I wasn't going to post today, but ...

Today I went out to cover the first day of our Marine Reserve Detachment's Toys for Tots toy hand outs. It was amazing. I can't describe the feeling of watching our Marines (and corpsman) perform this charity task. They love doing it. And the people! I can't believe the spirit.

The line wrapped around the old dilapidated building in which they were handing out toys. But even with the long line and long wait, everyone was cheery. It was the exact opposite of the line at the movie theater. Or the line at the DMV. The feeling of charity was infectious. I gotta tell you. I wasn't in the Christmas spirit this year until this morning. My heart just grew three sizes.

And while out, I noticed some things around the area that looked like great subjects for some quick photography. It's pretty overcast out today and it just casts everything into a cool frame.

This shot just jumped out at me. It really speaks of the state of this town in a lot of ways.

As though it's attempting to put up a good front, but cannot hide the decay and corruption going on within. I wish I could have shot this under better circumstances (without cars surrounding it, etc.). I guess I'll have to shoot it another day.

This is what inspired my little spat of personal photography this morning. This building shared the parking lot with the old department store where the Toys for Tots hand outs were going on. I really love the texture of this building and all the vines. I do not like the fact that I couldn't shoot it without all the power lines and modern-day obstacles, but I just love it. Also, we just got new lenses for our cameras and I wanted to test it out a bit. It an 18-200 zoom and I really kind of dig the circular deformation in wide-angle.

This is a closer shot of one of the windows of the same building. Just look at all that texture!

The minor and stark color contrast is amazing, I think. And in B&W the contrast is just too damn cool. Oh, the first thought I had when I saw this building is how cool it would look shot in B&W. Well, thanks to digital photography, Photoshop and Ctrl+L, we can approximate.

What I really like about this shot is that the window is about 7 feet or so off the ground and I was able to shoot low which gives the foreground the effect that it's bending away from the window. Almost like you could walk on that wall and the window's a door.

Last shot of the day.

This just happened to be on my route to my shoot and I made a mental note to go back and get a couple of shots. Something about trains appeals to men, I think. I never got into toy trains or anything like that. I have no hidden fascination about ever becoming a railway engineer, but I do admit some sort of visceral pleasure from looking at trains and railways.

Well, I had some fun this morning while on the clock. Hope you guys like the shots.