Happy Fourth of July

It's a bit late, but Happy Fourth of July. At least I took this photo on July 4th. It was a fun afternoon spent with family in my old home town... Eastman, Georgia. This small town fireworks display takes place at the high school, same as it has for decades. I considered just leaving the Nikon at home and enjoying the show, but I had taken a couple of weeks off without a single photo and that just wouldn't do.

Fireworks are pretty easy to capture if you have a tripod, a locking shutter release cable, and even decent glass. This image was a seven second exposure at f7.1. I shot it at ISO 100 with a 24-70mm f2.8 lens. The only problem with this slow shutter speed is the blurring tends to make the burst look a little plastic. But it is a necessary evil to capture the action from ground to sky.

I tried several different compositions, including closeups. But my favorites all seemed to be images that captured the flight of the shell from the ground and the starburst at it's peak. Call it storytelling, I suppose.

It would be so wrong of me to not take advantage of my tiny platform here to offer up my thanks to the men and women serving my country at home and abroad. And to pause to remember those who sacrificed so much for my freedom. Happy Independence Day.

Losing Jobs In My Hometown

Can you remember your first fieldtrip in school? I can’t remember what grade it was—either first or second, I’m sure—but I clearly remember climbing on board the school bus and traveling twenty miles to Eastman and a Stuckey’s candy plant. For a little kid, seeing an amazing array of machinery, conveyors, and packaging was pretty neat. Getting free samples was even better. But after about fifty years of making candy, the plant is closing.

Eastman is a quiet town. 5,400 residents. A handful of traffic lights. A regular slice of Americana. But by the standards of many, there’s not much to do there. High school football, hunting, and local politics are highlights. But to many folks around the country, one Eastman icon was easily recognizable… the home of Stuckey’s Candy.

When I was a kid, Stuckey’s stores lined the freeways. It all started with a roadside pecan stand opened by Mr. W.S. Stuckey. But Mrs. Ethel Stuckey thought if folks would stop to buy pecans, they would buy pralines, divinity, souvenirs, and gasoline. Turns out she was right. Ultimately, around 350 stores were built, some as far away from Eastman as California and Oregon.

Stuckey’s Candy was ultimately purchased by Standard Candy, the maker of Goo Goo Clusters. But over the decades the plant where it all started stayed open. And there are not a lot of places to work in Eastman. With 250 jobs, Standard Candy was one of the biggest. But Standard is closing the plant and, to their credit, relocating those jobs to Nashville.

With luck, the good folks of Eastman will attract another industry to the town. But for now, I’m sure town leaders and plant employees are pretty sad. The little kid inside me that remembers a tour, some free candy, and a place I still call my hometown, is a little sad, too.