Charity x 3
Today has been a pretty wild day. I’m still perturbed that Allstate wanted to give me a measly $2,100 for pretty much wrecking my life- temporarily. My conversation with the rep went something like this,
“Mrs. Lindsey, we’re able to offer you $1,700,” said the rep.
“Did you say one, or ten?”
[Rep snickers lightly]
“ONE.”
“Are you serious? Considering that I had to drop two of my classes last semester- with a doctor’s note excusing me from those two classes, had to repair my GPA-”
“Well Mrs. Lindsey, you didn’t actually have something from your doctor saying that the car accident caused you to have to drop out of school,” he said.
“Um, [rep’s name omitted for confidentiality’s sake], the doctor wrote the statement on a prescription pad. It clearly said MVA (motor vehicle accident) along with the names of the two classes right on there. Any lawyer or jury would absolutely agree that that’s legit.”
“Yeah but, we feel that it wasn’t actually the accident that made you have to quit school,” he said.
“Ok,” said I. “First of all, I didn’t ‘quit school’. I simply dropped out of my two most demanding classes due to the pain and stress caused by your client splitting my bumper. Secondly, I haven’t had to drop a class in years. Not even when my house was flooded and cracked in half a year and a half ago and my kids and I were put up in a hotel by the Red Cross. We had nowhere to go, and I had to ask my art friends in Australia for help. They pulled together $650 in an hour and a half, and we were in an apartment days later- and [rep’s name]…I was carrying four classes during that time and STILL didn’t drop any classes.” [And for the record, made all A’s and B’s.]
“Well…Mrs. Lindsey….” [insert more BS here]
I was able to talk him up to $2,100, and what a disgrace. As mentioned before, and somewhere else- you are NOT in good hands with ALLSTATE. No siree….
To the rep’s credit, he expedited things to the best of his ability and Fed Exed the check. I thought long and hard about settling for pennies practically, but, I was able to give my friend Jean (the homeless woman currently residing in an abandoned train car) $100 cash todayand a new cell phone with 750 minutes + text and internet. That in itself made it worth it to me.
I wanted to get my guitar out of the pawn shop and when I got there, I was told that I was a few days too late. The (very cool) guy behind the counter saw my disappointment and told me that he would see what he could do for me. He certainly did. He clicked around on the computer and said that it was still in the backroom, but he wasn’t able to return it. Nevertheless, he checked with his supervisor and was able, by the skin of his teeth, to pull some strings for me. (Um, no pun intended.)
A few minutes later, he came out with my beautiful, green Oscar Schmidt- acoustic electric:
I twisted up a $20 and handed it to the (cool) counter guy.
“Man, you didn’t have to do that. Here,” I said.
“I can’t take that,” he said, making funny faces in the direction of his boss.
I shoved it under the massive day planner on the counter and said, “The world would be a better place if there were more people like you. Here. Take it.”
And smiled and walked out.
I wasted no time in giving the guitar to Josh as a gift. ♥
I also gave each of my kids $50 for some spending money. We were in a grocery store parking lot and saw a man asking for change. Naturally, he hit me up.
“Hey, weren’t you at the Haven house?” I asked, shaking his hand.
“Yeah, yeah,” he said, returning the smile.
I dug through my purse and gave him the equivalency of $3.00. I can’t help thinking that he was going to go straight to the liquor store and I really didn’t care. It’s a tough world out there.
“I think I’m gonna call that guy Liquor Store Lawrence,” my son said. I have a lively bunch. 🙂 It was several hours later when we were in Louisville, Ky. (minutes from the Kentucky Derby), and we saw a man on the street who was muttering to himself. He was fairly young with tattered clothes and a shabby toboggan. My daughter saw him looking through garbage cans. It made us all very sad.
“I think I’m going to give that guy some money,” Brianna said.
And moments later, while sitting at a red light in a congested intersection, she bolted from the back seat and sprinted across the street, shoving her $50 into his hand.
“Did you give him your $20?” I asked.
“No, I gave him 50,” she said softly.
“Are you serious, Sissy?!” I asked, not so softly.
“Dude, that’s probably the most awesome thing I’ve ever seen you do,” my son said to her.
