The Long Drive to Work

Many a time the drive to work has been in a rush. You've been there, I need to be at work at 9:00 am so I'll need to leave around 8:30 am, take the freeway as usual and maybe leave around 8:15 am just in case there's an accident or because it's this particular day of the week and traffic will be more congested than normal or because they'll be doing construction.

What ever the reason, we usually leave with the intent of arriving to work as soon as possible or with enough time if we need to do an errand or two before arriving to work.

The question is; When was the last time you actually decided to leave for work early just to enjoy the drive to get there?

This past Friday that's exactly what I did. I had to run an errand downtown and when I was done it was still an hour and half before I had to be at work.

It occurred to me that most of the time we're usually in a rush to get to work or we decide we need to take the quickest route to get there. I had my camera with me and so I decided why rush it. Hour and a half? That's more than plenty of time to get to work. Especially to get across town.

Instead of taking the freeway, I decided to take the scenic route to work. Alameda runs from almost the downtown area all the way to Loop 375 on the East side of town. Which is basically where my job is located at.

So off I went, turning onto Texas Avenue, as this later turns into Alameda, which would take me to my destination.

You can't imagine how liberating it was to drive to work without worrying whether I'll get there in time or not or what awaited me when I got to the office. Was the boss in a good mood or in a bad mood? Was there any issues awaiting me to fix when I got there?

It was just me, the road and the view.

It was total freedom. I just drove and took pictures. Most of which I took while in my car. Mind you I understood that others didn't have an hour and a half to make it to their destination so I made sure I played it safe and courteous. If cars where behind me and I wanted to take a photo I'd just pull over and let them pass and take the photo from the side of the road after they passed.

Sometimes though when there was no traffic behind me I would stop to take a photograph right then and there. Rearview mirrors are quite handy in these instances. Kept me from holding up traffic if it came up behind me while I was stopped and taking a photograph.

A few times I even stopped and got out of the car in order to take a photograph or two.

What piqued my interest the most about this is how much you can actually learn about where you live when you just drive for the enjoyment or even as a photographic tour.

You can see the architecture of the buildings and imagine the atmosphere of the time periods when they were built. You can even get a slight sense of how your town/city has grown.

Soon you'll see the comingling of the buildings, both past and present. Like ghosts of businesses past and present.

Sometimes you might even learn new things about where you live. For instance, I didn't know El Paso actually had an established medical school. Mind you I knew that the local University, The University of Texas at El Paso,  was or is in the process of creating better medical education for students. I just didn't know how long ago medical education in El Paso actually went back. Apart from the usual type of stuff you see advertised on TV, technical school type stuff.

Of course driving by long established land marks from your youth, both operational and closed, also make for a fond drive down memory lane.

Then there's also the artwork you get to view and possibly admire. I wonder; "How many pieces of artwork in its various guises, individual or commissioned by the city, do we drive by everyday without even taking the opportunity to enjoy them because we're always in a rush to get to where we're going?"

It's even enough to make you think; "How many of us have been in such a hurry to get to the end of our journey, that we never take time to actually enjoy the trip along the way?"

An Afternoon's Drive

Not knowing what else to do this afternoon I went for an afternoon drive. Didn't have any particular place I wanted to go so I just drove looking for something to Photograph.

I've driven East bound along Socorro Road as well as along Alameda and I'm kind of tired at looking at what basically becomes the same ole scene every time. So this time I decided to go East along North Loop.

Wasn't much, but I saw the areas I wanted to photograph on the return trip home. I drove as far out as Clint, though actually it was a little farther than that.

I then turned around and started to photograph what I had seen along the way out to where I turned around.

If anything it makes the trip more interesting. Try going in the opposite direction from which you traveled and try to find what you saw the first time for the first time and remembering where it was.

Of course I tend to take more photos of the same image at different settings just to make sure I got the image correctly done, or take more photos of the same thing because you find you now need glasses to see the instant view of the photo you took and you want to make sure and hope, that at least one image was in focus the way it should be when it becomes enlarged on your computer screen.

Then of course there's photographing the same thing over and over but moving around switching lenses so as to capture the image from a different perspective. Only because sometimes the only difference between a snap shot and an exquisite piece of work might be a difference of two feet.

Let's not forget how when you get home and start processing the images sometimes you can clean up the photos using just the camera raw processor without having to actually use any of the settings in your photo editing software, in my case Adobe Photoshop. Of course it's also nice when you take a photo and you don't have to do anything to it because it came out perfect.

Sometimes you can even use the Raw Processor to process your photos in order to come up with something interesting, or not. Especially when you've used the wrong setting in the camera and had to retake the image so you could get it right.

The one thing I do enjoy about driving around El Paso for different things to photograph is that even though at times you can find different things to shoot that look interesting and capture you're attention,

unless you're willing to look at it from a different perspective or point of view it can be nothing more than a crap shoot.

Yes, the Pun was intended.

Smoke

Well I've finally gone and started on Photographing some topics which I've been wanting to photograph. Started photographing Smoke. I set everything up in my bedroom. Used an antique Photo lamp I had acquired at an estate sale and set my flash on remote on a pile of books on my bed while I set up a back drop and table with burning incense so I could photograph the Smoke. The camera I own is an Olympus E-520 with Zuiko lenses.

The first set of pictures I took with the F-Stop at 22 the Shutter Speed at 50 and the ISO set to 400. TI took 16 photos with these settings on the camera, and then I changed the settings to F-Stop 11, Shutter speed at 100 and the ISO I left at 400.

I took 6 photographs at these settings with my 14-42 MM lens then followed it up with four photos using my 70-300 MM lens. Then I took four more photos with my 40-150 MM Lens and then I decided to play around a little.

Awhile back I had bought some screw on close up lens magnifiers. So I added the +4 to the 40-150 MM lens and shot another 3 more images.

After that I went and switched back to the 14-42 MM lens and added the +4 magnifier lens, with the +2 magnifier lens and followed that with the +1 magnifier lens and shot several more images.

And as just about everyone knows, not all photos come out the way you expect them to and sometimes not even with photoshop. I did use photoshop to try and enhance the smoke from the images, although some were not worth the attempt.

If you'd like to see more of my collection of smoke images you can visit my flickr page in the next couple of days. I'm hoping to have all the photos uploaded by then. Here's the link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/druid64/.