Salt and Photography

I really wanted to have a different blog title than the one I chose, but good ol' Blogger doesn't let you alter title text format in any way.  No italics, bold, or any other font adjustments.  See, what I really wanted to have there was Salt and Pepper Photography.  Just pretend that a strikeout of the word Pepper is there in the title and you just can't see it.

This is the time of year when there is not a lot going on.  Our amazing lives are willed with such wondrous things as watching movies, appreciating the accelerated clicking of a nice, hot woodstove, or writing about all these things on the computer like I am now.

One of our favorite movies is The World's Fastest Indian starring Anthony Hopkins.  We loved the story, and it kind of opened Suzie's eyes to the strangeness of this place in our country we call the Bonneville Salt Flats, just outside of Wendover, Utah.  They have an event there every August called Speed Week.  It's when record-setters descend on it from all parts of the world, hoping that they can shatter the previous record for flat-out top speed in their class.  My family went once when I was young--maybe 12 years old or so.  I don't remember a lot about it, but I remember it being unlike any other place.  My brother, Denis, went with a bunch of guys from his place of employment last year.  He posted a bunch of cool pictures and that clinched the deal.  Suzie said we should go.  Timing is everything in a place where the only town for miles and miles has only a handful of motels, but we did manage to snag one.  No, it certainly wasn't cheap.  We will be there for one full day and two nights.  I guess we're lucky because we actually forgot about it.  The last time we thought about it was several months ago.  Anyway, Monday of Speed Week will be our day on the salt, and we plan on being there to see the sun come up.  The salt flats are blindingly white, and it's August during that event.  And it's a desert in Utah.  Translation:  It's hot.  We will need plenty of water and sunscreen to help the experience go smoothly.  We plan on taking our usual multiple thousand pictures while there.  It should be a pretty exciting event!

Suzie is working on a special photography project.  She has this visual in her head involving tea light candles hanging in trees at nighttime.  Yesterday she spent some time making a bunch of little captive hangers to put them in, and while it was still daylight went out and arranged them out in the woods behind our house.  After dinner she dragged me out of my chair to be her [somewhat] able assistant and help her with her project.  She had them all over the place, and as we lit them they illuminated a "dummy" she had there in the center of the area that consisted of an old dress draped over a shovel stuffed into the ground.  It was an interesting effect to be sure.  As we finished up and were heading back to the house I made an interesting observation.

"It probably looks pretty weird to see two people walking out of the woods at night carrying flashlights, a shovel, and a woman's dress."

1 comments:

Maggie said...

Oops, forgot to leave a comment. I've been so boring lately. But everyone is so nice to me lately, maybe that's good, boring. So .... where are the photos of the lil lites and the dummy?