Jack's Dragon

This is a painting I made for my friend, Jack, for his birthday this year. It was actually an assignment for my illustration class – we had to do a zodiac sign (any culture) and originally I was going to do a snake but Jack said I should do a dragon (because he’s a dragon, obviously) so I decided to make it for his birthday as well as for my class assignment. The Chinese characters on the lower right are his name. Someone drew it out for him a long time ago and he gave me a copy to incorporate into the design.

Seasons

So many people (mostly people who have come to live in California from somewhere else) tell me that California has no seasons. The trees know what season it is. Watch the trees - they'll tell you.

Waterfall

I think it's interesting how we spend a lot of time and money building shelters to insulate us from nature then spend more money recreating nature inside our insulating shelters.

Liger Fish?

This is a Lion Fish. But it has stripes, so shouldn't it be a Tiger Fish? Maybe whoever named it thought all those poisonous, spiny finns look like a lion's mane? Mabe it should be a "Liger Fish" instead.  I'm just sayin...

No Tresspassing

Sign in the train station - the first two say "no trespassing" and "no loitering". This is a train station - how can you trespass in a train station? And no loitering? How can you tell if someone is loitering or waiting for a train?

The reflection on the floor is very cool. I need to go back and shoot this photo again on the other side of the sign.

Waitin' For A Train...

"Busted Flat in Baton Rouge, waitin' for a train..."

"...Sittin' downtown in a railway station one toke over the line."

"He's leavin' on that midnight train to Georgia..."

Lots of songs out there about trains. For any of you that remember the song One Toke Over The Line by Brewer & Shipley, did you know that Dick Dale sang it on the Ed Sullivan Show? It's true http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye3ecDYxOkg (if the link doesn't work by clicking on it, just copy and paste it into your browser).

Apparently they thought it was a Christian song and had no idea it was about smoking pot.

Ahhh, the 70's. So innocent for some

Looking Up

How much time do you spend looking up? We spend a lot of time looking ahead and way too much time looking behind - but what about up? It's really quite amazing how many interesting things there are way above our normal eye level. Try looking up more while you're going about your daily routine.

Where Does It Go?

Where does it go? Does it lead to opportunity, danger? Looks like a long way, doesn't it.

Fountain

They look like brass bowls sitting on a colorful snake. The lights in the water give the bowls a warm glow in the early evening. I wanted to try to shoot very slow to get the wispy, smokey quality to the water but the battery on my camera died. An experiment for another time.

Is It a Flying Saucer?

Metro Red Line

When I first heard about a subway for Los Angeles I thought it was a crazy idea. Nine years later, I almost never drive into L.A. any more. Almost everywhere I want to go downtown is within walking distance of a Metro Red Line stop -Hollywood, the Music Center, the Central Library, Grand Central Market, Disney Concert Hall, China Town, Little Tokyo, etc.

It takes about 30 to 40 minutes to ride end to end on the Red Line (North Hollywood Station to Union Station). I can't even drive into Los Angeles in less than 30 minutes most days. I've taken the connecting Blue Line to the L.A. Convention Center and the Nokia Theater. I don't like the Blue as much as the Red Line, but it gets me where I'm going. I haven't taken it (Blue Line) all the way to the end (Long Beach) yet, but that's on my list. I've read in the news that they plan to extend the Wilshire/Western line all the way out to Santa Monica. That would help a friend of mine who lives out there to get into L.A. more easily.

Times Gone By

Once upon a time this whole area would have been full of travelers buying tickets for parts east, north or south. I'm not sure what they use this room for now (if anything). It's been blocked off to the public for as long as I can remember. This is the original lobby of Union Station in downtown L.A. This is one beautiful building! It has been used as a location shoot for many movies and TV shows: Most recently it was used in the last two episodes of Monk. The train station Stottelmeyer was chasing the bad guy through was here in L.A. (not in San Francisco). And the plaza where Mr. Monk met Trudy's daughter in the final episode was right next door at the DWP.

Marble floors, beautiful wood paneling, elegant chandeliers - it's just a beautiful place to wander and look around, take photos, people watch. There is a restaurant and a couple of snack bars there if you want to slow down and enjoy the place. If you're in L.A. and haven't been here, you should take the time to see it.

