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Tag: Flickr

In the Path

Mattress

My main way of getting to work over the past decade has been on a bicycle; much of my ride has been on the Jeff Davis bike path. It’s so much less stressful to me than driving a car, and I am so glad I don’t have to start my day in an automobile. Nevertheless, I do encounter obstacles and hazards from time to time. I try not to get annoyed. But as I’ve noted previously, it’s “interesting how much annoyance seems to cluster around transportation. Getting from Point A to Point B is fraught with stress-inducing potential.”

As I often ride with a camera, it’s become an almost involuntary reflex to document problems on the bike path as I run into them. And so, just as I recently realized that I now have a little archive of back to school photos, I also realized I have an archive of bike-path problems. In fact, the fifth photo I posted to Flickr was of a mattress on the path, way back in 2004.

So I’d like to present this set of…

Deaf Government Area

Deaf Government Area

This photo recently became my most “favorited” on Flickr. With 26 favorites it has surpassed Big Cloud, which is gratifying because I think this is a much more interesting shot.

I took this one on October 13, 2006 in Gentilly, on Mirabeau Avenue near the London Avenue Canal breach. In the background you can see vacant flooded homes becoming overgrown with vegetation. You can even see some waterlines on the sign itself.

Need I say more? I think the power of this photo is that it tells a story all on its own. You don’t really need any of my explanations.

Bridging the Gap

I started taking digital pictures with increasing frequency after moving to New Orleans in 1999. But I didn’t start using Flickr in earnest until sometime in 2004.

So now I am bridging that gap. Over the last month or so, in what is laughingly referred to as my “free time,” I’ve managed to excavate 260 photos from the depths of my hard drive, covering the time from July 15, 1999 to December 31, 2001. I’ve uploaded them to Flickr as part of a set I call Less Old Stuff (in contrast to Really Old Stuff).

This grouping encompasses a number of other photo clusters, such as the aforementioned Day 991016, Thanx00, Xmas00, Carnival01, and Day 011027. There’s also the painfully artsy Dead Gas Station, the experimental Lunar Variations, the amusing-only-to-me Sliptych and a set documenting the local Greens moving in to an office in Gert Town. And who could forget 2001 The Space Odyssey?

Here are a few of my personal favorites to whet your appetite: