Memories are great, even if you don’t remember them

Memories are great, even if you don’t remember them

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Aunt Jean

This weekend my sister, April Galloway and I have spent with our Aunt Jean in Piqua, Ohio on an upcoming family reunion in Northern Kentucky in June. She’s the last living sibling on my dad’s side of the family and so I brought a couple hundred old family photos that she helped us to identify people in.

After we finished the pictures I setup my video camera and we spent the better part of the afternoon, around 3 hours, where she talked about all her 14 brothers and sisters an their life growing up. Can’t imagine having that many kids in one family, but during the time it wasn’t unheard of. It was good to get a lot of this down on video and I plan on using the footage for a program we’ll present at the Pearson family reunion which is set for the weekend of June 2d, 2012. So, if you’re a member of the clan, mark that weekend on the calendar and you’ll be getting information as we firm things up over the next week or two. Also, visit http://www.mosespearsonfamily.org  website as I’ll be posting the information there about the reunion and other information.

Conover, Ohio

Afterwards we went to Fletcher, Ohio for a fish fry at the volunteer fire department there, before heading down to Conover, Ohio where me and my family lived until we moved back to Kentucky in 1952 when I was two years old. I’ve always said that’s where I developed my love of trains as the station and railroad line was about a block from our house and I’m told that steam trains ran through there all the time. I like to think that anyway.

Tomorrow we’re headed to church with Aunt Jean, which is the one our family went to till we moved back to Kentucky. Looking forward to hearing a service there and I’ll add a picture and thought or two from there later next week. Till then… Keep on Track!

Sibling Bickering….

Sibling Bickering….

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Since we got back from California, I have been troubled by the number of people who have asked how we made the trip without killing each other.  It seems that some of our friends are under the impression that Jim and I don’t get along very well.

Jim and good friend Jose Lopez Jr. waiting for the Trains in Southern California's Cajon Pass.

They hear us bickering and think we must be angry, but we never get angry.  We sometimes disagree and when that happens neither of us is willing to give up.  It’s in our DNA to always be right.  However, we are mature enough to know that our instincts are frequently bad for us and we never get angry with each other about disagreements.

In fact, there are times when we deliberately pick at each other just for amusement.  We don’t really indulge this idiosyncrasy with anyone else in the family.  The strength of our relationship is the reason we can push right to the edge of anger without crossing the line.

Fascinating rock formations...Oh, look, a train.

I guess people who don’t really know both of us have trouble understanding.  I am the oldest of five children.  He is the youngest.  Growing up, we didn’t really spend time together.  When I got married the first time, he was only nine years old.  When I moved to California, he was only eleven.  We began to develop a real relationship when I returned to Kentucky, but he left for the Air Force not long afterward.  We didn’t get to spend enough time together to discover how much we are alike until years later. …

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Getting pictures without people

Getting pictures without people

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Arches National Park at night 2. - Photography by Jim Pearson © 2011
Arches National Park at night 2. - Photography by Jim Pearson © 2011

On our recent roadtrip I wanted to get some photos of some of the rock formations and arches without the massive amounts of people that were visiting these same places during the daytime and I found that at night… they disappeared! Well, went to their hotels, homes, RVs or where ever, but they were gone. On the two nights I shot, I only encountered perhaps two other people out shooting.

In my opinion night photography, at least for me, has gotten much easier with the improvement of today’s digital cameras. Of course not all of them are created equal as some do a much better job of handling the noise (grain) that comes with low light and long exposures. My Nikon D700 is one of these cameras that really handles the higher ISO’s usually associated with night landscape photography. …

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Time Out!

Time Out!

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While Jim searched for a unique viewpoint, I just shot the wall.

It’s been nearly two months since I had a normal schedule. I am so far behind on updating websites, it’s embarrassing. I still had thousands of photos to sort through and edit when we left for the Pennyrile Fall Photo weekend which, of course added hundreds more to the total.

My brain feels like that scrambled egg in the anti-drug commercials.

Even the reflection shot wound up being the same one I've done before.

I simply wasn’t feeling creative or inspired enough to come up with good shots. At the end of two days of shooting, I had more than 500 pictures and none of them really pleased me. Participation involved submitting four shots whether I liked them or not, so I did, but I wasn’t surprised when none of them even placed. If I found them boring, I didn’t expect the judge to feel any different.

The good thing is that I now get to stay home and start catching up. For the next two weeks, I do not plan to leave Madisonville at all. In fact, I don’t plan to even leave the house most days. I do love road trips, but 5 weeks of travel is enough even for me.

Morning light and fog on the water still didn't really inspire me.

The trip to Baltimore to pick up my grandson, Brad, and his family from the airport is probably what finally killed my enthusiasm. Going up wasn’t too bad, except for being tired to begin with, and the people at the airport were great., However, coming back it rained, the truck broke down, and things just kept on getting worse.  I took very few photos.  Later on, I’ll do a post on the trip and add those.  At the moment, I think they are on the laptop.  I’m just too tired to pull it out and transfer them over.  Right now, I need to get back to work on updates to my church website.