Day: August 25, 2020

The Time Between

Photographer, Photography, Laskowitzpictures, Ray Laskowitz, Pictures, Color

Finding the right way home.

Days in between.

Marco fell apart. The tropical warnings came down. We got a little wind and even less rain. Dodged it.

Now comes Laura. She won’t even come close to New Orleans. She will make landfall as a Category 2 or 3 hurricane around Lake Charles. I have a fond spot in my heart for that little city. After a couple of weeks of living in nowhereville after Katrina, I set up a temporary base there. I was there about a month, then on to New Mexico.

I was reflecting about all of this last night and again early this morning. I am amazed by how much hurricanes have affected my life. Before I moved to New Orleans I never even gave them a second thought. I grew up in Southern California. We worried about earthquakes. Wildfires weren’t a thing back then.

But, now I track them. I prepare for them. I read weather reports from NOAA. I worry about outbound routes even though there is no place to evacuate to during the Age of Corona. So, we batten down the hatches and wait.

We were lucky this time. Eventually our luck will run out.

That’s for another day.

The Picture

The scene is the same old one. I cannot tell you how many times I’ve used this as a go to location. I made kind of the usual picture. When I started to process it, I thought enough of that. Let’s see where I can take this picture.

After a lot of false starts, I decided to move in an entirely new direction. I smoothed everything. I turned strong clouds into cotton candy. I sucked a lot of color out of the picture. If you look closely at the power poles — normally black looking — they look almost transparent.

Eventually I got there.

You will too.

Stay safe. Stay mighty. Look after each other. Enjoy every cup of coffee.

Landfall

Photographer, Photography, Laskowitzpictures, Ray Laskowitz, Pictures, Color

The truth.

The truth about nature.

She does whatever she wants. You can’t control her and you can’t predict her. It seems to me that she is showing that in three ways. We can’t get our arms around a rampant virus. The west is burning. And, we are being threatened with two hurricanes at once.

We dodged a bullet with the first hurricane. Marco was downgraded to a tropical depression. All tropical storms warnings are removed. She glanced off the coast of Louisiana, making a kind of landfall well west of New Orleans. This, despite the exhortations of the big name weather people on The Weather Channel.

All I can say about that is I want one of their jobs. They are wrong 90% of the time. They act like idiots and yet they keep their jobs.

There is some question about Hurricane number two. Laura has not yet entered the gulf far enough to know where she is going. NOAA, who I trust way more than any weather channel, says that she is headed to the Texas-Louisiana border. She won’t come anywhere near us. With luck, that won’t change.

They say that if you talk about the weather you have nothing to say. They is wrong.

If you live down here you talk about how hot it is. You talk about how humid it is. You talk about how wet it is. You talk about hurricanes and tropical storms. And, for the few days when the weather turns cold, you complain loudly about that.

Anyway.

The Picture

The one thing that the storm brought is amazing skies. I couldn’t help but make a good picture. Or, twenty. Or, 391. I didn’t go that far, but you know what I mean. I know you know.

I did help this picture some. I added a little color to a very monochromatic picture. I did that in a surprisingly weird way. I used the fake bokeh tool. See that little thumb print looking thing on the left above the power pole? That’s bokeh. Supposedly.

Oh yeah. I added a border. I’ve been doing that lately as a way of finishing a picture.

Stay safe. Stay mighty. Take care of each other. Enjoy every bowl of homemade soup.