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How to Repel Flies (Maybe)

Mother and I were cruising around Jackson scoping out yard sales and looking for something for me to shoot. Out on 34 west of town, we saw a sign on a small BBQ stand that said Fresh Strawberry Pie. We pulled in to sample it  The joint doesn’t have a name out front, but Google Maps show it as Cook’s Bar-B-Q & Catering at 1931 West Jackson Blvd.

Right next to the order window was a note that said not to compare them with the guys at the north end of town. That would be Wib’s, a Steinhoff favorite for five generations. They implied that Cook’s actually puts meat on their sandwiches and that they are cheaper. Well, a challenge like that has to be checked out.

On the plus side, the sandwiches DID have a fair amount of meat on them and they were cheaper than Wib’s. On the con side, at least for me, the pork was shredded, not sliced, and it was “wet.” It had more the taste and feel of a Sloppy Joe than what I would call a good barbecue sandwich. The sauce was nowhere as good as Wib’s and the meat wasn’t as tasty as Hamburger Express in Cape. Barbecue is a highly personal choice, so some folks may prefer it.

The strawberry pie, on the other hand was excellent. Good crust and made with fresh strawberries.

Why are those bags of water hanging there?

But, that’s not the reason I’m writing this. When we looked up, we saw a Ziploc plastic bag, obviously freshly filled with water hanging over our heads. Inside the bag were several pennies. The bags were tacked to the overhang with heavy upholstery tacks. When our server slid open the screen-covered window to hand us our order, I said, “I bet I’m not the first person to ask this, but what’s with the plastic bags of water?”

Not wanting to engage in a lengthy conversation, she said, “It’s for the flies,” closing the window before I could observe, “Must be working, then. ‘Cause there’s plenty of them.”

While we were sitting at the outdoor table eating our pie and shooing off the occasional fly, a fellow walked by who elaborated on the bags. “They’re supposed to keep the flies away. It’s got something to do with the way the fly’s eyes work.”

When I mentioned that there still seemed to be a lot of the winged creatures flying around, he said that he had just put the bags up. The one over our heads was the first one to go up, he explained, and he said he could already see an improvement on our end of the seating area. I was going to take his word for it.

Mother was intrigued by the idea

Mother kept coming up with all of the places she could put up the bags and wondering if shiny pennies would work better than run-of-the-mill pocket pennies. Should you put them over the door to keep the flies out or do you put them on the inside to run them away? If you did both, would the ones entering and the ones exiting have head-on collisions, killing them all? Weighing all of the possibilities kept her occupied the rest of the afternoon.

I did a quick Google search and found that one of my favorite debunking sites, Snopes, had addressed this issue and found it —WHAT?!?!?—“Undetermined. ” You’ll have to read their conclusions for yourself. It’ll be good practice for you to know how to find them to check out your own hoax questions.

I should have shot them the first time

Anyway, after kicking myself for not taking a picture of the magic bags, Mother and I saddled up the pony and drove back over to Jackson. After standing around for several minutes waiting for someone to open the magic screened serving window so I could tell them what I was doing, I got tired of waiting, shot my photos and left. I didn’t REALLY need another piece of that strawberry pie. I DID ask another customer if she had heard of the concept and she said, “My mother has them hanging in her garage.”

We ended up at Mario’s Pasta House where our lasagna was good as always, served promptly by friendly and attentive wait staff. (I started to type “weight staff,” thinking, obviously, of the size of the portions.)

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Photo Tip: The Illusion of Speed

Many photographers think that faster shutter speeds are better. It’s true that a fast shutter speed will minimize camera shake on your end and subject movement on the far end. That’s usually a good thing. It can also be a formula for a dull photo. I was walking around Franklin School shooting an update now that construction of the new building is under way. (I’ll publish those photos in a day or so. I figure everybody is busy blowing things up this weekend, so I may hold off posting until there is someone around to see it.)

This cute little bunny rabbit was chowing down on the clover along the terrace in front of the school. I shot a quick frame and kept walking to go up the stairs to photograph the main entrance and flag pole. The bunny is reasonably sharp and relatively well exposed. It’s also not very interesting, unless, of course, you care more about bunnies than I do. (You might have a better idea what I’m talking about if you click on the image to make it larger.)

