Scene on the Road

I've always marveled at the illusion of the moon appearing larger near the horizon than it looks when it's higher up in the sky. That was the case this past Tuesday at dawn. I drove around for twenty minutes as the sky brightened, but I was unable to put anything in front of the moon for a photo before the sunrise blew it away (exposure-wise, anyway).

So the next morning I was prepared. I drove to the Camden waterfront intending to shoot the Philadelphia skyline but, as anyone who has ever watched moonrises or moonsets knows, 24 hours makes a huge difference in when each occurs. On Tuesday, moonset was at 7:31 a.m. When I made my second try on Wednesday morning, it wasn't until 8:04 a.m. that the moon went down over Philadelphia. With sunrise at pretty much the same time as the day before (at 7:17 a.m.) the moon was still high in the sky when the sun came up.

The U.S. Naval Observatory is the country's authority for "precise time and astrometry," as well as distributing "Earth orientation parameters and other astronomical data required for accurate navigation and fundamental astronomy." You can find out when the sun or moon set or rose anytime from Jan. 1, 1700 to when it will rise or set anytime up until Dec. 31, 2100 - anywhere in the world at this link:

I had given up on the low-on-the-horizon idea by Thursday, but I was still looking at the moon, and decided to try shooting it with geese, or something, anything along the Cooper River in Camden. That didn't work out either, but I did make one or two frames through the trees - just for fun - as I got out of my car.

Then I forgot all about it. I was't thinking of it even as I walked back from an assignment near Rittenhouse Square later in the day and noticed the Christmas Tree ornament in the forsythia bushes. I shot the bulb, from a couple angles - wishing it were red or green - half-thinking I could make it my "Photo of the Day." It wasn't until later in the afternoon, when I saw the images flash by on my laptop as my card was downloading that I realized both globes were in branches. And the silver ornament worked even better than if it had been red or green!

That's how I ended up with the moon-globe diptych for my Daily Photo yesterday, January 24, 2008.

Saturday's Daily Photo was originally this one of a yellow VW bug that I saw in the Rite Aid parking lot. When I took a second look after sleeping on it, I didn't think it worked. So I swapped it out early this morning for the photo above that I also shot yesterday. I have been keeping an eye on the Cherry Hill water tower as they prepare for maintenance and repainting, and originally planned on using it for a future posting.

Photographer Rosemary Mackintosh - a contributor from last summer's Road Trips blog - reminded me that the tower - and gas station - is the very same "Petit's Mobil Station, Cherry Hill, New Jersey" captured by New Jersey fine-art photographer George Tice. It's the cover of his book, Urban Landscapes: A New Jersey Portrait.

(Click here and then scroll down about halfway to see Rosemary's photo, also from New Jersey, of her sons on the early morning beach at Ocean City).

When I first realized I was moving to the state almost twenty years ago, the Tice photo happened to be one of the images I had in my mind. But for some reason, I always associated the picture with the industrial, stereotypical non-garden part of New Jersey. Who knows, I probably even thought the tower was a fuel storage tank.

That water tower is such a prominent landmark, right between I-295 and the NJ Turnpike, that it's easy to spot from the air. I always use it to get my bearings while looking out the window, approaching a landing at Philadelphia International Airport.

I hadn't thought about it much until Rosemary commented that my Day Sixty One Daily Photo of the gas pumps at Wawa reminded her of his photo. I remember a few years ago when I pulled into the 7-11 adjacent to the Tice gas station and water tower and realized where I was. I looked up, and there it was, like some larger-than-life 3D image in an outdoor museum.

Speaking of museums, I'm sure many of you have made your own versions of famous photographs. I asked here before, but now I'm broadening my request beyond New Jersey sites. If you have a picture you've taken, either on a photo pilgrimage, or one of a famous photo scene you just happened to revisit, please email it to me as a jpeg attachment at roadtrip@phillynews.com

Over the years Tice's is not the only well-known photo-scene I've stumbled upon. Maybe, like me, you were walking along the sidewalk and stared right at the very same Flatiron Building Edward J. Steichen (and Alfred Stieglitz and many, many others...) photographed in New York. Send them along, and I'll post some in the coming weeks.

Back to George Tice's photo. I graduated from high school in Las Vegas the same year, 1974, he took the photo. One of my friends even had a Dodge Charger like the one in the photo. Just a couple reasons the image always stuck with me. Since moving here, I heard from someone (I can't recall who, when or where) that the car in the photo belonged to a wrestler at Cherry Hill East HS, which is still just a few pennies worth of gas away on the same Kresson Road - even with the average price of gasoline almost doubling that year, climbing from 37.9 cents a gallon to 55.1 cents (the Oil Crisis).

