Blogs writing themselves and a photography tip
on George Hamilton (Jamaica), 16/Apr/2011 21:25, 34 days ago
I discovered two great truths today although initially I was not moving as fast as the San Andreas fault - 21 feet since 1906, but my speed was a toss-up with a normal-paced glacier. I didn't deserve to discover any truths for all my lack of get-up-and-go. Life is not fair to all you conscientious people who every day diligently, but unsuccessfully, search for the truth. In general terms, the first truth is that blogs write themselves (hey, I'm not to blame for what follows) so you just go outside, take your photos and be alert.Secondly, there is a truth about photography that you won't find in any North American photography books. At least I expect that's true, because all I have read is one book kindly loaned by Dominic Ali to Bunty and me - "The Digital Photography Book" by Scott Kelby, and the photography tip I learned today wasn't in that book. Let me explain the first truth.I thought my blog was going to be about a semi-capsized house on eroded ground that was in danger of sliding into a gully. Ricky kindly drove me along in his taxi towards the Barbican area. He was key to this story because he knew where the house was and I did not. Actually the house was past the Barbican area and that's why Bunty and I never saw it before. We had stopped looking before we even arrived at it. My mind was thinking outside the box again for suitable attention-grabbing things to say in the blog - for example, late breaking news from Kingston, house in danger, only seven months late! And so on. You can sense the un-excitement. But later on as I was taking the photos, the real blog title came to me for the first truth, and simultaneously the photography tip that I had never seen explained in any photography book, arrived too. It's not always sunny in Kingston and this might explain why I was not on the way to the beach. Here's Barbican Road today.I wasn't particularly confident one way or the other about this expedition. This is just a photo of wall art found along the way. There were many other paintings. This was not necessarily the greatest artwork, but it happened to be in sight when I got the camera out and the taxi wasn't going too fast - actually Ricky is a pretty safe conservative driver, so I exaggerate again.I was concerned that my photo would not show the building in as dramatic a way as the Gleaner (Kingston's newspaper) portrayed, and that blog readers would just put my tilted building down to me not holding the camera straight. But thankfully the photos clearly show the building's problems that were attributed to Tropical Storm Nicole, and not to me. Here are three photos from the front, the side, and where the building is likely to end up. From the front:From the side. Note that gully that is currently empty, but will be in danger of overflowing during the rainy season.Future relocation possibility. The house is just out of sight in the left foreground. You can see the long pipe sticking out over the gully in both pictures. You can see the depth of the gully when you see the relative small size of the people standing by it. More about the people later.Taking photos takes time and it was during this period that the two truths came to me courtesy of concerned passer-by whose lips barely moved when he told me the second truth, and that led into the blog title that became the first truth. The second truth is a photography tip. Mr Kelby's book has very useful recommendations on only taking scenery photos within half an hour of sunset or sunrise, never photo a flower from above, position the subject matter correctly in the photo, how to take indoor photographs that are not too dark or blurry, and many, many more. But what did be miss? It's always difficult to see something that's not there.If you follow the photography tip I luckily received, you too will live a long and happy life. Isn't that more important than a photograph? I apologize to all dedicated photographers who may not agree with this - I'm not a 100% dyed-in-the-wool true-blue photographer yet. And there are even more benefits to the advice I received. Not only will you have a long and happy life, but also you will avoid unexpected visits to hospitals for the removal of bullets that might have become lodged in your body. The sage advice was "Be careful not to take photos of gangsters".There were only three people I could see down the gully photo and they seemed to be too far way to recognize, so I believe I am safe. Here is an artist's impression when the house slides into the gully. It will slide into the gully on a rainy rather than a sunny day because that's when there will be lots of water around to undermine the house. What will happen when the house reaches the bottom of the gully on that rainy day? The gully is going to be dammed and fill up with water within minutes. You may find this hard to believe. Trust me, those nature TV shows of the large fast-moving raging torrents of rivers in Canada's north give you some idea of what can happen in a gully on stormy day in Kingston. Gullies are extremely dangerous when full. If by accident you drive your car into one, it and you will be washed away. So, all the water below may not be that far off the truth.For those searching the truth, this really was a jet skier doing a tight turn close to restaurant on the dock at the Morgan's Harbour Hotel in Port Royal, just past Kingston's Norman Manley International Airport. Great seafood there, and lots of fishy action in the water after dark. And that's all for today, and that's the truth.