Friday, July 3, 2009

daily snapshot: auto park ansel adams

Photographing The American Flag, Montgomery Auto Park
Pretty much every blog is going to have some photo of a flag for the Fourth of July, so I decided to commemorate the people who take photos of flags. The American flag is not an easy thing to photograph: if it's windy, you'll never get a shot of the whole thing as opposed to a mash of stars and stripes that looks more like America just finished wiping the crumbs off her face. Location is also important. You don't want the flag to look lonely and forlorn, but rather strong and majestic. It's also good to throw some Americana in there for good measure: Moms and apple pies are nice, but nothing really says America like a car dealership.

That's why the fellow in my photo, presumably a dealer or just someone waiting for their car to get fixed, is himself taking a photo of the American flag planted in the middle of the Montgomery Auto Park at Briggs Chaney Road and Route 29.

4 comments:

Dr. F. said...

Yeah, that Briggs-Chaney Autopark flag is iconic and can be seen for miles in East MOCO.

When it was down a few weeks ago it was missed.

Thomas Hardman said...

I like to go downtown for the 4th... flags everywhere, and furthermore, when they launch the fireworks, you get some slight clue as to what some of our Revolutionary Heroes went through. It's an outright shelling, only the loads are detonating a few hundred yards in the air, rather than amid your company.

Keep in mind that people have fought -- killed, survived, or died -- so that the Stars and Stripes can wave. O'er the land of the Free, and the home of the brave?

Let's all be sure to get on out and give the flag a proper hooah, or ooraw, or whatever you yell when you fight to be free.

I'll be yelling it for an ancestress, one Regina Doerr, a so-called "Molly Pitcher", who carried water to the troops somewhere in the vicinity of Yorktown PA. A Daughter of the American Revolution to be sure. When she saw those fireworks, they were up close and personal... and all around her, and for REAL...

Robert said...

You have to wonder if car dealers with huge American flags are honoring the flag and America or if they are [mis]using the flag as a huge sign to call attention to their dealerships. Putting up a sign that high and big would probably be illegal, but not so with a flag.

Maybe I'm too cynical, but I tend to avoid these dealers, thinking that if they misuse the flag, they mistreat their customers, too.

Thomas Hardman said...

Hmm, let's see.

Thanks a lot Robert.

So according to you, the US flag is the sign of dishonesty.

And the bigger it is, the more dishonest.

Again, thanks a lot.

Commie.