My mea culpa is due here as I have not posted a door in several weeks. I had promised to do a Part 2 of my Sebastopol doorscursion but I’ll try to do that next week. This week, I’ll post a door from Bodie as I visited that site last weekend with photographer friends, including Deborah Z, our well-known Thursday Door blogger.
Excerpt from Wikipedia: Bodie (/ˈboʊdiː/BOH-dee) is a ghost town in the Bodie Hills east of the Sierra Nevadamountain range in Mono County, California, United States, about 75 miles (121 km) southeast of Lake Tahoe. It became a boom town in 1876 and following years, after the discovery of a profitable line of gold, and suddenly attracted several thousand residents. It is located 12 mi (19 km) east-southeast of Bridgeport,[5] at an elevation of 8379 feet (2554 m).[1] The U.S. Department of the Interior recognizes the designated Bodie Historic District as a National Historic Landmark. More context of the history of this ghost town can be found: HERE
Bodie was really interesting and a great place for photographers. We found out that it was open at nights only three times a year and last Saturday was the last night opening for 2018. Needless to say, many photographers made the trek for this photo opt and it was my first visit there.
Some of our group got there earlier while my wife and I decided to meet everyone in the evening; we stayed at a motel that was closer to Bodie and stayed in to keep cool and get some rest after traveling all day the day before. Everyone visited the Bodie church which was one of the beautiful structures and that’s where we found our photography group.
First, here is the door of the museum building taken at night; there is a blurred image of a person near the right window and bench which gives it a ghostly feeling. The blurred image was the woman who worked there in a period costume as she locked up for the night and walked off.
During daylight, I was able to shoot part of the town’s landscape.
This is the picture of the iconic church taken at night (after 9:00 p.m.) with a light in the doorway. It is quite amazing how much the moon light painted of the church’s facade which the camera picked up
The church at sunset; we were lucky to have fantastic dramatic clouds light up the composition.
I’m going to end this week’s Thursday Doors post here. Please visit Norm Frampton, our caretaker and creator of the Thursday Doors website to read about and see his fantastic collection of doors and then push his blue frog doorbell button to enter the portal of doors from around the world. Thanks for visiting my post and thanks to Norm 2.0 for his creation of the Thursday Doors website. As mentioned, for more posts and photos of doors by others please go to: Thursday Doors.
Last Saturday, our meetup photography group decided to meet at the Sebastopol Farmers Market to do some street photography and later explore a neighborhood street known for its art sculptures.
I’m going to post a couple of doors on this post and then do a follow-up on my next post. We arrived early and got to see the vendors set up their shops and greet their regular customers. There weren’t many people and the temperature was cooler so that was the ideal time to be there.
The musician was warming up her voice and entertained the early visitors while the kows roamed.
Other vendors selling their fruits and vegetables and baked goods.
If you need a date, visit this matchmaker.
Kids roamed and let off some energy but keep that cocao away from them.
Artists displaying their crafts; she weaved that tapestry!
I guess well placed vegetables can look like art!
And after and hour at the market we headed for the Florence Avenue neighborhood to find those yard sculptures while I tried to find some doors. The first house I decided to photograph had a nice door but the setback made it difficult to get a good shot of the front door.
The second house had a nice door, too and the door was in a better position to get photos.
The last door for this post included a “Police Box” in the yard. The Police Box is probably a sculpture in the yard and is modeled after the Dr. Who series from the U.K.
Be sure to read Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors post; who is Norm Frampton, you ask? He is none other than the Police Commissioner of the Thursday Doors serial and can open his Police Box to you if you press the blue frog door button to let you visit all of the other TD inmates. Thanks for visiting my post and thanks to Norm 2.0 for his creation of the Thursday Doors website. For more posts and photos of doors by others please go to: Thursday Doors.
Last week Saturday, I had the opportunity to join our Thursday Door Blogger friend, Deborah, and 3 other photographers for a return trip to Geyserville to see what may have been the final sightings of the Osprey family before the fledglings leave the nest. The parents built another nest on the power pole next to the pole with the existing nest and moved the branches out of the old nest to the new location; it was probably a hint to the fledglings that its time for them to move on. However, we got some good photos of the parents still bringing back fish to the nest.
The weather turned hot that day and it hit over 100 degrees before we headed for a cool restaurant for lunch and cool drinks. We wondered how those Ospreys could live out in the open nest with no tree branches for shade from the hot sun or when it rained during the early spring. Wildlife creatures are really impressive.
After lunch, our driver and event organizer, Dan, led us to visit the Dallas A. Saunders Artisan Textiles Gallery which was a short walk in that hot sun. The Gallery is located in a building that was a prune packing plant. According to Dallas, the building next to the gallery was planned to house artists and the gallery building was going to be the artists’ workshop but things changed and her building became the gallery; she planned to lease a small portion but the owner asked her to bring in other artists to share the space but she is the only tenant in there.
I think the work by photorealism artist, Chuck Close, was very interesting and Dallas allowed me to take some photos of the exhibits for this Thursday Doors post. Thursday Doors is the creation of the Door Artist, Norm Frampton; he is reputed to know the ins and outs of doors so please visit his TD website and view his current post then activate that blue frog doorbell to enter and see the door portal to bloggers from around the world.
