— unpredictable thoughts

photobooth saves the day

We were head­ing to Pitts­burgh to meet with heavy­bub­ble agent #1 Matthew Naftzger. Mar­garet got the Red­cap at 30th Street Sta­tion and I drove off to park the car. By the time I walked from the garage at 17th and Chan­cel­lor back to 30th Street our bags were on a dolly and our Red­cap was wait­ing for me to arrive.

We took the ele­va­tor down to the plat­form and boarded our wait­ing train. It was dark and most of the pas­sen­gers were nap­ping recov­er­ing from their ear­lier start I guessed. We tossed our lug­gage over­head and then set­tled into our seats with a cou­ple bot­tles of water and I put on my bright pink travel Crocs.

I put some of my small tech­nol­ogy — cam­era, ipod, and ear­buds, in the elas­tic fish­net pocket on the back of the seat in front of me. Set­tling in to watch the train depar­ture from Philadel­phia to points west.

As we pulled out from under the sta­tion to the sur­face of west philadel­phia I began to look up at the pass­ing neigh­bor­hoods. I was engrossed in the view of pass­ing rooftops. Time passed and we mean­dered through the sub­urbs and then burst through to the farm land of Lan­caster. I reached for my cam­era to catch an image of a four horse team work­ing an Amish farm. Turned the cam­era on and noth­ing hap­pened! All kinds of things went through my head, “Crap, did I drop it?” … Then it came to me like a water bal­loon on my head — I had left the bat­tery in the charger, plugged into the wall recep­ta­cle in the stu­dio. I could see it in my minds eye.

No pho­tos on the out­bound trip. Maybe I could get a bat­tery and charger in Pitts­burgh. I have my lap­top, I’ll google for a store. Wait, I HAVE MY LAPTOP. Lucky me. My Mac­book Pro could act as my cam­era. I opened ‘er up and launched Apple’s Pho­to­Booth app. My lit­tle built in cam­era turned on. Yippie!

The image cap­ture expe­ri­ence became more fun. I even took a cou­ple short test movies to play with and here’s one for you to take a look at. This clip is all about rhythm. The pat­ter of light, the famil­iar sound of the rails, the change in sound and light when one car ends and another begins.

Tags: trains, rails, pho­to­booth, apple, mac­book pro, images, rhythm