I went to Costco yesterday to get tires for my Chevy Bolt, it’s first set of new tires, save the ones it came with that lasted 31,000 miles, which seems less than they should have gone, but surprisingly tires are not one of the things an extended warranty covers.

So be it. The new tires look great and definitely hold turns better.

I accomplished a rare feat for myself, and maybe for the history of mankind: I went to Costco and spent less than $100, except for the cost of the tires, of course.

In fact, I spent $0. I managed to not even shop in the store at all.

Many other people shopped. I made an appointment for 10:00 am, the time the store opened. A line started to form at 9:30 am with shopping carts and shoppers lined up out into the parking lot and looping around the back. This was a Monday morning, mind you. It was impressive.

I dropped my keys off and took off on a walk outside. It was a cold and overcast day but the walk was wonderful, a bit brisk, my hands in my pockets at first, an audiobook from Brandon Sanderson playing in my ear.

The sidewalk became a path that wound around and through a group of businesses once I got about a quarter mile away. I passed a couple of people and said, “Good morning” with a smile, getting a smile and good morning back. 

The path, otherwise empty, was well done, passing by ponds, beside a stream, over bridges, past a gazebo on an island, and dotted with sculptures, some metal, some wood, some colorful, some with lights, some part of exercise equipment.

There were also evergreen needles on the ground, forming a blanket that had been pushed off the path in places, but otherwise covered the ground and made the walk softer, better for my knees, though a bit slippery if I tried to get close to the water, which I did while trying to get some pictures.

I took several pictures as I walked, thinking about what might make good images to support these poems, blogs, and essays that I write. I took many photos of the sculptures and wondered a bit if that was allowed, to use a sculpture to create another form of art that directly took from that work to create its own effect.

I decided that I could do whatever I wanted. 

Two of those pictures are here, one of a girl running, another of a tree looking across a pond toward the gazebo. In both cases I spent a good bit of time playing with the images and the controls that Adobe Lightroom gives me. 

I tend to stick with grayscale images though of course I take color pictures. I was struck yesterday and again today at the range of options that I have once the picture is taken. I remember being in college and high school and visiting the dark room to process film and print pictures. There was an art to that process, one that allowed just a few attempts to create an effect with a particular photo.

Now, I am running through multiple settings using sliders for black point and exposure and sharpness and grain, watching to see what happens, going back and adjusting more and more. 

I love this process. I love sticking to black and white, as it is called, as being colorblind I have no idea what is happening when I use color, and if an image is successful it is really just blind luck.

Digital imagery is a world that has brought so much change to the world of photography that it has virtually replaced it. I am sure that artists still use dark rooms and process photos that way. But for iteration and rapid experimentation the digital world has really taken over. 

It makes me a bit ambivalent when I think about these images, wondering how much I can accept as my own art and how much must be afforded to the software. Yet I also know that I am developing my own style, slowly, the way that images themselves used to be brought forth. And beyond that so much depends on what you start with, the lines and light and angles and whispers of life that I sometimes find in the pictures themselves.

And that’s twenty.