Night shift has been rather busy this past weekend and for that reason perhaps I have been alert and ready to go for a ride on my lunch breaks.
Sometimes nights drag and the minute hand barely seems to move on the office clock, and on other nights we barely sit down and it's time to go home. And yet the speed of the passage of time frequently has no correlation with how busy we are. However when things get busy I get a jolt of adrenaline and then suddenly I'm awake. A call for help about say, a room mate not breathing will do that.
So a motor bike ride at 3 in the morning can be just the right tonic for an addled brain and fiddling with the camera and the tripod can sooth the most frazzled nerve. This here house put me in mind of The Rose Tattoo movie based on the Tennessee Williams work so I set the digital pocket camera to sepia and got this result.
It is amazing what these modern camera can do and I am usually reluctant to play too much with the settings else the pictures end up being less a record of what one sees around the Keys and more a product of how clever one can be with the pixels. But I find the effects astonishing. 
Sometimes well meaning people tell me I should be careful walking city streets late at night as though muggers lurk but I have never been molested ever by anyone. Perhaps I am too intimidating myself and the warnings are issued by people who have heard tales of a mad photographer wandering Key West at night muttering to himself.
I think I tend to mutter to mutter to myself because it takes ages to set up the shot and choose the exposure, set the self timer and then get a picture that looks like crap. So then it has to be done again and again and the lunch hour passes. The picture above is the Hemingway House seen through the absurd cat fence erected to keep some snotty neighbors happy after they filed a lawsuit claiming the Hemingway House was "farming" by raising cats on the property. The US Department of Agriculture showed up like the passport inspectors in the movie "Passport to Pimlico" and solemnly ruled that the Hemingway cats do not constitute animal husbandry. No shit. I'm glad I'm not the only one living among rude neighbors. For my essay about the Hemingway House go here:
http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2008/07/hemingway.html
And for pictures of Hemingway's home in Cuba (thank you Kathy!) go here:
http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2009/05/finca-vigia.html
Sometimes nights drag and the minute hand barely seems to move on the office clock, and on other nights we barely sit down and it's time to go home. And yet the speed of the passage of time frequently has no correlation with how busy we are. However when things get busy I get a jolt of adrenaline and then suddenly I'm awake. A call for help about say, a room mate not breathing will do that.So a motor bike ride at 3 in the morning can be just the right tonic for an addled brain and fiddling with the camera and the tripod can sooth the most frazzled nerve. This here house put me in mind of The Rose Tattoo movie based on the Tennessee Williams work so I set the digital pocket camera to sepia and got this result.It is amazing what these modern camera can do and I am usually reluctant to play too much with the settings else the pictures end up being less a record of what one sees around the Keys and more a product of how clever one can be with the pixels. But I find the effects astonishing. 
Sometimes well meaning people tell me I should be careful walking city streets late at night as though muggers lurk but I have never been molested ever by anyone. Perhaps I am too intimidating myself and the warnings are issued by people who have heard tales of a mad photographer wandering Key West at night muttering to himself.I think I tend to mutter to mutter to myself because it takes ages to set up the shot and choose the exposure, set the self timer and then get a picture that looks like crap. So then it has to be done again and again and the lunch hour passes. The picture above is the Hemingway House seen through the absurd cat fence erected to keep some snotty neighbors happy after they filed a lawsuit claiming the Hemingway House was "farming" by raising cats on the property. The US Department of Agriculture showed up like the passport inspectors in the movie "Passport to Pimlico" and solemnly ruled that the Hemingway cats do not constitute animal husbandry. No shit. I'm glad I'm not the only one living among rude neighbors. For my essay about the Hemingway House go here:http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2008/07/hemingway.html
And for pictures of Hemingway's home in Cuba (thank you Kathy!) go here:
http://conchscooter.blogspot.com/2009/05/finca-vigia.html
3 comments:
These pictures look eerie. Especially the monochrome ones...
I'll take that as a compliment.Especially from a man with bleached whale bones on his blog's banner!
I took a few night shots strolling around town when I visited last December...strictly iPhone jobs, but came out pretty good. Walking/biking Key West at night was fantastic, save coming across the random staggering dunks here and there...hey, what place is perfect? Have a look at my snaps below if you'd like
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.474667819289.254908.742569289
Cheers,
Eddie
LA
Ps still harbor mad fantasies of packing it in and heading to KW permanently...what is it they call that, "Keys Disease"?
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