The Gallery sign at the street entrance displays the 5 self photos of Chuck Close. The information to Dallas’ gallery can be seen on this link: Dallas A Saunders
The entry storefront door with the Chuck Close tapestry (I had to shoot half of the door to get the images into the composition).
Since Dallas allowed me to take some photos of her gallery and the exhibits I didn’t get to chat or listen to much of the information she gave the others so I’ll post some links to let you view on your own.
People in the photo below, Deborah (left), Dan (middle) and Dallas (right) are discussing the textiles and tapestries. The photos on the wall are actually tapestries (I understood photos were used to program the instructions for the computers that print colors on the threads and on the large Jacquard Looms that wove the images on the tapestry).
Anna (right), joins in on the discussion. Behind Dan is the Chuck Close photo tapestry of a giant Sunflower. It looks like a painting on canvas but on closer inspection you see that the threads are individually dyed before being woven on the loom.
Everything looks modern in this gallery, even the storefront entry door.
The Chuck Close 5 self-portrait photos tapestry is really stunning. You can see more information about Chuck Close’s photorealism here: Chuck Close Photorealism
The Chuck Close Five Part series information can be found at this link: Magnolia Editions Chuck Close Five Part I took a close up photo of his middle portrait in the tapestry and it looks amazingly realistic; then I did a crop of the image so you can see what it looks like closeup.
The information about the Jacquard Loom is at this Link: Jacquard Loom
The forest tapestry hangs on this wall and Dallas has a work area in her gallery.
The last area of the gallery with a display bed, pillows and hung photo tapestry on the wall. And, an emergency exit door (nothing special about this door).
Anna, Dallas and Deborah.
Billee, our other member of the Osprey photo adventure greets Dallas’ dog.
Less we not forget, we did get some shots of the Osprey, too!
Thanks for visiting my post and thanks to Norm 2.0 for his creation of the Thursday Doors website. For more posts and photos of doors by others please go to: Thursday Doors.
Greetings and welcome to my sequel WordPress site. I had to create a new site because my old site reached its maximum capacity and since I don’t blog that often it wasn’t economical to purchase the site. The saga continues, this site is mainly created to post stories about doors on Norm Frampton’s Thursday Doors site but who knows, it might expand to include other blogs some day.
If you followed my last post, I had taken a trip to Lassen Volcanic National Park and found a field of dreams full of butterflies; the link to that post can be found: Here This new post is the prologue to that post (almost like the Starwars series where the first events are the latest episodes).
The drive to Lassen took at least four hours from the San Francisco Bay Area to reach a community called Mineral just outside of Lassen Volcanic National Park. The community had a few cabins scattered here and there and some tents and RV campers for those camping in the area. The nearest gas station was 20 miles away in a town called Chester. It was in Mineral that we rented our 2-Story cabin. Very homey, rustic with no Wi-Fi or tv signals and almost no cellphone signals; it could sleep at least 7 people (more if they used sleeping bags) but there was only the 3 of us this time and we spent most of the time driving around and exploring the area. The cabin was stocked with a lot of board games to keep you busy if you stayed in the cabin, especially during the winter.
We arrived late in the afternoon and had to find the gas stations so we drove the 20 or more miles to Chester and then tried to scout areas near Lake Almanor for a night shoot of the Milky Way. We found a local restaurant at the edge of the lake and figured that we could shoot from that location at 10:30 p.m. I marked the spot on my car’s gps knowing that things never look the same in the dark and we headed back to the cabin for a simple dinner before returning for the astrophotography.
Driving back to the lake with my sister-in-law at night was as expected, everything certainly looked different. My wife decided to stay back at the cabin to turn in early which was a fortuitous decision. We encountered deer by the roadside so we made sure not to speed on the country roads and something big and fast flew by my windshield; being that it was dark I’m guessing that it was an owl but we’ll never know for sure. I found the road to make our turn towards the lake but my gps said drive 8+ miles to the marked destination (this is an old built in-car gps that has old maps that have not been upgraded since 2001) but we followed the directions even when we thought it seemed awfully far and promptly got lost and couldn’t find the marked location; we had a new portable gps with us but I wasn’t able to mark the location on it so it was of little help. After driving in circles for a couple of hours we decided to head back to the cabin but we took a last chance at an intersection further up the road and decided if wasn’t the right place we were going to turn around and head to the cabin. Success, we found the spot and got some Milky Way shots and then headed for the cabin.
