Greater Philadelphia Photo Safari

Last post was about a flea market/auction I visited early July 2012. That place got me to thinking about 

1. my knowledge of such locations that are loaded with photographic opportunities
2. my desire to share photographic knowledge with other photographers to help them create better images
3. my love of food

After a few hours of additional thinking, I combined those three thoughts into one package.

So, on Sunday 22 July I will be leading my first group of photographers on a photo safari though an interesting location in Philadelphia. What, you may be asking yourself, is a photo safari? Let me elucidate.

A photo safari is a walk with a loaded camera. A safari, if you will, to create (place the word shoot here, if you must) photographs while being guided by qualified photographers. During the safari the photographer guides will supply tips on composition, lighting and exposure: how to stalk and shoot your prey (again, if you must). Your guide will customize the session to your level of photographic skills. If you wish to become a better photographer, the relaxed atmosphere of a photo safari is a great no stress venue to learn.

The safari will begin with introductions of the safari attendees and the photographer guides. As the group enters the wilds, the guides will help each photographer sharpen their photographic skills, help with camera knowledge and operation while answering questions that may arise at the moment. When the safari ends, members of the group will have the option to stop for a drink, some food and a period of Q and A. Later, the participants will be able to upload your photographic trophies from the safari to a private website for critique by peers and the photographer guides.

The main goal of dativer safaris is to uncover and develop your photographic skills. The fact that you will be exposed to colorful areas of the greater Philadelphia area and their signature foods will be what make these adventures clearly different than any other photo safaris being offered.

If you miss even one dativer safari, you will come to regret it.

Send for more details today. Contact at dativersafari@gmail.com

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

The Original London Sightseeing Tour

Wednesday we ventured out, again via bus, to the Original London Sightseeing Tour.  The tour consisted of a double decker bus around London and a boat ride on the Thames to Greenwich and return.  My wife and son started the tour the day she broke her foot but was in too much pain to go on the boat ride.  Together my wife and I would finish what she started.

Source:GoogleMaps

We caught the 276 to Hackney Central then the 38.  We disembarked at Piccadilly Circus, in front of Ripley's Believe It or Not Museum.  There was only a short walk to one of the stops along the yellow route of the Original London Sightseeing Tour.  There were three tours, each with a different route and corresponding color.  The yellow tour hit all the mandatory sites.  We boarded the double decker and were told there was no live tour guide on the buses that day.  We settled for listening to a recorded tour in English.  We didn't expect to leave the bus except for the river tour, so we settled in, under cover, at the front of the top deck.


There was a constant change of sightseers on the bus from stop to stop.  I heard many languages spoken.  The few I could discern were French and German.  On all of our travels in London, many different languages were spoken all around us.  I would guess I heard Russian, Polish, Arabic, Indian languages, Italian and others I couldn't discern.  On this tourist ride I heard mostly German and French, more German and French than I heard all week.

From the top deck of our moving bus we passed most of the following, 

Piccadilly Circus	Buckingham Palace& the Changing of the Guard	10 Downing Street	Southwark Cathedral
Statue of Eros	St. James's Park	Horse Guards' Parade	London Dungeon
The National Gallery	Westminster Abbey	St. Martin-in-the-Fields	HMS Belfast
Nelson's Column	Big Ben & Parliament	Covent Garden	Tower Bridge
Trafalgar Square	Lambeth Palace	Fleet Street	Tower of London
St. James's Palace	The London Eye	St. Paul's Cathedral	Shakespeare's Globe
Ritz Hotel	London Aquarium	Bank of England Museum	Tate Modern
Hyde Park	Westminster Pier	Monument	Speakers' Corner
Wellington Museum	London Bridge

We disembarked the yellow route bus when we arrived at the dock from which we would board the boat tour.  We walked down the long ramp to the rear of the line of tourists waiting to board the boat.  There was no boat at the dock.  It was still out on its return trip from Greenwich.  We didn't wait long before the boat was docked and empty of tourists.

We boarded and did a quick spin around the enclosed lower deck and it's snack bar.  I helped my wife to the upper open deck where the view would be better.  She settled on the first bench at the top of the stairs which was the last bench at the rear of the boat.  The weather was a bit cooler than the day before.  My experience from working outdoors over 34 years, is that whenever you are near water, there always seems to be a breeze.  The breeze put a chill in the air.  I returned to the snack bar and bought some coffee, hot chocolate and a few snacks.  I then juggled the hot drinks back to the upper deck. 

Westminster Clock and Portcullis House

I caught this piper on the Westminster Bridge

London Eye

London Eye and County Hall

There seemed to be quite a bit of time before we launched into the river.   I quickly drank most of my coffee and left my Twixt on the bench under my wife's knee.  I unsheathed my camera and went into photographer mode.


Once we got under way the boat went right across the Thames to pick up more tourists.  That got me closer to the Eye.

With the new tourists aboard, we set off towards London Tower.

There were several bridges to glide under, Jubilee, Hungerford, an unnamed RR bridge being restored, Millenium and Waterloo, before we arrived at Tower Bridge.

 All along the way the tour guide provided a package of pseudo-historical banter, wrapped in an East Ender slang, tied with a dazzling witty ribbon.  I remember tourist bus drivers delivering the same kind of banter in Boston.  I wonder if there is a school of witty edutainment that teaches all the guides, worldwide?  I can see the school offering Cockney and South Side speech lessons and bawdy details lectures.  Of course most of the learning would happen in the evening, after formal classes, when the worldwide students get together at the bar or pajama parties.

However they are trained, we enjoyed it.  I even tipped them at the end of our tour when the guide held out a small galvanized bucket to receive the coins.  There must have a gutsy class, too.

