On Any Sunday

As on the second Wednesday of every month, we had our ASMP NJ chapter Salon last week. The invited guest from “outside” was Grayson Dantzic, who showed his father’s images of Billie Holiday in 1950’s Newark (his father, Jerry Dantzic, an old friend of mine, is confined to bed due to a degenerative nerve disorder, he’s 81).

We had a great time looking at Jerry’s images but I was just a bit discouraged by the fact that none of the regular attendees had brought any pictures to show. We’d not had the Salon over the summer and, due to unforeseen circumstances, had to cancel our September meeting so I’d think that after four months someone must have something to show. I mean, I could have shown new work but... I do that too often and the Salon’s not supposed to be a showcase for me. It’s supposed to be a participatory thing.

I was bemoaning the situation with Linda Bohm, ASMP-NJ’s Treasurer (and a prolific photographer herself) and we’re both kind of astounded at the number of photographers we know who don’t make photographs. See that bruschetta? It was part of last Sunday’s lunch. I was out with a girlfriend, on a date for Pete’s sake, and I made a food picture that would stand up to any made on assignment for, say, a cookbook or the Sunday NY Times Magazine. Why aren’t other photographers shooting all the time?

Hello out there in New Jersey. Are your eyes open? Where the hell are your pictures? I don’t get it.

Radio Days

Given all of the technology with which I have to be conversant as a photographer, I regret to say that I've let radio slide. Now we have satelite, AM, FM, HD & Internet radio... in your living room or in your car or on your iPod or through your cellular phone... there's radio for days.

I like listening to radio. Here in the office I listen over my Macintosh through iTunes, radioio/country is my favorite Internet station. In my car I'm mostly tuned to WNYC-FM, New York Public Radio, until the sun goes down and WNYC goes all classical. At that point I retune to WCBS-AM, home of the New York Yankees on the air.

I'm not one of those rabid professional sports fans. I don't watch games on television and whatever my (former) wife could ever have possibly complained about, it wasn't that I left her a football widow. But there's something about listening to a ball game on a summer's eve that soothes me, that takes me back to my youth, makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

Except that in my youth I was always a Met fan.

Back to my inability to decipher modern radio: I don't even know which station brodcasts NY Mets games! I really ought to be ashamed of myself. I listen to the Yankees because it's easy, not because I'm a die hard Yankee fan.

This month, October 2006, and G-d willing, November as well, we here in New York have an all too rare opportunity to savor what we call a Subway Series, a World Series where one can commmute from the American League ballpark to the National League ballpark (and vice versa) via NYC Transit... the good old subway.

However it works out, with both the Yankees and the Mets having clinched their respective division titles, it's a safe bet that one of our teams will be in the World Series. Being a New Yorker I'll be quite pleased to see any of our guys playing in the big game.

But being a National League man, all I can say is: Let's Go Mets!!