Author: nataliar77

Put me in coach

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Me and baseball. Not a match made in any heaven, not at all. Really always swore I didn’t like the game. Just about as much fun as watching paint dry. Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooring.

When I got the opportunity this past weekend to go to a Red Sox game, I was apprehensive. The tickets were free, so no loss there, but I was thinking this wasn’t going to be my sort of thing. I always have my handy-dandy camera with me, which turns even the most boring endeavors into picture taking opportunities.

But, this turned out to be a lot of fun. I realized that even before I got into the stadium:

Yeah, OK, not uncommon to see a guy dressed as a hot dog, but he kind of looks like an Armadillo to me.

Of course, he was a sign that the ball park would be a place of all kind of culinary delights:

The monster dog. What a great name, but the ice cream helmet turned out just to be a plastic baseball helmet with soft serve in it.

The scenery itself was pretty nice too:

I love photorealism and these Americana neon signs, so the ball park was heaven in that respect for me.

And now to the Sawks fans. That’s how the Bostonians say it, Sawks. Here they are:

They were playing the Brewers, by the way and actually won, but that was almost secondary, when the scoreboard featured things like this:

Getting hit by a pitch that many times. Poor guy. And things written in foreign languages like this:

As the last picture, I give you this guy and I’ll explain in a second why:

I love the loopy look on the guy’s face. I’d be loopy too if I were selling $4 ice cream to people all day at a baseball game.

OK, Red Soxs, you won me over.

The possibilities are well, endless

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There are very few things I don’t like to photograph. Ask me about anything and I’ll tell you I love photographing it. One of these things are these decaying looking neon signs. They are art work in and of themselves with all of their colors and when you add my magical photo editing skills, well, the possibilities are as I said, endless.

Enough chit chat. The work:

I love photorealism and I try to put at least some small element of that in every photograph.

I am also incredibly unoriginal so I bite off of the masters, a lot. In this case it is Walker Evans, depression era photographer who spent the last part of his career photographing stripes on the road. Ah, that is just great. Well, anyway, some Walker Evans-inspired work:

Sepia toned paradise:

Random people

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As I have said up here numerous times, people do not like to be photographed, so I don’t usually get shots of them up here. Lately though with the new camera, I’ve been been doing this new thing where I just go out with the camera around my neck with my finger on the shutter. People are at their best when they aren’t posing. Now trust me many end of them end up looking like crap, but a few looked really great. Here was one that I really liked:

The look of amazement on the woman’s face was just so interesting to me. A close up:

This was another random one, just walking around, clicking the shutter:

I wanted this one above to look like someone I knew that I was taking a picture of. I really like this one. Another click the shutter wonder? OK:

And I guess if I am feeling the way the t-shirt above says, I’ll have to…:

To end this on a high note, I present these two:

And, to make it all “documentary gritty and all” I made it black and white:

I obviously did not sneak this shot. These boys saw me and said that if I gave each of them a dollar, I could take their picture. I thought I would get to pose them however I wanted, but they insisted on posing with their money. Those model divas. All about the Benjamins, I’ll tell you. They also mentioned something about me getting famous with that shot. Uh, yeah, little chance of that happening. But I am making progress in the whole “there are no people in these photos” thing.

This is just going to be a totally general kinda entry….

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I just went to the NY to deal with special business, i.e. rejoining the world of the employed. I interviewed and interviewed and interviewed and would at the end of the day run to the safety of my beautiful Canon XSI. If only I could find a male equivalent of the XSI. Lovely to look at, reliable, etc. Well, I can dream, can’t I? Well, anyway, I took a ton of photos and my ton, I mean about 500. In a five day span. As usual, I liked about three of them, so I’m going to post the few, the proud, the ones I actually liked. I’ll try to categorize them, somehow.

First, some kind of Eastern Island statue:

Smelling what the wax Rock is cooking?:

Seriously, some of the best signs ever:

Look closer at the picture below. It says “through these doors walk the best people, ever, our customers.” Did I mention this is some kind of place that sells porn videos and probably “sundry items” whatever those could be?:

On the door of the next door neighbor of the friend I stayed with in NY:

Machito Novo, that is the dog in the photo below, have parents who are very proud of him:

Proud enough to ask for contributions for every photo you take of him. I wanted to get a proper photo of Machito, so his father (and I got the feeling he has two) came out, grabbed him by the harness and turned him around. A dog with a last name? Only in NY.

This one I didn’t really get. Is the big thrilled to be getting eaten?:

And of course, you can get your entire future read on 9th avenue, complete with Astroturf, to make you feel better:

Glorious Gastronomical Gluttony

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I love dives. Love them. Hole in the wall, weird decorations, can’t get in there fast enough. The latest:

In case you can’t tell, I am trying for this new sort of New York Times photojournalism feel to the photos. Not sure if I can declare success in that one yet, but I am trying something new. Another photo:

Photo I really like:

Not that special, I admit, but solid.

Because this is a dive, there has to be weird stuff on the menu:

I refuse to believe that Dick “quadruple bypass means nothing” Cheney is acquainted in any way with these vegetable things.

We’re in Maryland, so we gotta have a menu item invoking this person:

She’s fab, by the way, jowls and all.

The menu itself is insane:

Alas, what sangwich did I eat here? (I know “sandwich” is misspelled.)
Sangwich:

And, in the grand tradition of this blog, a half eaten cross section:

Its a crab cake, because we are in Maryland. And what did I wash this down with?:

For some, drink on a dare, equivalent to those candified bugs I just blogged about, but to me, a reminder of being called “bubula” and eating pastrami in NY.

Sangwich verdict time:
Um, I’m underwhelmed in the words of my hero, Michael Kors. Just not impressive. Dives of the world, listen up. Love the decor. Could you focus a bit on the food though?

I’d like to entitle the following series….

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Candy I will never eat. All of this made me wonder what on earth people are thinking these days, when it comes to things they feed their children.

Exhibit A:

Seriously, though this is just sugar, it is still gross, to me. Grosser:

More of the yuck? OK. So, kiddies, this is not coconut:

Those are worms. Up next, cricket licking:

Or, different bug life? There too:

Disgusting. Simply disgusting.

Freshly painted heaven

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As most of you my loyal fan (or fans, should I say fans) know, I don’t really shoot black and white. I might post some occasionally, but over all, I am a fan of color. Bright, shining color. So, going along with that, some new production from the little SLR:

OK, I know, lots of flowers lately, but I like a challenge. And I am far from the flowers looking how I want them to look. More? Here goes:

And, evidence that I have a split personality. I get through that whole explanation and I go and find these:

This last one, I am totally on the fence about. The water looks the way it does because it is a time exposure, another of my tricks, but I am not sure if it that remarkable as a photo:

For my fan(s) to decide on that last one.

I guess I am capable of taking black and whites or something that doesn’t look freshly painted. News to me.

The eternal “why”

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In “A Room with a View,” George Emerson, during the vacation goers trip to the Italian countryside, climbs up on a tree and starts screaming “beauty, beauty.”

Anyway, I thought these following images were also examples of what George was calling out for so eloquently.

Here goes:

Flowers are so difficult to photograph. I tried as hard as I could not to make those up there look like what you’d see in a photography exhibit at your local Starbucks. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but I am trying for something a little bit beyond that.

Here’s are two other things that could be cliche city:

I love this kind of iron work, but this can really veer again into the type of picture that comes with the frame you just bought. Same goes for the peeling paint, that I stole from Man Ray anyway. I still have a lot more practice before these photos get anywhere beyond that.