How to capture a feeling of speed

First off, I’m going to confess that this photo of the rabbit blasting out is an example of instinct and luck. I didn’t plan it. HAD I planned it, here are some things I would have done:

  • I would have picked a relatively show shutter speed.
  • I would have put the moving subject in the middle of the frame.
  • I would have opened the shutter when the subject was slightly less than 90 degrees from me.
  • I would have panned (followed) the subject at the same speed it was moving.
  • I would have continued the pan until I heard the shutter close.

What does panning do?

What does that accomplish? It keeps the subject recognizably sharp, but makes the background a blur. We’re used to looking out the car window and watching the scenery go by so quickly that it’s a blur. That’s how we know that we’re moving and how fast. This isn’t a great shot, but it has some interesting things helping it out.

  • The back ground light coming from behind the rabbit is mottled. That pattern of light and dark accentuates the feeling of blur and speed.
  • The backlight coming through the rabbit’s ears makes them stand out and look pink.
  • He’s caught in mid-hop, so the bulk of his body is stationary. You can clearly read “rabbit” from the ears and cottontail.

Why did I say it was instinct and luck? I had set the basic exposure, but left the camera on automatic. Because it was getting late in the day and I was in the shadows, the camera opted for a slow shutter speed serendipitously. When I saw the rabbit start to move, I followed the movement out of habit and practice.

I’m not a hunter, but I was a decent shot and was pretty good for an amateur the couple of times I tried shooting skeet. There’s not a whole lot of difference between shooting with a camera and with a gun. (Except that the rabbit gets to run  away to eat clover another day.)

What a difference a millisecond makes

The time stamp on the photo is exactly the same as the shot above. That means they were both shot less than a second apart. It’s less successful (in my opinion). You can see the rabbit is in a different point in his hop. His hind legs are rotating down, which causes a blur within the blur of his body. His front legs must be moving back, because his fur is also a blur in a different direction. He’s moved out of the nice backlighting, so his ears aren’t as nicely defined. His head has moved to an angle where he could almost pass for a cat were it not for the cottontail. He’s also quite a way off 90 degrees from the camera, so the blur doesn’t work quite as well.

This is a technique that you don’t use often, but it’s very effective when it works and it’s not hard to do with a little practice. In the old silver film days, it cost money to practice if you actually pushed the button and exposed the film, so we’d sit on the side of the road and practice following cars as the drove by. It’s critical that you do your pan in a smooth, level movement. With digital cameras, it doesn’t cost you anything to actually press the release. Do it.

I’ve never used it, but my strobe and camera have the ability to add another dimension to this technique. You select a slow shutter speed and start your pan. When the shutter is open and you’re following the subject, you get the nice movement blur behind subject. Just before the shutter closes, the strobe will go off, freezing the subject cold. You get the best of both worlds: the illusion of speed, PLUS a tack-sharp subject at the end.

 

 

 

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Bill Adams’ American Flag

I overshot my street this morning and ended up going down Anna Street. About a third of the way down the hill, my eye was drawn to what I thought was a huge plastic flag hanging in front of 1733 Anna. I was almost halfway to the next house when I saw that it wasn’t plastic, it was an American Flag made out of red, white and blue license tags. I hit the brakes and the go-back lever so fast I may have left black marks. (Click on any photo to make it larger.)

Bill Adams and his wife were walking out to the car with keys in hand, but Bill was kind enough to chat with me. His wife must have known what a talker he is when he encounters another talker, so she went back inside the house where it was cool.

Found license plates on eBay

Bill, who said he isn’t really a license plate collector, started acquiring his tags on eBay around November 2010, and snagged his last plate toward the end of January of this year.

The cheapest tags were about a buck each; the most expensive was $55. “I could have gotten them cheaper if I had waited around, but I wanted to get the project done,” he said. Overall, the tags averaged about $7 to $10 each. His favorite tags are the ones with the state slogans on them. His least favorite are states like Delaware that have flat plate without embossed numbers and letters.

I think he said he had every state represented except Idaho, New Hampshire, Georgia and California.

Flag folds up for storage

After getting the plates, he spent a little time trying to figure out how to mount them. Instead of one large unit, he decided to string them together with Nylon ties so the whole contraption could be folded up into a storage container. The two support poles are made of two 2x4s joined together on each side and dropped into a 4×4 sleeve so they can be removed.