The Perfect Sunset

I chase "the perfect sunset" photo. I also believe that it can't be captured on film. As spectacular as some of photos I've taken and I've seen of sunsets it isn't possible to capture it on film (or on computer chips). The photo doesn't capture the visceral experience of a breathtaking sunset. I think we're maybe not supposed to be able to nail down an ephemeral moment and hold it forever. We're supposed to experience it, then let it go and look forward to the next moment that takes our breath away.

Shapes & Textures

I like to shoot interesting shapes and textures. This was taken while waiting in line for Big Thunder Mountain at Disneyland. With all the "set dressing" and landscaping they have around there it's a great place to take photos.

It's All In How You Look At It

If you look at a bowl (or a plate of fruit) standing over it, it's just a bowl of fruit, right? But if you change your perspective it looks like an interesting landscape. Shapes, textures, colors take on a different context. I can imagine myself being very tiny and climbing through this rugged terrain. And when I get tired of climbing around (and hungry/thirsty) I can just take a bit out of one of those fruits!

Get out of your normal reality once and a while!

Red Shoes

I keep a lot of Sculpy in my house. It's a clay that can be baked in a home oven to become a permanent object. When my niece was younger she used to come over to my house and "play clay". She would make the most amazing little creatures - and they were so small!

One day I decided to show her how to make red high top shoes. I made one and she made the other. They came out very cute.

Playing With Reality

This image started out life as a simple photo of a large gear leaning against a wooden wall. In Photoshop I cut it up and rearranged the pieces similar to how a kaleidoscope breaks up and reflects images with mirrors. The result is something strange and sometimes wonderful.

The process is very addictive and I have been known to sit and play with the pieces for hours, turning them this way and that looking for something interesting to happen. Usually I have to walk away from it for a few hours or days before I come back and see something completely different that what I had been seeing before. There are almost always happy accidents in this process.

Happy Surprises

I was at a hotel in Santa Monica last month wandering around waiting for the people I was with to finish up a meeting there. I saw a waterfall out on the patio and went to investigate. The pond was full of VERY large coy fish. On a rock in the pond was a turtle sunning itself. As I watched the fish and the turtle I discovered another baby turtle, and then another, and then another bigger turtle. As I stood there I discovered about 6 turtles in the pond from the big one on the rock to little ones swimming around on the bottom. Because they're so close in color to the rocks on the bottom, I didn't see them until they moved so it sort of became a game of find the turtle.

Memories of Grandma

After my grandmother passed I made memory boxes like this for family and friends who were closest to her. I put in pictures of the favorite places she had been in her life and put in bits of "her life" along with the photos. She used to do stitched canvas so I put pieces of that in the box, along with pieces of her jewelry. She also used to make beaded Christmas ornaments - angels, candy canes, wreaths. I put those in there too. I have this sitting on a shelf in my living room where I see it frequently. It's a nice reminder of her.

Grandma was always doing some kind of craft project for as long as I knew her. My mom is very creative too. I remember her teaching us to make Christmas trees out of Reader's Digest magazines for table decorations. One year we made ice candles in milk cartons (fill milk cartons with ice cubes then pour melted wax in. The ice melts and makes a Swiss cheese effect to the candle after you peel away the milk carton). So I guess I come by my creativity naturally.

I offer this as an alternative way of displaying photos - other than just putting them on a frame on a wall. Also, most of the photos are not stuck to the back of the box, but are actually on "stand offs" so that the composition has some depth and dimension to it. I think I actually scanned the original photos, I didn't cut them up for this project. All of the boxes had the same photos in the same locations - the "other bits" were pieces of projects in progress and other personal items that had belonged to her.

I hope maybe this inspires you to make memory boxes of your own to give as gifts to those still living or to commemorate those who have passed on.

The Things We Never Know

This is my great aunt, my maternal grandmother's sister. She was what people call a "formidable" woman. I was always very intimidated by her. She was one of those people who had an immaculate house and plastic covers on the arms of her couch and chairs. It wasn't that she was mean to us, she wasn't, she just wasn't a warm, fuzzy person.

