Great Minds Wait For The Bus

        I’ve been riding the San Diego trolley since 2006 so I feel I have come of age enough to say two things: First, the trolley, SDMTS, bus and trolley system is a joke with an embedded scam to write tickets to unwary passengers. Second, if you are a tourist, rent a car to spare yourself from the lunacy that is San Diego public transportation.

Heating The Lines

        For those of you that don’t know, the wide stripes at intersections are rolled out like carpet and then heat blasted into the ground. This roadwork was going on near my local bus stop, which is why I included it in this post.

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

Mirrored Exhibit At The Denver Art Museum – 1996

        Even though it can be hard to remember what things were like when my world did not yet include Photoshop or digital cameras, it is much easier to do if you have photos from those pre-digital days to jog your memory. Unfortunately, the cycle that most photos go through has them being passed around for a few days or weeks after they are developed, and then placed in a box or an album where they became forgotten and might never be looked at again.
        The other day I selected about 100 pre-digital prints from a box of my photos that hasn’t seen the light of day for years. It has been a steady walk down memory lane ever since, as well as me foaming at the mouth in anticipation of being able to work on them in Photoshop and them share them with the world. The best thing about this is that it breaks the cycle of a photo ending it’s life in a box or in an album in a basement. The photos are going to live forever now because I had them scanned AND I have a whole new library of memories and images that I can blog about, and I can’t wait to do it! My blog will now span between film and digital. I have created a new tag and category for the blog as well, “Film Photography” that will feature photos I took with any number of film cameras and have subsequently (and very recently) had scanned. The time span will be from around 1989 through 2003, so my earliest photography, photos I took more than 20 years ago will be shared on a modern day blog and seen by the world. It is very hard to describe how excited this makes me!

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

1998 Suzuki GSXR750 About To Smoke A Ford Mustang c.2003

        I recently had some film photos of mine scanned and digitized, so I’ m about to have a lot of fun playing with photos that were taken before digital cameras and ESPECIALLY before I knew what Photoshop was. The camera I used back then was a Pentax ZX-M.
        Bandimere Speedway used to be open to the public on Wednesday nights. For $20 you could race your car 3 times down an official NHRA 1/4 mile racetrack. On this particular night, back in 2003 my friend, Tim was racing a GSXR750, which ended up pulling a 13 second quarter mile.

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

Sunset, As Seen From La Mesa, CA

        All three photos in this post were taken at the same time, in the same place. I was just walking around my neighborhood at sunset, and the photos in this post is what I came up with. La Mesa is 12 miles from the coast, but the scenery is right in front of you.

Silhouetted Flowers Against The Setting Sun

        There are an infinite number of ways to photograph a single event, including an ordinary sunset. Above we see a typical sunset silhouette with the foreground being a clutch of flowers. Nothing special, 1/1000th, f/5.6, ISO 200. The shot below is different, but the same.

Sunset With Foreground Lighting

        The shot above is the same as the middle photo above except that there is more light on the foreground. The difference between the two photos is massive, even though they were taken at the same place at the same time. Pressing the shutter release button is just the first step for creating a great photograph. Photoshop is your friend after the fact. Admit it.

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

Pitching A Movie

        There are some very big, inherent flaws in the movie making industry. Not needing talent in order to be successful is the biggest flaw. Paris Hilton, Keanu Reeves and anyone that has directed either of these “movie stars” in a motion picture know what I mean. Just like the ratio of rich people that serve prison time (*cough* OJ Simpson, Vince Neil) to poor/middle class people serving prison time, we can see that if you have money, power, influence, parents with money or are in a successful rock band you can do whatever you want including kill some one, even if you have no talent.
        The rest of you have to earn it. Those of us that ONLY have talent are the ones that have to do legwork, prove what we can do and do it for little or no pay. Or… Am I wrong? No, I’m not wrong because If I was then 75,000 people would be filling a stadium every week to watch cancer research, live on TV instead of watching a bunch bitchy millionaires doing a victory dance for catching a ball or watching silver screen “stars” protesting a war.

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

Photo by Stephen G. Hurlbut Jr.

        This weekend, my parents were in San Diego and my dad was able to grab some photos of a local event I was not able to attend. The event was the raising of a plane that crashed into Otay Lake in 1945. The plane is Curtiss SB2C-4 Helldiver Dive Bomber.

Photo by Stephen G. Hurlbut Jr.

        On May 28, 1945, Navy pilot E.D. Frazar, and Army gunner, Joseph Metz were on a training mission in the air above Otay Reservoir in their Helldiver SB2C-4 when the engine cut out, as the Helldiver planes were prone to do, for reasons that have never been explained. Frazar, made the immediate decision to ditch the plane in Lower Otay Reservoir. Both Frazar and his completely-by-chance gunner, Metz had plenty of time to get out of the plane once it was in the lake. They swam to shore and hitchhiked back to their base. Ah, the 1940′s.

Photo By Stephen G. Hurlbut Jr.

Photo By Stephen G. Hurlbut Jr.

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

La Mesa Police Station

        There is one very weird thing about photography that is exactly the same as a pot of boiling water. A watched pot never boils. Have you ever popped a couple of pop tarts in the toaster and stared at the toaster waiting for the pop tarts to pop up? I have, and one of those weird quirks of fate is that things don’t happen unless you are not looking. Wherever your camera is pointed is where there will be no action. Those Pulitzer Prize winning moments happened on days just like today, except that someone happened to take a picture.

A Regular Thing Or A Record Of The Future

        Even though there is a rash of instances, right here in the United States Of America of photographers being arrested and detained for taking pictures from a public vantage point, it is not something that can be captured at will. It is an elusive beast that can hide behind the law, and people paid to uphold the law.

Just A Regular Photograph

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

All That Remains Of La Mesa’s Old Post Office

        Once the new post office opened up in La Mesa last year, the old building was slowly phased out and has now been torn down. No word of what will be constructed in it’s place or what is to become of the soon to be abandoned La Mesa police department building across the street. In the background is the city hall building for La Mesa.

Demolishing La Mesa’s Old Post Office

        There is a lot of construction going on in la Mesa right now, and most of the downtown area streets will be receiving face lifts over the next year or so. It will be nice to have another opportunity to document, photographically, the process of raising a building.

Along University Ave & La Mesa Blvd

        Just down the street and around the corner from the La Mesa post office, University Ave, has been dug into regularly over the last month or so. It seems that most of the work is cable/phone line related, with most of the in charge looking people having the AT&T logo on their hardhats.

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

Make Your Own Taco Night

        I am not a foodie, but I do like to make homemade versions of my favorite fast food menu items… Much healthier and better tasting versions. I like Taco Bell, and they have a seasoning mix available, so I bought a pound of premium ground beef, a fresh head of lettuce and some grated, sharp cheddar cheese. The point of this post is to say that both the Lawry’s and the Taco seasoning packs above require the same ingredients to make, but the Taco Bell seasoning is WAY better. If you like Taco Bell already, this is really for you because it has the distinct flavor of a Taco Bell taco, but because the ingredients are better and fresher, it tastes like the best Taco Bell taco ever made. As for the Lawry’s, it was way under seasoned, and tasted like it needed salt. Yeah, go with the Taco Bell seasoning, brown the beef on a Foreman Grill and prepare some surprisingly awesome tasting tacos!

©2010 The World Is Raw. All Rights Reserved.

Hidden Hummingbird Sanctuary In Balboa Park

        This trip to Balboa Park actually had a purpose, and that was to find a supposed hidden hummingbird sanctuary on Old Globe Way. I found it, right where it was supposed to be, around the back (north side) of the The San Diego Museum Of Art building. Up in the trees are a bunch of hummingbird feeders with brightly colored nectar. Unfortunately, there were no hummingbirds at the feeder, so after I do a little research to find out when hummingbirds are the most active, a return trip by me will have to made.

Hummingbird Feeders Sans Hummingbirds

        Without any hummingbirds at the feeders, I felt like I found a buried treasure chest that did not contain any treasure. That’s OK because I was in Balboa Park, and there is always a lot to see and photograph. This clutch of hummingbird feeders is very close to the Botanical Garden building, so I headed there next.

Water Lilies In Front Of The Botanical Garden Building

        The water lilies and lotus flowers are in full bloom right now and there are a lot of them. Hundreds of people, tourists and natives alike pose for photos in front of the reflecting pool, in front of the botanical garden building.

Lotus Flowers In Balboa Park

        If flowers and flower gardens are your thing, then you need to plan a trip to Balboa Park. There are 13 flower gardens, and most of them are very grand.

People Enjoying Balboa Park

        There are fish in the pools in front of the botanical building, and that is what the children above were looking at. Beyond them is another group of girls enjoying Balboa Park. There really is something for everyone, and there are restaurants for when you get hungry.

Playing Around The Fountain

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