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Out and about with my little point and shoot camera and found I had to give up on the birds in flight shots. I decided instead to shoot perching dragonflies and other things that don't move so much.
Canadian National 2128 (a GE C40-8) partners Illinois Central 1025 (an EMD SD70) to haul a double stack intermodal out of Markham Yard on the CN Chicago Subdivision near Homewood IL, 17 October 2015.
Car owners are either one extreme or another, anal or slobs. I’m a slob. It is we, the blue-collar workers, who have to use our cars and vans as offices, canteens, libraries and occasionally bedrooms, who struggle to keep our interiors in showroom condition. People who only use their cars to drive to and from the office, who wear clothing that doesn’t get worn through, who don’t need hobnailed boots, Gaffa tape and ladders in the back and who rarely eat their meals out of their laps have immaculate interiors, flawless dashboards, lint free seats.
Rather like my previous piece about keeping all of our belongings factory fresh, ready to sell on, cars are another thing we are meant to preserve to the point of not using them.
I have seen brand new Bentleys being delivered to showrooms with a dull plastic coating stuck all over them. When you get your new Bentley why not just leave the coating on – what does it matter? Everyone knows what is underneath it – that you are rich and successful and insecure, you don’t need to uncover it and leave it open to the elements just for everyone else’s benefit. Maybe that’s why you get those men who walk around in Ferrari jackets and caps – they have the car at home but they don’t take it out – it will devalue it – so they just wear the coat to show you that they HAVE it.
Once you ‘break the seal’ so to speak on your car and scratch it for the first time then that’s it, it’s done, you can relax. My poor old car since receiving it’s first me-inflicted scratch years ago is now a pit pony, worked hard with no petting. It is washed perhaps twice a year – well it will only get all sooty again once it starts the next day down’t pit. I leave my car filthy because I figure that the dirt to some extent forms a protective coating, fending off stone chips and zip scrapes. The more slobbish it looks inside and out to a potential thief walking past the less appealing it should be as a target. If all they see is, carrier bags in the footwell, fingernails and chewing gum in the ashtray and dog-eared books about ‘how to be happy’ on the seat then they will probably assume I don’t have a gold ingot in the glove box or diamond earrings tucked behind the sun visor. And as for the grime that will rub off on their grey trackie bottoms as they lean in to grab my out-of-date rice cakes – well it’s just not worth it. I also rather like the pattern of finger marks that form on the boot from my repeated openings – like the fork crimping around the edges of a pie – I always said that when I designed cars (that was a waste of three years) I would make the finger pattern a feature of the design – form follows function and all that. One of the only things I actually recall learning at university about ergonomics was a case where an architect designed a public building, built it, opened it and let it be used for about a year before he then landscaped the grounds. He let the footfall of the users dictate where the paths should be. Just like where you see sheep paths across farmland, the patrons of the library or whatever it was, tramped across the grass in the most convenient way for them to get from the bus stop or the car park to the entrance. They wore several muddy troughs across the grounds, which, for the architect made it extremely easy to simply pave the muddy bits that had been drawn out for him.
So often you see these fancy paths around office blocks that have ugly diagonal mud tracks cutting across them where people cannot be bothered to stick to the circuitous route dictated by paving. I thought this architect’s solution was perhaps the most profound thing I had ever read at the time, and I still remember it now and bring it out if ever I’m talking to anyone about designing public buildings – which is never – so I bring it out if someone asks me what I’d like to drink.
It’s lucky that my mum and I have the same policy on car valeting – When both our cars are parked on her driveway, chances are one of us will open the door onto the other one’s flank. We then spend ten minutes trying to find the mark we made through the dirt. We then stomp inside and bark “I’M SORRY MY STUPID CAR DOOR FLUNG OPEN ONTO YOUR CAR DOOR AGAIN.” We both trudge outside to inspect the damage and spend ten minutes trying to work out which ding is the new ding – “No its not that one, I did that yesterday, no, that was me as well, that one was my tripod, and that was my watch. Forget abaat it!’
When I watch films where one character offers someone attractive at the bus stop a lift home I imagine what would happen if I did that – I would have to get out and reconfigure the entire interior before they could get in. The bus would come and go, they would look longingly after it, thinking of the nice clean, empty seats and I would still be hurling the crap from the passenger seat backwards over the headrests.
The passenger seat for me is the equivalent of a desk drawer in an office. It is an essential stowage platform for:
Handbag – gaping open for frequent, panicked scrabbling inside, (I often astound myself by my ability to find the tiniest things within the dark depths, whilst driving, eyes on the road, just from feel - that nearly empty pack of Extra gum I know is in there somewhere, got it – tiny bottle of hand sanitiser, piece of cake, that lone pro-plus tablet that has been rolling around for weeks, ah ha, got it, down the hatch, no, that was a stone.
