Well, for my book, actually. 
Blurb’s 2010 Photography Book Now competition is now closed, but the fun is just starting. People’s Choice Award voting is OPEN now through August 20th.
Here’s your opportunity to have your voice heard!
Please help a girl out and cast your vote for my book, Child’s Play.
I’d be eternally grateful. 
If you’ve all been wondering what I’ve been up to (and why I’ve been a bit behind in posting and commenting), well it’s because I’ve been feverishly working on a photobook based upon the Playground Series images!
I self-published the book today just in time to enter it into the Blurb 2010 Photography Book Now contest – so exciting!
A preview of the entire book can be found below. If the text is too small to read, even in full screen viewing mode, you can zoom your browser (for example, in Internet Explorer, the zoom control is located in the lower righthand corner). You can also add your comments on the Blurb website. Not sure if that will influence the judges or not but it can’t hurt, right?
I must say that putting together a professional-looking book is much harder than you’d expect and I now have newfound respect for editors! I cannot tell you how many times I thought the book was ‘done’ only to upload it and discover yet another typo or layout error. Here is one time where my eye for the small details came in handy!
Many thanks to those who helped to review some draft versions – your feedback was much appreciated! Quite a few things have changed since the versions you reviewed, so go ahead and give it another looksee. I’m very proud to have followed this project through and can’t wait to see it in print!
I totally forgot I photographed some signage for the park series! What a find on this crazy weather day. (So far we’ve had sun, showers, more sun, clouds, rain, HAIL (!), more rain and now it is sunny but very windy and chilly - geesh!).
"Grate Sign" (Park Dept Sign) Playground Series (#20) Nikon D300, 62mm, F/4.8, 1/320s, +0.3EV, ISO 200, 'Old West' Toning Action
Anyways, I digress… 
"Hours of Play" (Park Hours Sign) Playground Series (#21), Nikon D300, 65mm, F/5, 1/640s, ISO 200, 'Old West' Toning Action
I really didn’t think much of it at the time when I shot these – it was merely a ‘while I’m here’ sort of thing. Now, I’m so glad I did as I think they will help to paint a complete picture of the childhood playground experience!
Went to the playground today to see what else I could capture for the Playground Series and lo and behold, someone appears to be looking out for me ‘cuz right there sitting in the grass under one of the basketball hoops is THE saddest looking ball simply begging to be photographed!
"Dead Ball" (Basketball with Hoop Shadow) Playground Series (#19), Nikon D300, 46mm, F.6.3, 1/640s, +0.7EV, ISO 200, 'Old West' Toning Action
Now really – how does one pass that up?
I liked what was happening with the lines and the hoop’s shadow so I maneuvered the ball from the grass over to the court and placed a few strategic pieces of mulch underneath it to get the positioning just right.
Game, anyone?
Meet Ruby.
She is the last original merry-go-round on the North Shore. She is creaky and rusty and she spins like a dream. Effortless. All you gotta do is hang on.
Doesn’t really matter, though. Ruby’s days are numbered. Don’t know exactly when it will happen, but am told it is soon as she has been deemed dangerous. A circular piece of metal that sits (no lie) all of six inches off the ground?
Yep, dangerous.
Really?
"Goodbye Ruby Tuesday" (Merry-Go-Round) Playground Series (#18), Nikon D300, 32mm, F/5.6, 1/400s, +0.3EV, ISO 200, 'Old West' Toning Action
Knowing this fact going in made my job of photographing her all that more difficult. I took over 200 shots over a two-day period and I’m still not sure I did her justice. Completely breaks my heart. 
In one of the earlier Playground Series entries, one reader took the time to post a lengthy comment that I feel compelled to quote a section of as he paints the oh-so familiar childhood scene better than I ever could dream of doing:
“That rusty, squeaky carousel of old? You betcha. (You can still find these around here and there.) A gang of us would climb aboard and several would hang out to spin us silly with three Gs of force (sometimes 4 Gs), trying to get us to either puke or fall off. Laughter abounded when Jimmy Johnson went flying off one day screaming, unable to hold on … ending up about 15 feet from where he originally landed. His momentum carried him that extra distance, but not before his open mouth filled with a goodly amount of “cushioning sand” surrounding the carousel as he eventually skidded to a halt, mostly on his head. He coughed and cried and spit sand for 10 minutes while we rushed him over to the drinking fountain to bathe him off. Afterward, he was good to go for more, back up on the carousel to “try and stay on this time”. What a rush and a laugh that was. Good times.” ~ Ruprecht
Sigh, good times indeed.
"Nehi Orange" (Orange Plastic Swings) Playground Series (#16), Nikon D300, 46mm, F/6.3, 1/320s, ISO 250, 'Old West' Toning Action
Once I outgrew the baby swing I so loved, I graduated to the ‘big girl’ swings at the playground.
Swings have gone through several manifestations over the years but the ones I most remember are those whose seats were made of molded plastic (hey, it was the 70′s). I preferred this kind since a favorite game of mine to play was to swing as high as I could then jump off, hopefully landing feet first into the sand below. (So, mom, if you were ever wondering about those dirty knees I would come home with, well, now you know. )
When the plastic ones wore out, playgrounds began replacing them with belt
"Rubber Soul" (Black Rubber Belt Swing) Playground Series (#17), Nikon D300, 80mm, F/7.1, 1/320s, ISO 200, 'Old West' Toning Action
types. Some were woven of heavy-duty canvas while others were made of thick rubber. Didn’t really matter the type as each were notorious for wrapping tightly around bare thighs (well, shorty-shorts were the rave) leaving those tell-tale red marks.
Wait, it gets better. Sometimes the rubber seat was embossed with the manufacturer’s logo which would invariably become branded on said thighs. Seriously!
I didn’t care much for this type for the reasons listed plus one more: in the heat of summer, the seat would somehow manage to laminate itself to one’s skin making removal tricky if not altogether painful. Ouch!
What we endured for fun, huh?
Sunny Saturdays are always good for monkeying around!
"Slinky Monkey" (Monkey Bar Ladder with Shadow) Playground Series (#14), Nikon D300, 60mm, F/5.6, 1/800s, ISO 200, 'Old West' Toning Action
This was the closest I could find to the monkey bars of my childhood and it won’t be around much longer as funds are being raised to replace all the old equipment at this playground with one of the new configured play structures.
"M is for Monkey" (Monkey Bars Shadow) Playground Series (#15), Nikon D300, 26mm, F/7.1, 1/640s, +0.3EV, ISO 200, 'Old West' Toning Action
While I was at the park, a young boy ran over to me, intrigued by me and my camera. After I assured the mom I was not interested in photographing the children, we began talking about how much fun we used to have on stuff just like this. Her son was having a ball, climbing, hanging and swinging from the bars. In other words, acting like a complete monkey!
I have visited parks with newer equipment and I must say, I don’t see the same enthusiasm as I did in this little boy playing on those old, rusty metal bars.
Who says change is always for the best?