So imagine my surprise when I saw this photo when I was going through my grandmother's possessions after she passed. I know nothing about what she or my grandmother were like when they were teenagers. I believe they were both in their early 20s when they got married and started their families. This photo says so much and also brings a lot of questions - first and foremost - What in the world is she doing in a wheelbarrow?
It's obvious from the photo that she had a playful streak and a sense of humor. This is a side of her I didn't know anything about. My grandmother used to organize trips for seniors and this was one of their fall trips to a pumpkin farm I believe.

I really like this photo (I didn't take the photo, I think my grandmother did). To me it says volumes about who this woman was.

Unexpected Evening

I was dreading going to my Graphic Design class tonight. 3 weeks ago the teacher gave us what we all considered a nearly impossible assignment. He said he expected us all to fail the assignment. I hate teachers who do that. The assignment was very vague to begin with and what he actually wanted was not what he told us he wanted in the first place. What we had here was a failure to communicate. Then when I got to class tonight I heard that he had discussed our next assignment at length last week (when I didn't go because it was a "lab" night and I have the program at home). Needless to say, I was not a happy camper at that point.

In class two weeks ago I finally went for the Gordian Knott solution to the current assignment and said "screw it, I'm throwing out all the rules and I'm going to do my design this way". Turns out he liked my solution to the "problem". In fact, he liked my solution so much he went on about how brilliant it was for about 5 minutes tonight when I gave my presentation (somewhat embarrassing and rather gratifying). It was a creative solution to the problem. As I understood the assignment, I don't think my design solution fits the criteria, but he loved it which I guess is all that matters.

It was a very unexpected night. From bits and pieces of what other students told me (and the teacher discussed some of it again) I can get behind this next assignment. I'm not still thinking of dropping the class (the thought crossed my mind earlier tonight) and I feel a lot better about my art classes.

That happens a lot - things go in a different direction than I expect them to. Sometimes this is a good thing, sometimes it's not. Tonight it was a good thing. And you're probably wondering what any of this has to do with the picture I posted. Well, in the vein of things not being what they appear to be - the above sculpture started out life as one 2x4 (I think it was a 2x4 - it was all one piece of wood anyway). This was an assignment in my 3 dimensional art class several years ago (I LOVED that class). We had to make something out of a singles piece of wood, but we had to use all of it, we couldn't throw any of it away. This was my solution to that assignment. It was a bit of serendipity that this photo was scheduled for my blog today and the events that unfolded in class tonight.

The Day After

I didn't take this picture. This is one of those photos that circulates in emails every year in October. However, I do want to do this particular type of pumpkin carving one of these days. I would fill mine with bits of candy and wrappers though, just to emphasize the grossness (kids love that kind of stuff!).

More Yellowstone

This mound is the result of years and years of mineral layering from the water bubbling up through the ground. This is in the same general area of the Travertine Steps but I don't think it's is actually part of it. It's amazing how different areas of the park are in the vegetation, even relatively close areas. This isn't all that far from the other photo I took that looked like a winter scene with dead trees, but look at all the grass and trees growing up right next to this mound. The water coming out of it is still very hot and very acidic. These plants must have learned how to adapt.

Yellowstone is such a beautiful place and I've only seen a tiny bit of it. I can't wait to go back again.

Berries

I got really overloaded in October and couldn't keep up with my blog. The way I tried to work around that is to pre-load images in a folder and date them so I know which photo to choose for the next day. That way I don't have to spend time looking for them. So, today it's berries.

This photo would make a cool background for something. I've been shooting a lot of things like that lately - images to use as backgrounds. A couple of years ago I took some great shots of a tree across the street from my office at this time of year. The leaves were green, yellow, orange, brown and shooting up, I got a clear blue sky. Now I have to go through all my CDs and look for those photos because I need them for "fall" backgrounds on projects I'm working on now.

Maybe I should get back to the berries. There's a lot of different colors of berries. And why are blueberries called blue when they're really purple? Who gets to make up the names? And who knew raspberries are hairy? If you look at them really close you can see the little hairs on them. If you take this picture into Photoshop and blur it really well you just get blobs of colors - shades of reds and purples - yet another interesting background!

