My Bible challenge

Yesterday I signed up for the Bible challenge. Starting Sunday, I have to read 12 pages a day and discuss those pages with other folks over at Wake Forest Presbyterian Church. The idea is that, while most people say they follow the Bible, few have actually read the whole thing. The article my co-worker wrote about the challenge points out a lot of people start, get stuck somewhere around Leviticus and give up.

I think I gave up in Genesis, likely making me the lamest of the lot.

Then again, I'm not Christian, so I have a better excuse.

But I've always wished I could have finished it, so I could better understand the 78.4 percent of other Americans who take so much stock in it. I've got my own Bible, which came from a motel room while I was still in college, where I distinctly recall watching hours upon hours of golf during what was probably the Masters tournament. As a photographer for the Canisius College Griffin newspaper, we'd attend the men's basketball NY state playoffs, if our team advanced that far. When the team won, it left a lot of down time until the next game. So, golf and the Bible, which, as I said, left me stuck in Genesis.

Of course, I also have a Koran and a copy of the Book of Mormon I hope to read someday. But, first things first.

My goal is to read 12 pages every day, excepting Tuesdays, (which brooks me no free time whatsoever, perhaps doubling up on Wednesdays or Sundays) and, as time progresses, write about my experience in this column. When the challenge is complete, and possibly before, I intend to take on another challenge, and another, etc., hopefully transferring this blog to a dolled up Web site at work, whenever that comes through. My idea is to have the challenges be somehow tied to the community, in our newspaper's coverage area, so I can blog about them or even write articles about them like real journalists do. Not sure what my future challenges will be; I'll have to consider the options as they come to mind (or are suggested to me, if I garner any readership here).

Wish me luck.

'The greatest job'

I took these shots at a DARE carnival -- a traveling parking lot affair which was sponsored by the local police DARE people, which is how they fund their program now that most federal and state funding has been dropped (mainly because it's been proven to not work at keeping kids off drugs). I took many of the photos for the officers themselves as a favor, but was basically there for the newspaper.

When the DARE officer thanked the newspaper for attending I replied that we wouldn't ever miss out on a chance to photograph kids on carnival rides even if the benefit was to keep kids on drugs.

Anyways, we always take more shots than run in the paper, so I thought I'd post some of the better ones here. There was this one real cute girl who was super excited to ride on the carousel with her mom and I thought it would make a nice photo.

While I was taking the shots, just after I asked for her and her mother's name from her father, he looks at me and says: 'You have the greatest job.'

I don't know what his job is or how boring it may be, but he's certainly right that, sometimes, being a newspaper reporter/photographer is the greatest job in the world. Not always, but sometimes.

A different set of rules

Ever notice how it often seems there is one set of laws for ordinary people and another entirely for government workers? Any regular Joe or Jesus would be ticketed for having this much solid writing covering his rear window while driving.

My digital evolution

When we moved to the smaller place, we had to move fast — too fast to go through enough of everything and pare it down to just what we felt like we really needed or couldn’t let go of. So the other day, I looked at the 5 or 6 boxes or crates in the middle of the living room and realized that, A) most of them were full of my stuff and B) most of what was in them was photo related: cameras and accessories, stacks of negatives and piles of prints and slides.

I’ve been a photographer since I was a senior in high school and through most of college and much of my adult life I used photography in my work. But it’s an expensive hobby (or at least it used to be) and for some time I didn’t do much with it while I was in and out of work. When I came back to it working for The Wake Weekly, I found some things had gotten harder — autofocus makes focusing either far easier or far more difficult, depending on what you’re trying to do. But mostly, I found it makes photography a hell of a lot easier.

Gone is the need for purchasing films of varying speeds and processing and printing that film. Gone are the hours in the darkroom or photo lab. Gone is the need for negatives, contact sheets, and light boxes and loupes for viewing miniaturized versions of one’s images.

So, after years and years of holding onto those proofs positive of a bygone era, I decided it was time to let some of it go. A lot of it, actually. I sold my black and white enlarger, developing tools and related knickknacks to a girl who is obviously much more of an artiste than I am — developing one’s own prints; seeing the image reveal itself in that faint red light is and will always be pure bliss. I threw away all of my grandfather’s remaining Canon equipment, at least half of which was older than I am; ditched three(!) old tripods and one monopod; trashed two flashes and a decayed Quantum battery; chucked unmixed developer and fixer, unopened packs of photo paper never exposed to the light and rolls of film that still smelled fresh but probably would never be used again, and packed the rest of it up for the move.

Now we’re here though, I’m going to rid myself of even more. I threw my Hoya filters in the trash (what a Hoya could do before, Photoshop can do after) and threw out anything that could be used to house a photo or negative that didn’t look clean. I then gathered all the prints and negatives together, not to mention my surviving Nikon F2, FM2, 200mm and 300mm fixed lenses, 500mm mirror lens and sundry accessories, boxed them up and put them in my closet.

My goal is to — eventually — go through each envelope of prints, throw away anything that’s not worth saving, put the negatives (also, only those worth saving) into sheets for filing, and then begin to scan them into the computer (such as the above shot of the twin towers the owner of Louisburg's Wammock Utility Buildings put up the week after 9/11/2001), so I have access to them in this digital age.

I hope to make some albums on Flickr, blog others, e-mail some to friends and family and store the rest digitally and hope to God solar storms or some other catastrophe doesn’t come along and send us back to living like cavemen.

Wetter days

I took this photo of the Kerr Lake picnic area a few years ago when things were a little too wet. But climatologists say that even so, we've been headed toward drought conditions with less than average annual rainfalls for the majority of the years in the past decade.

Leaving Louisburg

I used to live in Louisburg. We just sold our house after several years on the market, having to flee within two-hours' notice whenever someone saw the sign and wanted to look around. So it hardly felt like it was ours regardless.

My wife, Beth, and I have downsized ourselves, moving from a ranch house with basement on an acre of land to a one-bedroom apartment just west of Wake Forest, on the other side of the Wakefield Commons shopping center. I can now walk to go see a movie. I'll never have the time, but it's nice knowing it's close.

My commute to work used to be a half hour. Though that was through our Franklin County coverage area, it's not the same as being a part of the daily life of the town one works in. Now that I live almost directly in my coverage area as a reporter-photographer for The Wake Weekly newspaper I expect to have tidbits and musings about my daily J-life that I can post to the blog. Perhaps I'll get a following. Perhaps no one will ever see it. Perhaps I'll get fired for not being conservative enough.

Whatever happens, I'm happy just to be writing again, for myself, even if it is job-related.

Check back for more goings on - including pictures - from time to time. I expect I'll post 2-3 times a week.

Ciao, David Eliot Leone