My photographic style centers on the use of natural light to visualize emotion and evoke memory. The evolution of my style began early in the year 2002, with an imperative to capture personal and fleeting memories.
My son and I traveled to New York City, to view the first Saint Patrick's Day parade after September 11, 2001. My work from that parade was so successful and satisfying (see "New York Fire Department, Saint Patrick's Day 2002") I just never stopped.
On Causeway Road there is a turnoff an information placard for Dunseverick Castle near a cottage. This is the left side of the placard with the historical context. The right side is natural history of the area.
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Here we can see the two partial wall, remains of a gate house, destroyed in the 17th century. I can imagine making the climb up the foot path, examine the earthworks from before the Viking invasions, middle of the first millennium A.D. Recall a visit by Saint Patrick, trodding the path from his Easter fire on the Hill of Slane.
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The Rincons are one of 42 Sky Mountain islands isolated from each other by the gradual warming and drying climate changes since the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. While this marvelous environment of oak and pine forests only accessible with much effort on foot, it is literally visible from every point of the Tucson valley and million human inhabitants.
Here is a project completed for a “Fundamentals of Photography” refresher course. The task is to use a variety of lenses of my choice to document scene from my surroundings. These photographs document a family heirloom, mouse figurines collected by my wife, Pam’s, mother, Patricia Crist, assembled by Pam into two display cases with assorted figures created by Pam’s daughter, Denna.
24 mm wide angle fixed lens, f/22
50 mm fixed lens, f/6.3
70 – 300 variable lens, f/9.0
70 – 300 variable lens used for macro photography
Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Our last “FastPass” was for the EPCOT Forever fireworks and special effects spectacular. COVID-19 rendered the “forever” to be futile pretension, though during our wait Pam struck up a conversation with a couple who returned year after years to EPCOT, people who miss it and look forward to reopening.
We found the “FastPass” venue lacking, as there were many structures in the line of sight, as you can see from the IPhone 7 videos in this post. In retrospect, the area in front of the Canada Pavilion was open and might be a better location — when Epcot reopens, you’d need to get their early to grab a space.
“Dodge the bullet” is rather too active for our EPCOT experience as we did nothing to social distance, cover our faces and, even, attended a sit down restaurant. “Dumb luck” is a better characterization, but it makes a poor chapter heading.
As our time in Florida passed more information leaked from China, posted by their citizens on-line. I recalled the chaotic scenes from the hospital, frightened people screaming in packing halls. Seeking to protect ourselves during the flight home, we sought out N95 masks and all medical masks were sold out. We found packs of N95 masks marketed for auto body work, in Walmart. Wore them on the 2 hour flight home as the only “wierdos” wearing masks as several fellow passengers coughed uncontrollably.
Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
Epcot is a different experience at night, in many ways an enhancement, a gathering of glamour, smoothing of edges.
These few photographs and one video of the Japan Pavilion exemplify this effect. We were blessed with a full moon.
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Exterior of the Tokyo Dining restaurant
Tokyo Dining is a traditional sushi restaurant featuring served by native Japanese. Our service was efficient and attentive from a premium seat acquired through our on-line reservation through a smart phone Disney app. Traffic is immense. I can only think of the research from China that demonstrated transmission of COVID-19 to nine diners by one infected person. We learned in April 2020 a high percentage of infections are non-symptomatic.
Blue Roof Pagoda with Full Moon
After dinner Pam and I enjoyed views from the spacious terrace. All photos for this post are from that time. Many of our family gifts from the trip were from the large and well stocked Mitsukoshi Department Store. It is the only remaining branch of the company in North America.
Several times in the “aughts” (2000 – 2009) Pam and I visited Ottawa, the capital of Canada, for work. We’d leave on a weekend to enjoy some personal time before the appointments.
It is sad, I could find no photographs of Ottawa to share with this post. We loved the European feel of the city.
Our exposure to the Canada pavilion was a walk by at sunset on the way to our Japan dinner reservation.
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This building is very much like the Chateaus of Ottawa on the river Rideau and Ottawa rivers.
Copyright 2020 All Rights Reserved Michael Stephen Wills
