Steve Sheppard Photography Blog

I found this young lady in uptown Martinsville. Oddly enough she looks like someone I know.

PAW is a project to shoot a roll of film each week and post a photo. This was shot with a Leica M4-P.

Here I am again two weeks behind on posting a PAW. 

We went to the new Nationals stadium a couple of weekends ago. The stadium is beautiful and the electronic scoreboard is as big as I’ve seen anywhere. There’s nothing else quite like a day at the ballpark. As I have said in previous posts, I love baseball. 

One of the things I love about baseball is the bag of peanuts I always get. My seat will always be surrounded by shells no later than the second inning.  By the seventh inning stretch, it’s time for nachos. Somewhere between there might even be a hot dog. I always feel like I ought to leave someone a tip for having to clean up after me.

For the past several years, I have been in a fantasy baseball league with my son and his friends. This year they were all too busy to play. Last season, the final thing I’d do before going to bed would be to check my batting average, home runs, ERA and all the other stats. I knew the names and stats of nearly every player in the league, because I was constantly searching for players to help my team. There’s always next year. 

PAW is a continuing project to shoot one roll of film per week and post a photo. This photo was taken with a Leica M4-P.

Mattie and I had ate at The Front Page in Alexandria, Va. on Saturday. Since I’m a former newspaper guy, I enjoyed looking at all the old front page headlines and photos of important events in history. The Blue Cheese Burger was pretty good too. The photo was shot with a Leica M4P. This is part of my project to shoot one roll of film each week and post a photo.

After I read the sign on the speaker, I said “PLEASE NUMBER 9 PLEASE”. I shot this with a Konica FT-1 Motor.

Yes, I know. I am three weeks behind in posting a PAW photo. I am posting three weeks in one day.

For week 14, I have a deer in the woods. I shot this with a Leica M4P with a 40mm lens from the driver’s seat through the open passenger window. If there are many animals that only see in black and white, this picture demonstrates why they need a good sense of smell. You can barely see the deer in black & white, but it’s pretty rare to shoot one with the rangefinder. 

Apparently, the ducks and geese didn’t get the memo. They are fishing and swimming. This is part of my project to shoot one roll of film a week and post a photo.

This week’s PAW is baby bluebirds at a neighbor’s home. 

They put a Bluebird house in their backyard and sure enough a pair of bluebirds made it their home. The babies hatched about a week and a half ago and the birds have not yet opened their eyes. 

My neighbors have a container of worms and give the mother and father some for breakfast and dinner. It’s pretty entertaining to watch the birds pick up worms and take them into the house. It’s also a little odd that they don’t mind having the house opened to view the baby birds. I guess it’s their way of saying thank you for dinner.

This PAW photo was taken with a Konica FT-1 Motor and is part of my project to shoot one roll of film each week and post a photo.

This week’s PAW is of turtles sunning at Lake Lanier. This is a pretty common sight at the lake as the turtles seem to love this log. Sometimes there are as many as seven or eight there.

This is part of my project to shoot one roll of film each week and post a photo from it. This was shot with a Konica FT-1 Motor.

This week’s PAW came about as a result of a Saturday afternoon trip into the country. I thought this tree stand looked pretty comfy with a nice wooden swivel chair inside.

I brought back more than pictures from this trip. I had about 10 ticks on my clothes and pulled off four that had already attached to me.

Fortunately, I don’t have any poison ivy. The last time I got poison ivy was in 1986.  I used to get it by looking at the vine, but because of a treatment I took in ’86 I think I am now immune.

I had a really bad case of it as the whelps had covered my arms from the shoulders down. I used all the normal remedies to no avail. Then I spoke with Ronnie Mabe who told me that Puccoon Root (Sanguinaria Canadensis) was the trick to getting rid of poison ivy. He gave me a piece of Puccoon Root and said all I needed to do was soak it in a medicine cup of water overnight and then drink the water. He said he guaranteed the poison ivy would be gone in three days.

Now I was game for anything at that point if it would get rid of the itchy stuff that had deformed my arms into something unrecognizable. So I drank the concoction. About a minute later, I started having sharp pains in my stomach and chest, which to this day, I can only compare to when I had a gallstone. I was getting ready to visit the emergency room to have my stomach pumped when the pain subsided.

Three days later the poison ivy was gone. I told Ronnie about the great results, but added that I was really sick after drinking it. Then he told me, “You know, I thought about that the other day and I really couldn’t remember if you were suppose to drink it or pour it on the Poison Ivy.”

I’m not sure which one I was suppose to do, but I can tell you I haven’t had poison ivy in 22 years. I, however, don’t recommend the treatment to anyone.  I just read on the Internet that the FDA considers it “unsafe” and it says that self-medication should be avoided, as the plant can be toxic.  The website also states that applying the root or juice to the skin is a questionable activity as the plant is known to be an escharotic, a substance that kills tissue. Gee, I’m glad I didn’t pour it on.

By the way, this photo was shot with a Konica FT-1 Motor with a 40mm lens. This is part of my project to shoot at least one roll of film per week and post a photo from it.

This week’s PAW photo wasn’t really shot this week, but I developed one of the rolls that I had shot previously.

I have many undeveloped rolls of film. This week, just for fun, I decided to develop one of the rolls for my PAW. I had no idea what was on the roll.

This is what I found… Carlisle’s Halloween Carnival, a Martinsville football game, friends at our home, a bar in some restaurant, Mattie in a hotel room, me in my office and finally my feet while I was watching the American Masters episode about Robert Capa. The roll was from two years ago.

Street Photographer Garry Winogrand died in 1984 and left behind 2,500 undeveloped rolls of film. I have read that he preferred to wait at least a year to develop a roll after he shot it so that he lost an emotional tie to the photographs and could judge them based on merit.

I certainly don’t have 2,500 rolls sitting around, but it is fun to develop one when you don’t know what’s on it. I’m fairly certain this roll was shot with a Leica M6 that I was carrying around at the time.

The photo I selected is of course my feet while I was watching the program on Capa. There was also a photo of my wife Mattie in a witch hat and hair at the Halloween Carnival. I thought about it, but not for long.