Category Archives: Photos

Self-flagellation at its finest

Last weekend, I traveled up north* with Mathematical Laura, Troubadour Jenny, Road Trip Andrew and Biker Mike.  Laura’s family has a cabin on Hubbard Lake — located somewhere between nowhere and the end of the earth, a location some progressive cartographers call “the Alpena area” — and they graciously allowed us to invade Barkley North for the weekend.

*(For those of you unfamiliar with Michigan, “up north” means “wait, where did all the people go, and who put all these trees and lakes here?”  For many of us Michiganders from the population-dense southeast, up north is a pleasant escape; for other Michiganders who enjoy stress, traffic and endless seas of cookie-cutter home developments and obnoxious chain drug stores, up north is a strange foreign place filled with … well, nothing.  Which is to say it’s filled with lots of things that used to exist in southeastern Michigan before someone decided that pavement and strip malls were way better than icky dirty things like trees and grass and open space.)

Like many such lakes, Hubbard Lake features copious amounts of water, which makes it ideal for fast water-based activities like water skiing, tubing and motion sickness.  And, like many such cabins, Barkley North features a boat that allows its occupants to enjoy those activities (except for motion sickness, which is difficult to enjoy).  I don’t often get the chance to photograph things like water skiing and tubing, so this presented an opportunity for me to have some fun with my camera.

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Photo of the Variable Time Period, vol. 146

Chelsea held its Summerfest last Thursday and Friday.  Summerfest used to be a simple downtown sidewalk sale, but then it began taking event-enhancing drugs, and its hat size grew dramatically and it began hitting home runs at a record-setting pace.  Also, it added attractions like a small art fair and live music.

Summerfest 2008 (25 July 2008).


In a clear effort to appeal to the Large Power Equipment-Obsessed Little Boy demographic, the Summerfest now features a fire truck.

(Full gallery.)

Photo of the Variable Time Period, vol. 144

On Saturday, the Michigan High School Football Coaches Association held its annual all-star football game at Spartan Stadium in East Lansing.  Aside from being a shining beacon of Actual Football Action in the vast wasteland of the Arid Lifeless Offseason, the game is a lot of fun for me because I get to shoot football on the sidelines of a Big Ten stadium, and that’s halfway to fulfilling a dream of mine.  (Yeah, it’s Spartan Stadium, but … well, they can’t all be Michigan Stadium.)  This year, thanks to my connection to Heritage Newspapers, the West team gave me four athletes and two coaches to photograph:

  • DT Dean Roberts (Chelsea)
  • LB Chris Marsh (Dexter)
  • WR Sam Burchyett (Saline)
  • WR Marvon Sanders (Ypsilanti)
  • Brad Bush (Head coach, Chelsea)
  • Grant Fanning (Assistant coach, Chelsea)

Last year’s game featured bright sunlight and brilliant blue skies, and let me tell you, it was hot; this year’s game was cooler thanks to cloudy skies with a chance not of meatballs, but of thunderstorms.  The thunderstorms never happened, but it did start to rain midway through the second half; the rain continued through the end of the game, and it managed to soak everyone on the field, including me (but not my camera, thanks to my outstanding Storm Jacket camera cover).

The game itself was largely defensive; neither team reached the end zone, but on the strength of three field goals, the East (Detroit and a few nearby counties) defeated the West (the rest of the state), 9-0.


Dexter’s Chris Marsh


Chelsea’s Dean Roberts

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Photoshop engineering

For me, Photoshop is one of the strongest forms of digital punishment known to man; I admire those who adeptly wield its myriad tools, because when I open up Photoshop, I typically find that it makes me feel at least thirty percent less intelligent than I really am.  But I feel that way about pretty much anything that’s complicated — which may be why I’m still single — so take that with a grain of salt.

Anyway, despite my pride-based aversion to Photoshop, sometimes I do find reasons to dip my feet into its treacherous waters; those reasons are usually centered around my website or a photo book, but occasionally some other project pushes me in that direction.  One such project came up just the other day.

During a trip that will be covered in another post, I visited Lehigh University last week.  Lehigh’s current mascot is the Mountain Hawk, a useful but fairly unremarkable mascot; however, the Mountain Hawk was not always the common nickname for Lehigh’s athletic teams.  They don’t publicize the prior nickname much (or, from my outside perspective, at all) anymore, and that’s sad, because that nickname and its accompanying logo were remarkably unique and appealing: before they were the Mountain Hawks, they were the Engineers.

Since the Engineer logo is almost nonexistent on campus (aside from two old banners in the athletic hall of fame) and is completely nonexistent in the range of available Lehigh merchandise, I decided I wanted to try to capture the logo so I could have my own copy of that wonderful piece of Lehigh’s history.  This proved to be a challenge, as the two banners in the hall of fame are under glass; with the limited opportunity and light I had, I got these pictures:

After I spent some time stumbling around in Photoshop, I ended up with a finished product I actually liked:

So, despite Lehigh’s decision to cast aside the grizzled, determined Engineer (and his grizzled, determined stubble) and become the Mountain Hawks, the Engineer will persist … on this blog, anyway.

(And, as it turns out, on a shirt or two.)

Park it real good

As a permit-carrying member of the Blue Wheelchair Man Group (BWMG) — I get to park in handicapped parking spots — I have an interest in the parking efforts of other members of that group.  There are times those efforts aren’t exactly stellar; recently, I came across two such efforts.  (License plates have been removed to protect the careless.)

The first was during the Future Bulldog Camp.  Since the target group of the camp can’t drive, the stadium parking lot was only sparsely populated during the sessions, which meant one particular parking job was hard to miss:

I neglected to check the rear-view mirror for a permit, so I don’t know if that was done by a member of the BWMG.  If that was an able-bodied person’s parking job … well, come on.  If you’re going to park illegally, put some effort into it.  (At least stay off the sidewalk!)

If that wasn’t enough, just the other day, I went to Showcase Cinema to see Wall-E (by the way: GO SEE IT NOW!), and in the parking spot next to mine, I saw this:

The van did have the necessary license plate to park in a handicapped parking spot, but I’m not sure that counts as being “in a handicapped parking spot”; I think it’s more “in the general area of a handicapped parking spot.”  What made it more amusing was the “How’s my driving?” bumper sticker below the license plate.

If I see more of these sorts of parking jobs in the BWMG spots, I’ll continue to post them; if you see any, feel free to send a picture to me.  I’m always up for a good laugh.

Photo of the Variable Time Period, vol. 141

A while ago, my father — who typically doesn’t have facial hair on purpose — agreed to grow a beard when my brother graduated from law school.  (Leave it to an aspiring lawyer to negotiate that deal…)  He kept the beard a few days past the graduation, but its demise was inevitable; however, I did manage to convince him to keep it until I got the chance to shoot a few pictures of his bearded self.

Beard-B-Gone (23 May 2008).