Beautiful Night at Marine Street Beach La Jolla
The water has heated up to 71 degrees. So warm in fact that the Anchovies are swimming in schools of tens of thousands right up to the beach. Like black swarms of fish. These body bathers don’t mind.
Some Sweet Shots from 4th of July at Mom’s
Another 4th of July comes and goes and another awesome party at mom’s house. Danny worked on making some pretty terrific BBQ and many of the kiddy kids were there. What an awesome day and here are some awesome shots we took
Isabella looking dainty on the couch with a flag
Isabella laughs to herself, thinking we are all so silly.
isabella looks quickly to the left to see if anyone is watching
This is the way Isabella gives Camille a hug
What a patriot.
Geno slips off to take a sip of Slurpee at the Gas Station
Father and daughter at the end of a long day
Patrick waving the flag
The 4th of July was Dad’s Day to Shine
We’re getting ready for the 4th of July here. It was a big holiday with our family growing up and maybe our favorite holiday of the year. We used to go to Glorietta Bay in Coronado, rent a hotel room, gorge on candy and watch the fireworks when it was all said and done. It was Dad’s best holiday and one where he could go to the extreme in a big way.
We were always so excited and it was a holiday that my dad planned for us all. Some of my best memories growing up were getting sun-burned in the pool, ordering 45 hamburgers from McDonalds through the drive through, going through Von’s with Dad and dumping box after box of candy and junk food into the cart while he said, “go for it my man”. We could not believe our good fortune. We were Chula Vista kids going to Coronado and acting like spoiled millionaires in a hotel. Dad loved it. We loved it too.
This is one of the many cars that dad collected in his later years. He had probably amassed $20,000 to $30,000 in old replica cars from the Franklin mint. Just another thing he did in a big way. This was my favorite so I keep it on the mantle above the fireplace. I took it down today to take a picture and remember him.
The Problem of Word Inflation and Photography
It seems every news and blog site that I visit these days in inundating me with stunning photos. Sometimes the photos are labeled “Jaw Dropping” or “Amazing” or “Incredible” and usually the pictures are great to be honest but just as often they are just above average pictures with exaggerated headlines.
What’s going on here? When did every picture become stunning? And if every picture is stunning, is any picture stunning really? I mean how stunned can I get?
If I’m initially stunned into a stupor looking at a Jeffrey Mcgillicuty’s picture of the sunset, do I get progressively more stunned as I view pictures of Aunty Ellie’s shot of her steak and egg breakfast in the Bahamas? Do I get even further stunned to the point that I cannot drop my jaw to the floor for the jaw-dropping shot of Hawaii that Yahoo says I will not believe? How much more comatose into stundom can I get?
It’s called word inflation and it’s a little out of control
I was in Peru years ago and as I crossed the border they made me cash 60 dollars US into Peruvian dollars because there was rampant hyper inflation and they wanted US Dollars in the country. I gave them $60 and they gave me 15 huge stacks of Peruvian dollars that measured at least a foot high. I felt like a millionaire. By the time I left Peru two days later that same stack of bills was worth about half of what I changed it for.
Me and Aaron and just a portion of the near worthless money we had.
Well, the same thing seems to have happened in describing photography. I did a Google Trend search on the word “stunning” and I found it’s use on the internet nearly doubled in less than 10 years. Apparently a heck of a lot more things are stunning than ever before.
Not an excellent graph but it does show a doubling of the word “Stunning” as it appears on the internet
And the word jaw dropping appears to be just as bad
What can we do?
Well the first thing we need to do is find two new words that far surpass stunning and jaw dropping in describing photography. Maybe we can use “brain paralyzing” in place of stunning and “heart stopping” in place of jaw dropping to tell people about our awesome photographs. Since stunning has become so mundane we need to up the ante a bit. Or we could simply refer to great photographs for what they are – great photographs, and good photographs for what they are- good photographs.
Now, I leave you with a brain paralyzing photo.
