savannah photographic workshop

The Grand Finale of Streak Week: 1543 people took off all their clothes and ran from south campus to north campus. Earlier in the week students at the University of South Carolina had set a record for the largest group streak at 300. Not to be outdone by Gamecocks, word spread across campus that the Dawgs would attempt to break that record. After the confrontations with Athens’ finest earlier in the week, the administration quietly put out the word that any events au natural should be confined to school property. So, on a beautiful, balmy Thursday evening, 1543 people set a record that still stands. We know the number because campus security stationed officers at every entrance to the finish area and counted them as they came in. Earlier the same day another unique moment came when five guys sky-streaked, jumping out of an airplane wearing nothing but parachutes, and landed on the intramural fields.

For more photos of the Finale of Streak Week, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/gallery/UGA-Streak-Week-Part-3/G0000hAtbpzmb5_0

Continuing Streak Week from my last post, passions ran high as culture wars were in full force. Lester Maddox, streaked by several men while speaking, was on campus campaigning for the Democratic nomination in the Georgia gubernatorial election, running against George Busbee. William Shockley, who shared the 1956 Nobel Prize for Physics, was also at UGA to debate his theory that non-White peoples were genetically inferior to Whites. In an early example of what is now called cancelling, he was chased from the auditorium and campus and no debate happened. To be clear, I find any notion of racial superiority abhorrent, but I also believe preventing a disagreeable opinion from being debated is wrong. The only way to defeat an argument is to offer a better argument. The Free Speech clause of the First Amendment must protect even the most vile and offensive speech, or it is an empty promise. Trigger warnings and safe spaces are for children. (Next week’s final post from Streak Week will show setting the record for the largest streak in the country, a record that still stands.)

For more photographs of the middle part of Streak Week, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/gallery/UGA-Streak-Week-Part-2/G0000oS5z0PWZaEo/

It was beautiful early springtime weather at the end of Winter Quarter at the University of Georgia. A colleague from The Red and Black, the daily student newspaper, was at my apartment that Monday evening when we heard there was a disturbance outside the high rise dorms along Baxter Avenue, so we hurried over. (No cell phones then, or 24/7 news coverage; not even a local TV station in Athens, so I don’t know how we heard.) Streaking had been happening around the country and a couple of people had dropped trou and drew a small crowd. Athens police overreacted by firing tear gas into the crowd drawing more students out, in a less than friendly mood. This happened the first of the week, for a couple of nights, but calmer heads prevailed and the students eventually even cleaned up the mess. It was the beginning of an eventful week.

For more photographs from the first part of Streak Week, go to: https://www.billdurrence.com/gallery/UGA-Streak-Week-Part-1/G0000b_D9MgCzmSw/

Continuing the Discovery launch from last week’s post; the afternoon before the scheduled launch day, NASA bused media out to several areas close around the launch pad so photographers could set up remote cameras, which would be triggered at the moment of launch. Those are places too close for safety of any human presence during the launch. After some time doing that, approaching twilight, NASA did the Sunset Rollback, moving the support structures away from the shuttle for this photo op.

For previous blog posts, go to https://savannahphotographicworkshop.com/

For almost thirty years, I had a great job, essentially being paid to wander around the world and take photographs of whatever caught my fancy. It was more complicated than that, and there were plenty of chores I had to do as well, but in my retirement I choose to remember the wonderful (wonder-filled) experiences I had. This one was the launch of Discovery on September 29, 1988, about two and a half years after the Challenger explosion. The night before the launch NASA rolled the structures away from the shuttle, lit it up, and took media out closer to photograph it.

I am in a Monday morning men’s coffee group and this week someone brought up an article on AI that talked about how fake videos can be created showing people saying things they never said, and the deceit is indiscernible. That made me think of this photo, because, although this is the moon from that evening, that is not where it was then. A pretty simple double exposure created the composite. Early in my career I read someone espousing “visual literacy” as an educational need. That’s probably true now more than ever, but “lying” in a medium that seems to be straight forward documentation has always been an option. There is an old saw in the photo business that the camera doesn’t lie, but that is a dangerous assumption. People do, and the camera is just a tool.

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

I want to live next door to this place. We were stopping over in Haarlem for a few days to break up the long flight from Tanzania coming home. Barbara likes to sign us up for food tours in the various places we visit and this one was a “food to go” theme. The cheese shop stop was torture, because I wanted some of so many, and we were not going to be around long enough to sample much.

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

Several hours driving from Sarawak, Malaysia on Borneo (the island is also home to Brunei and a portion of Indonesia), we arrived at the Batang Ai Dam and transferred our things to our boat. We spent the next four days with these two boatmen and our guide traveling by river, deep into the jungle, staying at indigenous “longhouses.” Along the way we picked up the younger boatman’s wife, so that’s six of us in this boat. And all our stuff. And all our food and drink. The river would get so shallow sometimes, the guide had to get out to keep from scrapping bottom; then I would have to get out, then the boatman’s wife, then one or both boatmen, pushing and pulling instead of poling or paddling. I think I waded half the miles we covered. Barbara could not get out. The day before heading out for this excursion, she tripped on a root and fractured her ankle when we were hiking in another national park. She could barely hobble along and missed the two hikes I was able to do, spotting two orangutans in the wild. At least it was something large and orange, but high in treetops, so I’m making an assumption.

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

My wife, Barbara, is a golfer. So are many of our neighbors. I am not. These Dog Days of summer in the Deep South, the midday temperatures routinely reach the mid 90’s, not counting the heat index. So, when they say they are going out to play golf, I think of this place. “The Devil’s Golf Course” is a section of Death Valley not far from Badwater, the lowest point in North America. This rough ground may look like a plowed field to someone who has walked through one, but these “clods” do not crush underfoot. It’s sun-baked as hard as stone and the ridges can be as sharp as a knife’s edge, and even walking carefully one could slice into a rubber soled shoe. And if you fall down….

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

I was in DC for a conference, with an afternoon to kill, and thought I’d catch up on my monuments. As a young soldier stationed there in the 60’s, if we had out of town guests (Mom and Dad), we visited the Washington Monument and the Lincoln and Jefferson Memorials, but there have been many monuments added since, filling the spaces in-between, some of which I had not yet seen. Taxi to the Vietnam Memorial, the Wall, the Three Soldiers, Women’s Memorial, walk up to the Lincoln, across to the Korean, on to MLK, then FDR, and finally, Jefferson. They are all impressive presentations, and I really enjoyed the leisurely walk, taking time to read all the inscriptions/quotes. But even so, Jefferson continues to be my favorite for aesthetic and philosophical reasons. Wherever you fall on the revisionist history of Jefferson, you have to admit the Declaration of Independence was audacious!

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index

From Marrakesh we started our drive early, heading southeast, through the Atlas Mountains (spectacular), to the Moroccan part of the Sahara. Around Tagounite we switched vehicles and drivers for something more appropriate as we came (literally) to the end of the road, and moved onto a vast sandscape. From there on, the driver could have been making up the route as he went, for all I could tell, but he did get us where we were supposed to be. This could be what infinity looks like.

For more photographs, go to https://www.billdurrence.com/index