Monthly Archives: July 2012

Cruis’n For A Bruis’n

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MV Tillikum

MV Tillikum (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

If you’re in your little wooden cabin cruiser, threading your way through the shipping lanes of Puget Sound, and you suddenly hear five short, loud blasts from a ship’s horn, you should infer the possibility that every part of your boat, from stem to stern, is in imminent danger of being destructively dissected by the metal hull and propeller of a large ship whose path you are nonchalantly crossing.
In other words, you should wake the hell up!  If you do nothing to head off this destructive embrace of wood and steel–if you’ve deserted the helm to have a crap, mix a vodka tonic, or become a member of the seamen’s version of the mile-high club–you’ll be offered just one more series of five blasts from the metal monster before it has your life for lunch.

I was on the MV Tillikum‘s passenger deck when I heard five horn blasts from her wheel house.  I’ve heard this warning signal only a couple of times in all the years I’ve ridden car ferries around the Sound. None the less, I went back to fiddling with my camera and watching my daughter read a book.
Then I heard the same warning blasts from another ferry, followed by a second warning from the Tillikum, followed by yet another warning from the other ferry.  That got my attention.  I jumped up and dashed to the Tillikum’s forward observation deck just as she hit the brakes.  (A three-hundred foot ship doesn’t really have brakes, which is the reason it’s vitally important to heed warning signals from ships‘ horns.)
About a thousand feet ahead and a little to port was a medium size pleasure cruiser intent on crossing the Tillikum’s bow.  It had just crossed the bow of the other ferry, which was sailing from the opposite direction.  Both ferries came to a full stop as the small boat’s captain finally realized the pickle he was in and cut his engine.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have my telephoto lens, so I couldn’t tell whether or not the fellow had pants on.
After a long minute of everyone waiting for Godot, the Tillikum and the other ferry resumed their original courses, leaving the small boat’s captain to fend for himself in their intersecting wakes.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the guy put his boat up for sale as soon as he arrived back at the dock.  There is no bowel movement, cocktail, or sex worth the risk of having that experience twice.

July 19, 2012

Parts is Parts

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I do a lot of work as a bio-medical photographer, which is a sub-specialty of my general work as an industrial photographer for a large university and medical center. One of my duties is to photograph body parts (as well as body ‘wholes’).
Photographing a body part is easiest when the part is uncovered. This ensures the photographs will be useful to the doctor who ordered the photography. The more parts of a body there are to photograph, the more the body needs to be uncovered.
The most practical way to photograph many different body parts on one body (with live bodies, anyway) is to have the parts’ owner remove all of his or her clothing. So, imagine me standing in a locked exam room while holding a camera that’s wired to bright photographic strobe lights, and while wearing substantially more clothing than the only other person in the room. I see things.
Here are some interesting facts and observations relating to photographing naked people for medical purposes:

1. They don’t pay me well enough. I earn a hell of a lot more when photographing mannequins for Nordstrom.
2. Male patients do not at all like being photographed by a male photographer–which makes me wonder if homophobia is a hardwired gender instinct.
3. Female patients usually don’t care who photographs their parts–or which parts are photographed–as long as the work is done right. Female patients shake my hand and thank me; male patients retreat quickly to their dressing room.
4. All–ALL–distinguishing details of a patient’s body mysteriously disappear from my memory thirty seconds after I take their last photo. Really! I’ve run into female patients in the clinic lobby ten minutes after I’ve escorted them back to their dressing room, and I have not recognized them, even after they have said hello. (This does beg the question, why do they say hello to me in the clinic lobby?)
5. When I process and print the photos back at my office, I almost never recognize any of the patients.

Weird, huh? But when I compare notes with other male medical photographers and radiographers–even the good looking single males–they all report the same experiences. Nobody remembers anything.
So, there you go. Men really do have something on their minds besides sex. At least, some of the time they do.

July 7, 2012

BLOG #50!

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I’m dedicating my 50th blog to my wonderful daughter, Hanae Rose. Here is a poem I wrote for her 13th birthday. And while you’re reading it, I’m going to be busy deleting all the really lousy posts I’ve written the last two years.

Icarus at Night

I held a thought,
then lost it.
Among the flecks
on deck of night,
I lost the speck–
impractical
and wordless–
killed by blots
of sweet dreams
blown aloft.
Enjambed
by failing lunar flight,
I rose again
from canyons cleaned
of rotted dreams;
fell into folded furrows
sown
with memories of a
sun-washed face
resembling my own.

For my daughter

June 2012