I know that yesterday I said I wouldn’t have enough time for a blog today.  I probably do not but what’s an extra half hour of sleep compared to having something to show the followers of this blog?  I’ll make the sacrifice.

Some more images from my Saturday shoot.  I decided to look around Dubuque for things I have not previously shot.  I found this old Jeep 4-wheel drive truck sitting on a main roadway.  It was in terrible shape but I love to photograph old relics so I made a u-turn and started taking some images.

Interestingly I follow several professional photographers blogs and one of my favorite is a guy by the name of Bill Fortney.  He is a Nikon Ambassador and he does a lot of landscapes.  Anyway I was looking at his blog yesterday and saw that on Saturday he too had photographed an old discarded Ford truck.

You can click here to see his truck (you may have to scroll down a bit.)  He is a wonderful talent and I love to follow his work.  He is a great inspiration to me.

As I was photographing this truck, trying to capture the look and feel of the vehicle I couldn’t help but wonder what type of action this old fire vehicle had seen.  Apparently it was once the property of the Delaware Fire Department.  It has a wood plank bed on it, but could have carried hose, or a pumper or who knows what.

Then I got to thinking about my childhood again and when my Dad was the Fire Chief of the little town of Ridgeway, Missouri.  My Dad had to go to some town, I think maybe it was Chillicothe, Missouri, to get a “new” fire truck for the community.  He wrote a note to my teacher (I was in 2nd grade) and he let me go with him and Jimmy Triplet to pick up the fire truck.

We picked up a very old (looked like a model T ford) with an open cab and a big red light attached to the top of the windshield frame.  Anyway to make a very long story short, Dad drove it through town with the red lights on and I got to blow the siren (which was a peddled on the floor board.)

Dad wanted to show the town the new fire truck we had just bought,  but what happened was that everyone came out to go help fight the fire.  Mother was not happy about all the calls and complaints she received about the false alarm.  🙂

I like the saying that “Life is about the choices we make.”  Sometimes it is very difficult to alter our natural or genetic tendencies but we do have the ability to choose how we react to a stimulus.

Saturday I had just arrived to start photographing this truck and it would have been obvious to anyone what I was doing.  When these two guys pulled up and even though I spoke to them they acted like I wasn’t even there.  Again, I’m hard to miss and it was equally hard to miss what I was doing.

So they started climbing all over the truck and opening doors (which by the way is private property.)  They broke one of the seats while messing around with the vehicle.   I started to say something like “Hey that’s not your property, or Hey can’t you see what I’m trying to do here?”  I remembered that my goal is not to make anyone unhappy with my photography.  So I went down to the river and shot a bunch of images.

When I came back past the truck it was all alone so I had a half hour of uninterrupted shooting.  No frustration, no confrontation, no unfortunate consequences.  🙂

That’s it for today.  Of course I got so busy telling stories that now I’m going to have to rush to get to the event on time.  Thanks for stopping by the blog today.  I hope you enjoyed the old truck.  Enjoy your Monday (hope you get the day off.) Be careful.