A Little About Our New Banner for August

This month's banner features a Bard Owl. The tree is the typical type tree that Bards like. Lots of big branches and in the mix a few smaller ones where they can hide and sleep during the day.

If you got this far and you didn't notice the Bard Owl sitting in the tree looking down at the photographers that were all around the tree, then go back to the banner page with our name and mission statement. Then, page down slowly, but not to much. You'll see the owl. It's gonna be here all month and into the first couple of days into September.

So, enjoy the image of the owl in his native habitat and tell your friends if they are animal lovers to check it out.

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There Are Things That Exist Because They Do

While it is pretty much know that I post images on my blog that are a bit less in quality than those that I submit to my editors there is a reason for it. Unfortunately, there are those that will copy an image without getting a proper license to use a first quality images. It is just one of those things about human nature.

Occasionally, I run across things that just exist because they do. There isn't any clear reason for them. Yet, there they are! Some are even comically. I have just such an image and the quality is less than perfect, but it does convey the point outstandingly.

                                                                                                                                                                             Alright! Who gets their mail delivered on Interstate I-35E?

Click anywhere in the image to enlarge.

I'm Not Sure I Know Where This Balloon Lands

There are so many things up in the air right now. School Openings, Corona Virus, Economy, Health Care, and Government Handouts that found the lawmakers leaving Washington with plenty on the table while they take their August leave. I made a T-shirt that reads: My hobby is watching Congress. There are  little eyes in some letters. It really does seem that congress does take advantage of the American people by not really doing their job.

Doing as much research as I can while the summer heat and no car has me pretty much landlocked in the house while the Corona has its way with the world. There is some good to that.  I have discovered why my Walgreens runs out of meds more often and seems to have some problems with certain merchandise that never was a problem before.

When I started ordering on line it was between me and my retail store. When I switched to  online ordering with free shipping, I found out that I was talking to Boots Alliance. Boots Alliance is the Holding Company. Now, by reason of common sense, it must be another pharmacy in the picture some where. Well, as it would end up, yes, there is one.

Boots is the largest pharmacy in Great Britian. To make a long story shorter, The leverage buyout private equity firm known as KKR or Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, love to acquire businesses and toss the enormous debt onto one of the companies. In this case, it was Boots. Such is the case with Boots when KKR structured the deal between Boots and Walgreens with Rite Aid in the mix. Rite Aid bought out all the Lane Drugs in the Great Lakes.  I don't even want to know any more about how Rite Aid got there but it was through a buyout somewhere else. Not to mention the Eckerds (a subsidiary of J.C. Penny's ) buy out of their 1269 stores in Florida, Louisiana and Texas by CVS. Eckerds was the 4th largest pharmacy in the US at the time of the deal which also included Eckerds 1.3 Billion mail order business. The original company was worth $4.3Billion.

Yes, Rite Aid worked out a deal with Walgreens as a alternative to a merger by allowing Walgreens to purchase their 1900 stores except 8 states for a cool $4.4 billion that included 3 distribution centers.

Now, enter Amazon and Albertsons. Because of a government break up, Amazon bought on-line Pill Pak giving Rite Aid to grow its left over pickings it still owns. Albertsons is working with Amazon.com in the deal, it seems. This is, of course, old new...very old news, like two years ago.

What is even more surprising is that Blackstone and Carlyle and Bain Capital and Silver Lake Partners are all like KKR now. I can remember when KKR took Owens-Illinois, the glass maker, private and wrecked the company that was Headquartered in Toledo, Ohio. A lot of the employees have less to live on today as a result. But, as they say in mid-town New York, "You'll have that from time-to-time".  Yes, you will, I guess. Yes, you will.

Some still call this American capitalization. I call it pure greed and greed never wins in the end.

What Kids Really Think T-Shirt
by sam6372

Where Its Gonna Land Is Still Up In The Air!!!

