Flight Sequence

(For S.)

Here's a short documentary sequence of part of my day yesterday:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My life sure has changed recently. I feel like I've emerged from a comfortable but close and constrained cave to a breeze of fragrant fresh air and a vast fantastic vista lit by brilliant high sun; being in love will have that effect on you—but knowing that in your head and actually experiencing it in the moment are two utterly different things, of altogether different worlds.

That's a wordy way of saying I had a wonderful trip.

I got home to altogether too much reality: perfectly timed for the start of first winter storm of the season. So I descended out of the clouds to soon find myself mired in miserable local traffic, the wind howling, sleet falling at an angle, stuck behind minivans with their drive wheels spinning with a meager whining against the coalescing ice, trying to fit the snowblower in the trunk of my little sedan (a decisive fail), fetching the snow shovels which were at the wrong house, fighting my way through the crowds at the grocery store, and then racing the dark, the falling temperatures, and the fast-icing roads to try to collect the dogs. (Lulu made it home; Butters had to spend an extra night as a camper at Camp Bow Wow.) Ugh. Back to real life, with weather effects for emphasis. And I didn't even need the emphasis.

On the good side, I helped my taxi driver practice his English all the way to Waukesha, in the snow and slush and thick sluggish traffic—he and his wife came here four years ago from Northern Sudan, and he's been working very hard on his English. We had a great conversation. Those are brave people, to move permanently to a new country without even knowing enough of the native tongue to know where to start. Whoever thinks poor people don't work hard has never been one. The Sudanese-American cabdriver (I never asked him his name) goes to ESL class twice a week on top of fathering three young children and a 50-hour work schedule; he practices English in his cab, when he can understand enough of how his passengers speak.

I learned my first words in Arabic, too.

I want to write a bit about some of the problems of constructing photo sequences, but that'll have to wait a bit—right now I have to locate somebody to plow the driveway, yet another task I failed to get to in a timely fashion. Real life west of the Lake needs to settle down!

More soon.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2014 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Dave: "I love to see you grapple with a sequence of travel photos, especially aerial photos. How does one convey the feel of the journey with a few photos taken in less than optimal conditions? I've been struggling with those issues at my blog for years. My current solution is to use fewer photos and more words. I now post only photos that I feel are perfect and then I fill in the story with words. Surprisingly, all those illustrated books that I've been reading to my kids have started to guide my blogging.

"Here's an example of my old, photo-heavy way of telling a story. You'll see that I was lazy with the prose and relied on photos to do the heavy lifting.

"This is a more recent post. Yes, the subject is the same—complaining about work—but the style of the post is different. In this post the pictures punch up the story rather than carry it."

Mike replies: Practice improves skill, for sure. Those are superb instructional examples of your point and I like your strategy a lot. So if I were following your lead I might use my pictures #1, 3, 5, 7, and 10, and let words augment the sequence.

Thanks for that, Dave. Great comment, really amplifies the post.

Comments

[Chuck Albertson]

Watch out for those shots of the tarmac. I've lost count of the times I've been questioned by suspicious flight attendants (or H&K-toting cops at Heathrow) about why I'm taking pictures of planes at the gates.

[Fred]

You sound like a happy man! And with much to be thankful for, irrespective of the problems of coming home to "stuff"!
On Long Island, we're looking forward to some "weather" too.
I like those shots from the plane, my favorite is the plane in front of the brightly lit hanger(?) building.

[Thanks Fred. Happy and fortunate as hell. And that shot is my second favorite--it's been growing on me. --Mike]

[John Krill]

Lets Edit: 11 photos currently. Pictures 1 and 2 delete one of them - your choice. Delete #3. Numbers 4, 5, and 6 keep. Remove 7 and 8. Keep 9, 10, 11.

You could probably get it down to 4 pictures.

Don't you just us editors?

I have other photographers do this for me and most of the time I want to ignore them but almost always take their suggestion seriously.

[Jayson Merryfield]

Not that it particularly matters, but you're missing the obligatory "These pictures were shot with...."

[Stephen Scharf]

Great post, and really nicely written. Reminds me of exactly how I felt when I got back home to the Bay Area after a week spent in Jackson, Wyoming photographing the Grand Tetons.

I keep thinking back to how simple that week was, how nice the people were, and how incredibly beautiful it was.

Sigh.

[G Dan Mitchell]

"Those are brave people, to move permanently to a new country without even knowing enough of the native tongue to know where to start. Whoever thinks poor people don't work hard has never been one."

Yes. Thanks for saying it! :-)

[Kenneth Tanaka]

Good to see you getting out and having fun, with or without a camera, Mike.

Nice set of travellin' images. Isn't it fascinating how heavy the overlay of a locational caption can be on such photographs? Take, for example, that first image. What if you captioned it, "On the tarmac in Munich", or "Sitting at the gate at a rainy Narita", or "Waiting to roll at Heathrow". Photographs, even such gentle photographs, can reach beyond the eyes, eh?

[Michael Perini]

To Mike,
You sound Happy. That's Great. The world is better when you are happy, especially when you have someone to share it with.
Enjoy your well deserved good fortune.

To Everyone else: We're Doomed !
Mike's got 2 houses, 2 dogs and he's in love !
Soon he'll be assigning term papers and pictures of flowers.
The angst engine is gone. How can a Happy Guy run TOP ???

Welcome Back ;-))
M

[Roger Bradbury]

Sequence 5 is my favourite of these. It looks quite busy, doesn't it?

You know, you sound like a happier man today. Excellent.

[Murray Lord]

I'd wager at least one of them was taken when all electronic devices were supposed to be switched off Mike ;-)

[Just electronic devices that can communicate need to be turned off or set to airplane mode. I asked. --Mike]

[Bob Dales]

s. Is very lucky.

So Mike lets have a poll. I'm in for #1 the "Lets Getoutahere" shot.

bd

[Darlene]

Mike I am happy you had a wonderful trip!

I love the pics showing your flight at altitude -- I LOVE flying, especially at altitude in a blue sky above the clouds. I feel as if the plane is swimming in an ocean turn upside down.

[Sarge]

Not that you've been gone. Here's a unsharp bouquet to welcome you back from your wonderful trip, Mike!