My wife locked the cabin door from the inside but the lock was a keyless electronic lock from the outside. We pushed the buttons for the code but the lock didn’t open. Several tries later the lock lights turned blue and then blinked red and we were still locked out with mosquitoes for company. It’s a good thing my wife selected the only bedroom on the 1st story level so I called out to her at the window and she finally got up to let us in. It would have been a disaster if my wife came along with us because we would not have been able to get into the cabin. Next morning I spoke to the owner and he thought the keyless lock needed a new battery; only problem was he lives in another city probably over an hour’s drive away and his cleaning person was at least 30 miles away and they didn’t want to drive that far just to replace the lock batteries. So, if you rent a cabin in a remote area, make sure they don’t use an electronic keyless lock on the door. The owner told us it was a safe area and there has never been any thefts in the years that he has owned the property so we had no choice but to leave the cabin unlocked during the hours we were away; but every night after returning from the explorations I had to check the closets and nooks and crannies because my sister-in-law stayed in the 2nd-story bedroom and was afraid someone could have entered and hid in the cabin during day when we were away.
This is the 2-Story Cabin we rented with the bedroom on the 1st story on the left.
The door and the modern keyless lock
The “Second-Story” in the title of this post also means there is another story to be told here. If you saw the butterflies in my last post then you’ll appreciate this story.
The first full day of exploration took us into Lassen Volcanic National Park and we stopped at several areas to admire and photograph the scenery. By noon, we needed a lunch break so we stopped at the Kings Creek area and ate a light lunch before taking a hike to the waterfall. The hike to the falls wasn’t too bad but it required going uphill and around to get to the bottom of the falls and I knew I wasn’t going to be able to make the uphill trek so I set up my camera to do some water shots of the creek that flowed to the top of the falls. My wife and her sister decided to hike to the top of the falls and then down towards the bottom while I got some long exposures of the water flows in the creek (see below).
After shooting the water flows for a while I thought I should start packing up before the Mrs. and her sister returned so I folded my tripod and held it in both hands when a butterfly flew around me. Thinking butterfly photo opt I stood still but my camera hung around my shoulder on my right side so I had to wait until the butterfly landed before I could get to my camera. It flew closer around me and then it landed, underneath my tripod; I tried not to scare it off by making any sudden movements. It stayed hanging upside down on my tripod and I slowly turned my tripod right side up and it just stared at me while I stared at it. I slowly placed the tripod on the ground so I could get my camera to shoot some photos and the butterfly didn’t move. Initially, my “macro” type or closeup images were blurred and I should have used my tripod but something was already using it, if you know what I mean! I finally got some better images of the butterfly using my tripod.
I must have shot a bunch of photos trying to get a few that might look okay and finally told that butterfly it’s time to move on. So I picked up my tripod and gave it a little shake and the butterfly took flight and flew around me again and then landed at the other end of the tripod. I shot a few more photos and shook the tripod again. It did its flyby and then he landed on my hand. I’m so amazed that I didn’t see the old guy walk up the path with his camera; I saw him and showed him the butterfly clinging to my hand and offered him a photo opp to take a shot; he gave me a stank eye. After more minutes passed and I’m trying to figure what to do with butterfly, I moved my hand closer to get a good look and it just hung on and moved his proboscis on my hand then I hear the old guy yelling at me to move out of this composition of the flowing creek.
I could have been rude and held my ground but I moved to let the old guy get his shots while trying to keep the butterfly from flying away. So I’m stepping over branches, keeping my balance and arm and hand still but my camera is still dangling over my shoulder and on my right side. I’m thinking, how am I going to get this shot of a butterfly on my right hand, just licking away like I’m either a “sweet honey thing” or a “rock salt lick”. Meanwhile, the old guy moves on so holding my right arm close to me so I can see the butterfly as a macro image, I use my left hand to try to find the camera grip on the right side of the camera to raise it so the lens is pointed at the butterfly (I have to do this blindly because I can’t look through the viewfinder). I had set up my camera with a back button focus (bbf) (a separate button in the back of the camera to do auto focusing so the shutter release button doesn’t have to refocus with each shot) and pushed the bbf hoping to get the butterfly in focus. Next, I have to use my left hand to try to find the shutter release button on the camera grip (you gotta picture in your mind a right-handed person holding his arm out, steady, so the butterfly doesn’t fly away; then using the left hand to try to lift the camera and lens while pushing a bbf then the shutter release to shoot some close up shots of the butterfly; an almost impossible, shot). But I found out that a few shots came out (the others were blurred, blackout frames). Here’s the little guy on my right hand.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
Next, thinking my camera shots might not turn out, I had to pull my cellphone out of my waist pouch, remove the sliding phone cover, turn it on and select the camera mode and then holding it in my left hand, trying to get it close and focus and then pressing the phone camera’s shutter release. I got some that worked and below are a couple of those shots. You can see that proboscis working.
I don’t know how much time elapsed but I was with this butterfly for more than 15 minutes. The Mrs. and her sister returned and I held up my hand showing them what I had and they took several photos with their cellphones and camera while my BFF (Butterfly Friend Forever) just stayed on my hand licking me.
I don’t know if this long narrative adequately described what happened but the photos gives you and idea what happened. I finally shook the butterfly free and it flew away reluctantly; probably thinking that was a good free meal, and I had the story of a lifetime.
I hope you enjoyed this 2nd-Story; feel free to LOL!
Thanks for visiting my post and thanks to Norm 2.0 for his creation of the Thursday Doors website. For more posts and photos of doors by others please go to: Thursday Doors.
