Metered Parking

An exciting day today.

First, an appointment at the Family Medical Center for a blood sample -- the prelude to my annual physical examination in May.

On the way, I saw a Bentley Continental GT, to drive one for just a day is the top of my Bucket List. Marveling at the best of British engineering, the cars are manufactured in Crewe, which is 15 miles from my home town of Stoke-on-Trent, raised my spirits considerably. At least someone is in the money, probably a doctor from one of the many doctor's offices to be found in Riverside.

A couple of hours later, I had a visitor. No one particularly interesting, I am afraid, just a plumber who came to fix a leaking pipe on the hot water heater.

These days, those events qualify as "excitement". To think, I once had my finger on the pulse of breaking news stories across the globe. That was exciting and I also got paid to do it.

With my busy morning out of the way, I set out on my photographic walk. I had a retake of a shot I took a few days ago in mind and duly accomplished that. I always like to have more than one subject in the bag and so walked on, thinking of other retakes.

A few days ago, I set out to retake a particular shot -- a motorbike parked in front of rows of electricity meters at a condominium complex. It had been parked in the same spot two days running but on the third, the day I was counting on it, the motorbike was gone and a sign had been posted saying, "No Parking For Bikes."

I am, if nothing else, persistent and decided to check the spot out again, fully expecting the space to be empty. Imagine my surprise on discovering the motorbike in situ and the sign removed.

The B&W conversion was done in Adobe Bridge, following a method described by Dutch photographer Wouter Brandsma using Lightroom. I recommend visiting his Web site.

Wouter's method of B&W conversion basically involves desaturating the individual colours that make up the image and then adjusting their luminance. The end result is a slightly more contrasty B&W version than I usually obtain with Photoshop CS3 but it does takes a little longer.

Like I have got loads of other things to do. :-)

Zeiss Planar T* ZE 1,4/50.