Creepy, In a Good Way

The plan was to knock around The Big Easy for a few days. Wander the Garden District, the French Quarter, and maybe a bayou or on the outskirts of town. Eat and drink too much. Listen to some good local blues and jazz. Take lots of pictures. It was a good plan. Hell, it was a great plan.

Mother Nature laughs at my planning.

Shortly after we arrived, unseasonal rains dumped eight-to-ten inches on NOLA in a short few hours, flooding The Bowl and many other low-lying areas within the city. Clubs along the Quarter found waters coming over their steps and seeping into the venues. Travel around town was a disaster, where you could drive at all. It wasn’t pretty. And then it kept raining.

This mess left us to while away a large chunk of our time in the hotel, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. We stayed at The Columns, a gorgeous old turn-of-the-century boutique boarding house, now twenty-guestroom hotel, that offered a dark, mysterious charm. And by mysterious, I mean creepy.

Creepy in a good way.

Adding to the creep factor, for much of our stay we were the only guests in the place. Quiet dark halls. Empty staircases. Rows of closed doors. Were one to be effected by such things, there was some serious malevolence brewing.

Did anyone see The Shining?

But we loved the place. While Mary napped or read in the room (number 25), I happily puttered around the haunting hallways and climbed up and down the incredible spiraling staircase to capture a few images, fully expecting to get back home to find soft spectral streaks in the photos. Ghosts of old New Orleans, peeking through.

They were most certainly there, visible or not.

Carp It

Bend it

Net it

Juggle it

Admire it

Kiss it

Celebrate it

The Photo Bin: 2Q2017 - Beaver Island Suspects

Scott Thompson: That Feeling

True story (and I say that because around here one can never be sure), I had a dream last night that I was flying to Alaska to fish. At the end of my commercial airline ordeal, as I awaited the arrival of the Beaver to take me on my final leg, I discovered that my duffle was half empty (or half full, I never know which) and I stood on the tarmac trying to decide if I had been robbed or had simply forgotten to finish packing before departure. The latter seemed more likely.

What was packed was my camera, and, despite the tender care that my luggage had undoubtedly received in the hands of the gorillas in Delta’s baggage management division, my unprotected Nikon had bounced around in all that unfilled storage space such that the lens now looked like a half-crushed PBR can. The poor thing was toast and it occurred to me that it was going to be a long, boring week on the water. Never mind that I had no wading boots or shirts to wear (I remember those things specifically as missing), I was not going to be taking any pictures.

Steve Martinez: The big man's in the boat

Obviously, this glut of photos has been playing with my mind, even in my sleep. More specifically, trying to figure out how to trot out this pile of material without completely overwhelming the reader and cooking my laptop’s motherboard in the process. (I’ve heard it’s poor little cooling fan kick in during this past week’s marathon Lightroom sessions with startling regularity).

I’ve landed on the idea of groupings of five. A series of posts, each containing five images, that revolve around some theme. I have no idea what those themes will be. We’ll just have to see as we go along. As for how many there will be, we’ll just have to see that too. (You can tell that I’ve given this lots of thought.)

I fear more anxiety dreams are on the way.

Alex Landeen: Looking to the sky (and the man on the platform) for a little rain relief

Prepared or not, I’d better get started. Ignoring any coherent chronological sequencing of the events and images from the past three months, interspersed in this post has been a quick rogues gallery of my companions from our just completed carp adventure on Beaver Island. It’s a bit of a cheat as they have already been posted on my Instagram feed (yes, I’ve fallen down yet another social media rabbit hole), but for the sake of efficiency…

Kevin Morlock: Can't keep a good guide down

For the photo barrage to come, my apologies.

Cameron Mortenson: The Man and His Island

That goes double for the mugs in this gallery.

What is a Photo Bin?

The Photo Bin - December 2016

Hello. Remember me? I used to post around here every now and then.

Lots of excuses for my absence, none good. The holidays, not fishing enough, the distraction of guitars and travel and winter colds. Piddly stuff. But, in truth, the slowdown has been long-running. Were it not for these photo bins, the blog would be barren. Funny, as photography is far from my strong point. It's a source for talking points, however, so it seems as good a way as any to get started again.

The holidays raced by, and crawled at the same time. We spent the better part of two weeks on the road, north, starting with a family gathering in what I affectionately call the frozen tundra, Mary's sister's house in Indiana. It was a grey and frigid visit, this time, in stark contrast to our visit of just a couple of months earlier.

Luckily, whatever the weather, it's always warmed from inside by family in abundance.

From Indiana it was on to Chicago for the week before Christmas. I am fascinated by the city this time of year. Downtown is alight like a Christmas tree, though the dark expanses in the highrises show just how many folks escape to the 'burbs or places elsewhere (warm?) for the holidays.

Thankfully, the blues dives keep hoppin'. Cheery watering holes, made more so by the festivity of the season. If you've gotta have the blues at Christmas, here's the place to have them.

After spending time with family, my favorite thing during these holiday visits is to sneak out after the grandkids have gone off to bed and wander the residential streets of Old Town, particularly on Christmas Eve. Like the highrises, the normally parked-up streets are empty as folks have escaped the city, and the quiet, semi-dark avenues are a delight to walk along. A different experience for this southern country boy.

So there you have it. I'm back on the board again, post-wise, but there's plenty of catching up to do. Hell, it's almost time for another bin. We'll see if I can't do better than that in the coming weeks.

No promises.

But then, you knew that.


What is a Photo Bin?

Plans Are Overrated

My return to this hidden staircase of rock and water didn't go quite as planned. The intent was to nick a few brookies and take some long exposure images of soft falls and emerging Spring. I was ready.

But the brookies were absent (I saw nary a fish, much less caught one) and the day, forecast to be heavily overcast, turned bluebird bright, and windy. There's not an ND filter made that can fix dancing rhododendrons. I snapped a few shots but my objectives went pretty well unrealized.

No worries, however. The three-hour drive was saved by a quintet of rough-coated whitetails that passed within twenty feet as I sat on the tailgate enjoying my lunch, a leisurely mid-day nap in the bed of the pickup, taken between half-mile rock hops (the first with a fly rod and the second, a tripod), and, after each climb and descent, a cold beer, tucked snuggly in a trailside plunge pool. Nature's perfect cooler.

So while things didn't go quite as planned, it was a joy to be out. To be on the road. On the stream. On the trail.

Besides. Plans, as you well know, are overrated.

Note: Click on the pics for a better look. I'm often disappointed with how Blogger represents them.

Acknowledgement: Thanks, here, to the good folks at Upslope Brewing Company for sending a six-pack of their fine lager. A perfect summer beer, light and flavorful, that would be even more perfect if I could get it here on the east coast. Just another reason that Boulder rocks. Oh, and no small thing, one percent (1%) of revenue from sales of this beer is donated to local chapters of Trouts Unlimited where their beers are sold. Well done, boys.