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.