“Mrs. Mabel Chinnery was visiting the grave of her mother one day in 1959. She had brought along her camera to take photographs of the gravesite. After snapping a few shots of her mother’s gravestone, she took an impromptu photo of her husband, who was waiting alone in the car. At least the Chinnerys thought he was alone.When the film was developed, the couple was more than surprised to see a figure wearing glasses sitting in the back seat of the car. Mrs. Chinnery immediately recognized the image of her mother – the woman whose grave they had visited on that day. A photographic expert who examined the print determined that the image of the woman was neither a reflection nor a double exposure. “I stake my reputation on the fact that the picture is genuine,” he testified.
I am yet to see close friendship among women extending from child hood.
If there is ,this could be an exception.
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“When five teenagers sat down and posed for a picture at Copco Lake in 1982, they didn’t plan on making it a tradition. But that’s what it became.
Every five years for the past three decades, John Wardlaw, John Dickson, Mark Rumer, Dallas Burney and John Molony have been meeting at the Californialake and taking the same photo.
The first photograph of the high school friends was just happenstance. Wardlaw, known as Wedge in the group, had a family cabin at the lake where the friends gathered in July 1982.
While hanging out on the deck of the cabin, Dickson, or J.D., set his 35-millimeter camera on self-timer to take a g
“For some reason, we all chose to have dark and mysterious expressions on our faces,” said Wardlaw. “I’m sure we all thought we were being really cool.”
Though they tried a couple of poses, the one that would eventually win as the official vacation photo depicts the five teens, three of them shirtless, with shaggy hair typical of the time. They were about 19 years old.
Molony, known in the group as Belves, is pictured holding a Folgers Instant Coffee jar, which contained a cockroach the guys had decided to keep as a pet. They fed their new friend with a piece of butterscotch candy and kept it company with a photograph of Robert Young.
“Priorities were so different back then. All I was really thinking about was summer and girls,” said Wardlaw.
As the men went into their college years, they continued to return to the lake every summer. They spent their time fishing and reading and playing roles in homemade movies shot by Wardlaw, who is now a filmmaker.
“We’re all very creative people, so we would take all of our creative energy and focus it into a certain direction,” said Molony. “It wasn’t, ‘Let’s all get together and get drunk.’ It was, ‘Let’s get together and see who can make the funniest joke or pull off the sneakiest prank.’”
The men never drank on the trip. It has always been good, clean fun.
At least fairly clean: One year Wardlaw turned on the water to take a shower, and it was running brown. He removed the shower head to find a beef bullion cube.
“When I went back to the living room, the guys were all chuckling and I said something like ‘beefy goodness’ and they all exploded with laughter,” he said.
But it wasn’t until five summers later when Wardlaw, a photography enthusiast, decided it would be fun to recreate the photograph they’d taken in ’82.
In 1987, the now college-educated men sat in the same position on the same bench, again with a self-timed camera. The jar, a different one this time, contained no cockroach, and the hat held by Wardlaw was different as well. The expressions however, were unchanged.
“I think I had a feeling this might become some cool tradition, but I had no idea we would still be doing it for 30 years,” said Wardlaw.
In 1997, 15 years after the original photo, the men, then in their mid-30s, decided to solidify the photo as a tradition they would continue every five years for the rest of their lives.
Having found out that her daughter posted Alcohol related photographs in Facebook, a Mother devised a novel, yet effective way to punish her through the same Social Network.
“After author ReShonda Tate Billingsley found her daughter posting alcohol-related photos to the social network, she came up with a very original, and no doubt effective, form of punishment.
Following up the post her mother deemed inappropriate is a new photo that features the young girl holding a hand-written sign that reads, “Since I want to post photos of me holding liquor I am obviously not ready for social media and will be taking a hiatus until I learn what I should + should not post. BYE-BYE.”
Denise Abbott, a mother from Ohio, used the same method to punish her 13-year-old daughter Ava after she found her posting “disrespectful things” on Facebook.
“I do not know how to keep my [mouth shut]. I am no longer allowed on Facebook or my phone. Please ask why,” the text on the 13-year-old girl’s Facebook photo read.
Despite the embarrassment, Abbot told NBC she doesn’t regret her disciplinary action, saying she needed to find something that would “totally impact her.”
The photographing of the images is the actually least time consuming part of the process. What takes the longest is finding the places that are worthy of shooting and getting to the spot that’s best to shoot them from. You can’t light landscapes so it’s important to figure out what the best time of day is to take a photograph. Sometimes this means long hours of waiting and watching.
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