It was Sunday and the Saints were playing downtown. The Saint Charles Streetcar was crowded.
Saint Charles Streetcar, beads still in the trees.
Getting off the Saint Charles Streetcar in the Garden District.
Animated Streetcar
Category Archives: Photography
Photograph – Jogging in the Neutral Ground
(Click To Enlarge)
Everywhere else, the space between the two lanes of traffic on a divided road is called the median. In New Orleans it is called the Neutral Ground. The legend is that it is called this because in the early days when the French lived in the Quarter and the Americans lived in what is now downtown and beyond they would meet in the wide median of Canal Street (named because there was going to be a canal built there – that is why the street and median is so wide – but it never was built) to resolve their differences.
Now, all medians in the city are referred to as the “neutral ground.” This is especially important during Mardi Gras, where a lot of people watch the parades from the neutral ground. If you are waiting for a certain person in a Krewe they will tell you if they are on the street side or neutral ground side.
Along Canal Street, Saint Charles (where this picture was taken) and Carrollton Avenue, the streetcars run in the neutral ground. I’ve got some pictures of the Saint Charles Streetcar (one of my favorite things in the world) that I’ll be putting up here. The Saint Charles neutral ground is a wonderful and popular place to go running in New Orleans.
Pirate Alley Fashion Shoot
In the French Quarter, in New Orleans, there is a little alley, only one block long, between the Saint Louis Cathedral and the Old Spanish Governors Mansion, the Cabildo. It runs from Chartres Street at Jackson Square to Royal Street. The alley is intersected by Cabildo Alley and it continues past the Spanish Dungeon and then The Faulkner House, where he wrote his first novel.
It’s called Pirate Alley, or Pirate’s alley – nobody really knows how it came on that name, despite many legends.
Even though now I realize it is a famous spot – I first stumbled on it by accident trying to fight my way through the French Quarter Mardi Gras crowds. It is always a quiet little lane surprisingly isolated from the hub and the bub of the tourist crowds bursting in Jackson Square or the never ending party jostling the other French Quarter Streets. Whenever I’m in the quarter, I try to walk the Pirate Alley.
The other day I was walking and riding the streetcars around the city taking some photographs. I was walking from Canal through the quarter to Frenchman Street and cut through the alley to Jackson Square. I found a photographer and his assistant setting up lights while a few feet down a model was arranging a pile of clothes. They were doing a fashion shoot.
I didn’t stop – I had miles to go before I sleep – but a while later, I looped back through Jackson Square and took a look to see if the fashion shoot was still on.
It was.
(click to enlarge)
Without the portable lights they had, Pirate Alley was a tough place for me to shoot the people doing the shoot. Though a beautiful spot it has bad, uneven light.
I popped my head in and snapped a couple shots. I didn’t take the time it takes to make a good shot – I was more than a little self-conscious – they kept looking at me – I guess my big camera makes me look like a professional photographer (lack of skill isn’t obvious from the outside). I don’t know what the rules of courtesy are when shooting someone shooting someone. Of course, there isn’t any more pubic spot than Pirate Alley – so if you choose that as your location, you get what you get.
Cameras, Cameras, and More Cameras
A couple more photographs I took at the Nasher at the Tony Cragg exhibition.
If you wonder what she is taking a picture of… it is this:
I’m Walking Here
More photographs from the Nasher.
Children and Calder (Trois Bollards)
A pair of Giacometti, in front of a window.
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Another new Video from Lana Del Rey
Order Here
The order window at the SSahmBBQ food truck. Get you some Kimchee Fries!
Carrie, thanks for the TED talk suggestion.
Painting with light
I have been playing around with my camera. I want to try a technique – actually a set of techniques – to paint with light. These are not finished attempts, just preliminary studies to see what the possibilities are.
When I was a little kid I used to read Popular Science and Popular Mechanics like they were the word from God. There was an article where you would set a camera down in the dark, open the shutter, and swing a light over the top of it, making a pattern. It’s a lot easier now, with a digital camera, because you can see what comes out right away – instead of having to develop the film. You can play around.
A couple of test shots with a small flashlight hanging from a ceiling fan.
Working on adding a little color
Next, I want to go outside at night and experiment with “painting” on objects. I actually tried that, but my neighborhood has too much ambient light – plus all the dogs go nuts. I need to think about this a bit more.
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A new version of Video Games by Lana Del Rey
Good Stuff
Another Project
Well, I managed to get another project crossed off of my todo list.
A while back I dropped my camera and spent too much money getting it fixed. I didn’t want to do that again, plus I wanted some way to carry my camera around with the extra lenses (I always seem to have the wrong lens when I’m out taking pictures).
So I looked around at hard, fitted cases and they simply were too expensive. So I did what I always do – make do with what I can come up with myself, no matter how crappy it is.
I dumpster dived a hard plastic case. I don’t even know what was in it, maybe a drill or something, but by the time I found it, there was nothing left. That works for me – it was tough, in good shape, generic looking, and about the right size.
So I went by the local arts and crafts superstore and bought a roll of foam. Some outlining with a sharpie, cutting, and a little glue and I have my custom fitted case. It will hold my Nikon and a couple of extra lenses. It’s small enough to fit in a backpack, but has enough space for extra batteries, filters, release cable… that sort of little thing.
It doesn’t look very good, but I think it will work.
Animated Train
Red Line DART Train reflected in the gold mirror of Campbell Center at Northwest Highway and 75.
Granite
Stupidity is something unshakable; nothing attacks it without breaking itself against it; it is of the nature of granite, hard and resistant.
—-Gustave Flaubert
I was down in the Dallas Arts District. In front of the Symphony Hall the Bald Cypress trees have been growing for decades now, they are huge and beautiful. Their knees are coming up now and pushing through the little blocks of granite that pave the ground between the sidewalk and the street.
- The small granite paving blocks.
I set my camera down on the ground and took these pictures – mostly to remind myself of the spot. I’ve always liked the stretch of shaded sidewalk along there, and the rough displacement of the carefully set granite pavestones… the bits of goldbrown cypress needles falling into and filling the gaps… I like that even better.
The block of granite which was an obstacle in the pathway of the weak, became a stepping-stone in the pathway of the strong.
—-Thomas Carlyle
“For me chemistry represented an indefinite cloud of future potentialities which enveloped my life to come in black volutes torn by fiery flashes, like those which had hidden Mount Sinai. Like Moses, from that cloud I expected my law, the principle of order in me, around me, and in the world. I would watch the buds swell in spring, the mica glint in the granite, my own hands, and I would say to myself: ”I will understand this, too, I will understand everything.””—-Primo Levi
Bill Chance 