Men's Large T-shirt
by sam6372

♫♫ There Is A Song In My Head ♫♫

♪♥Charlie Puth♥♪ might be a Jersey boy, but I like his music. If I could download this song I have in my head, I'd give his record company the first chance to produce it for the ever hot music industry. My music interest goes from classical to Jazz to R&B to Hip Hop to Operatic to Classical and Classical pipe organ, of note, Widor's Tocatta, from the 5th Symphony, to English Choral. I will listen to all forms of music, period. I even like some Country!!

One of the most interesting that I cherish to this day is when Paul Winters of the Paul Winters' Consort took a trip to the Grand Canyon and boated down the Colorado River creating one of the most interesting recordings that I have ever heard. They used natural sound echo's of the canyon, bird's

An A-typical photographer

with nice cameras,though.

chirps, as Paul Winters' saxophone comes in with his typical, but not all typical, sounds with mixed sounds added on another track. There is an African drum in one piece that the beat still echos in my head some 25 years later. There is a solo with a native American as he sings in his native language and finally, a song mix in improvisational form with the great organ in St. John the Divine in New York City. It is truly, an amazing accomplishment and I can only hope that ♪♥Charlie Puth♥♪ will produce something like these two examples in his lifetime. It must be that my brain is writing a symphony is the only reason I can think of why I can't download that song at this point.

To this day, I still not only think Out of Africa was a great movie, but the song and the photographic scenes of a bi-plane flying over the terrain made my top-of-the list. The fact that music and photography work together or apart in my world is just something I like to say, I have two pocket on these pants!

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My New Normal Contains More of the Old Than Expected.

My daily life is pretty much all electronically and has been that way for more than a decade. Yet, there were a few things that lingered. Those things that did were pretty much because I was a bit ahead of those in services that I used, and they did not, and had not, updated to the electronic age.

At 14, I had my first checking account. It was because I had a rather large paper route that covered a full city of 1500. My thinking was that if you were going to get a part-time job, you might as well go for the one that paid the most money. Never thinking that it would follow me into adulthood and into the age of "golden years" as some would still think of "old" people not being active. It came to mind this week as I watched the funeral coach carrying the remains to the late Congressman, John Lewis travel through the streets of Washington from the Joint Base Andrews. I watched the tour make several key stops, like the Supreme Court, Martin Luther King's monument, The Black Lives Matter memorial and finally to the East side of the U.S. Capital.

Watching the photographers running to get that perfect shot; stand on a ladder leaning against a building so wires did not get into the shot. And also give a better angle for the image. It's only been two years since I stopped doing Live News Feeds. Doing those feeds had nothing to do with my health, rather they just became something that took up more time out of the day. Editor's photo calls had you basically stop doing what you were doing and go get that shot at the House of Blues Bartender's Competition or such things. In short, my first awareness of AP or UPI news hounds first hand, came my freshman year in college when the oldest university west of the Appalachian Mountains was the party school that made all the Look Magazines, and others of the time, cover pages regularly. My one room mate's father was the publisher of a towns newspaper.There was a sit-in at the town's square at college and all those M2 flashbulbs going off shook my roommate to the core. He just knew that when those photos hit the wire, his father would see him in the middle of the sit-in. He was right. His father was rather angry with him.

Years later, I sat in his father's office as I passed through the town and talked to his dad for a while. I ask him if he remembered that picture and his quick answer was," you bet I do." Later, I meet several other AP reporters and photographers that remained dear to me until they passed. The other ones, which taught me so much, was one of the several writers of the Nancy Drew Mysteries. Milly and I talked almost daily for a number of years. She was the city desk editor of a major newspaper in the Great Lakes area. There were a lot of staff reporters and those with specialty columns as their by-lines. They have all since retired and I only see one in the headlines from time- to- time. The point is, I do miss the Live News Feeds that were shot over the years, but I don't miss that deadline stuff.