The last leg of the outbound tour was to Greenwich a bit farther down river.  There were some great views along the way.  Many of the new apartments were quite pricey, we were told.

The boat was tied up at Greenwich for five or ten minutes.  By that time it was getting dark.  The darkness was partly due to the overcast and partly because of the latitude of London near 50º N, closer to the Arctic Circle and mostly the time of the year.  On the trip back to Tower Bridge the guide was silent and we spent sometime on the enclosed, warmer, lower deck.  I composed my map and British money image there.

The boat docked again at Tower Bridge to take on more tourists.  I captured a few more images of Tower Bridge.  I underexposed some of the images on purpose.  I wanted to darken the tower and catch the moon in the same frame.  The gull was an added surprise.  I think the gull adds some spookiness.


When we returned to the dock at Westminster Bridge we boarded a tour bus that took us to Green Park where we caught the mother ship, the 38, that took us back home.  We finished what my wife and son started the on their very first day in London.  The end of our visit was Friday.  We had only one more full day in London.  That happened to be my wife's birthday.




©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

My Golden Grail

I had a goal to be rich before I was sixteen years old and famous soon after.  Another of my goals was to be a great photographer.  If all else failed I set a goal to win the lottery.  Crap, I wasn't setting goals!  I wasn't planning!  I was wishing!

In the mean time I have been living.  My life has been revealed to me as a poem; each stanza a surprise.  It has been an adventure.  You might call me Odysseus or Percival or Skywalker but I don't think I would answer you, if you did.

Odysseus

Percival

Skywalker about to start his adventure

As things turned out, I wasn't rich when I turned sixteen.  Nor was I famous soon after.  I stopped playing the lottery.  I still have a goal of becoming a great photographer.  I'm not sure how that will fit into my life before the last line is written.  

Nikon

As for now, I am off to London for 10 days to visit my eldest princess and her new prince.  A grand adventure.  I've planned to bring my camera.  I wish I could stay longer to look for the golden grail.   My goal is to slay my dragon "Thou-shalt" with the spirit of my lion "I will."


I wonder if I am more the Don Quixote type?

Don Quijote de la Mancha Joaquin Garcia Donaire  in Philadelphia

©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved

Learn to Pose: Hands

It is very difficult to grab a good candid portrait of someone.  The process of creating a good photographic portrait involves visual composition and posing.  One of the fine details in posing are the hands.  Placement of the hands and each finger can put the icing on the cake.

Source:Doug Box's Guide to Posing for Portrait Photographers

I recommend visiting a site with a lesson on hand posing, an excerpt from the book Doug Box's Guide to Posing for Portrait Photographers provided courtesy of Amherst Media.

Learning to pose will increase the quality of you images.

Public Polite to Colorblind Photographer

I first realized I was color blind just before my double digit years.  It was when our family traveled from South Philly over to my paternal sister's home in Magnolia, New Jersey, a Philadelphia suburb, to enjoy the sunny day and celebrate my younger cousin's birthday.  The whole party was spread out on the lawn; playing games, sitting on multicolored lawn chairs, shooting the breeze and taking in the suburban South Jersey lifestyle.


As the day progressed, my father, who never really talked much, remarked about all the apples in the tree across the road.  I looked up, liking apples, and queried, "Which tree?"  He looked at me as if I might be joking and a backhanded smack might be in order.  He pointed definitively at a tree and said, "That tree with all the red apples!"  I touched my left cheek to his short sleeve and looked down his right arm and off his pointed stogie stained index finger to the tree.  I figured the closer I stayed to his hand the less it would sting when it hit.  I couldn't see any apples from a distance of 200'.  I jumped up from my chair, quickly putting distance between my cheek and his hand, and walked towards the tree.  The closer I got to the tree, the better I could discern the red apples from the green leaves and it was only after the relative size of the apples was large compared to the mass of leaves.  I guess parents don't need to be polite to their children.  Children need to learn to be polite to their parents.

Source:http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/Ishihara.asp

In high school, I had a chemistry workbook that contained printed colorblind tests (PseudoIsochromatic Plate Ishihara Compatible).  Hidden in the graphics were either numbers like 25 or a word like onion, most of which I could not see.  Needless to say, my fellow Central High School students, as smart as they were, didn't need to be polite.  They fell to the floor, holding their sides, laughing at my deficiency.


Within the last 15 - 20 years, I needed to be tested every two years for a commercial driver's license.  Every time, I failed the color blind tests.  At that point each doctor would realize they had found a jewel that needed to be mined.  Doc would gather all the staff to witness my inability to see the numbers hidden in the graphics.  I felt like a curiosity, a freak, some three legged chicken or a two headed calf in a bottle of formaldehyde.  Does knowledge override politeness? 

If you see a 2 you have Red-Green color deficiency.  I see a 2.

There was one other time that was really embarrassing.  I purchased a skirt and top as a Christmas present for my soon to be wife.  I was trying to impress her with my fashion sense.  I believed I bought a grey skirt and mauve top.  When the presents were reveled they were actually a mauve top and a green skirt, which didn't go together as a set.  My betrothed was very polite.  Needless to say, I stopped buying coordinating clothing for others from that day forward.  I sometimes wonder about my own clothing.


I've lived with the knowledge of my color perception deficiency for some 50 years.  I've called myself a photographer for the last 40 odd years.  I guess I figured out how to get around my handicap.  Either that or there really are some polite people in the world. 



LINKS
http://members.shaw.ca/hidden-talents/vision/color/colorblind1.html
http://www.toledo-bend.com/colorblind/index.asp
http://colorvisiontesting.com/color5.htm


©Damyon T. Verbo - all rights reserved