The day has gotten away from me. Just the NFTR update today. Here's #3. Enjoy.
Our Hat's Off to Merle
This was written before we'd heard about the death of the man who singlehandedly put Muskogee on the map — Merle Haggard. We're gonna miss ya, Merle.
Today's Notes From The Road #2 talks about Merle's impact. Join us.
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Thar Be Dragons!
We may be out on the edge with this latest addition to our workload but today debuts the new audio update to the 2016 Who Do You Love Tour (WDYL), Notes From The Road.
It's self-explanatory and is less than a minute long. Give it a listen.
FUD — Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt
When we first started making preparations for the 2016 Who Do You Love Tour, it was all about possibilities. Rolling the idea around in our head, we begin to imagine what we could do in a short film to shed some light on the current presidential campaign.
Like many people, we are confused and confounded at the situation in which we find ourselves. As Paul Turley, a retired Corning employee put it this evening here in Muskogee, Oklahoma, This country "is in deep doo-doo."
Read MoreCan't Come With? Send Your Questions!
While we make final preparations to leave the comfort of home and hit the asphalt for the 2016 Who Do You Love Tour, we're also finalizing the questions that we want to ask each interviewee.
To that end, we'd like to enlist your help in making this film. It takes a village, right? What would you like to know from as many as a few hundred people (hey, it could happen!) regarding this presidential election, the candidates, the process, and the issues. We may be talking to kids, too. You never
Read MoreMPF: Multiple Points of Failure
The stress has been building for a week. Our road trip to film people across the South giving their opinions on the 2016 has any number of elements, and the failure of just one can stop everything in its tracks.
We were hoping to be able to leave bright and early Monday morning, April 4th. That's part of the stress. With so much going into making this trip successful, there was bound to. . .
Read MoreDetails, details. . .
The devil is in the details, they say. But so is God.
For this road trip and the film I'm shooting while traveling, I've faced a number of challenges in finding some of the things I need — batteries, lights, equipment of various types and rarity. But none have compared to the difficulty of finding someone to watch after my cat, SoongiddyDoongiddy Doo. (And, yes, that is his real name. For some reason it never fails to. . .
Read MoreThe Toys! The Toys!
This is the only time I'm going to post about "toys."
One of the things I love most about working in digital art, photography, audio production, and video is all the toys. Boys and their toys, right?
In the end, however, they're all just tools. And I'm noticing some distinct differences between the "toys" for photography and those used for shooting video.
When I shoot photographs, my kit can be as small or as large as I want, depending on the job at hand. Shooting video is a bit different. Like many photographers who are making or have made the leap to shooting DSLR video, I'm finding. . .
Read MoreThe Countdown Begins. . .
We’re so close to embarking on our 2016 Southern State Political Tour that we’re counting the minutes. Hence the clock. So, for all of you wanting to know when we are leaving, simply check in with us here for the current schedule. The clock will always be at the top of the current blog. We're planning a three-week tour. You can do the math on our return. But we'll probably have a countdown for that, as well, once we're underway.
If you're just now finding out about our little jaunt around the South, here are the basics: 1) 15 Southern states; 2) God only knows how many cities, towns, and hamlets; 3) 4200+ miles of Interstate. . .
Read MoreWe Are Polyglot! Meep!
Welcome to our new and improved website. Look near the top of the page for a new Google Translate button that will allow you to view the site in your language of choice — everything from Afrikaans to Zulu and everything in-between.
Simply click on the button and select your language. It's not perfect but it works pretty well and should allow us to reach a wider audience.
We were moved to make our site more accessible to non-English speakers because we have recently been both teacher and student to a person from Monterrey, Mexico. As we teach her English in preparation for her extended stay in Europe, she has, by simple osmosis, been helping us improve our Spanish. (¡Olé!) So, we decided to extend our newly developed language abilities to our website.
Let us know if you find any problems with the translation. Just click on the Contact form and tell us what's going on. It should also offer you an opportunity to give us what you think is a better translation.
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9 Tips to Planning a Phantastic Photo Safari
Quite often I find that I write things about which I most want to know. I am planning a photo "safari" for this spring that will take me on a more than 3000 mile journey across the South. In order to figure out how to go about planning that road trip, I decided to simply write about my present research and past experience. Hence this blogpost.
