Berth Of The Night Owl, outside Mickey’s Diner, St. Paul, Minnesota, November 2009, photo © 2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.
drenched beads of lens sweat
black fog that spawns crusty rain
berth of the night owl
Sometimes the best shots are unplanned. A few weeks ago, Liz and I drove through St. Paul after going to see a music performance of Strange Attractors. It was almost midnight, rainy and foggy. We parked at different spots downtown and took a series of photographs. She stepped out into the rain; I stayed behind and shot from the car. I feel lucky my partner is one who loves the night (and art) as much as I do. It provides opportunities for creative sharing that might not otherwise take place. And we can spend downtime together in our art studio in Northeast Minneapolis.
The best part of this rainy shot of Mickey’s Diner through the windshield is the BlackBerry sitting on the dash. When the photo is viewed in its largest size, you can clearly see the raindrop reflections on the screen. They make it look like the rain fell through the glass. This time the photograph was not taken with the camera phone; she’s one of the stars.
Other Night Owl posts from over the years:
- Insomnia Haiku: Counting Syllables In My Sleep
- Night Owl
- Mickey’s NightOwl Sandwich
- Minneapolis At Night
- Dreams Of A Creative Insomniac
- haiku for Stella’s (Night Owl revisited)
-posted on red Ravine, Friday, November 27th, 2009
-related to posts: haiku 2 (one-a-day), WRITING TOPIC — WINDOW
I’m pleased to be the first to comment, QM — wow, this photograph is so mysterious and draws you in to see…what is that? a Blackberry? – – so spooky and iconic. Very odd, we just had Thanksgiving dinner with old and young-adults and a 14 yr old, and the discussion centered on cell phones – texting – sexting – how the blackberry has become an essential extension of self + society, how the language has been affected — I learned a bunch about it, but can’t really see those little screens anyway! Cool post, thanks for getting out there in the night.
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LOVE the photo, QM! I like my new iPhone but am homesick for my old BBerry.
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lil, maybe we were at the same Thanksgiving Day dinner. We, too, had a fun conversation about texting, how this one person thought that LOL meant “lots of love” and used it in that context until finally being told what it really meant. Can you imagine? Laugh out loud and lots of love aren’t all that interchangeable. 8)
QM, I love the photo, too. What great lines. And makes me want to be sitting in a car at night in the rain.
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lil, I appreciate your comment on the photo. Thank you! And that’s a great topic for Thanksgiving chatter since all ages are usually in attendance. Social media has definitely changed the language. One thing I like about Twitter (as opposed to texting) is that you use regular language in 140 characters. I do see some trying to use the text abbreviations in Twitter to try to fit more in. But in general, Twitter is readable.
I call Twitter the haiku of Social Media. One thing I’ve noticed though is that they’ve made software that allows people to extend their tweets with dots (….) and add longer tweets. I say it’s not Twitter anymore if people have to do that. Why not follow the boundaries, the limits set up by Twitter? Why not try to distill things down into 140 characters?
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Barbara, the BlackBerry is new to me. When our phone contract was up a few months ago, Liz and I spent a few hours in the phone store comparing phones. We ended up liking the BlackBerry the most. There was also a BOGO deal on it, so we couldn’t pass it up.
I’ve been really happy with it — the ease of functioning, intuitive buttons, free instant messaging to other BlackBerry owners, and the camera is fantastic. We looked at a lot of phones that day.
I hear people are happy with their iPhones, too. But I don’t think they do as much as the BlackBerry. It’s a workhorse with integrated functioning like UberTwitter. And there is the pesky limitation of the iPhone service provider. I think that will go away with time though. (Not to mention the price that’s prohibitive to many people.)
Thanks to all for the compliment on the photo! I was happy with this one. It’s unusual. I hear people use the word “moody” to describe it. That’s interesting to me. Looks like it could be the cover of a mystery novel. 8)
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ybonesy, that’s funny about the LOL. Texting language. We were listening to an NPR show recently about the 40 year anniversary of the Internet and they were talking about how LOL was one of the first things transferred across the Internet (before it was the real Internet but there were chat lines for geeks or pre-Internet bulletin boards).
It didn’t mean the same thing, of course, and I don’t remember the details. It just struck me that it was LOL! I was amazed, too, that there are still a few of those Internet bulletin boards going all over the country. They are run by the pioneers of the Internet on computers out of their homes!
About the photo, I think what I like about shooting photography at night, and particularly going out of your own comfort zone to do it, is that it makes you look at things differently, to take different photographs than you might otherwise.
There’s a book by John Berger called Ways Of Seeing. It came out in 1972 but I didn’t read it until I was in art school. It’s about the ways that we see visually. How we look at paintings and photographs which translates into how we create them.
The challenge for a photographer is to always be open to new ways of seeing the world and capturing those images through the canvas lens. And it is a challenge. Because there are so many photographic images in the Internet world. It’s hard to create something different or new.
Since I haven’t altered my images with software or other ways, it’s definitely a challenge for me to shoot something different straight on. That’s part of my practice. And a long-winded explanation of why I love Night Owl shooting!
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QM, very berry cool! D
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QM, the effect of the blackberry of the rain on the windshield is amazing. Thanks for sharing the photo and the haiku.
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WHOA! Total bling bling QM! Love the sparkle.
Sexy, dark and mysterious. My favorite combo in a shot (and people) WAY TO GO! LOVE IT!
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QM, I also love this photo and it brought back instantly the memory of riding in the back seat of our car, as a very near-sighted child, when it was a rainy night. The diffusion of light into a soft halo ( from my poor vision,) was magnified and, at the same time “broken up ” in the droplets on the windows. It gave the night the appearance of looking through a Kaleidescope, which I thought was almost magical. Thank you!
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That’s great, Lots of Love! = LOL I always liked ROFLMAO the best. Our young friend at Thanksgiving dinner reported the girls talk in emoticons – OMG!
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