering:

All 2008 Phoctober posts from this site.

Minx on a pond, with lilypads much better than the ones I saw.

Taffiny's ode to summer.

Baino joins in with rocks and sea and a lighthouse.

That's So Pants on birds and...well, mainly birds.

Jefferson Davis finds beauty at Furman University.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the third

Yes, I know it is the fourth. I got home last night and simply crashed out until this morning. I had nothing to drink or anything, and yet still have no clear recollection of returning home, or of going to bed. My work life is sort of complicated right now, apparently exhausting, and I suspect I've caught a minor bug during the annual "Let's everyone get sick because the weather is changing" event. I'll make up a post tonight to get back on track. I could always backdate the entry, but I don't want to start lying to you.

At least not about what day of the month it is.

*****

Night - Part One

Most people who know me would not be surprised to hear me say that I prefer the night. I've probably written about this before, so I won't go into too much detail about this particular preference. When I discovered that I loved photography, it was inevitable that I would discover quickly that I love night shots a lot.

I'm not a great dark shooter. My finished photos tend to point out some of the flaws I have as a processor. My tastes rune to very dark darks and bright brights, and I often blow out the whites entirely when I do my level adjustments. Also, I do not have a tripod, and I've lost more than my share of night shots to the lengthier amount of time the shutter is open, and my image comes out slightly blurred. But while I'd like to fix the blurriness thing, the blown out lights and pitch black darks are something I kind of like. This summer, I sent a shot to a friend that I was rather fond of, and he sent it back to me a few minutes later, having done some level adjustments (he does this sort of thing for a living). I had to laugh when I saw that his adjustments had turned the file more or less back to the original exposure.

Here are some night shots for you. I think I'll be doing another set of nights soon, hence the part one in the subhead.

*****

This first one, I think I will go reshoot at some point. I did virtually nothing to this shot, but somehow the lighting made everything but the statue into a strangely beautiful faux sepia. It looked so amazing on the viewer in my camera, and I was heartbroken when I discovered the focus problem.

*****

Other Phoctobering:

All Phoctober posts from this site.

Kyklops with a spider he says is only partially terrifying.

Taffiny gets started with yet another spider, and the view from inside her car.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments.

Phoctober the second

Chicago

A friend of mine went through and read a bunch of this blog once she learned I had one. Her main comment was "wow, you really love Chicago."

I guess it's true. I pine for London, but Chicago does just fine for now. And it is a beautiful city, even if it is sometimes a flawed sort of beauty.

*****

Other Phoctobering:

All 2008 Phoctober posts from this site.

It isn't too late to join the fun. Just do a photo post, mention Phoctober, and come and tell me about it in the comments. No takers yet, and I did not have a chance to trawl through and draft anyone today, but I am hoping to have some linky goodness for tomorrow.

Phoctober the first

Baseball

I stepped outside of my normal routines last night, watching a sporting event in a local bar with some friends. It was the Chicago White Sox Baseball Club Team League Players versus the Bishops of Montreal or Minnesota or something. The two teams had identical records for the season, and the game's outcome would determine which team would advance to the playoffs and the which would begin puttering around their houses or going on cruises and the like. Unlike most jobs you or I might have, this extra month of vacation is apparently undesirable.

I arrived at the bar somewhere in the third inning, with both teams tied at zero. That remained the case for quite a while. I was told later that the game was a "nailbiter," but to my eye it was kinda boring. Honestly, if I want to watch groups of men fail to earn points at a game they are paid millions of dollars to play, I can always watch soccer (see also: football, futbol).

Anyway, Chicago won, "clinching" their way into the postseason with, I guess, a dramatic clinching sound. But, of course, this was the wrong Chicago team as I live on the North side of Chicago. More traditionally, the north belongs to the famed Chicago Cubs, who have not won the "World Series"—a contest which assumes the world consists entirely of parts of America and a couple of towns in Canada—in one hundred years.

Now my position all along has been that if you've managed to have a team for a hundred years without winning the grand prize of baseball, they really ought to just let you have it. Once every hundred years seems more than fair. But apparently they don't do it like that, and the Cubs must battle the same as any other team for the right to the trophy or ribbon or whatever they give the winners of that thing (a glass of milk?). They get the millions of dollars either way.

The thing is, the Cubs are apparently very good this year, and did their own clinching some time ago. Both teams from our fair city have big-shouldered themselves into the postseason, and a World Series consisting of only teams whose stadiums can be reached via the Red Line train is, while not terribly likely, at least a mathematical possibility. So, as a Northsider, I am now obligated to unleash some trash talk on the White Sox. Here goes.

1. That one pitcher you guys have is quite hefty, and his facial hair is ill-advised.

2. A close up of the lantern-jawed guy who hit that home run last night made me rethink the entire concept of high-definition television. His chewing tobacco did not gain him any points in this area. Where was he spitting? Just on the ground in front of him? I saw no spittoons.

3. How hard is it to spell the word "socks?" Are we to imagine that no one has thought to correct this typo since your team came into existence? It's just laziness, and you should be ashamed.

4. If you guys are so great, then how come the..uh...(loses interest, watches an hour of television)

OK, so I really don't care about sports. I have only pretended to in order to waste your time, and to justify these pictures of fireworks that I took at the White Sox game I attended with friends in June.

A couple of people who saw the shots asked me how to photograph fireworks, which are generally small bursts of light in an otherwise dark frame. My secret is to shoot several hundred pictures, and hope for a dozen or so that actually work.

Here are three:





As a tiny bonus, here's a shot I quite liked of the park itself, just around dusk:




To join in the Phoctober fun, simply do a photo post and come tell me about it in the comments. I'll ink a link for the following day's post. Sadly, this year, I can only guarantee a link if you come and tell me you did a post, as last year it was very time-consuming trying to track down the entries. This year I have a job.

Rest well, my friend

Internet is working again here on the moon, but my return was delayed again due to the recent loss of a friend and colleague. The funeral was sort of lovely (as much as such a thing can be), and I was glad to have a chance to meet his family and share stories of the man we all had in common, who shuffled off his coil at the still-tender age of 41.

His name was Kyle. He was a private man, so I won't tell you too much about him. He was often funnier than I am, and his hair was graying in the way all men likely hope theirs will: at the temples alone, a distinguished streak of white. Like Mr. Fantastic from the Fantastic Four. I know he read this blog at least once, to catch a mention of himself as my "supervisor" so he could give me crap about it later.

But that's just trivia.

He was a really great guy. I miss him.

*****

But now it seems I must get my blogshoes tied up snug and make ready again, as Phoctober begins in two days. Last year was such a nice thing to have been a part of, that I would hate to not host it again this year.

I'll do a post tonight to let you know how it might differ from last year.