[Note: I did finally find the CD with the Fall trees on it. 11-15-09]

Yellowstone River

Water is the most corrosive substance on earth. Given enough time it can erode anything. And we drink the stuff every day! I think maybe water is the most versatile element on the Earth - we drink it, wash with it, water plants with it so they can grow and we can eat them. We mix it with other stuff to make other, other-stuff. We literally could not live without water, which is why they're trying to find it on the Moon and on Mars.

[Note: According to NASA they did find lots of water on the Moon when they smashed a rocket into it the other day. They just released their findings this week. 11.15.09]

Grand Canyon of Yellowstone

I have a bit of a fear of heights, so this was one of those occasions where I had to screw up my courage to walk out to the edge to take a photo. Of course there are rails all around where I was standing so I would have really had to try hard to fall in. It was VERY windy the day I took this photo - VERY WINDY!!!! That also was very scary, I felt like I was going to get pushed over the side any minute by a gust of wind. But I did stand out there for a little bit and take in this amazing view. My mom told me later when we were walking back to the car that there was a ledge below us on one side where there were all these hats that had blown down there. Maybe next time I'll get that photo!

That's the thing about fears and phobias - we almost all have them and it's what we do in spite of them that makes us who we are. If I let my fear of heights (or small spaces) stop me, I would miss out on a lot of wonderful opportunities. I don't think I will ever have the courage to go sky diving. I think I could enjoy the experience of hang gliding (not sure about that one yet) but I definitely would go up in a hot air balloon and take pictures from up there. I think that would be great and I could probably be OK with the height thing, since I'm in a basket and reasonably safe from falling overboard. Not, big, brave things, I know, but I think life is about doing things in spite of your fears and not letting them stop you, cause most of the things we're afraid of aren't real anyway.

Stark Beauty

Looks like a winter scene, doesn't it? Nope. This is in an area of Yellowstone Park called the Travertine Steps. All the trees in this area are dead. The water is boiling hot and the ground it highly acidic. Step off the boardwalks here and you will be scalded before you know it.

But there is a beauty here all the same - in the graceful shapes of the bare trees, in the myriad colors of the algae that lives in the hot acidic water and the colors of the mineral deposited by the water as it runs across the landscape. It's a breathtaking landscape and a reminder that we exist on the surface of this spinning rock at the whim of nature. If we think we are in any way in control of it, we're only deluding ourselves.

What must our ancestors have thought as they traveled from east to west in search of new beginnings when they came upon places such as this? Scalding water and mud bubbling from pits and pools and shooting miles into the air? What an astounding sight this must have been for them. Is it much different now, from what they saw then - set aside and "preserved" as a national park, a place for city folk to come and "experience nature" that isn't created from steel, chicken wire and concrete in an amusement park?

I'm sure a lot of people will view this scene (either here or in the flesh) and think, 'how sad that it's all dead' and completely miss the beauty and life that is still there. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Lilly

Tiny lily tucked into a flower arrangement. I like the spots. Why do flowers have spots? Is it an attraction mechanism? Are insects are attracted to the spots, which lead them down into the center of the plant where the pollination takes place? I wonder about these things.

I especially like Star Gazer lilies. They smell SO good.

Someone at work gets a lot of flowers. It's convenient when photo opportunities come to me. With my busy schedule lately I haven't had any time to go out shooting.

Happy Times

Just spent the evening with my niece at Disneyland. We went twice on Tower of Terror and twice on the California Screamin'. We watched the fireworks from the top level of the parking lot (accompanied by the sound track of car alarms). Then went back to Disneyland and waited a long time to go on Space Mountain, which has been temporarily altered for the Halloween season. The changes are ok, but nothing special. It's still a ride I think is best experienced with eyes closed and just listen to the music, feel the wind rushing past you and tune into the physical sensations of the ride. They've got this light show going on on the outside of space mountain that's pretty awesome to watch while you're waiting in line though.

She's 15 and she thinks I'm funny ("laugh with me" funny, but also, "your so weird" funny). She has two (much) older brothers whom I wasn't around much when they were growing up. They lived out of state when they were little and when they came back to California I was having my 20 something messed up life crisis and wasn't much interested in associating with my family. We (the boys and I) have bonded over the years, but not as much, I think, as I have with Ana. I don't know, maybe it's a "girl thing". I love them all, but Ana and I seem to do more stuff together.

I always made sure they all knew I was there for them while they were growing up. Some times kids just can't talk about stuff with their parents and they know they can talk to me about anything. I won't always give them the answers they want to hear, but I will listen. They know that my place is a "safe house" for them if they needed it. The boys are old enough they don't need that now, still the offer is always there for her.

Anyway, we had a lot of fun at Disneyland tonight playing around, having fun and just being goofy.

The photo is an architectural detail on a hotel in Santa Monica I saw last weekend. I thought it was cool.

Haunted Gingerbread House

A couple of years ago I made a haunted gingerbread house and took it to work. It sat there for about a week. The funny thing was that the longer it sat there the more warped it got. The 2nd floor started sagging, the ground floor, which was made out of sugar wafers covered in royal icing started to curl up - it was great! The support pillars for the 2nd floor are pretzels. The rail around the 2nd floor is made up of little "bone" candies. I might do it again this year.

Usually gingerbread houses are a Christmas thing. I thought I'd do something different. It's fun to take a tradition from one area and put it into something unexpected - kind of like the idea of The Nightmare Before Christmas. Think beyond the stereo types and traditions! Dare to be different!

Suede Tree

This tree had the most interesting look and texture. It was like suede and looked so soft. I was walking back to my car after attending a festival that a friend had invited me to and I saw so many things to photograph - including this tree. I only have a point-and-shoot camera at the moment so I couldn't get a nice close-up to really show the interesting texture.

If anyone was walking down they street they were probably wondering why the crazy lady was talking a picture of a tree on a parkway. My sister and her daughter are used to it now and they don't think anything of it.

My niece even asked me to take a picture of some tiny Lantanna flowers we passed. While we were looking at them she screamed and ran down the block. Turns out there was a very large spider about a foot above her head where she was standing looking at the flowers. It was a beautiful spider! and very large, about the size of a half dollar. That was a fun, discovery day.

Leaf

Nature makes the most beautiful things. This is a natural leaf, no enhancement, no Photoshop - it's just the way nature made it. The colors are so beautiful. It certainly calls attention to itself. The oranges and yellows are very bright.

It was outside a makeup shop I took my niece to yesterday so she could buy fangs. I saw it on our way back to the car. I only got this one shot, though. The memory stick on my camera filled up with this shot so I couldn't shoot another one. Glad I got one.

Leo Carillo

I love the beach! I used to think that the beach was just sand and water and rocks (and seagulls) and that there wasn't really any "life" there. Then I took an oceanography class and opened my eyes. That sand and those rocks are teeming with life! You just have to know where to look.

I discovered sea slugs (think squishy, brown, cucumbers), spiny sea urchins, muscles, crabs, tiny fish - it was amazing and beautiful. When kelp washes up on shore I like to look in the holdfasts (roots) for shells of small sea creatures just to see what is there.

A lot of life is like that - we go through our day seeing only the surface of things (or people) and never knowing the richness of diversity of life that is right there to see if we just look in the right place or get to know something or someone a little better.

Catalina

This looks like a very old photo to me. However, I think it was taken only about 4 years ago. I like Catalina Island. It's a very relaxing place and it has the BEST miniature golf course (at least I think so). My grandmother took my sister and I there when were were kids for weekend vacations a couple of times. That was when the only way to get there was on the SS Catalina steam ship. They had a dance band on the boat and a clown (Catalina Cappy).

The docking pier was in the middle of Avalon harbor, not off to the side like it is now. Kids used to swim out to the incoming boat begging for coins. I always wanted to be one of those kids.

One of these day's I'm going to go camping there. I like camping and don't do it nearly often enough. I don't, however, like camping when I know there are bears around. They scare me and I don't get much sleep. Probably silly, as most bears would rather eat what's in my cooler than me (it doesn't fight back or make noise), still, it's one of those phobias that limits what I do sometimes.

I would also like to go dancing in the ballroom at the top of the Casino one of these days. Such a beautiful room! I had been to Catalina for several years before I ever took the Casino tour. I had even been to movies in the theater downstairs and heard the pipe organ. But I love the ballroom with the parquet floor and the Art Deco design. Very beautiful and elegant. I can see myself dancing a waltz or a cha cha in there. Some day....

