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Whaddya Got to Say?!?!

Over a billion people have stand alone cameras or phones equipped with camera, and the world is awash in digital images… conservative estimates are 14 trillion photos per year! What are all these photographs about? Let’s speculate about some common ones:

  • Family and friends
  • Selfies documenting activities, trips etc.
  • Documenting activities and objects observed
  • Artistic expressions
  • and so on… just look at Tumblr, Facebook, Pinterest or Instagram

I’ve done all of the above with either an iPhone, a pocket camera (rare nowadays) or a pro-type DSLR Digital Single Lens Reflex); however, the most gratifying are the artistic expressions that I try to create using the camera.

Using a DSLR, for me, is a craft in how the technology of a moderately complex mechanism is brought to bear on a subject, along with the associated post-processing software. But most importantly, it is a medium for creative self-expression.

Creative self-expression is where the rubber meets the road. It’s a combination of the eye for a composition and the execution of a vision by effective use of the craft. Most importantly, I think, for effective creative self-expression one is best served by having something to say with the image. This can be seen on Tumblr, where the most effective photographers exhibit a thematic sensibility with their images. In other words, the most effective photographers have something to say with their photographs about a particular subject. That’s not to say that photographers need to limit themselves to a single subject; however, flitting around all over the place does not give viewers a sense for your identity as a photographer.

For me, one of the best example for what I have to say involves tall grass prairie wildflowers. The countryside of Iowa, where I live is dotted with restored prairies and some ancient relic locations that have existed for thousand of years. Every summer, the prairies bloom an incredible variety of flowers which are quite fun to photograph using close-up or macro techniques.

When a thematic area is addressed in detail, one’s eye may develop to the point of creating a relatively unique view and expression of the subject to the point that a reputation for expertise is developed. For example, I’ve been requested to shoot prairie images for my university’s Tall Grass Prairie Center!

Get proficient and create a body large enough and then you can do an art show… share what you have to say about a subject! Below is an art show of my prairie and landscape (another favorite subject) photographs at our local downtown coffee shop.

Let me wrap up here as this blog entry may be getting too long… Many times I’ve heard others say “I’d like to get into photography”… Here’s what you do: get a camera, learn how to use it, take photographs and demonstrate what you have to say about a subject!

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On the bedstand…

I’ll be with this tome for a while, weighing in at just over 700 pages. Because I read the previous two books in the trilogy, I was pretty charged up when I first noticed this book was to be published and pre-ordered it on Amazon… Despite my early order, it has been sitting around for several months waiting for me… I have to steel myself for a Don Winslow book as they are typically very dark…

The Border is the concluding book in a trilogy focusing on the illegal drug trade that filters up into the U.S. primarily from Mexico, but also involves Central America. It’s a really deep dive into Mexican politics, corruption and the every day people trying to carve out a life who are often victimized. The other two books were, The Power of the Dog and The Cartel. If you ever saw the wonderful film Sicario, then that would give you some idea of the subject matter.

This book in particular, as noted by the title, is particularly topical given the daily turmoil on the southern border of the U.S. According to the reviews I’ve read Winslow offers his own dark insights as to what is really happening, going deeper and on beyond was the mainstream media offers.

I’ll be leaving next week for a road trip to North Carolina with my guitars, and this book will be along for the ride.

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Moving on from Adobe…

Capture One workspace and post-processed image of prairie bloom…

Back in 2005 I purchased my first DSLR (Digital Single Lens Reflex) camera and was quickly appalled at how flat and drab looking the photographs looked onscreen despite being shot with a “dead-on” exposure value. What I learned quickly was that DSLR images must be post-processed to draw out the essence of the image.