Refilled-umpteen-times-bottle of water whose nozzle smells a bit of wet umbrellas but tastes ok as long as I don’t breathe in.
Three bags for life.
Tupperware box full of two-day-old lunch.
Deodorant.
Two dirty forks.
Several books in case early to an appointment or caught in a five hour hold-up.
Blank paper and pencils for emergency notes when parking where I shouldn’t.
Sunday magazines going back three months.
Chocolate bar wrappers and empty coffee cups in foot well (once cup holders all full.)
And then what about all of the crumbs and fragments of skin and fingernail from several anxious hours a day sat on the M25? – It all gathers in the gearbox scrotum, and down the sides of the seat (where no hoover nozzle can ever reach) I blow into the scrotum to spread it about at least and get a face full of dead skin cells and breadcrumbs. After I have thrown everything large over my shoulder into the back seat they would get in, sit down and a cloud of biscuit dust would rise around them accompanied by a smell of lynx (that I have covertly squirted as they opened the door). When they eventually get out of my car a giant hairball will have attached itself to their trousers and I will say a fonder goodbye to it than to my guest passenger.
Every time I see a dash-hoard I am compelled to photograph it, thrilled that through this un-witting glass display cabinet I get to glimpse a little piece of the driver’s world.
What they're taking part in, through university. They can cross France and Belgium off that list, I think they get to Germany tomorrow.
See flying turkey he kicked up one photos back, here he is after voles, or anything that comes up, grasshoppers, lizards, etc, he doesn't catch much, so not to many things get killed, but he has a ball, and so do I watching him, he was a found dog 2 1/2 years ago.
In the meanwhile of watching the SP engine do it's thing, a Dash 8 races by to serve at Jax Intermodal Ramp.
One last blue dasher as I was leaving the park. Hope to get one in flight later if I get lucky. :) Lens still not getting sharp focus consistently.
This male Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) was hanging out in a field next to a swampy area. After approaching many different dragonflies for about an hour with no success, I finally found this one willing to sit still...
DASH (Alexandria Transit Company) Orion V (Model 05.503) #92 on the Blue Line Shuttle to Franconia-Springfield on George Washington Memorial Parkway and Slaters Lane in Alexandria, VA.
Pablo Maneiro Jr. Photo. All Rights Reserved.
Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) male.
John Bunker Sands Wetland Center.
19 May 2018. Seagoville, Texas. Kaufman County.
Nikon D500. Nikkor AF-S 300mm f4E ED PF VR + TC-14e III teleconverter.
(420mm) f6.3 @ 1/2500 sec. ISO 800.
Chassis: Dennis Dart.
Body: Alexander Dash B40F.
Location: Duxford Airfield, Cambridgeshire.
Date: 21st September, 2014.
This is his favorite hiding spot when the weather gets loud in Houston. Underneath my hanging clothes, you can see his past hair deposits.
Blue Dasher (Pachydiplax longipennis) male.
John Bunker Sands Wetland Center.
7 October 2017. Seagoville, Texas. Kaufman County.
Nikon D500. Nikkor AF-S 300mm f4e ED PF VR + TC-14e III teleconverter.
(420mm) f5.6 @ 1/1250 sec. ISO 800.
In about 1996 tomato soup liveried First Greater Manchester 1060 heads up Cannon Street, Manchester, on its way to Middleton. This Volvo B6 was originally registered to Volvo, Warwick, so I suspect it was a demonstrator in an earlier life.
Los Angeles Dept. of Transportation DASH El Dorado National EZ Rider II bus at Griffith Observatory.
My LEGO model of Rainbow Dash from 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic'. She contains approx. 3,700 parts.
I started this project over a year and a half ago. There were many times where I felt like giving up; designing her proved to be a huge challenge. My main expertise previously has been in building model trains. They tend to be covered in straight lines and right-angle corners. This is about as removed from that as you can get.
What kept me going was the encouragement I received from friends in the MLP fandom. Since LEGO models aren't common in that community, the novelty of the project seemed to be a good draw. Essentially, people wanted to see the finished thing just as much as me.
When I began the project, I set out a few objectives:
- She would be an accurate representation of how Rainbow appears in the cartoon, when viewed from all angles
- It would be obvious that she is made of LEGO
- She would be free standing
- She would have an exciting pose and expression to best represent her character, rather than looking like a lifeless statue
The fact that she is able to balance on just 2 legs is more of a fluke than anything else.
Also on my Deviant Art: