Cool Used Book Store, Part 1

For book lovers, a place like this needs no explanation. Lovely Wife and I enjoy looking through this place.

I will, however, point out the jumble of books in the third photograph. See the chair there on the right? That's where the owner/cashier sits. If you walk into a book store, and are immediately met with such a massive pile of books right beside and behind the front counter and cash register, can you imagine what the rest of the store is like?

It's like finding treasure.

This is in the old downtown section of Melbourne, Florida.

By The Pool

I took these about five years ago, before we even had our Sony digital camera. These were taken on Fuji 100 print film.

The top photo is a 3ft rubber alligator that belonged to Number Two Daughter. In the mid 90s when I was in college (again) at Louisiana Tech, we were able to take a few days and go on vacation to Panama City Beach, Florida. This was the "big" souvenir that Number Two Daughter chose. We went to every tourist shop in the whole area and she ended up with this. She's like me in that regard. She agonizes and stews and does trade studies and totally stresses before buying anything. She and her friends would play with it in our pool.

The bottom one was also taken beside the pool, you can see decorative tile laid into the surface there, and the bright colors on the left are a stack of air mattresses for relaxing in the pool.

These were taken with a Nikon N90s and a sweet, 50mm f1.4 lens I had at the time.

Train Bridge, Monroe, Louisiana 1983 and 2006

This first one is of what was left of a wooden buildings built into the middle of an old train bridge across the Ouachita River, between Monroe and West Monroe, Louisiana. This is another photo from the same roll of Tri-X black and white film I posted two photos from on yesterday. That ratty looking old building still hanging on there in the middle of the bridge fascinated me. I have no idea what the purpose of such a structure was, above a river and with trains passing beneath it.

When I was last in Monroe, Louisiana, in December 2006, I took more pics of a train going across this same old bridge. The bridge had looked old in 1983, so I was surprised to see trains still crossing it. There's no hint anymore of the old building in the top photo, although this bottom photo shows that same section of the train bridge, only from the other side of it.

Golden

This past Saturday, I posted a couple of sunset photos that I took the previous evening.

These two photos were from the same batch that I took on Friday at sunset.

The top one is the golden colors of the sun reflecting on the side of a high dollar set of condominiums in Melbourne, Florida. The water is part of the Indian River Lagoon, our section of the intracoastal waterway.

The bottom photo is simply looking east toward the barrier island across the Indian River Lagoon. Beyond the island across the top of the photo is the Atlantic Ocean.

Sunday, Father's Day

In the U.S. we're celebrating Father's Day today.

I thought I'd put up a couple of pics of my father and father in law that I've taken.

This first photo is one of my Dad that I took in around 1983. He passed away in 1994. I miss him and am thinking about him today.

This photo is one that I took of my Father In Law, also around 1984. He was a good photographer and had enjoyed the hobby since his youth. This is him on the beach at Gulf Shores, Alabama adjusting his camera.

Also, today I wrote and posted pictures on my other blog about all the men in my life. I've been blessed to have grown up surrounded by good, hard-working, salt of the earth type men.

I'm proud to have known them.

Friday's Sunset At Both Ends Of My Nikon's Zoom

Yesterday evening, Lovely Wife and I picked up the Ford Taurus we own from having the air conditioner repaired. Last year, there was an incident of I-95 on the way to work one morning that resulted in a trailer's aluminum fender skewering the front of the car at 70mph.

We knew it would cost a good bit to have fixed, so I've mostly just driven it to and from work, sans air conditioning.

To celebrate the Taurus's ice cold air, we went for a drive to a park we like that is on the Indian River Lagoon.

As the sun went down, I took these two photos at either end of the zoom range of my 18-200mm Nikon zoom. I ABSOLUTELY LOVE, LOVE, LOVE THIS LENS!

I even remembered to stop down to a tiny f-stop to prevent the sun from blooming. It's nice and round like it should be.

Black And White #7

These are a couple of scans of black and white film from a photography course I took in college in the early eighties.

Lovley Wife (Lovely Fiance back then) went along with me as I scurried around Monroe and West Monroe, Louisiana looking for things to photograph.

This first photo was taken in West Monroe on the banks of the Ouachita River. There was this little house or building, that was all decrepit and overgrown. Old buildings such as this are always intriguing to me. It was once a new house or business or something that I'm sure the original owner was excited about and proud of. Click on it to enlarge and tell me what you see in the photo, OK?

This is a wider shot of the same building with the Ouachita River and a bridge in the background, from the same roll of film. (Tri-X)