Often fine tuning included adjustments to:

  • Highlights and Shadows
  • Contrast
  • Saturation of color
  • Brightness
  • Clarity

This had to be done using post-processing software and it had to be purchased separately from the camera. At first I used Nikon’s NX, but their support and the functioning of the product became very sketchy, which was a shame as it worked quite well. Then I transferred to Apple’s Aperture which was outstanding, easy to use, effective and, over the course of time, I happily went through several upgraded versions of it and it only got better.

While I was plugging along with Apple’s software, there was an ongoing debate among the photographic cognoscenti about Aperture vs Adobe’s Lightroom and which one was best. Lightroom would eventually dominate the landscape as it worked on multiple computer platforms. Even so, I was very pleased with Aperture and saw no reason to switch to what appeared to be a more clunky Lightroom until Apple, as they do, pulled the rug out from under me and killed support for Aperture, which meant that as Apple’s operating system was upgraded, Aperture would no longer work in the near future.

So… reluctantly I switched to using Adobe’s Lightroom for post processing. Fortunately, my university supplied the Adobe suite to professor’s as a perk and I had copies on my office desk and personal MacBook. Lightroom worked just fine and also recognized plugins that I had been using with Aperture, namely the Nik plugins that are so useful for somewhat fancier post processing, such as local spot changes to an image or state-of-the-art black and white conversions.

Then I retired from the university. Silly me… I thought that as an Emeritus Professor I would still have access to Adobe software… wrong… literally the day after my last day, I got thrown under the bus… I was cut off and no more Adobe Lightroom… I was loath to use Adobe on my own because of the egregious monthly charges they insist upon and it was just not that good… Constantly being upgraded, it never seemed to improve and always remained, in my judgment, a bit clunky.

So I shopped around for a replacement and frankly there are not many. Only one stands out as a legitimate contender. As with the Adobe products you can buy a monthly subscription to Capture One, but Instead I purchased a stand alone copy. My wife subsidized the cost as part of a birthday gift.

So far, I am very pleased with Capture One. It does everything that post processing software should do both precisely and quickly and works well with my Nik Plugins. Since photography is one of my important retirement endeavors I am delighted to have a decent, beyond Adobe, post-processing platform!

Capture One post processed image of a common prairie forb (bloom)
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On the bed stand…

After slogging through to completion a history of the U.S. involvement in World War I, which was actually a rather dry accounting, I was in the mood for a summer page turner… Fortunately, I had one on hand, courtesy of a birthday gift from my son Parker…

This is the second book I’ve read by Blake Crouch… He happens to be a graduate of the University of North Carolina, so I feel a modest connection to him. The first book, Dark Matter, was a sci-fi adventure involving quantum mechanics and multiple universes and it was entertaining enough for me to consider reading his new one. Recursion is about the nexus of time and memory and thus far is a great/fun and interesting read. I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart of stories about time travel and the paradoxes it entails, with the possible exception of Star Trek episodes where time travel was too frequently used to solve improbable plots…

Up to this point in my reading, I would recommend this book…

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Not Jimi Hendrix at Woodstock… but good enough…

CVAGA performance at Overman Park bandshell… About my clothes… I was at the gym earlier and thought I would have a chance to change… I was mistaken…

I’ve written before that playing in front of people is equal amounts of stress I and excitement; however, the most important thing about it to me is that performing helps me to take myself more seriously as a musician, such that I am… this past Friday night I had the opportunity to join several guitar players on stage at Overman Park in Cedar Falls, Iowa. The “concert” took place the couple of hours before dark, after which a film is shown on an outdoor screen… that night it was Ironman…

Each musician or group of musicians was granted a 15 minute time slot, which in reality was more like a suggestion, as some players seemed to linger on the stage for much longer…

the Bandshell looking outwards…

The entire experience actually lasted quite a long time. As a player, I was asked to help set up. I arrived at 4:30 in the afternoon and was early, so I took the opportunity to climb on the stage and look out at the park before people would arrive in a couple of hours. The weather was lovely for a mid-August date… Days like that are the payoff for suffering through long, brutal Iowa winters.

