For The Love Of Choppers … & Vettes

When I was just a little kid, I fell in love with motorcycles. I get that from my Dad. He is a Harley man true-to-the-bone. He has always loved these wonderful machines & always had motorcycle magazines lying around the house. He would show me pictures of different cycles & tell me all about this chrome & that engine & I was always wide-eyed in amazement. Some of them were just so beautiful with their hand-painted tanks & shiny handlebars. And I especially loved the Choppers.

How could you not love a Chopper? They have this wild & free mystique that always perks up visions of “Easy Rider”, which I of course saw when I was just that little girl in ponytails.

If you have never felt the pulse between your legs or heard that low throaty growl of the engine then you are missing such a breathtaking experience. I have not ridden in years but my Dad still has his Harley; although now it’s a cool looking maroon trike with all the sweet features.

Yet I see very few Choppers on the road anymore. Its all Harleys & crotch rockets & rice burners. You have to go to a bike rally or bike show to see them, all gussied up as the belle of the ball, but not on the road. But they are still my favorite, even though my Dad says they don’t make for a smooth ride.

It wasn’t long after discovering cycles that I took a shine to cars. My Dad used to go to the drag races (without me) but would bring back some pictures of souped up engines & brightly colored bodies. And then of course he had all those hot rod magazines. He even had a mustang when I was a tot but I somehow thought it needed a stripe & took a rock & made that stripe myself … all around the car. Oops …..

I was probably all of about 10 years old when I fell in love with Corvettes. Talk about a cool car, they were IT. I loved the Stingrays & Sharks. Me, being the little photographer since I was 4, had my little camera with me at all times & would snap shots of Vettes anywhere that I saw them: in parking lots, in front of houses, wherever. Drove my Grandmother crazy, always having to stop for me to take pictures of a car. It didn’t matter to me what color they were or what condition they were in. They were still Vettes.


This is one of the photos I took of a Vette I spotted one afternoon in 1978 (as the photo is stamped on the back). It still gives me the giggles, this Vette just sitting there in all its coolness.

I found a few more photos of different Vettes I had taken but alas many have gone the way of the “who knows where they are” now. Wish I still had them. It’d be fun to see them again.

So do I still like Vettes? Yes & no. I like the old ones, like the Stingrays & Sharks. They still seem unbearably cool, like that Bandit gas-guzzler Trans Am, but I tend to really favor even older cars now: a 1930’s Packard, 57 Chevys, a 60’s Bentley. I still try to catch local car shows & snap hundreds of pictures of fins & steering columns & pink dice hanging from rear view mirrors.

Sitting here thinking about these Vettes seems to evoke an aura of nostalgia; of a time that was once very glorious & special. My own memories drifting back to lazy 70’s days spent listening to Fleetwood Mac & KISS, wearing handmade clothes, eating food that wasn’t full of preservatives & sitting with my Dad picking out Choppers in a magazine.

See Ya Again Soon,
BLUR

Music Playing = “Hotel California”

Tripping The Writing Fantastic

I have spent the past week entangling myself in words that I have been happily grabbing out of an atmosphere of nouns & verbs & succulent pronouns. Inspiration has hit me like a ton of psychedelic bricks & I have been erotically swimming in words like fever & passion & rock n roll.

I have started the proverbial article that I have been wanting to write these past several weeks. I have picked a subject that is near & dear to my rock chick heart & have been committing words to paper (yep, the old fashioned way) & seeing the light of creativity crack a smile on my face.

It feels good. It feels natural. It feels like I can still do this. That those lost words from my journalist past were only hidden in a forest under a small petrifying tree limb & like the crocus bounding to the spark of spring, the words are swarming around me with renewed lusciousness.

With fingers placed over my sweet southern lips, I am not telling you who I am writing about. At least, not yet. No need to go jumping the gun. I am enjoying this. I am thriving in a pool of wonderful words that are giving life to this project I am working on.

I am at the point where the article is craving some direct quotes from its subject. Those I do not have yet but may try to get within the coming month. I wanted to build the body first. Get the title & groove of how I want this to be.

I think about writing about as much as I think about photography now. I feel the connection & the intertwining of the two getting tighter & tighter within me. I sit & daydream at work of what to write next & the anticipation of this gets me through a long day. Once I can sit at my desk, I linger over sentences & roll them around on my tongue & try to sense how to say what I want to say.

Of course, some days I have only written one sentence; while the other day I wrote several paragraphs. Time gets in the way. I have had a busy week with normal life & photography. To sit & create is something to be savored & appreciated since I have had such little time to play with it.

So here I am ~again~ typing out a spiel about writing. Listening to music in the background & humming like a bee to an old Muddy Waters tune that is stuck in my head yet not even playing on the system. My doggie is sleeping by my feet & in just a few hours I can pick up my old fashioned pen & jot down more words in that old fashioned notebook. And I am one step closer.

BLUR

Music Playing = John Coltrane

Blurry Rock & Roll, Part One

Blur is one of my archest of enemies. It haunts many of my photographs & makes me grit my teeth in utmost anger at its nasty little habit of turning up in all the wrong pictures.

It haunts my D90 like Sting’s proverbial ghost in the machine. I take hundreds of concert photos & it never fails that about 70% of them have some sort of wispy fingertip smudges all over them. Dang-blasted irritating blur!!!!

It’s my fault, I know this. Somehow someway I have messed up a setting somewhere, causing the blur to bleed over everything in its path. It drives me F***ING NUTS!!!!


I have an affinity, as I have been told more times than I can count, for capturing that “something”. I have “an eye”, they say. I take wonderful portraits of people, capturing their personality & life. That is what I keep hearing. But for the love of Elvis, sometimes I wonder if something isn’t blurring THEIR doggone eyeballs. Jeez, what is it that they see that I cannot???

Another debate for another blog. My photographic insecurities are not what I am babbling on & on about today. Nope, its blurry rock & roll. It’s my ability to capture a great guitar face yet, time & time again, upon opening the photo on my pc, there is finger blur or hair blur or just plain old blur EVERYWHERE.

It’s pitiful that I do this. I upgraded to a D90 from a D40; & got some pretty cool glass with a f1.8 that lets in all that wonderful light when the stage is sometimes pitch-black (ask me about The Radiators one day; they didn’t seem to want ANY lights on them at all – a photographer’s nightmare). At this time in my life I can’t afford the REALLY good camera & lens. I’m fresh out of a bad marriage & thankfully I am financially getting things back together. But one day I will be able to.

So I have to do what I can do at this moment in time with what I have. I continue to take hundreds of photos, because its just what I do, in hopes to capture a few good ones that the band or the club will like & post on their websites. I practice at mostly the mechanics because I seem to get THE SHOT, just not exactly in focus. I’ve had musicians play to my camera & I’ve been practically underneath them. One photo here, half a photo there is the outcome.

Frustrating beyond all definition of the word.

But there is hope & there is light at the end of this tunnel. I have some good photographs which have received some big-time compliments. I continue to go out there every couple of weeks & shoot bands in low-light staging, earning my dues. I’m making contacts with managers & PR people, other photographers & magazine editors. I’m getting advice & instruction from professionals & everyday shooters.

And you know what? Sometimes a little blur enhances the essence of a photograph. Score one for BLUR.


Top Photograph = Josh Gillie of Jane Doe's Dead
Bottom Photograph = Devon Allman of Honeytribe

BLUR

Music Playing = Picture Me Broken