FSO – rush hour

This time of year it is all about rushing.  Rush to work, and home; company parties, shopping, children’s plays, recitals, shopping, dinner parties and more shopping. There should be no limit to the possible photo ops and I have found myself with ZERO photos on the camera.  I carried the camera with me all week.  Nothing.  Two days ago I began looking through the Houston archives.  Nothing. 

I suggested this topic.  Surely I had an idea for a photo to post.  Nothing comes to mind.  Last week Patty and I went shopping for Thanksgiving dinner supplies, the lines were miles long, everyone in a rush to get home.  Did I take an interesting photo – NO.  On Thursday night we went to Wal-Mart to see ‘black Friday’ activities.  It was a madhouse people acting like idiots, rushing about then standing in a line that wound around the store, probably  a quarter mile long.  No dollar saved was worth standing in that line.   Did I take photos – NO.  Are you getting the idea that this is a disclaimer?

Right at this moment in time I don’t work.  In fact, I avoid going out between 6 – 8 am and if I do go out, I try to be back at the house or hiding in a coffee shop between 4 and 6pm.  Houston is a ‘get there by car or don’t go at all’ town.  Missouri city does not have any mass transit options.  Avoiding rush hour out this direction is a matter of survival.   Today I took two photo – snap shots really – that can give you an idea of what a society driven by cars means on a daily basis.

looking south

looking north on a Saturday afternoon.

and inside a store… we were 10th in line

So I have been lazy -

This week’s Friday Shoot Out is, “9 to 5, people at work in your town”,  In Brasil I had a huge, still do in fact, archive of photos that I could dig into if the week didn’t let me out to shoot new photos.  For Houston’s photos, I need to get out there and shoot for our weekly topics and that seems to just not happen.  Two weeks ago I spent 4 days in a courtroom listening to boring testimony as the attorneys worked hard for their money, course I would have looked silly snapping photos while they worked.

Last week it rained all week and I don’t mean little sprinkles but hard gushing blowing cold rain.  There is no taking the camera out on days like that….. oh, I guess I could have gone to the mall and snapped sales clerks hard at work – but I didn’t.  I worked hard in a warm house baking for the Thanksgiving meal on Thursday.

Houston is an Oil services, shipping, banking, and medical center town.  Most of that is tied directly to like businesses in South America.  I think I have touched on most of this in other FSO weeks, maybe not focused on the worker.  I would love to go on a rig and take photos but don’t get excited it is not likely to happen anytime soon.  oh if only I were still in Brasil…..

What does that leave me…. gardeners and lawn men; mowing, cutting and digging, and, this week, hanging Christmas decorations.  And yesterday a high school play-off game; the team, coaches and refs working hard on the day after Thanksgiving – so enjoy just a couple of Houston My Town photos just to show I am not just being lazy ….. 

A couple years ago - but on November 20 – new trees are planted in the Rose Garden.

This year, rain and cold would have kept the city garden crew at home.

Saturday Play-off game between Elkins high of Missouri City – GO KNIGHTS - and the Katy Tigers

   
The guys that work hard to make the game play stay inside the rules.

Yes,  I had some envy issues seeing that lens.  Yes, I realize that if I bought something like that I would have to take photography seriously …..  there were 4 official photographers on our side of the field using super cameras – I wonder what they would think of my quick snaps.

and the cheerleaders,  who are working Hard keep us enthusiastic even when the score went to
56 Katy TIGERs to 26 Elkin’s Knights.  Ouch!

My car just seems to go there….

Over and over, as my posts from the past when I was visiting Houston show, my car loves to go out into the country. And if time allows I end up, over and over, at the same places.  (Drat - it is thundering, and lightening I may have to shut down AGAIN)

(next Day! no more thunder but is COLD)  Often my car drive to the Brazos Bend State Park, Oyster Creek Park, Kitty Hollow Park, the bird preserve out by Katy or just for fun takes a country road to nowhere. 

For a different type of day I can drive West on HWY 90 for about 25 minutes and there is what used to be the small town of Richmond.  Now we say Richmond – Rosenberg because these two small towns have grown so they meet making one big, no personality city.   But there is a small area of ‘old town Richmond’ right off 90 that the locals have tried to preserve and make into a small but pleasant place to walk, shop for antiques and local crafts, and have a good old fashioned drugstore hamburger for lunch. 

The hamburger is okay but the shops are a lot of fun, a stroll down memory lane for me.  Old glass and other collectables line the walls and windows.

 

  

   

Just one way that my car, camera and I spend a pleasant Sunday afternoon.

 

 

 

playing with digital

For FSO I have done Black & White three times, this is the 4th time.  This is the second Houston as my hometown.  How I wished I could have used the mountains of Nova Friburgo for my experiment, just so I could have the depth of our view to play with after reading Mersad’s tutorial.  I guess I played around for a couple of hours, coming to the conclusion that my editor ADCSee 14 and ADCsee Pro 5 are not very good / I am not very good / I choose the wrong photos to play with.  But I did learn that there is more to do than just ask the program to convert to B&W.
I  used this format in one of my other posts on black and white and liked very much seeing the comparisons and reading everyone’s comments – so my FSO experiments in black and white editing.

Critters in my own back yard.

Just when you think there is no life in your own back yard,
you find proof of a world not seen.

This is a grassland restoration area just on the edge of Missouri City, Texas.  Normally it looks like, well like grassland.
But on this particular morning’s walk, coming around a bend, the trail took me directly into bright sun shinning through fog; 
a secret world not normally seen.

Proof of life visible for as far as the eye could see.