Thrilling Cities

Growing up in a small town in a lower middle class family I dreamed  of  traveling and seeing exotic locations.  But I never believed it was any thing more than a dream.   My grandmother never saw the ocean until she was in her late 60's although it was only three hours away from our home town.   I tried to convince my parents to go to Italy and revisit the places my father was in during WWII.  We knew my father was developing early dementia and I thought it would be one last great experience for them.  Instead they never got any farther than those three hours to the Ocean City, Md where my grandmother had finally seen the ocean.

Growing up I watched the James Bond films.  I was thrilled with James Bond and all of the fascinating locations he explored.  I'm not sure what I liked more.  Sean Connery or the beautiful and exciting places he visited.   I thought about those places for years and like my grandmother and parents I never thought I would ever see them.

Photography became my escape.  I had my first camera at the age of eight.  I took photos of my town, of my younger sister, my cousins.  I loved photography.  But I never became a photographer.  Perhaps I should have.   It truly is my passion.   I am just a man with a camera who might get a great shot on a 10 gig chip.  I am reading a book by Ian Fleming called Thrilling Cities..  This brings all of this back to those James Bond movies I saw as a kid.   As an adult I have gotten to see many of those Thrilling Cities Fleming wrote about in his novels and in the book I am reading now.  And I am realizing I will never be that great photographer or that expert on foreign travel.   Or a great writer.  That is my third great passion.  I wanted to be a writer.   I have many great novels buried in my head that I have never written along with the great photographs I have never taken.

Fleming writes in Thrilling Cities "Zurich came and the banal beauty of Switzerland, then the jagged sugar icing of the Alps, the blue puddles of the Italian lakes and the snow melting down towards the baked terrazza of the Italian plains."   My photo above is taken from a plane flying over Zurich and Switzerland headed to Italy.   I could never have described it like Fleming.  I saw it.  I loved it and I photographed it.  Reading his book today I can see his words in my photo. 

I have been to many of the Thrilling Cities Fleming describes in his book.  I'll never have his words to describe them.  I'll never write the great travel blog and take the perfect photo about them. But reading his book today I have discovered a thread that takes me from a little movie theater in 1962 watching the movie from his novel Dr. No that leads me to my travel adventures today.  It's been a long journey.  But I have gotten to travel across that ocean my grandmother finally got to see before she died.  And I have gotten to visit the locations where my father was located in WWII that my parents never got to see.   And today my daughter is writing a novel based on my fathers  war experiences that I never got to write.   So it all goes full circle.  And we all have seemed to fulfill hopes and passions our parents never completed. 

I still have a bucket list of Thrilling Cities I want to see.  Thank you Ian Fleming for sparking that flame inside me.   And thanks to my Aunt Louise who bought me that first camera at the age of 8 which is still my inspiration.   And I am thankful my daughter has been inspired to write about the exploits of my father in WWII.  My oldest daughter is also a writer.  She has many wonderful ideas and journals for stories she wants to write also.   My mother once started a journal with the words "the flowers were in disarray."  She never completed the sentence.   The journal remained empty.    But we all have visions, dreams, hopes and inspirations.  To my two daughter I say :   Follow the dream, take on the fantasy, and follow the inspiration of those who were unable to complete their fantasy and leave a little unfinished work to inspire those who follow behind you.

Thrilling Cities await you.  Don't hesitate to find them.

My grandmother at Ocean City Maryland seeing the ocean for the fist time

Waiting for the photo

I am still thinking about photography today.   I wrote a blog about old photos yesterday and this is a follow up to that blog.  I have mentioned any number of times how much I enjoy taking photos.  My Aunt Louise bought me my first camera when I was around nine.  I wrote about that in my very first blog here several years ago. I found the photo above of my exact camera on google.  I was surprised to find the exact one as "Imperial" is not exactly a well known brand.    I was thinking today about how photography has changed in the digital age.  There was an excitement and anticipation about taking photos pre digital.   You would have to go out and buy a roll of film.  I used to like to use Kodak 620 Verichrome Pan.   It would cost me almost a weeks allowance for the roll of film. Ansco film was a little less expensive so I used that often also.   620 Kodacolor was out of my range.   So like most people back then I shot my photos in black and white.

That little bright yellow, red and block box held a weekends worth of fun for me.  The film came wrapped in a metallic little bad to protect it.  You had to break the seal on the side of the film to open the roll and then place it in your camera.  Then you had to manually attached it to the spool inside your camera.  And finally you had to  wind the film into position until you saw the number one in the back of the little window in your camera.  It you didn't get it set right you might only get half a photo.  And who wanted to waste a photo when you only got twelve exposures to a roll of film.

