Bottom of the Sixth
Camden Yards, Orioles vs Tigers. Tigers won.
Camden Yards, Orioles vs Tigers. Tigers won.
I’m still considering just how to process this shot, and if it even belongs here. I go back and forth between this and a B&W version, but I like the vintage look for this one.
One of the shots from an all-too-brief (work) trip to New York. Taken shortly after a rainstorm, just outside my hotel. This is an HDR composite of 7 shots.
The runways at the San Diego airport push right up against traffic lanes, sidewalks and buildings. This was taken from the sidewalk during busy evening approaches. I had hoped to shoot from about 40 feet higher, on top of a parking garage at this corner, but there were signs saying “NO PHOTOGRAPHY” and attendants actually paying attention, so I shot from the street.
In reviewing the photos from this trip, I found several that I never got around to editing. This is the first from that “new” group.
An unused photo from my cover shoot for the June, 2009 issue of the American Journal of Human Genetics, the second cover I’ve been lucky enough to shoot for them.
Three lone trees near my hotel in Downtown San Diego.
About the only time the bridge isn’t packed with people and souvenir sellers is right before they shut off the lights for the night — 2 AM.
Trapped. Even before heading to the port, I realized the Aegean Sea was choppy. Things aren’t helped by the enclosed decks and assigned seats of the high-speed ferries. But over the span of four hours, that rough ride would mean the people in the seats in front, to my right and behind me all needed multiple uses of their seasickness bags.
I awake to long blasts of the ship’s horn. Figuring the ferry is pulling into one of the first stops, I grab my camera and head above deck. Expecting to see Ios or Naxos, I instead recognize the rock walls and caldera of Santorini, the last stop. Passengers are pulling luggage through the halls and toward their cars on the vehicle deck. A family is applying suncreen at the stairs to the exit. It’s not yet 8 am but I’m not the only one salivating for gyros on shore.
The internal debate over the precise details of my Athens itinerary continues right through the airplane’s descent into the city. Stay a night, see the sights then move over the horizon to the islands? Or pack in a days’ worth of photography and hyperaggrivation and take an overnight ferry to gyros paradise?
By noon, the gears of travel finally begin to grind. I head to the airport, but with a brief stop at the FedEx terminal to retrieve the new camera lens that had arrived this morning. With an uncharacteristic smoothness in my travel plans, I arrive at gate C8. I think – maybe – that I might even have brought everything I intended. It hasn’t happened yet in eight years, but without any glaring packing errors, I consider the possibility.
I [dropcap]I[/dropcap] was shopping. After years of abuse, I finally retired some much-loved and oft-abused travel clothes. Pants that had climbed (and slid down) a Moroccan mountain. A shirt whose longevity was inversely proportional to its 8 dollar price tag. Shoes that had seen more than a dozen countries on four continents. And while this gear was like my travel family, its best days were behind me.
Swimming a few hundred metres from the shore of Perivolous beach, I pause to look back to shore. The early evening sun is still warm and bright and soaking everything in a luxurious, golden hue. The water is calm and exquisitely refreshing after a day spent lounging on the sand.
The glistening Aegean Sea is smooth as glass and on the approach to land in Santorini, the plane skims Kamari beach with its tavernas and cliffs and umbrellas and volcanic rocks. Home, sweet home.
A monstrous day of travel brought me from the Sahara desert oasis town of Tozeur back to the Mediterranean’s capital of apathy and pissedoffedness: Athens, Greece.
In the interest of space and internet cafe time, I’m going to leave this one out. But suffice to say that a train ride aboard a beast called The Red Lizard, into a place where there are no roads, was one of the most amazing rail trips I’ve ever taken.
As I settled in for the four hour bus trip from the Mediterranean coastal city of Sfax eastward to Tozeur, I couldn’t help but notice I was being watched from across the isle. While I tore into my massive roasted chicken sandwich, a boy of about seven wouldn’t stop staring at me.
In my first few days in this country, I am perplexed by what appears to be a vast one-dimensionality to contemporary Tunisian music: the people all watch and listen to the same stuff. I’m not new to Arabic music. But with eerie similarity, it’s like The Big Game is on every channel, all day, all night, every day, every night. I don’t get it. I must be missing something.
The speaker blares to life and startles me back to consciousness. It has been just under a year since traveling in a Muslim country and being woken by one of the five daily calls to prayer.