The Santa Project, 1965

Back in the 1960s, our church youth group (led by my dad) had a special Christmas activity called “The Santa Project.”

Every year the church compiled a list of families that had requested a Christmas Eve visit from Santa Claus for their kids.  Then, on Christmas Eve, the kids in the youth group would gather at the church.  The boys would bulk up with pillows to dress as Santa Claus, complete with red suit, black belt, white wig and beard.  The girls would help the guys get their pillows and suits on, make sure the wig and beard were on straight, and apply white make-up to eyebrows.

Each “Santa” would be driven by an adult to addresses all around the city at the appointed times.  Usually the family would leave some presents outside the front door for “Santa” to pick up and bring in to the kids.

Needless to say, the little kids (and their parents) were thrilled, and we teen-age pretenders were amazed that the kids believed we were actually Santa Claus.  So we “ho-ho-ho”-ed and handed out presents in the most ebullient style we could muster, and helped a lot of people (including ourselves) enjoy the spirit of the season.

Fortunately, besides organizing the entire project, my dad also took home movies of the costuming process at the church.  You can watch a 4-minute video here.  Just hit the "play" arrow on the video screen.

May you have a joyful and peaceful holy day.

Solstice Light

This morning’s sunrise marked the southernmost point of the sun at the horizon.  The big clump of trees on the left across the water is due east, so you can see how far south the sun is.

While the sunrise itself wasn’t particularly remarkable for anything but its astronomical position, the low angle of the light in the sky and on the Cutler Park trail made for some beautiful images:

I hope you have a super Solstice, happy Hanukkah, merry Christmas, or whatever holiday you celebrate at this time of year!

November Images

November at Cutler Park brought fiery sunrises . . .

frozen pools . . .

fall colors (finally!) . . .

and foggy tranquility.

You can enjoy these and other November Cutler Park images at my Hastings Street Photography website by clicking here.

Encounters

All actual life is encounter.

-          Martin Buber

This morning’s sunrise at Cutler Park was beautiful . . .

and, at moments, dramatic.

But sometimes the most important “moments” aren’t captured in images.  This was one of those mornings.

Walking in, I was looking through the trees and listening to the sounds of the woods, when a movement ahead and to my left in the now-leafless woods caught my attention.  There wasn’t much light, but there was enough to see a dim flash of bushy white.  I stopped, and could barely make out the shape of a deer.  I took a few more steps, and the deer took a couple of leaps ahead in response – but amazingly quietly as it traveled through the underbrush.

Knowing that (a) there wasn’t enough light to get a picture, and (b) the deer would be gone instantly anyway, I decided just to keep on walking down the trail.  But as I proceeded, the deer didn’t move, so in a few steps I was parallel with it, maybe 50 feet away.  So I stopped again, and we looked at each other for a few seconds.

Martin Buber, the Jewish philosopher, calls moments like this the “I-Thou” moment:

When I confront a human being as my Thou and speak the basic word I-Thou to him, then he is no thing among things nor does he consist of things. He is no longer He or She, a dot in the world grid of space and time, nor a condition to be experienced and described, a loose bundle of named qualities. Neighborless and seamless, he is Thou and fills the firmament. Not as if there were nothing but he; but everything else lives in his light.

So it was with the deer.

The moment passed.  I walked on down the trail to the river.  But another was yet to come.

Cutler Park draws lots of people on mornings like today's.  There were walkers (sometimes with dogs) . . .

 runners . . .

bicyclers.  

On my way back to the car, I encountered a solitary walker heading into the woods.  He was an older African-American man, who stopped me to ask what kind of camera I was using.  I told him.  He explained that he had been looking at ads for cameras in the “Black Friday” newspaper inserts this weekend because, as he said, “I’m 70 years old and I want to take some pictures.”

I encouraged him to start simply, with a small digital camera, and take lots of them.  I handed him my Hastings Street Photography business card; we introduced ourselves, shook hands, and went our separate ways.  It was a simple encounter, but there, in that moment, he had spoken his dream to me.

All actual life is encounter.

Be Prepared

Over the years, I’ve learned to check my camera settings (ISO, aperture, exposure, white balance) before heading out, and to re-set them for what I expect the light to be for the first shot of the day.  That way I’m ready, rather than missing a “moment” while frantically spinning the dials because the settings were where I left them at the end of the previous shoot.  Usually it doesn’t really matter, but when I’m out at Cutler Park in very low light half an hour before dawn I don’t want to be fumbling with the settings while something interesting is happening out on the river.

So last Sunday morning, before I left the house at 5:45a to go to Cutler Park, I did my usual pre-shoot check, and made a guess about the settings.  The sky was almost completely clear (portending another one of those boring sunrises with no clouds), so I dialed in ISO 1250, f/5.6, 1/60^th of a second, Auto White Balance.

Sure enough, this was one of those times when it was good to be prepared.  As I approached the river, I could hear low-level duck quacking nearby off to my right around the other side of some bushes.  I didn’t even have time to put on my waders before I saw a lone duck out on the water and four ducks heading out from the bushes toward the other duck.

 

The four paddled out for a few seconds, but when they became aware of my presence, they immediately turned around and headed back for the safety of the bushes at the edge of the water.  And that’s how I got this shot:

The whole thing happened in 9 seconds . . . from the first shot to the third shot.  No time to mess with settings.  Be prepared.

Six minutes later, four ducks got brave enough to paddle out across the river, but this time further away from where I was standing.  Still, they were close enough to provide a couple of nice images . . .

. . . before they slipped into the shadows across the river.

And, by the way, 26 minutes later there were just enough clouds and fog to make for an interesting sunrise:

October Images

October at Cutler Park was much like September . . . the skies were either cloudy . . .

or foggy . . .

or completely clear.

But despite the unpromising skies, each day produced interesting views.  One cloudy day provided a face in the clouds:

And a waning moon shone above the foggy river:

The perfectly clear days provided beautiful light along the trail:

And a dusting of snow on October 30 added a hint of the winter to come:

For these images and more, check out the October Cutler Park images by clicking here.  Enjoy!