Eastside YMCA

If you have to exercise, then it is nice to have a pleasant place to go, but truth be told, it is not my favorite activity.  I guess I would rather be outdoors, but sometimes the weather is not ideal, and I am basically a wimp.

Clover nursery

Last weeks warm weather got a lot of people thinking about their gardens.

This week the the cold returned with temperatures below freezing.  Still the sunny days are springlike and soon the warm weather will be with us on a more reliable basis.

Sudden spring

Strange is the only way to describe our weather over the last few months.  Not much winter, and now we have practically skipped spring and jumped straight to summer.  The last few days have been near 80F, and we should still be dodging snow and cold.

This warm weather has had a definite impact on the plant world.  Trees seem to have budded-out overnight.  I hear reports that the peach tree orchards are in full bloom, a month a head of schedule.  The question is, will it last, or is it all a cruel joke?

Foggy spring

Early spring means foggy, soggy, rainy weather.  And of course winter could still return.  Snow is possible all the way through April, but this mild winter and early warmth makes us hopeful of pleasant days ahead.

School bus

It's hard to think of any manufactured item that has not changed substantially over the last 50 years, but these school busses sure seem stuck in time.  They may have seat belts now, but they really do not look much different what you would have seen picking up kids in the 1960s.

Is it a design that is so perfect it cannot be improved, or just lack of innovation?

Open

Someone I admire has said "good picture making is about focus."  And he was not talking about proper lens settings.  He was talking about the importance of creating an organized and cohesive body of work that is consistent in visual style and technique.

Not so sure I am very successful at that.

Most of my photos on this blog are square format, but beyond that there is a lot of variability.  I tend to capture whatever strikes me as interesting at the moment without any plan or over arching idea or theme.  Maybe that is OK, but I would like to build a "body of work" (his term) that hangs together as something more than a random collection of pictures.

So maybe I will.  I am open to the concept. But I need an idea.  Maybe there is one hiding in plain sight.

Vacant conference room

Live bait

Vending machines can be very handy at times.  If you want a bottle of water, a softdrink, even a treat of some kind, you only have to insert some money, then retrieve your product.  

But here we have a vending machine that dispenses worms.  

The thought of worms crawling around inside a vending machine is a little strange, but I guess if you are a fisherman and need something to put on your hook, it is a pretty convenient idea.

Parkside diner neon

To me, neon lighting is magical.  A glass tube filled with an exotic gas made to glow when thousands of volts of electricity is injected into the ends.  The color is intense and the carefully formed but somewhat primitive designs have an old-time nostalgic quality.

Of course neon gas only creates the quintessential red-orange signage.  In this case there is also blue which is produced by argon and mercury.  There are additional colors possible using other gasses, sometimes in combination with phosphor coatings inside the tube.

Neon led to the development of florescent lighting, todays widely used but less loved illumination technology. But that greenish-white light holds no magic for me, certainly not when compared to the colors of neon.