I was completely stunned. She became my hero, immediately. To top things off, she was wearing this:
A beautiful kimono looking lingerie gown, with sneakers. 🙂
Not that we were out looking for homeless people today, but homelessness is rampant in this area. I ponder on this Scripture: Withhold not good from them to whom it is due, when it is in the power of thine hand to do it. (Proverbs 3:27)
We popped into the Greyhound bus station so I could use the ladies room. I couldn’t resist the lighting:
SP/ 50 MM 1.8 II/manual exposure/manual focus
I also couldn’t resist snapping these guys on the way out:
50 MM/manual focus/manual exposure
You have to be sneaky to snap pics of people without them knowing it (all while focusing the lens- I can’t stand autofocus and consider it taboo). Something tells me the guy on the right knew I was taking his pic…
It just kept getting weirder as the day drew on. The wind blew fiercely and we found ourselves facing this:
We took a detour and ended up here:
Not only can pigs fly, but pigs fly high. Literally. Look at its bloodshot eyes…
I was able to shoot a rare pic of my son outside of a music store. He dyed his hair blue today, although you can’t see it here:
I never in a million years thought I would be cool with my kid dying his hair blue. I guess I’m mellowing out as I’m growing older.
That’s not altogether a bad thing…
Catch of the Day
It’s amazing how much I want to get out and shoot, and begin the creative process almost immediately now that the semester is over. I’m beginning to realize that there are two very distinct cycles that I rotate through: the “school me”, which is the stressed out, dead-line driven, insomniac who strives to get good grades and is very, very sad- and then there’s the carefree child-like “out-of-school me”, who indeed looks up at the sky and marvels- and cries, with a big grin on my face, as I did today.
I am 43 going on 19.
I don’t ever want to lose my child-like view of the world.
And I feel complete with the simplest of things.
I think I’m falling back in love with life.
And so fast!
I remain obsessed with monochrome, mood, lighting, and manual exposure.
The Marriage of Black and White
I’m realizing only today why I’m so creative. Because I’ve had to improvize my whole life. Having next to nothing to work with, forces you to try harder. You have no choice but to experiment because you really don’t know what else to do. Over time, your style becomes defined, refined, and unmistakable.
Having to sell my rig, more than once, I was left with only my Canon G3. It’s a 4 MP dinosaur. Because I had nothing else, I decided to not only learn how to shoot in B&W + manual, but revel in it.
That was about two years ago. I’ve been shooting for about 7, but B&W rules me. I’m completely infatuated with the marriage between light and shadows. To me, black and white is already a story. The images within an image become the actors on the stage, or props, I suppose, but even if you have only one blank wall, and a cheap camera set up to photograph that wall, with a bit of natural window lighting hitting it (through parted curtains, say), then the clouds passing over the sun become the filters. The passing clouds increase and decrease the gamma and contrast naturally.
The story of B&W is one of masculinity and femininity. Life and death. Hot and cold. Love and hate. When stripped down to their very elements, they are in their most powerful state. I have little interest at the moment in HDR, filters of this or that kind- and while they’re great (and I have experience in those as well) I can’t escape the beauty of being stripped down to almost nothing, and simply working with what ya got.
That’s not to say I photograph things in the nude.
I’m experimenting with a new webcam I got. It’s a cheapie $18.00 Logitech. But it’s capable of shooting in B&W (Heaven……….!) and so I’ve been sitting here in my computer chair, painting shadow swans on my wall with my hands. When I move my hands back and forth to and away from my chest, the shadows become elongated horizontally. Such a simple action. But it changes the dynamics of everything.
And here are some snappies:
This is generally how I feel several times a week.
“Ahhh…..close the curtains!”
(Migraines make the light absolutely unbearable.) Oh, and I wasn’t faking it. I did indeed wake up with a migraine.
I intentionally bleached the lighting, and jacked up the gamma so the blacks would be double heavy.
Choppy, grainy, bleeding contrast, toasted exposure- what’s not to love?
(Yes, yes, I’m kidding.) But the shadows on my neck from my fingers are intentional.
It’s a fair statement to say that I am obsessed with shadows.
Perhaps I’ll post a video today.
Perhaps not.
m o n o c h r o m e j u n k i e † 