‘Da Chefs

Several years ago I was traveling back and forth from Nashville, TN to White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, working on photo projects for The Greenbrier Resort. My favorite time was when we were composing what was to be a new cookbook for The Greenbrier. Eric Adkins was ‘shooting’ the ‘plates’…the glamour shots of the food, while I was concentrating on the ‘back story’… the ‘behind the scenes’ photos of what it takes to make a large operation like this run.

Sadly, the cookbook was ‘shelved’ for various reasons and until recently when someone posted one of my images on LinkedIn, it was all just a good memory. When I saw the image, I realized that I had hundreds, if not thousands of other photos that no one had seen. I put together this video as a tribute to all of the chefs who I got to know (and who fed me some incredible food.)

Click the link under this photo:

https://vimeo.com/665895238

Thanks to you all!!!

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Covid Chronicles, or… Wuhan Workflow

I just found this and don’t believe it was ever posted. From October 2020

This has been a strange year so far, no?

Some of my usual assignments…Indy 500, etc. just were not happening…as far as I was involved.

…can’t photograph people in closed office settings…can’t go here…can’t do this…

You know the drill.

So, what’s a photographer to do?

I decided to go far…

Our moon and Mars…(that little dot just above left of moon….not a dust speck after all)

Click image, then click again to see

and go close…

Covid-Week 52

I’m certain many of us have taken time in this past ‘non-year’ to organize our lives, our goals, or at least our closets…

In purging old documents on my laptop I came across a Facebook post that I wrote in June, 2019 as my “Farewell to Facebook”. I think it still rings true…maybe even more so now. When I stopped checking Facebook every day, I’ll have to say that a dark cloud disappeared from my thoughts, emotions and time.

June, 2019

I’m Outta-here…

“…Keep as far away as you can from the places where they gather to cheat and insult one another, to exploit one another, or to mock one another with their false gestures of friendship…”  Thomas Merton-1962

This will be my last Facebook post.  Due to the increasingly ‘Orwellian’ takeover and suppression of free thought and free speech, I don’t think FB is a place for me anymore.

But that is not the larger reason.  I find myself trying to break the addiction to outrage that seems to have become the staple of FB posts.  I am weary of  perceiving many of my ‘friends’ as uninformed ideological morons…maybe I should say MIS-informed….and by the same token, in many cases having them think the same of me.  There is no enriching, edifying purpose for negativity going out or coming in.  It grows and festers and I for one choose to no more take part in the building of unsafe, bordering on insane, social structures.

It does pain me that we seem to culturally be headed in the wrong direction…and if you just now had the thought, “It’s Trump’s fault”, then no, YOU are the problem.  I can almost guarantee that I was as disgusted by the Obama presidency as so many are now about Trump….BUT….I didn’t hate him nor did it cause me to stupidly hate my country, just because so many were fooled into thinking he was more than he could be. 

Bottom line…if you absolutely HATE President Donald Trump, then the problem is actually with YOU…you are the hater.  If you simply disagree with his policies or his style, then that is something that can be, but probably will not be rationally debated.  (I still am waiting for someone to define “Presidential’, as in “…he’s just not acting Presidential.”  Who set those standards?  Nixon?  Clinton?  Andrew Jackson? )

I will still write blog posts that will be at rkpowers .wordpress.com and I am on Instagram at rkpowersphoto if anyone has any interest in or curiosity about what I am doing.

You know how to find me if you need me and if you don’t know how to find me, I doubt you’ll need me.

I’m gonna end this with more words from Thomas Merton from 1968…but oh so true today.

…we imagine that we are of all generations the most enlightened, the most objective, the most scientific, the most progressive and the most humane.  This, in fact, is an “image” of ourselves—an image which is false and is also the object of a cult.  We worship ourselves in this image.  The nature of our acts is determined in large measure by the demands of our worship.  Because we have an image of ourselves as fair, objective, practical, and humane, we actually make it more difficult for ourselves to be what we think we are.

            Since our “objectivity” for instance is in fact an image of ourselves as “objective”, we soon take our objectivity for granted, and instead of checking facts, we simply manipulate the facts to fit our pious conviction.  In other words, instead of taking care to examine the realities of our political or social problems, we simply bring out the idols in solemn procession.  “We are the good guys, they are the bad guys.  We are honest, they are crooks.”  In this confrontation of images, “objectivity” ceases to be a consistent attention to fact and becomes a devout and blind fidelity to myth.  If the adversary is by definition wicked, then objectivity consists simply in refusing to believe that he can possibly be honest in any circumstances whatever.  If facts seem to conflict with images, then we feel that we are being tempted by the devil, and we determine that we will be all the more blindly loyal to our images.  To debate with the devil would be to yield!  Thus in support of realism and objectivity we simply determine beforehand that we will be swayed by no fact whatever that does not accord perfectly with our own preconceived judgment.  Objectivity becomes simple dogmatism.

