Just some thoughts and ideas going around in my head while trying to figure out where I am and where everyone else is going.

Monday, April 28, 2008

Change is something you can't Avoid

I was going to take some pictures of the events outside of the Penn Relays yesterday. The last time I had been there was 2002 or 3 and the streets had been filled with young people celebrating their youth, their strength and their beauty and I thought this would have good chance to pull out the new camera and see if I could figure out the advantages of a 10.0 megapixel instrument over what I have had before.

When I arrived on 34th St., I already knew that I would not try to get a ticket to get into the stadium so I walked down to 32nd St. on the overly crowded side walk passing the many food and vendor stands almost all of them selling some of jerk chicken or fish meal. The others were selling T-shirts or caps supporting Obama and I wondered how much of the funds would actually go to his campaign. The rest almost overwhelmingly, were selling shirts, caps, necklaces and other jewelry emblazoned with the flags of Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and Guyana. There were national flags from the other Caribbean countries but I didn’t know which ones they belonged to.

It was then that I ran into someone that I believe still goes to my gym. I don’t really know what his name is, it could be John but who knows. He had once told me that years ago we had met at a bathhouse before and that we had done the do there. I had tried to tell him that he had gotten his pieces mixed up but after I while I figured if I was going to be his fantasy…well he could do worse. I’d let him live a little.

So we shake hands and he proceeds to tell me that he had been going there every year since ’78 or ’42, I wasn’t really listening and that back in the day the crowds had been filled frat brothers, and sisters I suppose, but now the Penn Relays were full of West Indians. It had become a mini version of the West Indian Day Parade in Brooklyn but without the parade. How things change.

I decided to walk up a bit further to see if there was anything that would be of interest to me. I reached the gates of Franklin Field and I realized that everything this year seemed to be very clean and very efficient. The police had prevented people from congregating outside the gates as they had done in earlier years. The traffic moved smoothly outside of the arena and I realized the bacchanal images that I had remembered and was looking for now were not to be found this year. So I left, not spending more than 15 minutes for the whole thing.

Besides, I’m starting to grasp the fact that more isn’t necessarily better and that I made better pictures and was more careful with the 3.5 megapixel camera with the bigger lens than I could ever be with this one. And the pictures I took with the 35mm were even better than those I took with the 3.5. So I will just wait for another occasion or just make up a subject myself that won’t change before I decide to shoot it.

5 comments:

  1. hey man: side bar I would LOVE to see the picture. how is the day going scholar

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  2. do you think technology is getting better? I have had some 35mm cams that took better pics than the digital ones i have owned...

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  3. T - Sorry, no pictures were taken last weekend. I should have, I might have been able to develop a story around it or at least got some practice in, but I just didn't want to hang around. A journalist I'll never make.
    ___________________________________

    Fuzzy - Yes I think technology is getting better. There is a picture taken of a man and a woman holding a picture of Obama in a post I did earlier. If I had not reduced and compressed that photo for the blog, you would have been able to see the fibers in his jacket there was so much deatil being captured by the camera. It was quick, it was easy. But that's because it was close up and a point and shoot camera works just fine there. But if there was some distance between us, 35mm would have worked out better. The camera with larger lens pulls in more detail than your little Sure Shot deals.

    It's like the difference in driving a Ford Focus and a Duesenberg one will get you good mileage but the other will make you excited.

    Of course there are those $1600+ didgital cameras which are really exciting and give you journalist quality pictures but I can't justify buying one so I can't really tell you how well they work.

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  4. All the festivities and no pictures or story built around those pictures?

    I tend to toy around with the digital, but 35mm does a better job.

    I did enjoy this entry blog as usual it is entertaining and educational.

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  5. Chet - I know. I was kicking myself after I left, because that's when I thought of something that I could have written about. Another wasted opportunity down the drain.

    So you like the 35mm better too. I would play around with my old one a lot more but I don't know how much film costs these days and to develop it must cost an arm and a leg now. Plus most of the old camera shops that you could take your film to in this area have disappeared. I'm afraid the convenience of digital is here to stay.

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