And finally, the Tice photo was also an album cover. That's jazz guitarist Bill Frisell's 2001 CD, Blues Dream. Click on the image to hear a sample.

This day sees not only the one hundredth Daily Photo I've shot - so far - this year, it also marks the ten year anniversary of that "inside the local section black and white photo thing" as many readers call it.

That's right, before there was a Daily Photo on my blog there was (and still is) a Weekly Photo in the newspaper. The City Life photo made its inaugural appearance on a Thursday, on page B-2 in the City Edition of the Inquirer on April 9, 1998 (it's since morphed into Scene on the Street, and appears in all editions of the paper, still inside the B-Section, now on Mondays). Click on the montage above to see a slide show with color versions of some highlights (it's a straightforward contact sheet - no need to squint as in a previous montage - to see the overall image formed by all the tiny ones. These don't do anything but just sit there).

There was a server/platform problem here that kept me from uploading any photos since last Friday. I ended up describing some of the pictures (see below) but otherwise, the Daily Photo here was nothing but words all weekend.

It was fixed tonight, so I was able to go back and upload all my photos from the past four days. Except now I had a new problem. After a few days had passed, I started having second thoughts about some of the pictures, and and entertained ideas about re-editing some of them.

On Friday night, I attended a rehearsal of the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia. This is what I saw when I arrived in the parking lot:

I liked the shadows more than the musicians, so I moved in closer to favor that element:

Then a bird landed on the head of the taller statue. This is how I described it here when I was unable to post only words, no photos:

A white statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary, on the summer solstice, with a bird standing on her head. I took it just minutes before summer officially arrived at 7:59 pm, so the orange/red evening sunset was lighting the statue and the adjacent wall casting shadows from nearby trees. Inside, with Jack Moore conducting, The Orchestra Society of Philadelphia rehearsed Tchaikovsky's Symphony #6 ("Pathetique").

And here's the one I used my Daily Photo:

What I didn't like about this photo is that, even a few days later, all I could see is that I wasn't paying attention to my background. In my defense, I guess I was thrilled when the bird alighted. Then, after I recovered from my good fortune, I made a quick photo, and started thinking about whether I could capture the bird in the air when it flew off. It would have been a much better photo if I had just bent my knees and leaned a little to the left. The bird would have been positioned against a lighter area of the wall, instead of a shadow. But I didn't, and then it took off.

It's a matter of luck, timing and thought.

I also revisited my ballet photo at Rutgers/Camden's Gordon Theater on Saturday. There was another frame I'd liked from the finale:

And then leaving after the performance, which was the first annual Workshop Performance of the two year old Northern Liberties ballet school, I was drove toward the river as the sun was setting on this first full day of summer. I was stuck not just by the light, but by how empty the streets of downtown Camden are, on an evening, on a weekend. Not until I hit the old RCA Nipper Building on the waterfront - now The Victor - did I even see so much as another car:

While watching the Olympics, seated in front of the television with my laptop, I ended up with a pretty extensive set of bookmarked links to blogs from lots of great photographers covering the games. The closing ceremonies are a day away now, but I figure the blogs should be up for a while, and will still make for informative and entertaining reading. So here they are, all in one place. Click on the photographer's names, and please let me know if I've missed any (just blogs, not "Picture of the Day" sites or those that require registration).

Zach Honig, PopPhoto.com
Vincent Laforet, Freelance
Rod Mar, Seattle Times
Kevin German, Freelance
Dan Powers, Appleton Post-Crescent
Chris Faytok, Newark Star-Ledger
Nhat V. Meyer, San Jose Mercury News
Chris Detrick, Salt Lake Tribune
Jens Dresling, Politiken, Copenhagen (English translation)
Mark J. Rebilas, Freelance
David Burnett, Freelance
Mike Powell, Freelance
George Bridges, McClatchy/Tribune
Jonathan Newton, Washington Post
Kenneth Jarecke, Freelance
Jerry T. Lai, Freelance
Richard Lautens, Lucas Oleniuk & Steve Russell, Toronto Star
Scott Strazzante, Chicago Tribune
Donald Miralle, Freelance
Sol Neelman, Freelance
Larry Steagall, Kitsap Sun
Matt Detrich, Indianapolis Star
Michael Martina, Freelance
Eric Seals, Detroit Free Press
Kari Kuukka, Freelance, Finland (English translation)
Getty Images, Agency
Reuters, Agency
Jeff Swinger, Cincinnati Enquirer
Marc Aspland, Times of London