Late Friday night it was raining and I got the urge to go take a photo. I’m a night person as it is, so heading out at 11pm to go take photo isn’t completely out of the ordinary. I remembered seeing a photo on flickr a while ago of an intersection with a stop light – it was a long exposure and all three lights (red, yellow, green) were visibly lit in the photo. I can’t find a link to the photo, but I decided with the wet roads, I wanted to try something similar and headed out.

I was hunched over the camera with an umbrella for a while trying to protect it from the drizzle (which I did for the most part). Then the cops showed up!

Now, I don’t fault the guy for doing his job. I was hunched over my tripod at midnight taking photos in the rain. There is nothing remotely illegal about what I was doing, but I know it’s not something that most people do He asked what I was doing (taking photos) and if I had any ID – which I gladly gave him. He went back to his car with my drivers license while giving my license number to whoever was on the other end of the radio.

The officer came back and then started with the 20 questions – I was entirely respectful but declined to answer many of his questions. He kept asking and saying he was required to ask and I was required to answer (not true). It’s none of his business where I work or if I go to school for photography… He even made multiple references to terrorism! Give me a break man, you said hi and checked me out, move along. Finally, he went back to his car but sat there for about 10 minutes until I left. My only regret of the night of the night was not taking a photo of him or his car…oh well, that will have to wait until the next time I am harassed.

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Tomorrow starts my 366 Day Challenge. I’ve already been thinking of revising my guidelines. Specifically, on certain days there may be something I want to use as my daily photo that does not belong to the current theme. There could be a concert I go to, or I may be traveling, or attending some other event. These would then be called “event days” or something similar. I have not completely decided yet…and I bet by the end of the year, if I have kept up with the challenge, that the guidelines will have changed a bit…we’ll see. For anyone who hangs out with me, be prepared for me to be toting around my camera much more often starting tomorrow. (To vote for or suggest a theme go to the btjones FeVote page – I’m also thinking of making a mini-app for btjones.com instead of using FeVote but don’t hold your breath)

One last thing – I posted two more photos for consideration in issue 15 of JPG magazine. To vote for me, go to my user page and click on each of the photos that say “Vote Now”.

It smells like dog food outside and I’m heading to Dave’s Taverna Express. Where am I?

I was watching game 2 of the World Series and Fox talked about Taco Bell for about 10 minutes straight. This included an interview with the Taco Bell COO, giving away free tacos to America because a base was stolen, and listening in on a player in the dugout that was talking about the free tacos. During the interview the COO talked nothing of baseball but said how fresh their tacos were about 3 times. Then the interviewer actually said of Boston fans, “we think outside the bun.” Fox you are a tool. Damn it…now I’m hungry for a taco. I’ll just have to wait for a free one (I hear they’re fresh!) on October 30 from 2:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m.

Google Maps has implemented a great new feature to customize your driving route after they give you directions. I’ve used this a couple times since it was rolled out with great luck. Basically, after you put in your start and end points they give you a route as a blue line on the map. Then you can click and drag any point on that route and move it to the route you really want to go. It is useful if you are picking something up along the way or just want to use a different road than they suggest (the “scenic” route for example).

It seemed to work great until tonight. I wanted to give someone not too familiar with the area easy directions into DC via Interstate 66. Google Maps refuses to give directions using I-66 inside of the Capital Beltway going eastbound. I even tried having my starting address as “I-66, Arlington” and the end address being Constitution Ave (which 66 runs directly into). The first thing Google does is exit 66 and take a much more confusing route. No matter how many stops I added, it refuses to use 66 eastbound inside the beltway. It had me literally driving in circles going in and out of DC because it would only drive West across the Roosevelt Bridge.

Anyone else run into this?