It's Freezing (Up)

No, not me! The damn camera. My main camera is jamming, and I don't mean dancing smooth moves to the latest grooves, or improvising wildly off a hot chord progression.

Dead.

Me friggin' main camera is only delivering grief. And just when I was sort of starting to get back into it a little. It's a Canon Power Shot SX1o IS, my second in this series. Even though this has more zoom power, I think I liked the first one better. This has been a slightly disappointing camera. I'm very disappointed in the noise I get from it on a gray day.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/tooloose-letrek/4398395318/

The sky is putrid. I don't have fancy software to fix it up. Nope. Just old Paint Shop Pro, for us poor saps that can't afford Photo Shop.

The repairs will be covered under factory warranty, so except for shipping, no cost to me. The cost is measured more in lost time and killing my interest in getting out for shots.

I still have a camera to shoot, but another disappointment for me. The Lumix is capable of some nice shots, but I have some issues with shake. I don't think the anti-shake mechanism works properly. No factory warranty on that one, and that's the way I got it out of the box. But I must admit, in ideal circumstances, it does make a nice sharp image.

I tried a Fujifilm S2000 for a day and was horribly disappointed. It's not a great camera and costs roughly half the price of my Power Shot. The zoom was horrible. And it brought back a very bad taste in my heart, too. My first better digital camera was a Fujifilm Finepix S5000. It was great fun for me to get away from a totally retarded Kodak Point-N-Shoot 1.3MP junk box and into a camera with some controls. I think I had a little Nikon Coolpix in between the two, but beside the low resolution, it totally lacked any controls. I liked it, though. Anyway, back to my Fujifilm. It had problems out of the box and I didn't attend to them right away. Had I, I probably would have gotten a brand new replacement. Someone in a photo forum convinced me that it was a power issue and not a camera issue...and I didn't realize that I had such a small time frame for the right remedy, a new camera. So I got on the repair train ride. It went back to the factory tw0 or three times (who's counting?) and the problem was never resolved really. I was able to get photos out of it, but at times, the camera just went bonkers on me. I don't know why they couldn't fix it properly. But oh well, right?

I was disappointed in Fuji, to say the least. So when I had one in my hand the other day, for a few hours, I was on high alert. The zoom sucked, as did the display.

No more Fujifilm for me!

And then I learned about a new model coming out next month, a HS10. Man, it has features, and a super-dooper zoom, 30X. I can't even imagine what I could have done with that much zoom, and still stay out of firing range when I drove around Detroit for photos.

Detroit. Wow, what a change in sentiment for me. I still don't want to do what I used to do, and I'm thinking of getting some professional help to aid me in understanding why I did what I did in the first place. Perhaps I have a death wish? I just watched a local film about thugs in the city, mostly drug dealings and violence as the theme. I guess when one is feeling that disadvantaged in life, the value of life is minimal. Popping someone is no big deal. There can't be any thought behind that bullet ripping through and ending a human life. Life is shit so I shit on life?

But while I was driving down the streets of Detroit, there was a lot going on behind the scenes, drug deals and violence. It wouldn't be anything for someone to pop a white boy driving where he shouldn't be driving. I've written before that I was nearly car-jacked (or worse?) twice in my travels, and nearly accosted on foot a handful of times. The first time, I was in a mixed black-Arabic neighborhood early on a Sunday morning and two guys in a car were doing their best to cut in front of me, and probably stop me. I don't think they wanted my car because it wasn't much of a car, and I don't think they wanted sex because I'm not appealing that way. Every time we got to a stop/yield sign, they tried to pass me, but I gunned it and had a goal in mind, to reach a street some blocks away that I knew was populated with security guards, guarding some new cars in storage at the Michigan State Fair grounds. I won. As soon as I hit that street, they backed off and went looking for some other action. Another time, on the other side of town, in an area known for prostitution and crack, a pick-up truck pulled up next to me and when I decided to leave, left with me. And kept leaving with me. Fortunately I was driving a V8 and s/he was in an old pick-up and I was able to hit a main street before him or her. I never looked over at the driver and would not have been surprised to see a gun pointing at me. We got onto that main street and s/he pulled in front of me. There wasn't a cop in sight! I took a hard left just in front of some oncoming traffic and escaped down a side street.

Then one day I was pulled over against the curb, watching a nun eating a sandwich outside a church, just on the border of an area called DelRay, one of the nastiest areas in the city. I noticed some movement in my rear view mirror and saw a guy creeping up along the parked cars, heading in my direction. He was about a car length away and I got the hell out of there. When I was in my car, I always had the engine running, in gear, foot on the brake, with a clear escape path.

I'm really not anxious to see how many more of these 'adventures' I can have, just to feed you guys some interesting photos. And on top of that, I feel like I'm invading people's private lives. I hate it when someone takes my photo without permission, so why would I want to do that to others?

Not so many people stop by my photo gallery anymore.

On top of that, anybody who reads my comments know how I feel about what's going on in this world now anyway. The rich, the VERY rich, are in control. They, along with corporations, have a commanding lead on the American people, and what makes matters much worse is the fact that the American people (hell, the world's people, as it isn't just happening here. It can't happen here? It is!) don't seem to care that much. I used to think Americans were a people who respected freedom and liberty, but now learn they cower in fear of 'terrorists' and fully support an undefined 'war' against a principle. Hell, this is stuff right out of the pages of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. And obviously whoever is behind all this studied that book in great detail. Doublespeak is everywhere. A 'clean air' act that pours massive pollution into the environment, for instance. Bush is on record as using a quote right out of the Orwell classic, "War is Peace."

And now, I have no idea what's going on.

It's not just in Amerika, either. It's happening all around the globe.

So here I am, at odds with the world. I have some photo projects in mind, some involving the only friends I have, action figures and figurines I have accumulated over the years. Don't worry, I have some ideas that will no doubt be plenty offensive to some people, though that is certainly not my intention behind the concepts. But I'm having trouble with this because I find I do much better with my photography chancing upon something rather than setting it up. Maybe I don't have a good sense of layout design, I don't know. What I probably should do is get someone else to lay out the props, giving them a general idea of what I want to do, and then going to the scene and nab my shots.

That, and a horrible economy, is what's going on. I'm working on developing my business more and that has me hopping. And I'm back to work on my book, a non-fiction book, that I have been working on for years. I don't know why I even care, but I'd like to leave something useful behind, when I'm a goner.

Not sure what I'll be able to grind out with the camera with my main weapon in repair.

Maybe I should just get a lobotomy and an iPhone, watch American Idol and buy lotto tickets. Oh yeah, and pick up a six pack on the way home.