Photos

While visiting any city, we try to utilize public transportation for many reasons, one main one being that once the valet has stored my car at the hotel, I am reticent to have him bring it to me time and again. I'm not worried about the amount of money that would cost me in tips - I already believe nice hotels charge so incredibly much for this service that I should not have to tip if I only get the car a few times. I just hate to wait. When we are ready to go, well, we're ready to go!

What we usually do upon arrival at a new city that we have not visited before, or perhaps not for a long time is try to take one of those Grayline bus tours - I prefer the tours that have the double-decker buses with open tops, such as in Toronto and Chicago. We get a good overview of what there is to see, and I can orient myself to the city since I am normally the one who leads the way. Of course, God forbid we get lost, as since I am the leader, I should not have to ask directions. This has gotten us (ok, me) into trouble more than once, but has also served to let us find some things that we might not have found. I like to drive like that, too. If I have extra time I am not afraid to follow a rock country road (or a dirt road if I'm in my truck) and take it until it ends or comes out on another road. I do this sans map in Missouri and Illinois - my wife hates that! I figure I am not much of a boy scout if I get lost within a couple hundred miles of my home - there's plenty of time for that if I get old enough to start losing my memory.

Anyway, we skipped the tour in Memphis because we had a somewhat compressed schedule with the Beale St. Music Festival taking up most every afternoon and evening so we went right to the public transport - it was easy to catch since the street cars (or trolleys) ran pretty close to the Madison Hotel. Another thing we do is try to get a pass for the public system for the period of time we will be in town, otherwise you always have to have correct change - I was too busy feeding my dollar bills to tip buckets and beggars, I might not have a dollar for the next tip or next trolley, so I tried to buy a three day pass for like $7, but the place to get them was closed and they were not available from the driver. We did manage to get a one day pass on Saturday.

So, this was shot from inside the street car from as far back as I could stand and shooting towards the driver. Street cars do not turn around in Memphis, the driver does, so there is no front and no back, it is the "Push-mePull-you" of vehicles. There are controls at both ends. The insides of these things are wood, nicely stained and varnished. They give the appearance of being very old but well maintained and they make quite a bit of noise when traveling down the street. Lots of metallic rattling, squealing and of course a bell seems to constantly ring, as well. They sort of lumber along at about 10 or 15 miles per hour, faster than you can walk and a sight easier, too, if you are carrying stuff, but not fast enough to capture any motion blur other than what I caused by my somewhat shaky hands (I can even fool a vibration reduction lens!). It was not for lack of trying, though, I hand held this shot at 1/20th of a second, which was as low as I was willing to try. The trolley was moving at about top speed and there is little, if any motion blur out the windows. So, we get a rather static shot, interesting in that it gives a perspective of the inside of a Memphis street car on a Friday afternoon. I think we were on our way back from lunch at Gus's World Famous Fried Chicken - a place I highly recommend if you are on a good statin drug or not susceptible to high cholesterol. Or if you just like good fried chicken. They didn't get World Famous for no reason!

There was almost nothing done to this shot other than lightening up a bit on the inside - shot in RAW and white balanced for daylight - the "as shot" wanted to use a much warmer light, perhaps because of the incandescent lamps on the inside of the car. I didn't crop, just added a frame, re-sized for TE and sharpened some to compensate.