Thomas Merton   1968

TIME TO WAKE UP!

Covid Chronicles-Week 47

I am a little lost on WordPress after they ‘improved’ it, so I’m going to try this and see what happens:

This is a project that I did this past week:

Play it Loud!

https://click.email.vimeo.com/u/?qs=2a6cadfbde0a9b3777b131dbde54a3ef3de0a0b4afb5d8a049da626582a215f9c89f7844c1f293d261e71040db0ed937af5bcdcba66efefdfa41eb415a6df1c9

“I Know You’re Out There Somewhere”

It has come to my attention that I have not written a blog post since October, 2018.  What the heck?

So, Rip Van Winkle may be ready to awaken…

I got off of Facebook several months ago so I know those people will not be seeing this.  I AM curious as to how many, if any, previous followers are still around.  I don’t usually ask for much but if you would click ‘Like’, or comment, then maybe I’ll know who’s out there…

I hope everyone is staying safe and sane in the midst of all this 2020 craziness..

In keeping with my use of song titles……

https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tFP1zcsNM0yS8lNNzJg9NLNzc9PqVRIyilNLVbIVMjOyy9XqMwvVS9KVcgvLVEoyUgFsorzc1PLQSwAblYVSg&q=moody+blues+i+know+you%27re+out+there+somewhere&rlz=1C1AWUC_enUS740US759&oq=moody+Blues+I+know&aqs=chrome.1.0j46j69i57j0.12329j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

The Main(e) Thing

(I have been borrowing song titles for the last few posts so, in keeping with that theme, this is attributed to Bryan Ferry and Roxy Music)

 

 

One last hodgepodge of Maine impressions that didn’t go with any of the previous posts.

 

 

Cadillac Mountain, Acadia National Park…first spot in the United States to see the sunrise…

I didn’t…..

 

 

 

Nice little ‘Playhouse’…

 

 

…and let’s put it RIGHT there….

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Loves Me Like a Rock

(Paul Simon)

This was on the shore at Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport

I can’t help but think about an old Charles Schultz ‘Peanuts’ comic strip in which Charlie Brown and Linus are standing on the beach and Charlie Brown picks up a rock and throws it in the water. Linus looks at him and says something along the lines of, “Congratulations, Charlie Brown. That rock spent 3000 years to make it onto this shore and you just threw it back to start all over again!”

I wonder if these are making their way from the sea or to the sea…I didn’t throw any…!

A Brief Lighthouse Tour

 

Bear Island Light

 

 

 

 

 

One of my two favorite stories from this ‘outing’ was about the lighthouse keeper who lived year-round on an island with his wife and seven kids.  They would take their boat across the bay to get groceries and supplies…this family were the only inhabitants of the island.  When Zachary Taylor became President, Taylor’s cabinet convinced him that all government workers, including lighthouse keepers should become members of the Whig Party.  This fellow balked, refused and was replaced by another man.   He bought a nearby island with his severance pay of $300.  What they didn’t count on was that when he left, he left behind the wife and seven children to make life miserable for the new keeper.

Bass Harbor Light

(which was somewhat featured in the last post)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Egg Rock

 

 

 

 

 

 

Interesting fact about these guys…Seals have such sensitive whiskers that they can fish at night by feeling the change in water movement caused by a fish swimming…

 

 

Winter Harbor Light

 

 

 

 

 

And then there was the story about this little island just off Winter Harbor.  It is said that during Prohibition, the Canandian rum-runners would sail down to the other side of this island, pull up the appropriate lobster traps…each lobster ‘farmer’ has always had his buoys painted in his own specific colors…fill the traps with bottles and drop them back in to be harvested later.

 

Our Red Planet

 

This is a follow-up to a mention, two posts ago, about how things don’t always work out as planned.  Vicki and I do pretty extensive research before we take a trip and one of  the  MAIN things…(maybe I should have said, the MAINE things) that I wanted to attempt, over and above, or subsequent to soaking in and experiencing the beauty, was to do some long exposure night-time shots in and  around Acadia National Park.  I had read that it was a ‘light protected area’, meaning that in certain places there are no artificial lights to obstruct, or overpower the stars.

 

 

You have probably seen photos of EVERY lighthouse in Maine and it’s quite likely that you have seen Milky Way photos from the Bass Harbor Light…breathtaking…

Viewing the Milky Way inspires my soul as much as the sound of ocean waves…both timeless.

I wanted that experience even if I had forgotten my camera…oops

…but I didn’t.

 

I was hoping to drive there during the day to scout the scene but with other ‘happenings’ I didn’t get the chance to actually find the ‘primo’ spot.  I saw the lay of the land from a boat and decided, yeah, I can get ‘right there’ and have the rocks and the lighthouse and the stars….

