High Noon, the movie classic, it’s all meaning and emotion in addition to being a midcentury “shoot’em-up-bang” western. For me it is a little dull, okay but dull. There’s not much emotion in it for me, just kabuki acting and lots of meaningful face shots. The “high noon” part does appeal though, in a literal sense. I attend the “Mad dogs and Englishmen in the noonday sun” services for the selected—or touched few. For me ideal weather is 105F and 2% humidity. It’s Las Vegas in the summertime weather, and I love being right out in the middle of it. It’s the best time to be out doing things, when it is hot, dry, and bright—photography included in said outings.
Now, that dramatic light at the beginning and end of the day, having fog for a picture, and waiting for dramatic clouds over the mountain peaks works for many photographs. Standing around waiting for the right conditions for a picture, or getting up at O’dark-thirity to catch the sunrise isn’t on my short list any more. I like to go out in the middle of the day and try and capture what I see at some fleeting moment and some transient place, then I meander on to the next scene that catches my interest. Snapshots are highly underrated in the sunny, mid-day world or any other for that matter.
By about 3:30-4:00 I am ready to wind up for the day, it’s always been that way. I’m a morning person, afternoon is siesta time. Sunset is time for having dinner, not running out to snap a picture of it, sunset not dinner. Photographing meals is another topic. Twilight when the reds are about gone and the remaining clear sky sunset light is blue, yellow, and green is a time to be getting some photographs. Early full dark is another time to be looking for houses, city lights, blue-on-blue ocean light, and industrial parks to photograph.
Walking around or driving around to see what I see at any time and trying to capture it in pixels is my photographic fun. Street photography might be the name. It is a broad category including buildings and the intersection of humanity with nature to boot. Getting snapshots looking through a window at a complex and chaotic world out there is what it is all about. Funky highlights, things cut off, complicated goings on, are what we see looking through the window of our eyes. Getting that vision inside a camera and allowing other people to see it in the same way does not work all too often, but when it does it’s worth it.
These snapshots were taken on the last day of June between noon and 1:30. I drove though various local neighborhoods looking for interesting things, parked when I found something, and walked around taking pictures in those interesting areas seen from the car. They were taken with a little Olympus PEN camera and a 50MM equivalent lens. It was a lot of fun, but I didn’t get the ones with dogs and Englishmen in them.
