Where did that pesky sign come from?

I can’t believe how out of sync with myself (and probably everyone else in our weather zone) I was yesterday! We were out the door just after dawn, heading for South Bend to re-take some of the photographs that my editor told me are not up to snuff. (It is no consolation that many of the historic photos I submitted are also unacceptable “because of their age” which is a bit confounding since the publisher is the History Press.) The day was unbelievably beautiful. And therein lay the immediate problem. Or at least most of it.

You’d think that after days and days of pouring rain, overflowing sloughs and ditches and water across the roadways that I’d have been delighted to head over to South Bend in the sunshine. Not! I needed photographs of high tide (hence the early hour) at the mouth of one of the rivers or sloughs flowing into the bay and I needed photographs of the old Pacific County jail cell at the Margaret Olson Park in South Bend and, while I was at it, a photograph of the “Bridge of Sighs” at the county courthouse.

Shadows of overhead wires and oh! is that a telephone pole emerging from the jail cell?

Nyel drove. I looked. We stopped at various watery places where I could get a picture that might illustrate my chapter dealing with the years of Prohibition in which I say “Pacific County, with its big bay and many isolated coves, sloughs, and inlets, provided perfect hideaways for the mysterious barges and boats that arrived under cover of darkness.” Contrary to what you’d think, I had a lot of difficulty – the main one being reflections and shadows from that oh-so-bright sun!

But there were other problems, too. The jail cell is now situated in a way that I cannot get the two photos I need without the impingement of modern intrusions. Telephone poles, overhead wires, background buildings, automobiles etc. are impossible to avoid and God forbid I should “manipulate” the photo in any way. No photo-shopping!! Not acceptable. My hope is that the photo editors, described by my book editor as “the trolls under the bridge,” will come to the rescue though, apparently, they aren’t prone to do that.

Could the shadows and signs be any worse! Sigh!

And then there was the Bridge of Sighs. Sigh! That’s the covered walkway that joins the jail with the second story of the courthouse so that prisoners can be taken directly to the courtroom and back in privacy. Too many intrusive signs disrupted the view and, worst of all, half the ‘bridge’ was in bright sunlight and half in deep shadow.

We were home by 10:30 a.m. I am less than satisfied but don’t know if I have time to wait for a gray day and try again. Bottom line: I’m not a photographer. And, if I keep fooling around like this, I won’t be a writer, either. Not of this book, anyway…