A photo safari isn't necessarily one in which you travel to Africa to capture wildlife or landscapes unavailable anywhere else. It can be any extended trip taken with the goal of bringing home a "trophy" shot to hang on your (or your clients') wall. That trophy shot could be photos of people, places, things, or whatever you enjoy photographing.
In this writer's view, all of that takes planning. How much is up to you. . . .
Read MoreThe "Measure of Man"
What's on our mind? you ask.
Truthfully? We're thinking about what we need to do so that we can add more friends and followers here on Facebook. And on Linkedin. And Twitter. And the rest of the social media sites.
We need to have more people listening to The SRO Show and following us and. . .
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UPDATE: The SRO Show
It's taken me much longer than I anticipated to re-design the website for the old "Musical Notes" — now rebranded as "The SRO Show."
Technical issues keep popping up and I feel as if I'm playing Whac-a-Mole!
Not to worry, though. It's all part of the process. I'm about to make a major push to finish it up.
In the meantime. . .
Read MoreComing Soon. . . .
For the past several months, starting in the last days of winter of early 2015, we have been producing a short-form audio program that runs on RioandReyes.com on a weekly basis. You may have listened to it, either on their website or here on ours.
When we started out, it became necessary to give the show a home on the Internet so listeners could hear the show, search through. . .
Read MoreLoss
I’d like to talk about something that each of us will experience sooner or later — loss.
I’m not referring today to the kind of loss that takes with it a few photographs or even a few thousand for that matter.
No, I’m referring to the kind of loss that grips you by the throat and squeezes until you realize that you are just as vulnerable and might be taken, too. At any time.
Read MoreWalking the Talk
It's sometimes best to take your own advice. Last week, you and I explored how we could discover new images in our work by taking a little extra time to see what we could see in those lost frames packed away in the dusty folders of our photographic archives.
After a few days working on other projects (The SRO Show #019 / Journey and #020 / Pat Benatar) I came back to give the photos from my latest road trip for a second look.
I found a number of good shots that I'd overlooked before and ended up tweaking a shot that I'd originally included as my "selects."
Read MoreLet's Get Back to Normal, Shall We?
Second Passes
I want to talk about finding hidden gems on your hard drive. We all have them. I certainly do and you probably do, too.
In our rush to find the best images from a recent shoot (or one from some time ago), we often will miss some truly wonderful images that might take a little more polishing than the obvious ones we find on our CF or SD cards.
Pulling back highlights, opening up shadows, cropping slightly different than usual, settling for a smaller print — or a web-only sized image, or masking parts of an image for use in a composite. . . these are all legitimate ways to reclaim images that previously we might have thought of as culls.
Read MoreShould Have Stayed on the Road
Being on the road is difficult. Not excruciatingly so but, nonetheless, it is a distinct break in the continuity of one's life, the banalities that we take for granted.
That said, in reflection, coming home when I did was probably not the best choice I could have made. As I said earlier, the gas company (Atmos Energy) had the easements torn up and they were busy installing new pipes and meters, and city inspectors have been involved to approve ever step of the way (which, of course, slows everything down).
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Flagstaff is a Whole 'Nother Town
My memory of Flagstaff is from the late '70s when I passed through after leaving the Grand Canyon with my then-wife and her parents. (Don't even ask. Just know that I have lived the nightmare.)
Come to think of it, I'm not sure that it actually was Flagstaff. It was that different. Back then, it was just a dry-as-a-bone strip of businesses, one of them a diner we stopped at on our way to Oak Creek Canyon, and there was a small mountain behind this strip of ramshackle businesses. All the same height, basically a ridge that ran the length of "town."
(Picture should have gone here.)
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Road Trip and a Half
More Like Half a Road Trip
My trip out west ended abruptly Friday morning and I headed back home from Flagstaff. Let me tell you. . . that is one long drive. I can't claim to have driven non-stop, however. I stopped in Albuquerque for a couple hours to visit with a friend I met on last year's road trip, Pratt Morales. He and his son, Chris, own Golden Crown Panaderia. At 77, he has so much energy and passion for his business that he puts me to shame.
(Gallery of images from the Road Trip are below.)
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