How Connected Are You?

How connected to the earth are you? When was the last time you walked on the earth? Not sidewalks, asphalt, carpets or floors but on the actual earth - soil, sand, grass, rocks?

I've been walking on the grass and paths at school for the last few months. Since we're in a drought the ground has been packed and hard. It rained quite a lot the last two days and when I was walking over the grass at break time tonight it was soft and springy. It was an interesting sensation and I'm glad I was aware of the change. Makes me know I'm still in touch with the earth and not just existing on the surface of it.

We've become so separated from the earth. We go about our lives on the surface of it every day, but we've paved over so much of it, we put barriers between ourselves and the earth - shoes, cement, carpet, etc. We rarely walk barefoot on the earth any more. It's a wonderful feeling to walk barefoot in the grass, on the beach. You can feel the life of the earth, her warmth and her heartbeat. Try it sometime.

Random Musings Under Stress

Why do we imagine we're all alone when we're under stress; that no one knows or understands, that no one cares, that no one is there to help? Contrary to what the voices in my head tell me, there are PLENTY of people who, in reality, are there for me. People who say "sure, I'll be there" when I ask for help; people who say "I hope you feel better" when I express doubt, frustration or sadness. People who tell me what I should be doing (whether I asked for advise or not, LOL). My friends are always there for me, whether I remember it or not. Thanks to all of you.

Glendale Train Station

I have to believe that the architect/lighting designer knew the effect of the decoration above the door when up lit at night (center of the photo). I pulled the day image from a blog called Modus Eundi because I just don't have time to drive over there in the daytime to shoot it. I shot the night image myself. They're both the same place. I wonder if superstitious people see this place at night and turn around and drive away.

Travertine Steps

This interesting feature is located in Yellowstone Park. It's in a location called the Travertine Steps. The colors you see in this photo are cause by different kinds of algae that grows in the hot water that runs down the side of this mound. The mound was created by mineral deposits left by the hot water, sort of the same way lava shapes a volcano.

There are so many interesting places in Yellowstone! I specifically wanted to see this area because I had a calendar once that had a photo of the "steps" with water running down it and it was so beautiful. Since that photo was taken the water activity on the steps has changed and they are mostly a bleached white now. No water, no algae. Still, it's a beautiful place to go. I'd like to go back when I have more time and to walk around and explore.

Blue Goo

This thing has been the office for as long as I can remember. It makes the rounds of everyone's desk at one time or another. I'm sure it originally arrived as a promo piece for a company that makes promotional pieces. We get a lot of stuff like that.

It's very therapeutic. You just keep turning it over (like an hour glass) and the blue goo runs down to the bottom and makes bubbles at the top. I think it takes about 3 minutes for it to run through, but it wouldn't make a good egg timer because you'd keep turning it over again and forget to get the eggs!

Pitcher

I like to shoot sporting events. You can get some very interesting shots. I shot this one at a pretty fast shutter speed. If I had used a slower speed the ball would have been elongated and the pitcher's arm would probably have been a blur.

It's cool when you shoot for a stop motion effect because then you see things you would most likely see with you own eyes, weirdly contorted poses or facial gestures. Some are funny some are scary and some you just can't believe a human body can get into that kind of expression or pose.

I have a couple of really good shots where you can see the batter swinging and just barely missing the ball. I'll have to look for those.

Bubbles

I LOVE soap bubbles. Look at the colors in these things! They're like delicate living things. They float and move and change colors. If you can follow one or if one alights on a surface and manages to stay whole for a minute you can watch the haze of colors swirling over the surface.

Soap bubble are a magical things to me - like airplanes. My logical brain knows that it's physics (and a lot of math stuff) with water and soap and surface tension and I know the are physical laws for for how planes fly, but to me it's just magic. I know how it works and I know why it works but I'm in awe that it happens.

I like holding on to that little-kid wonder and awe. It saves me from becoming depressingly cynical.

Cactus

It makes a difference what time of day you photograph something. I first saw this cactus in the evening, maybe around 6 or 7 pm. It was much more interesting looking then - it's leaves (pads?) were open more fully and the pattern of white around their edges was more noticeable.

