A good day to all. I can’t get through a good post idea today so far. Started 3 new ideas and they are all now stashed in the drafts folder to flush out at a later date perhaps. That happens to me a lot. So here we go with the 4th attempt to crank out some worthy words of logic or wisdom or levity or clarity. Well welcome to my muddled mind that probably doesn’t reflect any of the aforementioned goals.
Now there is a creative way to get a child to use a toothbrush.
Photo by Mike Hartley
OK, It’s two days and 1 hour from the start of spring training. Time to brush off the gloves hats and bases. And I’m so looking forward to this season. Yes I cheer on the Evil Empire. Been a fan of theirs from my youth. I take a lot of heat living here in the heart of Birdland. I’m looking forward to doing some shooting at the local little league fields this spring. A little bit of sport, for joy and fun which is how it should be. And it moves a lot slower than professional ball so it will allow me to cut my teeth on some action this old guy can keep up with. Plus you get the emotion of the kids and parents all in one place.
Explaining myself,
I feel the need to explain something in this blog which I don’t believe I’ve done in the past. Its a simple thing really. In some ways it feels self-serving to do it each time and in every post. That simple thing is putting “Photo by Mike Hartley” under each picture I take and post. Being 99.9 % of the pictures I use here are ones I’ve taken its very redundant.
But here is a short background on the subject. When I first started in newspapers in the Engraving department, one of our responsibilities was photo reproduction. Every photograph had to be converted to a halftone. A series of dots of various sizes representing various shades of grey and black. As well as illustrations or color photographs for 4 color separation.
I reproduced so many my first two decades that I would just shake my head and say someday I’m going to get a photo credit. I would look through the printed product and see the photo credits of the wonderful photographers who shot the images as I would do the quality checks on our work and printer reports. I’m pretty sure the number of reproductions I’ve done over the first few decades reached in the millions.
Keith Weller shot this in our camera room at the Times building on Main St Ellicott City. Figures he would catch me one of the few times in my life I didn’t have a beard.
As I slipped into the early use of computers in publishing and moved in the direction of IT I still thought about someday being a photographer and getting a photo credit. Well that day happened for a short bit when my friends and I started our own newspaper and I did some shooting then but that didn’t last to long before I made the move back to IT work. So today I do it for the following reasons. I’m kind of proud of the image and want my name attached to it. I’m from old school publishing and all images have photo by or illustration by credits. It’s a selfish pleasure that I get to publish my own images and put my own name to it. I felt the need to explain this because I don’t do it to be conceited but as kind of a reward to getting back to a dream I had many decades ago.
Get with it –
Its Random Acts of Kindness week. So what can we all do. Be creative and do it often. It feels good. It should because that is your normal instinct telling you what is right. Yesterday standing in line at the concession stands the single line split into two as we got closer to the register. Our side happened to move a good bit faster and I saw this older couple who was ahead of us the whole way before it split so I waved them ahead of us. Didn’t cost me more than a few minutes and that is more time I got to spend with my son talking while we waited.
Plus they noticed it and said thank you. They were kind of surprised actually. Which is probably the way I would have reacted when you see the way people treat each other in person or on the roads. Good behavior and courtesy used to be the norm and other behavior stood out like a sore thumb. Now it’s almost expected as par for the course that your going to encounter it on a regular basis.
Well, the only thing we can do is continue to set a good example and hope the goodness in people overwhelms the selfish, insensitive and greed of some.
A walk on Hill Street. And what else would you find but Hill House at 8505. Yes it is raining today and this shot is not from today. But I’m good at filling space and getting some previous shots displayed. And I’ve got to have something to break up all this grey matter (words).
Hill House shot from Hill Street on a hilly walk.
Photo by Mike Hartley
The whole town I find myself looking UP.
Rainy weekends are not popular in this town.
Photo by MIke Hartley
Random Thoughts of the Day
Life is good, as long as it last.
The amount of trash I generate (besides this blog) is disturbing to me. I have to find ways to reduce my footprint.
I’m starting to get into this.
