Wednesday, July 04, 2007

In Which David Is Caught In The Act

One of the Mixed Meters Regular Readers (MMRRs) might have noticed a few pictures posted here and there. I've taken many of them myself with my ancient Pocket Point & Shoot Camera (PPSC). The others were shamelessly ripped off from other Internet locations.

Here's one I took a few hours ago on my walk up to Starbucks.

Small Blue Guitar Leaning Against Wall
When I saw this guitar I knew I wanted a picture of it. I'll tell you why later. The immediate problem was the guitar was positioned up the driveway of a private house.
  • My second rule of photography is not to walk onto people's property to take pictures (unless there's someone I can ask).
  • My first rule of photography is that I don't alter the position of the things I photograph.
  • My third rule is that I never talk about the first two rules. I occasionally break all three.
In this case I didn't see anyone to ask permission from. So I quickly walked a few steps up the driveway, snapped a shot and scurried back to the sidewalk.

Then I heard a voice "Excuse me, sir." It was the owner of the house who had been standing on the small porch hidden behind a post. I hadn't seen him there at all. We recognized one another as familiar neighborhood faces.

Embarrassed, I hastily explained that
  • I have a blog and
  • I post pictures of found objects on my blog and
  • I had earlier posted a picture of identical guitars for sale by a street vendor just two blocks up the hill and
  • I wanted a picture of this guitar so I could reference the earlier post (which only one person had bothered to read back then).
Here's that picture again.

Selling small Guitars on a Pasadena Street
Obviously the guitars are the same model but on that day in January the blue one had already been sold.

I had a pleasant and interesting chat with him. He had found the blue guitar that morning in the middle of the street. It still seemed functional if a bit worse for wear so he retrieved it and left it in the driveway.

I gave him my card and asked him to check Mixed Meters out. On the way home I decided that I would post this story quickly so he might find it here.

Want to See More MMPs? (Mixed Meters Pictures)


All three columns of Mixed Meters are festooned with photographs. In the right hand column the pictures change every time the page loads.

MMPs can also be found at three other locations:


  • Mixed Messages - I try to make every other post an original picture. Scroll down and when you get to the bottom click to previous pages. Repeat. Through the magic of RSS recent pictures from Mixed Messages load into the left column of Mixed Meters and a random string of them can be found at the bottom on the right.

  • The Mixed Meters Flickr Page - these are all my own pictures. Some of them are randomly inserted into the right-hand column.

  • Picassa Gallery. Blogger, the host site of Mixed Meters, is owned by Google. Picassa, an online picture gallery site, is owned by Google. Every MM picture uploaded since Google owned both sites is available at Picassa. It was their idea.
The earlier MM post with the guitar picture is entitled Buying A Guitar In Pasadena (Mahler's Seventh)

The otherwise anonymous Addison left a comment asking me to explain my seeming put-down of Mahler. I actually wrote a long response doing just that. I should post it someday along with pictures from Sioux City Iowa. (Makes sense to me.)

Here's another picture of another somewhat-the-worse-for-wear blue thing leaning against a wall photographed the same way I shot the guitar. What an old racket.

leaning blue racket
Blue Guitar Tags: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Other Mixed Meters "found object" posts
Buckets for Babies in Pasadena
In a Pissy Mood
Graffiti Animals of California

2 comments :

RioinLA said...

What's in the plastic bag in the foreground? Goldfish?

David Ocker said...

I'm pretty sure the bag was filled with nothing.

Thanks for reading.