Month: May 2014

As I was making a salad for lunch Saturday, using some leftover chicken I grilled with hickory smoke the day before, I decided that it would be perfect with an herbed vinaigrette. I found a fabulous sounding recipe on Food Network’s website and used the fresh herbs I had in my garden to make it: basil, thyme, and chives and added fresh garlic and fresh lemon I had on hand. I thought the resulting salad looked pretty enough for a picture so I set the salad on my wrought iron patio table with the container of herbed dressing in the background and with some sprigs of herbs under the fork——for you herb purists out there the fresh herbs laying under the fork are thyme and oregano but oregano was not in the dressing. Only later did I discover that yesterday’s Flickr challenge was Still Life. Perfect.

Triple “R” Tree Service came Friday to get my live oak under control and prune some long-neglected trees in my yard. Their visit gave me an opportunity to resurrect my “men at work” series for this edition of In Focus Daily.

Randy was perfectly at ease as I watched him move gracefully around the tree in his aerial lift at the end of a long boom extending from the truck. He sawed branches, surveyed the results, then moved to the next spot. One couldn’t suffer from acrophobia and do this job. It looked like aerial acrobatics to me and I know I could never do it!

I’m not too lean and I’m not at all mean but I am becoming a ‘grilling machine!” Thursday was the third night in a row that I barbecued my dinner after assembling my brand new Weber Performer Platinum charcoal grill with electronic ignition and gas starter on Tuesday evening. It’s been years since I’ve tasted the intoxicating flavors of the kind of home barbecued, hickory smoked beef, chicken, and pork that my late husband used to produce. So, I immediately indulged in all three just to confirm that those flavors were what I have been craving. They are. First was a New York steak that turned out pretty well, medium rare-ish, not the blood red rare I love but a good first attempt; then the next night, I managed to barbecue marinated chicken breast along with some asparagus all while talking to my friend Susan, an experienced griller who “joined me for dinner” from Wisconsin. Then, it was a center cut pork chop, a pork porter house steak, just salted, peppered, and smoked. That salt and the hickory smoke turned the chop to a glorious mahogany, and I savored a flavor I haven’t had in more than 8 years. Oh, how I’ve missed it. Oh, and I’m wearing an official Weber apron that my old friend Suzanna sent me more than 20 years ago when we moved to this house. It’s never been worn because I didn’t barbecue then and Ron refused to wear an apron.

In 1873, the Virginia and Truckee Railroad purchased a new engine which they called The Empire. After a long career, The Empire was retired from service in 1938 and eventually found its way to the California State Railroad Museum where it now sets surrounded by mirrors. It is black, gold, red and beautiful. It was a challenge to photograph at the Trains and Tripods event last weekend. And I was so fascinated by those beautiful red wheels, all in duplicate from the reflections, that I ignored all other aspects of the train.

Not the weather—the coffee beans. I had a chance to photograph Nick Young, the Roaster at Vaneli’s Handcrafted Coffees today, while he roasted several batches of beans. Here is Nick checking on the progress of the roast; releasing the beans from the roaster into the cooling tray; cooling the beans; and presenting the perfect roast! Oh, and if you were wondering, Vaneli’s Handcrafted Coffee is the best I’ve ever tasted. It has chocolate overtones. Undertones? Whatever! It’s coffee but with that enticing chocolate lingering somewhere there. I drink Vaneli’s Classic Cremosa Espresso which is described as having chocolate notes with a cherry finish. Nick sent me home with Espresso Forte today with its sweet dark chocolate tones in the foreground. Who could resist this stuff?

At the top of the list of photographs I wanted to get at the California State Railroad Museum’s Trains and Tripods event Saturday was this orange Western Pacific diesel locomotive. It caught my attention on our museum walk-through Friday evening. Saturday morning, I headed directly to it, set up my tripod, and took this shot, the first shot I took and my favorite.

The shot fits the bill perfectly for my Flickr group’s recent “starts with ‘L'” challenge.

On Saturday, my brother Art and I joined the Trains and Tripods event at the California State Railroad Museum as part of a group of 50 amateur photographers allowed into the museum at 7AM, three hours before it opened to the public. Tripods are not allowed in the museum so being able to take our tripods, being able to place those tripods in places normally off limits, and having access without worrying about other museum visitors, allowed us to focus on some of the interesting and unusual details in the museum as well as on the magnificent trains on display. In a coaching session the night before, Dave Henry, a professional photographer who guided us in the event, advised us to select three things we wanted to photograph because the 3 hours would be over before we were ready for it to be. He was right on both counts. It was important that we knew where we wanted to focus our attention because the time flew by.

One of my three “must haves” was the San Diego & Arizona Eastern M W 1003 1931 Ford Model AA Rail Fire Engine. It was not only the color that caught my eye, but the spectacular hood ornament. The bell was a last minute “grab” in the waning minutes of the event as they announced we needed to pack up and exit the museum. As I hurried by to collect my equipment, the bell grabbed my attention, all but ignored in my obsession over the hood ornament. Art and I both had a great time and were thrilled to learn that this is a semi annual event so we’ll be back in September! I used my macro lens for all but the shot of the truck.

From 1913 to 1932, the Eastman Kodak Company published a magazine called Kodakery and subtitled: “A Magazine for Amateur Photographers.” My friend Melinda presented me with my very own copy that she found in an antique store in Chico the other day. It was published in November 1924, almost 90 years ago. It is in excellent condition and doesn’t appear to have any wear on it at all. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet but after glancing through, it contains the same kind of information amateur photographers today seek: exposure information for each of the photographs; how to frame a composition; how to photograph clouds; how to photograph wildlife. The ads (mostly Eastman Kodak ads) tout photo papers and film and a sky filter for 75¢ that acts as a polarizer. I took this shot at ISO 200, f/22, 4 second exposure then, although the actual magazine is sepia, I converted the shot to sepia then processed it in Silver Efex Pro. The processing ages the magazine.

While visiting Chico the other day, my friend Melinda walked me by the 1920’s two-story stucco house converted into her father’s dental office with living quarters upstairs where she had lived for a time with her family starting when she was about 18 months old. As we walked around the back through the parking lot, we saw that the automotive garage that she remembered from her early childhood was still in business, its back wall and window looming over the shrubs and fence separating it from the parking lot. The white masonry building is now stained and mildewed, the window frame is rusted, and the spray painted gang tags show a bit of urban decay, all in stark contrast to the cheerful, newly painted, tidy structure still housing a dental practice just yards away.

While spending the other day in Chico, with a dear friend in her old home town, we ran across evidence everywhere of another dear friend’s current home town, Neenah, Wisconsin. Surrounding every sidewalk tree was a rusty grate stamped “Neenah Foundry Co.” so of course I had to photograph one. It was a grab shot (although I took several) and I was amazed at how uninteresting a tree grate can be. It has texture, to be sure, and color from the rust and the verdigris (I presume that’s what it is), and its form reminded me of a backbone and ribs, but I hadn’t taken any time to compose an interesting photograph and the contrasty shadows from the bright sun were distracting. As I looked at the downloaded shots, I knew they needed help. I rotated the shot slightly, cropped it to a 9X16 format, and enhanced the color with some of the Color Efex Pro filters. I clicked on buttons until I was pleased with the outcome. I could never duplicate this. So, Susan, Melinda and I were thinking about you that day, even when we weren’t walking with the Beatles!