Bill is thinking about using the poles for other holidays, but he’s not sure if he’ll make the displays out of license plates. There are a lot of green and white tags, though, he said. Those would work out well for Christmas.

Riding the Mother Road

Bill just retired from a career as a postal carrier. “Retirement is great. For awhile, I thought I’d better make a list of things to do. That didn’t mean I had to KEEP the list; I could put off a task to the next day, change priorities…”

One thing on his list is for the couple to take a trip to see their daughters in Seattle. They’re going to fly this time, but Bill’s other obsession is to drive every inch of Route 66, the Mother Road. He’s managed follow it as far as the New Mexico-Texas border. “I’m not looking forward to Southern California and LA.” He admits, however that even big cities can have quiet moments. They hit Chicago on a winter Sunday morning and had the road almost to themselves.

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Fireworks on the 4th

Christmas with its presents, Easter with its egg hunts, Halloween with its trick-or-treating candy, your birthday and the Fourth of July (fireworks) were the biggies when I was a kid. Sure, there were religious and patriotic overtones to the holidays, but, be honest, what did YOU think of?

One year Dad ordered a huge box of fireworks through the mail. When it arrived – and I mean a HUGE box – we all gathered around and unpacked it piece by loving piece. We were admonished NOT to pull on the fuses or they might not work. We weren’t allowed to open any of the individual packages and we certainly weren’t allowed to jump the gun and actually light anything early.

The funny thing is that dad used REAL dynamite on his construction jobs, but he was as excited about the 4th of July as we were. (By the way, how do you like Brother Mark’s bright red, get-away-fast shoes?)

Cherry bombs and M-80s

I don’t recall exactly what was in there. I’m sure it had cone-shaped fireworks, all kinds of rockets, Roman candles, bottle rockets and fire crackers from the lady fingers all the way up to the two-inchers. For the little kids, it had carbon snakes and sparklers. It might even have had the mighty cherry bombs and M-80s.

Launching cans

Our big thing was to see how far we could launch cans. The small cans that frozen lemonade came in were perfect for the smaller crackers. We quickly learned that the M-80s and cherry bombs wouldn’t send the can in the air. It would blow them up on the launch pad.

To keep from burning up a gazillion matches, the fireworks stands would give you cork-covered sticks – punks- to light the fuses.

Even fireworks can become boring

Shooting cans in the air and lighting firecrackers one at a time was fun, but quickly became boring. The next step was to twist together the fuses of half a dozen firecrackers so you could try to get them to all go off at the same time “like a stick of dynamite.” Of course, that never happened. the first one to go off would cause the others to scatter or it would blow out the other fuses.

Dad considered it bad form to light whole strings of firecrackers. Until, of course, even HE got bored playing with them. He usually suspended them from a tree branch so they’d writhe, pop and flash in the air. This was particularly good at night.

Dad wasn’t big on picnics

I don’t know how many times I heard him grouse, “Six days of the week I sit on the ground chewing sandwiches full of sand. I don’t plan to do that on Sunday.” I guess the 4th didn’t fall on a Sunday, so my grandmother, Mother, Brother David and Dad are gathered around the table in our backyard.

Don’t go back too soon

When we lived over on Bloomfield road, Dad got half of the instructions right. The “light fuse and get away” part he understood. He didn’t bother to read the section that said, “If the firework doesn’t go off immediately, do NOT lean over it to see why.” One of those cone fireworks came to life when he was checking it, causing us to hold off lighting the rest of the fireworks until he returned from the emergency room.

I don’t remember what the exact nature of the injury was, but he never shot off that particular type of firework again.

Writing with sparklers

The date stamp on the front of the print says JUL 1960, so I must have shot this with my trusty Kodak Tourist II folding camera set on Time Exposure. I’ve got some shots filed somewhere where my brothers spelled real words in the air. I didn’t bother: my handwriting looks like this ALL of the time.

Two more generations

Wife Lila captured Son Matt and Grandson Malcolm shooting off fireworks in 2008, when Malcolm was four. He’s not exactly sure how he feels about the noise.

Y’all be careful out there

  • Light fuse,then get away.
  • If the firework doesn’t go off immediately, do NOT lean over it to see why
  • If you’re in a drought area (I’m talking to you Florida and Texas), don’t be shooting off fireworks. The house you save might be mine.
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