 

 

 

Close to midnight… half-moon…(new moon would have been better, but it’s what you do with what you’ve got, right?)… clouds drifting in… Vicki and our fellow travelers, Jon and Laura, had already called it a day so I drove the 30-some minutes to the Bass Harbor Light.

 

Ya know…?  A ‘light protected area’ gets very dark at night…

 

 

 

 

 

I strapped on the camera backpack and tripod, and had it not been for the flashlight on my phone, would probably not have even ventured out of the deserted parking lot…

No…let me restate that…

I wouldn’t have found my way out of the parking lot…

much less to the wooded path that led to the wooden stairs that led to…

 

 

 

Well, I wanted to think that they led to the water but the ‘throw’ of a phone flashlight does not go very far.

When I DID get to the bottom of the stairs, wooden and then stone, I realized that the stones were longer, deeper, and farther apart….not really ‘steps’ at all… AND they didn’t go far enough.  They led in the right direction but stopped about 40 feet from where I thought that I needed to be, and the next 30 feet involved some rather large boulders and no path… I wavered…waffled…okay, chickened out….probably because it was not wise to actually go there in the pitch dark, by myself, with nothing other than a cell phone for illumination.

After a bit of self-deliberation tempered by the ‘wisdom’ of age, (including the thought of how long it would take before anyone would find me)…I opted for stopping where I was and trying to make do with what I had.

First kink in the chain….

Second kink…

I got the camera  all set up and stable, looked around for  things that I might stupidly trip over in the dark and wind up where I had intended to be in the first place, (but maybe upside down with a broken bone or two…), and got my first exposure.

 

 

I don’t mind telling you that the hair on the back of my neck stood up… and ran…

I did NOT expect what I saw, and every devilish horror movie remembrance attacked my brain with those sharp little claws that awaken us in a cold sweat after eating the wrong foods too close to bedtime.

I did figure it out, thankfully, after surreptitiously looking over my shoulder a few times.  (There’s no telling what I would have done had I seen some red eyes in the woods, or if the hoot of an owl had echoed across the water!)

 

 

 

 

 

I had not found in my research that the traditional white light in the lighthouse had been replaced by a pulsing red light…energy efficiency, etc., so in a 30 second exposure, quite a bit of red light was building up on the treetops.  I sat for a while to observe and only faintly could see with the naked eye that the light was lightly (no pun intended) brushing the tops of the trees, but leave the aperture open long enough and…

 

 

 

 

At one point, I turned the camera towards the water and got this.

 

By now I was not exactly sure where in the universe I was….and the hair from the back of my neck was still running to the car, lost in the woods, whimpering…

 

 

 

So that’s how it turned out without adequate research and planning, but THEN…oh, there’s more…

Two days later, on Old Orchard Beach, I wandered down to get closer to the roar of eternity and I felt as if I had walked into an Egyptian plague from the time of Moses.

 

 

 

 

The seas were red, too.  Now I felt totally disoriented before realizing that it was a ‘red tide’…red algae that occasionally washes to shore.

 

 

 

Who needs Mars?

Wooden Ships On the Water, Very Free…

(Title thanks to David Crosby…)

 

Let me set the record straight for a second…not as an excuse, but simply a clarification.

These photos from Maine, and the ones from a year ago in Italy, (5 or 6 posts starting here),

rkpowers.wordpress.com/2017/10/08/mtk/

are ‘vacation’ photos.  I feel fortunate when 1 out of 25 or so is something that I want to keep. (Actually, I feel fortunate when I get 1 out of however many, that I love to look at over and over.)

 

 

Being in ‘awesome’ places doesn’t necessarily translate into ‘awesome’ photos.

Some of these I like as photos and some I like merely as mementos of a wonderful trip, to rekindle the feeling I had at that moment.

 

 

Were I shooting sailboats as an assignment, I would expect the luxury, the necessity, of being able to radio the captain with instructions to… ”tack to starboard 20 degrees”. Or, “…excellent…  Make another pass exactly like the last one and the light should be perfect by then…”, or even, “put on the yellow slicker and…toss the nets….not yet…not yet…NOW!”

 

In other words, I would ‘work it’.

Having said that, my ‘assignment’ was to capture what I saw, as much as possible, with the conditions that were.   (Oh…and to eat as much lobster, scallops, clams, haddock, and wild blueberries as I could.)

 

And sometimes, even ‘working it’ brings results other than those planned, which will be shown in an upcoming post.  (Tentatively titled “Red Planet”)

As someone who has lived most of my life in a land-locked area, sailboats have always held a certain fascination for me.  I mean, you’re out there with seemingly endless water and you have to possess the knowledge and experience to catch and harness the wind to create motion, or to strike the sails before you’re blown off course by a squall that you can see approaching from miles away, and then have the skills to get back to port again.

And then there is the peace in knowing that you can do it all again and tomorrow has endless possibilities.

 

Next up….a lighthouse or two.