Downtime. Catching up on vacation photos. Back to current when there is something to report.
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This is the building I lived in from 4th grade to the middle of 9th grade. As a kid, I lived in seven(?) places, six of which I remember. If you asked me to imagine my childhood home, this is the one that would come to mind. (If you asked me where I grew up after the age of 14, I’d probably say the barn.)
Horses fine. People fine. Narrative content non-existent. There’s only so many posts that I can spin out of nobody going nowhere. I thought about taking a break. Instead, I will use the time to catch up on vacation photos. I hope to return to regularly scheduled programming once I am doing something more riveting than watching Milton graze.
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As I wandered around the AmeriStamp Expo, folks kept asking me, ‘What do you collect?’ I mumbled something about getting started [Year of the Stamp], while thinking, ‘Don’t mind me. I’m just here for the blog posts.’
I watched customers hunched over dealer tables, flipping through boxes and albums, checking the items on offer against lists and notebooks. I made snap judgments about an entire subgroup based on 15 minutes of observation: older, white, male, chatty. I looked at row upon row of stamp competition entrants. People compete with stamps? Why, yes they do. People compete at everything.
I needed a guide through this new world. So, I looked – of course – for a book.
I joined the American Topical Association, resulting in a pile of loot including a huge head start on forming a horse-stamp group.
Year of the Horse First Day Covers. The larger envelope includes all the stamps in the series to that date.
The one thing I didn’t buy was a stamp, other than the ones on the first day covers. The various dealers had hundreds? thousand? hundreds of thousands? of stamps for sale, from buy-’em-by-the-bucket to credit-check-first-please. Unfortunately, stamps are arranged by country, not by ‘Horses, pretty pictures of.’
Donald Evans painted fascinating, tiny watercolors as stamps from non-existent countries.
Carol Gordon is (was?) an amazing cachet, i.e. envelope, artist. Despite the huge range displayed in a show entry, her work doesn’t have a centralized Internet presence (Please correct me if I’m wrong). Mostly, Google turns up items for sale: Year of the Pig, Edna St. Vincent Millay. This woman’s career is crying out for a web page.
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How much of this sudden interest in stamps is due to the blog and how much is personal? I’d say 50/50. I wouldn’t pursue the idea without an outlet, i.e. blog posts. On the other hand, I wouldn’t research and write about an area for content alone. (I would if someone paid me, but that was a previous life.) Stamps are interesting. Stamps will generate blog posts. Win/win. [RS stamp page]
Fourteen hours of class without a single photo assignment.
A local college has evening photography classes. The first prerequisite is Know your Nikon/Canon. Seven weeks of going over buttons and menus. Apparently, people would show up for Intro Photo, the instructor would tell them to put their camera on X setting, and people would look blank. Hence this class.
Sometimes I feel frustrated, particularly as class involves hauling myself off the farm and into town. Two glazed and a medium hibiscus tea from Dunkin’ Donuts eases my pain.
Photographer Meg McKinney [list of posts] had already done an excellent job setting up my camera and getting me off auto. Therefore, much of this is review. Still, a) I learn something new about my camera in each class and b) I appreciate the professor explaining what settings are important, telling stories to make a technical class entertaining, and helping when my camera ends up in a weird place because I have pushed too many buttons.
Meg teaches classes here, so one reason to take these pre-reqs is to sign up for her classes later.
Virtual Brush Box 