A few months back I received an email from Sarah Bryan. She is a travel writer who was writing a travel guide to North Carolina and needed photographs to illustrate her book. Even though she had traveled to various parts of the state, she did not have the prequisite photos for all areas. So like many enterprising people who need quick stock photographs, she turned to Flickr and search for photographs of North Carolina and that is how she found me.
I was pleasantly surprised to received an email inquiring about permissions to my photographs. She had selected quite a range of photos from the traveling I have done over the state not just from my home city of Winston-Salem. The only caveat was that as a bargain price book, she could not afford to pay me. I would receive full credit for the photos used as well as a copy of the book.
Now, this is not the first time I have been approached by various people or groups for use of my photographs. Most people can not afford to pay me but to that I have no problem. It is not my primary career nor was I hired to take photos of a certain place like I was a few years back when I was commissioned to take photographs of the First Baptist Church in downtown Winston-Salem.
So my photographs are now illustrating a blog on the Blue Ridge Parkway, a church fellowship blog, an annual report for the North Carolina Bar Association and an internal document for the Planning Commission for Houston Texas. My requirements are the same for all: proper attribution to me for the photograph and a copy of the document that contained the illustration.
For the book Moon North Carolina, available for purchase on Amazon, Sarah used three of my photos which curiously enough were not of Winston-Salem. Two were from Salisbury and one from Wrightsville Beach. But I do not mind. It is gratifying to see my photos in print and available for many to view now.
The original photo sources for the illustrations in the book are shown below:
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Just one of the many hot air balloons that were at the Carolina Balloonfest that was held in Statesville NC this past October.
Light drizzle here in the Triad today as Election Day gears up. I passed by a church serving as a polling place near my house this morning. Cars lined up everywear on the curb and all. Line stretched out the door but people were waiting patiently in line using umbrellas to keep the rain away.
Lot of people are engaged in this election and everyone is anticipating the results, the earliest ones we will see sometime after 7pm EST. The commentariat consensus is that if Barack Obama pulls out a victory in Virginia and is very close in Indiana, then the night should be very good for him. The clincher will be the Florida and North Carolina results. A win by Obama in either state will mean that John McCain has no path to victory given that Obama is expected to carry all of the states that John Kerry won in 2004 including Pennsylanvia with New Mexico and Iowa already assumed to be in his column.
Still, no winner will be officially declared until the networks call enough states for either candidate to pass the 270 electoral vote threshold. We will know the winner beforehand no doubt as 4-6 states will act as leading indicators for the nation as a whole.
I expect a long night for me as I flip back and forth on my television catching the results and commentary. I will move the computer out into the dining room too to catch the on-line commentary and track the results on a state by state level not just for the presidential, but also Senate and congressional seats along with the Governor’s race here in North Carolina.
I wrote a prior post on the local outlook of the upcoming election and I received some feedback on the current state of the congressional race in District 5 between Virginia Foxx and Roy Carter. Apparently the race is tighter than most people expect it to be.
Perhaps it is. There is some polling to suggest that Foxx’s lead in the race is not insurmountable if she has one at all. Thing is though I hardly see any presence of Carter in the area where I live. He has one commercial (The Coach) that gets intermittent play locally. Signage seems predominantly Foxx; On my trip to the mountains, 90% of the signs especially around Boone appear to be Foxx’s.
As for Foxx herself, she seems to be keeping a low profile. I have not seen any rallies by her and she has one ad running occasionally that is re-run from two years ago. I think her most vigourous campaign was when she had to compete against other Republicans in their primary four years ago to replace Richard Burr.
Still, it would be nice to see her go. Her type of conservatism which runs to the far right seems to be out of place with the transformation of North Carolina into a swing state. If she says something as outrageous as Michelle Bachmann did in dividing the country into pro-America and anti-America parts, then Carter could see a bump in contributions to be competitive. As it is, there are higher priority congressional seats that the Democratic party is trying to win in this election cycle so it is unlikely that the party will send significant funds his way especially this late in the campaign.