I took this picture late morning, around 10 am or so. I don't think it's as good an image as what I saw in the afternoon. I'll have to go back and get an evening shot.

House Spirit

I've learned many skills in my life. One of them was wood carving. This was a house spirit I carved. It hangs in my sister's house. Funny, I make lots of things for other people and very little for myself. I should make a house spirit for my home too.

Playing With Trees

All three of these images started out with one tree branch - the same branch image was the foundation for all of these different looks. I copy and rotate the image, playing around with how it's laid out until I see something that I think looks really cool - sometimes for hours! I think maybe you have to be a little OCD to do this. If you click on the image you see a larger image of the three. This is like cloud watching - you can find all kinds of imaged hidden in them. The middle one reminds me of a human torso - kinda creepy!

The Sphere

I went to New York with my sister and her daughter a few years ago. We were only there for a couple of days. We did all the tourist things - Statue of Liberty, Redline Tours, Times Square.

Of course we went to Ground Zero. It was very quiet there. My biggest thought was that as bad as 9/11 was, it could have been so much worse if the buildings hadn't gone straight down. The site was all sanitized by then and looked much like any construction site you can find in downtown LA on any given day. I didn't have any real emotional reaction to the site.

In Battery Park it was a different story however. We were walking back through the park after our trip to the Statue of Liberty, when we came upon this sculpture. It's a winding path that leads to it so you don't see the thing all at once. It was a huge, metal ball and I could see that there were large holes in it. I thought "how sad, vandals have destroyed this piece of art". When we got up to it I could see just how badly this sculpture was damaged.

There is a sign there telling that this sculpture once stood between the twin towers and was removed from the rubble of 9/11 and placed there in Battery Park as a memorial. I cried while I was reading the sign. Maybe as an artist, this touched me more than the empty hole where the buildings used to be. I could see what this sculpture had been and what had been done to it. I could understand the forces needed to create so much damage.

It was a very strange experience. A couple of years after this visit I saw a program on TV about this sculpture and it's strange and sad journey and the message of hope that it offers that although we may have been damaged by the events of 9/11 we're still here and we're still going about our daily lives.

Unexpected Paths

I grabbed a box of pictures to go through last night thinking it was mine. Turns out it was my grandma's box of pictures. Pictures of family from 25 years ago. Man, have we all changed! Pictures of family members I've never met (or met when I was 4) but I've heard their names.

I've become the keeper of the photos for the family. I took grandma's photo books and boxes when she passed several years ago and my cousin sent me a bunch of her mother's photos when she went through her things. It was a surprise to see pictures of all of us so young. I saw a photo of my mother at the same age my sister is now and I saw the same look on her face that I see on my sister from time to time. My grandmother, mother, sister and niece all have the same face. If you saw photos of each of them at, say, age 5, they would all look like photos of the same person.

I learned a lot from grandma. Besides my mom, she was the person who was around the most while I was growing up. She took us on vacations to Catalina and Tahoe. She made vegetable beef soup on cold days. That's probably the thing I miss most about her - her soup on cold, wet days.

The most surprising thing I learned from her (that I wasn't expecting) was how old people die. She was in the process of dying two years before she actually passed and if we had known what was happening we would have made the transition easier for her. She was in a nursing home and they kept giving her blood transfusions and all kinds of drugs just to keep her alive. She had no energy to get up and about. All she could do was lie in bed. She was hallucinating because of the drugs. When we'd come to visit she'd ask how we found her and tell us that they had taken her somewhere in the night and she didn't know where she was and wanted to go home. She was very unhappy.

It took us a while to understand that she was going through the natural process of dying. We talked to her Dr. who told us that the drugs he had her on were only prolonging her life so we told him to stop giving her all the drugs except pain medication if she wanted it. The last two weeks of her life she was quite lucid and remembered seeing her great great grandchild who was newly born. My sister and I were with her when she finally passed.

I hope that particular lesson I learned from her will help me be more understanding, compassionate and helpful to my other relatives as they reach the natural end of their lives.

Determination

This was on the way home from Catalina Island on the Catalina Express. I don't know how fast that ship moves but the seagulls were doing a pretty good job of keeping up. There was a man on the boat holding out sandwiches for the birds. This bird got most of it.