Today I ended writing checks. The first time in 60 years. Each month writing one check and then paying all my other bills electronically, did kind of irk me. But, it did bring a part of my old normal into play and how it had been over those years. It made me think of 'ole Dodrill, the AP reporter and photographer friend. Not, having to re-order checks again is an old normal routine that is gone. Even my prescriptions come by DHL now, rather than me going over to Walgreen's to pick them up. My groceries now come to my door. The old normal is still a part of my new normal, just in a different way. Now, when I think of, or see photographers chasing political, Hollywood, sports figures, I will think, "I did that once."

Even this shot is a thing of the past. It was traveling to Houston where the hashtag has

a place on a downtown building on the Gulf. It was pure luck to have been at the same place the driver stopped to eat lunch. That's why I wanted the Maggie 1 in the shot. That's proof it was in Dallas.

I've always embraced change, never being afraid of it. Change makes progress overall and that's my way of thinking on being progressive. I'd rather be here than to fear change.

Change does seem to come more frequently today. It also seems that there isn't the attention paid to detail today than in the old normal. Which, in this case, beings itself into my new normal. Tell me it isn't so!

Stock Photography Is Me Happy

A long time ago I learned that the first rule of photography is: shoot what you like! It is the key to everything. So when I decided that urban photography was what made me happiest, that first rule came to mind every time I went out (which lately isn't that much). Never-the-less, it still applies to the few times that I have been able to get out.

Before my hospital stays took me into downtime, there really wasn't enough time in a day to go out and shoot, then edit, then submit to agencies. Now, being home bound for the last month, I have been going through my archives of images that I just never got around to submitting. Having said that, my total on line images has begun to show up in my workday.

The old adage that one should take time to stop and smell the roses, became for me, take time to see what you have been shooting. The stock business money isn't even a factor. I do log every sale to see the images that are making their way out into the business world, homes, offices, and board rooms. The places were I have seen my images is amazing to me. Having a picture sell is what brings me joy--not the money that it generates. It's a numbers game, for sure, but you can't focus on that. Your focus has to be on the image that your eye caught or something so unusual that it makes you gasp. That's why I relied on my shoot wheel so much over the years. If you don't plan to follow up on project, you miss the next one entirely. Things change!

Having said that, I still shoot a lot of images that give me direction for things in the future. Those images are not worth deleting because they become to you much like the greens book do for the pro golfers that they keep in their hind pocket. Notice that they look at it before ever hole. It's a guide for them as those shots that will never get published are for a photographer. Sure, it takes up space but it's like a travel journal or notes that you keep about customer likes etc.,etc. It becomes your journal of what makes a good shot in almost every situation.

Even something as simple as a bike sale can lead to something else within the sale or the location.

The Art Linkletter House Party Is Etched in Memory

"Arthur Gordon really knows how to make his reader fall in love with life . . . without being preachy, pompous or pedantic. His word pictures are fresh and sparkling; his personalized stories are heart-touching; his sudden shafts or poignant observation are illuminating. I read it with such a sensation of relief and happiness that I cannot recall anything in recent days to make me feel so good all over."

This quote shocked me more than anything because it came from none other than the iconic author of "Kids Say The Darndest Things."  Mr. Art Linkletter wrote this in time before Fleming H. Revell Company published in 1974, Author Gordon's book, "A Touch of Wonder ".  The quote appears on the back cover.

I have always loved life. Gordon's book came to me from a dear friend years ago. Gordon said, " A Book to Help People Stay in Love with Life. " It's one of those books were you can read chapter 6 first if you choose and read the other chapters at your own choosing. Yet, the entire book has organization to it that fits like a  jigsaw puzzle. In the past.

I have a few post about this book. It never gets old and finding new though in its pages seem to always fit the time period that is current.

No refreshments being served at this counter this season!

Since 1991, this book has been at the ready at my desk. It has become tattered and some pages have dog ears. The margins are marked and the chapter headings have  notes to myself. It won't be the last time that I pull it down from it's handy spot. After all these years, finding Art Linkletter's quote on the back page was indeed a shocker for me. I just never imagined that  I would  discover that Art Linkletter and I have such like thoughts about life.