  • Sound system set-up…
  • CVAGA Banner at the Bandshell…

It was not long before the other performers and the sound tech arrived for set up. The sound system was a real pro rig, including monitors for the players which I had never used and was delighted to get the experience. You can see in the image above right that the event is hosted by CVAGA or the Cedar Valley Acoustic Guitar Association. Rick Vanderwall, a friend of mine, and original founder of the Association invited me to perform. I was somewhat ambivalent, but he insisted, and I am glad, in the end, that I agreed.

Overman Park Bandshell during set up

You can see from the image to the left that Bob’s Guitars underwrites the concerts. The Bob was there with his wife Avis and their dog Scout. You will most often find them all at his shop when its open. I’ve written about their shop before…

Yours truly awaiting my turn for sound check. Note my pedal array at my feet which allows me to sculpt my own idiosyncratic interpretation of country blues.

It was a bit nerve wracking waiting for sound checks to occur. Here I am on the left patiently waiting for my turn. Despite the fact that the host organization is an acoustic society, I was told there were no hard/fast rules, so I decided to play my semi-hollow bodied Taylor T3, along with my pedal array. My teacher and family all concurred with my decision to go electric. Ah yes… I think that Bob Dylan would have approved too… Other than one snide comment that I brushed off, everyone else was cool with my choice.

I played a 15 minute set of finger-style country blues. Fortunately, I got to play first, which is what I really like to do at open mic events. i.e. Get it over with! Though there are lyrics to each of the tunes I played I did not sing. At this stage of my player development, the finger-style patterns are too complicated for me to sing simultaneously. Further, I am not confident that my singing voice would complement my playing anyway. My set included the following tunes:

  • Corinna Corinna; traditional… arranged by Stef Grossman
  • Railroad Bill; traditional… arranged by Etta Baker
  • Police and a Sergeant; Rev. Robert Wilkins… arranged by Catfish Keith
  • Cocaine Blues; TJ Arnall… arranged by Stef Grossman
  • Shake Sugaree; Elizabeth Cotton… arranged by Stef Grossman

I think I played reasonably well… actually as good as I can at this stage of my development. Iowa audiences are typically very kind and they acted appreciative. My family and friends thought I did well too, but it’s always hard to tell if they are being nice or really mean it… My wife Nettie was particularly pleased with the quality of the sound system and how my playing came across, so that sounded like a legit “mazel tov!” I was most excited that the sound guy, who hears a lot of performances was delighted with the combination of my choice of music, my playing and the tone sculpting that I do with my array of pedals.

Me and my main-man Grant…

In the end I was glad I did it and I was equivalently glad when it was over with. Here I am afterwards relaxing with my main-man and fellow musician Grant, who was kind enough to capture my performance.

All’s well that ends well…

my travel rig the night of the show…
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Best place to buy a guitar?

Donald H. at Bob’s Guitar working on my Taylor 914ce…

Where is the best place to buy a guitar? Pawn shop? Yard sale? A friend? Or more likely, if you are looking for a premium guitar, the best place may be a music store or perhaps online.


Based on my experience, you are best served purchasing a guitar at a local shop that focuses primarily on that particular instrument. The store should offer a premium line or two of guitars, indicating a higher level of seriousness.

Why buy at a local shop? Most importantly, guitars can be idiosyncratic artifacts; consequently, playing the guitar you buy before hand can be quite illuminating. Even so for acoustic guitars this may still be a bit of a gamble because new guitar woods are a bit tight and not ready to yield their final tone… the wood requires time to open up, which can take a year or so… Nevertheless, if it sounds good new, overtime it will probably sound even better.

My friend Grant T. giving a Duo-Sonic a test run…

A local business too will service the instrument if required. You’d probably be surprised at how often that eventuality occurs. Further, a new premium guitar like a Taylor will be under warrantee and the store that you purchase it from will service it for you unless there is some type of catastrophic failure which requires return to the manufacturer.