Lilly Pond

Isn't this pretty? You wouldn't know it's in the middle of a college, would you? I found this while I was walking around Pierce College on Saturday. I had to go to school to buy a text book. While I was there I was taking pictures in the Botanical Garden and came across this pool. I'm usually there in the evenings so I don't really see all of this.

There was a cute little box turtle right on the edge of the pool. The only way I could have gotten a picture of him was to wade into the pool. Not really an option. There was something big in the pool making waves but it was staying under the surface. I think I'll go back again.

Masks We Wear

At some point in my distant past I taught clown make-up classes to Campfire Girl groups. It's amazing what happens when you put on a mask, even a painted one.

This particular class was one group so they all knew each other. The other class I did was two different groups at the same time who did not know each other. They sat at separate tables and did not interact with each other. They were mostly very quiet and reserved. By the time they got all their make up on they were running around the room talking and laughing and even went outside to wave at cars passing on the street. Having the masks on made them anonymous and allowed them to do things they otherwise wouldn't do.

The World Wide Web is our collective "mask". Behind it's (perceived) protection of anonymity some people do and say things they would never do in a face to face situation. This is a double edged sword. On one side, it allows some people to express their creative side, their own opinions or defend themselves. On the other side it allows some people to spew forth hate, ignorance, intolerance, and other anti-social behavior that they otherwise would contain.

This virtual mask is also a great leveler; the very nature of it puts most of us on a level playing field with everyone else. On the web you can't see what a person looks like, so you can't judge them by their looks. You can't identify if they are deaf, blind, or have missing limbs. You can't identify (in many cases) gender or age ; all of the things that feed certain ingrained judgements we have about people which directs our behavior toward them.

There is also a whole generation (or two) of people out there who apparently believe that because they have their virtual personal space set to "private" that no one else can see what they write or the pictures they post. They don't get that posting anything in cyberspace is equivalent to putting your diary on a shelf in the library; while everyone may not see it, it's there as a permanent record for anyone to find who wants to and is determined enough to look for it. They also don't get that alliances shift and the person who was your BFF yesterday isn't your BFF today and is forwarding your compromising pictures and/or comments to everyone they know.

The virtual world is just like the real world. There are consequences for what you say and do and the choices you make. You have the power and the responsibility. What are you going to do with it?

Solitary Purple

Who says you need a whole bouquet to make a pretty picture? Not me!

I can appreciate the whole forest (meadow, landscape, cityscape, etc.) as well as the next person, but I like to look for the little details that get lost or overlooked in the big picture. I tried to catch the little bug buzzing around these flowers, but he was moving too fast and I didn't have a tripod with me.

You know, this daily blog business isn't as easy as it looks. I scanned 3 photos last night and uploaded them to my "blogpix" folder, labeled them with dates, so I'd know which one I was going to pick next, then I went out taking pictures this morning and that "schedule" of photos went right out the window. At the moment I'm more inspired by today's photos than the old one's I scanned last night.

Oh, you'll see the others somewhere along the way. They're still in the folder as back up for when I don't have the time to take new ones or I just don't have the time/energy to look through the 1,000s of photos I've taken over the last 20 or so years for something to write about.

I have discovered that it's much easier to keep up with the "daily" aspect of this blog if I preload a bunch of pictures into that folder. Guess that works for most things in life, planning makes the job go smoother. I should have already known this. I DO already know this. If I was going to do a drawing or a painting I would lay out all the tools I need nearby so I wouldn't have to constantly get up and go get a pencil or a tube of paint while I'm in the middle of working. I guess maybe I thought that since this is "virtual" there wasn't any planning or preparation to do. Silly me!

Well, this blog is doing what I wanted it to to. It is inspiring me to take pictures again. I haven't been out shooting in probably more than two years and now I've been shooting quite a bit and most of it right in my own back yard. Well, not literally in my back yard, but certainly within the scope of my normal day-t0-day travels. Might not spend the whole day doing it, but bits here and there add up and I'm seeing things and places I would ordinarily have missed because I'm really "looking" at what is around me, looking for "the shot". I hope you're enjoying this little tour through my life. I am.