It seems impossible now but a little roll of twelve exposure film would last a long time.  I remember a sixth grade field trip to Washington D.C. and I used one roll of film to document the day.  I came home with a photo of the White House, a photo of the Washington Monument and a photo taken from the top of the Washington Monument.  I had a photo of a friend taken inside the school bus.  There were no selfies, no special angles, or multiple shots of the same place.  But I did have a full days experience documented on a roll of twelve exposure film.  And the anticipation set in, waiting to see the developed photos.  I would take my roll of film down to Mrs. Waller at The Harford Stationery Store on Washington Street in my home town of Havre de Grace. She would then have it sent over to Pershing Studio a couple of blocks away for development.  It usually took four or five days to have the completed photos returned.  And Mrs. Waller looked at every photo that came into her store.  And she would let you know if she liked them or not.  There are no secrets in a small town.

A few years later when I was in junior high school Polaroid came out with something magical.  They created a Polaroid Land Camera that was affordable for everyone.  Their original camera was quite expensive and was not made for preteens.  But the Polaroid Swinger was made for my generation.  At least that's what their commercial said with swinging sixties music and young people taking photos a party.  I just had to have one.  It was the number one item at the top of my Christmas wish list.

Opening it up Christmas morning was so exciting.  I put that first roll in film in the camera and proceeded to take some of the worst photos of all time.  It was a terrible camera.  You had to pull the photo out of the side of the camera.  Then you had to wait 60 seconds, then peel open the photo.  Then you had to apply a special chemical to the photo to protect it.  And the photos really weren't worth protecting.   But I never noticed that fact.  It was just too exciting to be able to see your photo 60 seconds after taking it.  I wasted a lot of allowance money on Polaroid Swinger film.   My Aunt Louise who bought me my first camera also thought it was fantastic and bought one for herself.

Mad Magazine had a spot on satire of the Polaroid Land Camera rage.  It was the 60 second disappointment.   Of course today we can be disappointed or delighted with our photographs in a matter of a second.  It's almost instantaneous disappointed or delight.  You can delete, edit, flip, and share your photos in a moment.  Some of the excitement of waiting is gone.  And now instead of enjoying places I am are visiting or taking time to talk with people on my photo adventure I am too busy taking a couple of hundred photos a day.  I don't get to really appreciate a lot of places I visit until I get home and look at the photos on my big screen television. It's the digital age.   Time to end this blog.  I feel the need to take a selfie.

Artists and Models

 I have never really given a lot of thought about being a good photographer.  It is just something I do for fun.  I am not a professional by any stretch of the imagination.  I have never used quality equipment.  I have never studied photography in school.  However this morning I was taking some time to look through some of my old photos I have taken over the years and have decided that perhaps I should take my photography a little more seriously.

Photography has been a hobby of mine since childhood.  I got my first camera when I was nine years old.  My sister Shelley was my model when I took photos with that first camera.  I would take her out and pose her in bizarre places and take her photo.  I never thought much about it at the time but looking back now I realize that I did use some creative imagination in those old photos.  I remember taking this photo above by  putting Shelley down inside this old house foundation in our neighborhood and telling her to reach out like she was trying to crawl out of a pit.   Looking back now almost fifty years later I am impressed with the way this photo turned out.

This is a photo I took in 1963 of Shelley.  Something in my warped little head thought this would be a fun photo.  We had a little black puppy at the time whose name was Susie and she was behind Shelly in the photo.  But I didn't take the dogs photo.  I took one with the dog behind her making it look like Shelley was tied to the dog house.  Shelley never really questioned what I was doing or why I was doing it.  She was just always the willing model.  

Of course every photo was not creative or unusual.  Some were just photos of that I snapped on the moment like this one of Shelley with her doll carriage.  But still looking at it now I am finding it a much better photo than I had realized.   It does tell a story of sorts.  

This photo was taken of Shelley at Ocean City, Maryland.  It's not set up or posed.  But looking back it today I really like the way it turned out.  It's just a little girl on the beach looking down at her feet oblivious to everything around her.   And once again it does tend to tell a story of some sort.  

I am not sure who was more responsible for these photos me or Shelley.  I took the photos but she was the willing model.  Who is to say who the creative one really was?  

I still love to take photographs.  I always joke saying give me a 16 gig photo chip and somewhere on that chip you will find a good photo.  Perhaps I should have taken it all a little more seriously over the years.  Maybe I should have been a photographer.  But then it would have stopped being fun and become work.