Local guitar treasure and Bob’s guitar store staff, Jacob L.

A well run local store will offer the expertise of its staff when evaluating an instrument, amp, pedal, tuner, what have you… This is much better than making the decision in a vacuum in front of a computer screen.

Not just new guitars can be found in a typical guitar store. In fact, I’ve purchased two used instruments from my local establishment. Guitars are like cars, in a way… new ones lose value as soon as you drive it off the lot, so getting a used guitar, if in excellent condition can be a great savings!

Not all communities are lucky enough to have a good guitar store. Just recently I learned that Rochester, MN lost its excellent store, Avalon Music. If you are a guitar player, it would serve you well to throw some business to the local store to keep it going.

Bob G. (the Bob) and his dog Scout. Bob is also one of the best guitar players in town.

I am not sure if all guitar stores are like the one in my town, Bob’s Guitars. I think perhaps there are some others, like Rudy’s in Manhattan, NY where a musical community exists around and within it. Spend anytime in the store and you will see the best musicians in the region constantly passing through. Further, if you are a frequent customer in Cedar Falls, you get to hang out with Bob (the Bob) and the other staff and there’s quite a lot that can be learned from them.

In sum, a local guitar store can be a local treasure… perhaps the best place to buy a guitar too… In a future blog post, I will speak to buying a guitar online, which I’ve also done for better or worse…

Grant T. getting a sweetheart deal from Bob G. on a pre-owned Taylor acoustic…
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Guitars and the company’s that support their product…

I do not own a Martin guitar, but there are enough well-established guitarists who swear by them to make me believe that to certain players they possess their share of fairy dust and music magic. I think the same is true for Gibson guitars too, both acoustic and electric.

Me… I prefer Taylor guitars… On and off through the years, I’ve owned eight of them. My first serious solid wood acoustic guitar was a Taylor that I used to replace a starter Yamaha back around 1994. That was a spruce and mahogany large bodied “dread” best used for flat-picking. It was traded a long time ago but is probably still serving someone well because Taylor builds an excellent instrument. Since that time, I’ve accumulated two Taylor acoustics and three electrics, and then there’s another Taylor acoustic that I handed down to my son Parker.

Taylor 510, like my first purchase…

Acoustic guitars (and for that matter electrics) produce their own idiosyncratic sounds based upon design philosophy, so Taylor’s, Martin’s and Gibson’s all have their own characteristic tones. For me the Taylor’s offer a nicely balanced tonal range and great presence so they just appeal to my ear. If you ever become more interested in Taylor Guitars there is a wonderful memoir by Bob Taylor about the founding of the company.

Bob Taylor memoir… an excellent read…

Beyond the instrument itself, another thing I love about Taylor guitars is the support offered by the company itself. I’ve had two instruments that required repair, both of which did not fall strictly within their warranty; however they stood by their product and repaired them (actually as I write one is currently in for repair, but that’s another story), just charging me for shipping to and from California where their main factory is located. For me, that kind of product support is a huge difference maker.

This morning I discovered the below attached video demonstrating the periodic maintenance that an acoustic guitar requires. In this case it is a Martin having some neck, nut and bridge repair work done at their home factory in Pennsylvania. My small bodied Taylor 812 required bridge replacement similar to what’s seen in this video. A large chip broke off the bridge when I was changing its strings. Taylor did a lovely job replacing it. You can surmise in this posting as well as elsewhere in this weblog, I am quite fond of Taylor Guitars.

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Avalon Music no more…

Avalon Music as it existed when I was involved…

Yesterday, when I was doing some background research for this weblog, I discovered, to my sadness, that Avalon Music in Rochester, MN no longer exists. Apparently they went out of business a year or so ago. As far as I can tell, this is the only store that offered “higher end” guitars in Rochester.

