Close Call

Late entry. Internet access has been a disaster this weekend.

Bucky took the day off. I think he wants to stay for maybe another day and then move on to other locales for further adventures.

Today was an interesting day. My blip is not that artistic or "creative" in my own opinion, but it carries a story which increases it's value to me.

My brother is a very talented amateur film photographer, but he's been reticent to take the digital plunge. The money and time overhead for film photography has not balanced well with his work and family commitments such that he doesn't shoot with any decent frequency anymore. He's pushing me hard to go to my neice's wedding, because if I don't go, he becomes the default wedding photographer. When I told him about blipfoto, he was excited that it may be a good avenue to rev up his photo hobby again and get him going with digital imaging. He has a "dial-up" internet connection, but I assured him that if it's only 1 photo a day and if he downsizes the photo before uploading it, it would be manageable. He asked me if there were some good photos or was it more like a blog with pictures. I told him that in my opinion about 70% of the participants routinely try and mostly succeed in creating good if not great photographs, and the remainder use the photos as a prop for their writings or written journal with some excellent use thereof. Of course there is are some who do both well. Anyway, the exchange made me think about what I get out of Blipfoto. I know Chaos is wrestling with that question given his stated self doubts regarding creativity.

I have decided that I'm not going to stress out too much about how my photos measure up to others, how many comments I get, or how many choose to subscribe to my blips. The value to me is that it's reminding me to take my camera to places I might not think to take my camera. I'm taking more pictures on a routine basis than I ever did before. By shear numbers, some are really pleasing to me. Today I captured an image of my daughter that is absolutely precious to me. I can't show it to you because I'm honoring an agreement with my wife not to share personal family photos in cyberspace (myspace and the like rightfully creeps her out and has soured her to the internet community concept). I also think Blipfoto has made me more keenly aware of what's around me. Four paragraphs and I still haven't gotten to the story.

My daughter with some of her friends wanted to paddle around a local lake in a raft and generally make each other wet. I agreed to take them over and schlep the raft in the back of the SUV (sorry to the greens out there). I figured I could read, listen to the car radio, and be the one to dial 911 if the raft flipped over or the girls injured themselves. I also knew this lake was a floatplane port of sorts and there was a short airstrip nearby as the lake was part of a flying community. I'm a fan of general aviation and had at one time taken enough lessons to do some solo cross country flights in a Cessna 172 before I became a responsible family man. I've entertained taking it back up since moving to Alaska as there is so much to see and enjoy from the air here. I thought there may be some blip potential of the aviation activity while loosely attending to the girls.

The first interesting sight was a plane coming down the road. As he passed, I realized it was a colleague of mine who actually was in a crash 2 years ago with serious injuries to his parents and himself and total destruction of the aircraft. His young son also in the crash was unscathed. After a year or so hiatus, he got back on the horse and with insurance money replaced his destroyed airplane. I didn't know he lived in this neighborhood and it was neat to see him and his new (used) plane in action.

About an hour later after sever more aircraft took off, I noticed a family gassing up their plane from a special fuel tank in the back of their pick up truck. They were prepping and loading their plane for a trip over about 20-30 minutes. I watched them fire up their plane and taxi down the dirt runway toward the other end so they could turn around and take off into the wind. As they went down the runway a could see some fuel slopping out of the right wing tank. I trotted down the runway and waved a jacket at them as they started taking off. They stopped their takeoff and I was able to tell them about the draining fuel. It turns out they left the cap on the truck. This blip is their subsequent take off with fuel caps squarely in place.

I'm aware that most airplane accidents are not due to a single problem, but are more typically a cascade of potentially avoidable events. I'd like to believe that I may have forestalled one such event that could have contributed to bigger problems later. Extrapolating this logic, my awareness of what was around me and the circumstances of my being there were influenced by Blipfoto. So in this instance, I think a case can be made that Blipfoto saves lives.