Still, it would be nice if he had the money to run advertising such as this one, a true indictment of who Foxx really is:
Well, you know it is autumn when every morning you go out and see the car covered in frost. A bit warmer this morning than yesterday so no scraping required but I will have to settle in a new routine of getting the car ready for the day.
So the old sheets and blankets made for summer are now replaced with thicker ones. No light PJs but rather our woolen ones. Trying to avoid having to use the heat much at this time of the year. Save that bill for when it really gets cold.
But with sunny warm days and chilly nights, we should see autumn colours spring forth in the next two weeks here in Winston. We did our annual trip to the mountains this past weekend and we did manage to go further south than we ever did before. The colours were at their peak at the higher elevations and the day was perfect with clear skies and warm temperatures. The only thing that was not appreciated were the crowds. It seemed to be a perfect day for everyone else to travel the Blue Ridge Parkway.
One feature of the trip was a visit to the Linville Falls, a really nice spot to visit when there is fewer crowds. One interesting thing about the trip coming home was that we took a new route, highway 80 which is as tortous drive I have ever been on; twisting and turning in a steep spiral, it is like one of those roads that car commercials like to use to demonstrate handling. Took quite a bit of control at low speed to stay on the road.
I took plenty of photos on our trip and I hope to get them up over the next week or so with the other photos on my list to do (Dixie Classic, Car shows).
Hurricane hit the Texas coast about 10 days ago. It was pretty devastating though few would know about it since it coincided with the financial crisis that is ongoing. Yet for us here in North Carolina, we are still pretty much affected by the fallout. With the refineries still not at full production, shortages remain here at the gas stations. At the local neighbourhood station, their pumps are dry nearly every other day for regular and premium blends have not been seen for over a week.
Yet we are not so bad off as compared to other parts of the state. The main pipeline for gasoline products goes through Greensboro so there is some supply for the region. Western Carolina, though, is nearly dry. Asheville has 85% of its stations without gas and Charlotte nearly also too.
Supplies are not expected to be normal for two more weeks. Shortages will continue until then but at least gas prices have not escalated tremendously as state laws prohibit price gouging.
One thing that be affected will be tourists who travel the mountain roads for the fall colours which are expected to be quite good this year with the peak happening sometime around the third week or so. Many tourists will stay away if they fear being stranded on the roads without gas. For our annual trips, we always need two full tanks to take us there and back. I might have to buy a 10 gallon jerrican as insurance to ensure that we get home.
Interesting times these are.
Early this morning, Hurricane Ike proceeded to tear up a broad swath of Texas. Damage is extensive with the full extent of it yet to be determined especially as the storm moves up the midwest of the United States which may lead to more flooding and more seriously, outbreaks of tornados.
Last week, Tropical Storm Hanna cruised offshore of North Carolina but we were minimally affected. Not so with Ike which is hundreds of miles away. The particular thing about Ike was its strike point, the heart of oil production and refining in the United States. Production can be easily made up on the spot market or even from released oil from the Strategic Reserve. But refining capacity can not especially as refineries were near capacity from some time.
So the refineries are now shut down and so too is the supply in the pipelines that convey product into the Midwest and East Coast regions. When this information was known to many people, panic set in around here as people thought that there will be no more gas available. Mad scenes at gas stations everywhere as people tried to fill up their cars. Gas stations immediately jacked their prices by a dollar a gallon to $4.50 before getting visits from the state police that were sent out to enforced the state’s no-gouging laws. Prices are higher, by 30 cents more than the beginning of the week but seem to be stable now at $3.80/gallon.
Gas stations are quieter now. If anything else, everyone has topped up their tanks and there will be no crush at the pump for a few days at least. On the other hand, driving past pumps at Sheetz station, showed too that their tanks were dry for several of the gasoline types. Right now, both of our cars are fine with gas but we will need fill ups by middle of next week.
We should know by Monday on when the refineries will come back on line and start refining oil again. When a similar situation when Rita and Katrina hit back in 2005 in the same region, it took three weeks before prices came back from their spike. Can not see where this will be any different.
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At the North Carolina Zoo