With disruptor online stores like Reverb, it is probably very challenging to own and operate a successful music store in a moderate sized town. I imagine that the nearby Twin Cities were also a source of serious competition. Of course, this is all speculation as I have no idea what really happened to the store, other than the proprietor selling the building for a little over a million dollars.

Avalon Music was a very nice store with a broad inventory of instruments, and a nice selection of Taylor Guitars. It was a very important music store to me as it is where I reinvested myself in guitar playing while at the Mayo Clinic for a seven week medical treatment cycle. I bought a very nice Taylor 914ce there and took lessons from an excellent fellow and they still influence me today .

The store itself was located on the main floor and lessons occurred upstairs in a series of rooms. There was a nice “living room” up there to await your lesson and to warm up. I learned some fascinating facts about that building while surfing around trying to understand why the store closed down.

The building was originally the Northwestern Hotel established by Sam Sternberg in 1919 where Jews could stay as the other hotels surrounding the Mayo Clinic would not house them… ugh… In 1944, a new owner changed the name to the Avalon Hotel and it became the first to host African American guests, including Duke Ellington. Mississippi John Hurt popularized a country blues tune called “Avalon Blues” and though I am not sure a connection exists, there sure might be.

The Avalon Hotel…

The building has been converted to offices and another of many Bistro’s that come and go in Rochester. The only constant in this world is change…

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Railroad Bill… a Piedmont Country Blues tune…

Piedmont Country Blues is a finger style guitar blues with the thumb alternating on the bass strings and the fingers (varying in number depending on the player) plucking out the melody. Etta Baker from North Carolina was one of the most beloved players of Country Blues.

Etta Baker

Among her many well known tunes, Railroad Bill is one of the best known and most recognized. This tune was played by the late Ms. Baker as an instrumental; however there are lyrics that speak to the actions of an African American train-robbing desperado. Apparently Railroad Bill was done wrong by a train company and he sought revenge by waylaying trains and robbing them until he met his unfortunate end.

Railroad Bill seems deceptively simple on the chart, but it’s not… getting the phrasing correct is an ongoing challenge; however, I am getting pretty close. Here below is my current rendering of the tune.

You’ll note that unlike most Piedmont Blues players, I am playing electric guitar (Taylor T3 Custom) through a variety of tone pedals giving it a bit of a haunting sensibility.

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Currently on the bed stand…

During the July 4th weekend, Nettie, Parker and I went to Kansas City. Among our activities, including witnessing the musical Hamilton, we also visited the World War I Museum and Memorial. It was, for the most part an excellent museum with attributes such as simulated trenches, shell blasted holes and a deep collection of military hardware and uniforms.

In my judgement, the absolute highlight of the museum was the introductory film about the root causes of World War I. The film itself pointed out how obscure the causes for the war were. Most of us are aware that the spark initiating the war was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo. If you’re like me the first reaction to that fact is: What?!?! There were actually a confluence of causes, many of which seem to still exist today including great disparities in wealth and national boundaries eroding in light of cultural differences across populations…

Archduke Ferdinand

Deeper into the museum there was another film located in this very interesting “simulated battlefield” theater which spoke to the war itself and elaborated on the forms of conflict, particularly trench warfare. The film ends with the briefest mention of U.S. involvement in the war, which I found to be unsettling. This was an American museum was it not? The museum staff were unapologetic about the film’s short shrift treatment of General Pershing and the AEF (American Expeditionary Force), suggesting somewhat evasively that it was controversial.

So, I picked up a nice used copy of Yokelson’s Forty-Seven Days off of Amazon to dig deeper and, so far, it’s an excellent read. In short, Pershing and the AEF, at great cost to American lives, broke the trench war stalemate and helped, in large part, to end the war. The controversy the museum staff alluded to had to do with the unequal treatment of African-American soldiers. The preponderance of American soldiers who fought on the front lines were white; however, there were some black soldiers who fought under the leadership of the French, but most worked behind the battle lines helping with logistics.