Baltimore's Best Street Performer - Charles Lee

On the way back to the Light Rail tonight, I stopped by the ampitheater at the Inner Harbor to listen to and watch Charles Lee.

I've seen Mr. Lee a few times before here, and he absolutely deserves his title as Baltimore's Best Street Performer.

He performs with a high-end karoke system and top-notch karoke disks (good arrangements, well-performed,) adding his excellent vocal renditions of mostly Motown oldies. There isn't a clunker in his portfolio - they're all classic hits that you gotta just love, and you'll love the way he handles them. In I Can't Get Next To You, he pulls off the neat trick of doing a very credible imitation of each of the five Temptations - quite a vocal range, if you remember that song.

Mr. Lee's website is here.

And if you stop to listen and enjoy him at the Inner Harbor this summer, don't forget to leave a generous tip!

Found Pattern

Yes, it's a found pattern, but is it worth anything as a photographic image?

I really liked it when I saw it on the LCD of my Canon A620 digicam. I think I still like it, but I'm not so sure anymore.

I'd appreciate any of your thoughts.

By the way, this is the corner of a metal tree grate within a nicely-paved stretch of East Pratt Street in Baltimore. I was inspired a few years ago to look for photos like this by Carl Root's rust and paint folder on Photo.net. You should check out all of Carl's amazing photo.net photos here.

Shadow Dancer

This little shadow dancer was doing her thing as us adults watched a group of Peruvian musicians performing at Harborplace.

Now that Spring is well along and the days are much longer, there's free entertainment every evening at the little amphitheater, and I like to walk along the Inner Harbor on my way to the Light Rail to check things out. This group of three musicians did a very good job of playing guitar and bamboo flutes (the style is sort of like the flute bridge in El Condor Pasa.) Last Friday, I saw a very good juggler/comedian.

I took the little shadow dancer photo with a Canon A620.

Wachovia Tower

Here's another photo from a long-overdue walkaround during lunch the other day.

The Wachovia Tower sits at Baltimore and St. Paul Streets in downtown baltimore, and it's alternating bands of granite and glass make for a nice reflecting surface. Depending on where you stand, you'll see different buildings reflected. Of course, timing is critical, and the morning, especially early morning is best for a lot of reasons.

I took this particular shot a little after noon, but I'll be heading back to shoot this facade from several angles much earlier in the morning. Stay tuned.

Joe McNally

What are you going to do tonight? You can waste an hour watching Rock Star Supernova on CBS, or you could learn something.

How about spending 70 minutes with a YouTube video? The time will go by really fast, and what you see and learn will make a much bigger and more important impression on you than anything you could possibly see on network or cable tv tonight.



This video of Joe McNally is part of the Authors@Google series. Google invites authors to visit and speak at their Mountainview, CA campus for the benefit of their employees. In this case, McNally, a top-flight photographer for more than 30 years, had just released a new book, The Moment It Clicks: Photography secrets from one of the world's top shooters.

I hadn't heard of McNally before tonight, but it turns out that he's a charming and engaging speaker. Moreover, his photos do live up to his billing. He seems to have a very good sense of humor, which shows up in a lot of his photos.

Check him out by clicking on the YouTube video above. If you aren't hooked in the first five minutes enough to stay for the whole video, I'll be surprised.

Custom House

Baltimore has very little in the way of modern buildings that please the eye, but we do have quite a few very nice older buildings.

This one is the United States Custom House, a classical-style building completed in 1907. Baltimore has a number of handsome old buildings built in a similar style. In fact, enough of them that director Len Wiseman chose this part of Baltimore as a stand-in for Washington DC in his 2007 film Live Free or Die Hard. Wiseman gave us a birds-eye glimpse of the Custom House, but from the other side - you can see that side in the link above.

Free Fisheye

Passerby must have thought there was something fishy about a guy bending over to photograph a "Push To Cross" button, but all I was doing is getting a free fisheye foto.

I found this almost-pristine, unscratched chromed button while walking on the south side of Pratt Street the other day - I usually head to work on the north side. Passing by, I noticed that the Baltimore World Trade Center building was mirrored nicely in the button. I've done a little of this kind of photography before, but I think this photo combines a nicer composition with that morning's beautiful sky and clouds to make for a better image.