One of the things I enjoy on the Palm Beach Post‘s website is the “Booking Blotter” – mugshots of the latest scallywags booked into the Palm Beach County Jail. It’s here where drug dealers, prostitutes, trespassers and wife beaters have their photos published for the world to see. While the purpose is not for humor, you can’t help but get a chuckle when looking at some and wondering, “did he/she really leave the house looking like that this morning?”
While no such “Booking Blotter” exists online in Luzerne County, after seeing Wednesday’s Times Leader I think we could use one. An article ran about a Laceyville, PA woman who was looking to hire a hit-man. Unfortunately the prospective hit-man she was looking to hire was an undercover state trooper. Michelle Lee Parkhurst was charged with criminal solicitation to commit homicide and two counts of criminal conspiracy to solicit the commission of homicide. While being booked into the Wyoming County Correctional Facility, the prison’s staff took the obligatory mugshot which you see below:
Photos have the ability to capture nature at it’s most sensational moments or humans at their weakest points. I always carry a camera with me wherever I go, and not just the one built into my iPhone. I always manage to see something along the highway, up in the sky, or right next to me which deserves to be saved in digital form for viewing later on. I’m not a professional photographer by any nature, but collecting interesting images is a hobby of mine. Like one from today:
I couldn’t help but notice the door handles for an old McCrory’s Five and Dime proclaiming “Self Service.” I started thinking about how many people over the years pushed those doors open to gain entrance into a menagerie of housewares. It’s a history lesson in itself coupled with a trip down memory lane.
Images are powerful. They can summon tears, instill fear, inspire awe or simply illicit a chuckle. Photographers have the ability to call upon these emotions with every click of the shutter. Even if it’s a dimly lit photo of the neighborhood mugger.