I haven’t written for awhile and it isn’t because I haven’t been taking a lot of photographs.  It’s mostly that  the images I’ve been taking wouldn’t be very interesting to most people.  So this evening I went back through my folders and found these that I took a few years ago of Mel Rauton’s “Filling Station”.  What a great collection of auto memorabilia; a life’s work and certainly a passion.  I gave these two images a different look just for fun.

I read in photography magazines and blogs about groups who come from all over the country to photograph our plantations in the spring.  They pay airfare and stay in expensive hotels, and here we are able to enjoy them literally on our doorsteps.  It’s a 10 minute drive after work on a Friday afternoon.  This was how Magnolia Plantation looked this afternoon.

This evening I took my bike and rode around the neighborhood, stopping every so often to photograph whatever caught my eye; colorful spring flowers, ivy on a tree, an overgrown lamp post.  We miss so much when we drive in our cars.  Here are a couple of spring cameos.

You just can’t beat this weather at the moment, and everything looks particularly lovely during the “blue hour”, after the sun has set but while there is still color in the sky.  I was on a mission to photograph gates for a particular project I am working on.  Right now I’m just kind of mapping them out – the ones I want to use, and making notes as to when would be the best time of day to photograph them.  No shortage of gorgeous wrought iron gates in Charleston.  Here are a couple from South Battery, Legare Street and King Street.

While sipping on my morning cup of tea I heard sirens wailing somewhere
in the vicinity.  I said a quick prayer for the person or people who
were in need of such urgent aid and then forgot about it.  A few minutes
later I left for work but didn’t get very far because the road was
blocked by 5 fire trucks and two additional emergency vehicles.  Our
neighborhood is usually very quiet and fortunately not the scene of many
high speed crashes.  The most that happens as a rule is that kids after
having had a little too much to drink like to take out mailboxes with
their pimped out pickup trucks.  Anyway, all this morning activity
resulted from a kitchen fire which fortunately was soon brought under
control.  Since I had my camera in the car, I passed the time waiting
for them to move the hoses out of the road by taking a few shots.

Great evening for a walk downtown.  Everywhere there are signs of spring – just a couple more weeks ..

I took Gideon to the aquarium about a year ago when he was barely toddling.  Now he’s all over the place so yesterday was quite a different experience.  I was pretty tired after chasing him for a couple of hours.  He had a great time though, and here are a few of the pics.

There was lots to do, and the rain on Saturday was almost a blessing because there were no excuses for getting stuck into the “honey do” list, and it is a long list.  We had Gideon stay over on Saturday night which meant an early start on Sunday morning.  I have a new toy – a 85mm Sigma F1.4 portrait lens so here are some pics from my initial test shots.  It’s capable of wonderful images, but you have to nail the focus, otherwise you get the dreaded fuzzies.

Please understand I’m not complaining.  Life, I have concluded (no great profound revelation here) is a series of seasons, good, bad, and so-so.  The only thing you can count on is that they will change. I am busy enough not to be bored, but the pace is sedate enough not to be at all stressful.  My family is also probably grateful for that because I’m not very nice and not a lot of fun when I’m stressed.  I believe we are in for a lot more rain tomorrow and the weekend, so I recorded this fair-weather scene at dawn this morning; first light on the Stono (or Paul Gelegotis) Bridge.  Who is/was Paul Gelegotis?