Charlie's Fake Blog

I I've  always had an appreciation for old work shops.  This is a picture of the shop my wife's father toiled away in when he had a need to fix or build the odd or end around his farm. The tools that are left are familiar. My Dad's father had a tool shed I spent hours in squeezing things in the vice and cranking the handle of the drill press ( mounted on the wall in foreground right).  Once in a while I would find a drill and try to punch a hole in a piece of wood. It was a tough go for a kid but the mechanism fascinated me. The crank drove bevel gears that turned the shaft the drill was chucked to.  There was a cam that lifted a lever that shifted a ratchet  at the top of the drill shaft which, in turn, caused the drill to be advanced a bit deeper into the thing I wanted to put a hole in.  Things would go pretty smoothly until the drill got buried in the "workpiece".  Since the drills I usually found were dull and the wood scrap dead dry and prob...

Every now and then I take a picture that rocks. It doesn't happen often. Quite often I have to overlook a flaw and just be satisfied with what I like about the picture. This is one such shot. It has everything I was looking for anytime I'm taking pictures of family. There's expression, joy, emotion and spontaneity. That is one of the best looks I have ever gotten from any small child. Yet, there is also a serious flaw. The shot is out of focus and grainy (noisy in digital photography speak). With this picture I finally learned my lesson about using a manual focus lens to take pictures of a fast moving small child.

Whenever I dig into my old stuff the question always creeps into my head, "What would I tell that kid if I could tell him anything?" You are going to do OK for yourself but in a quiet, unspectacular way. He (I) already knew that. In fact I took that for granted. You are going to lose people that mean the world to you and you will never stop grieving for them. I knew that too ( we all do ) but I would have never admitted as much, preferring to only recognize those bitter truths as I was being run over by them. I suppose I couldn't resist giving some sage advice but I wouldn't listen to myself. I remember making a point of not acting on good advice when dispensed by anyone professing to know what life was really about. All in all it's a good thing time travel isn't possible. Aside from being freaked out by my wrinkly old self showing up to tell me crap I knew but didn't have the courage to act on, I would have been angered that all the suspense and my...

The weather got nasty overnight and left everything covered with a layer of ice. I let the dog out and we walked around enjoying the scenery.

I have decided to start fresh with this space Google has provided for me. I take a lot of digital pictures. I am not a Pro photographer. I don't pretend that I could ever make a dime taking pictures. But I walk, drive, ride around every chance I get taking pictures of things that I might find interesting. I'm going to post them on Google+ and here as an album or albums depending on how well I can figure out how to work Google's toolkit. Hopefully I can get some feedback on the relative worth of my stuff which could lead to making me a better picture taker. Every summer I try to get shots of these moths attracted to the flowers in my wife's garden. They are fast and as agile as a hummingbird which makes it hard to get a good picture of one. This old girl spun a web in one of our barberry bushes. If I could have gotten the background in focus she would have been nearly invisible.