Grace Under Pressure

I have a darling, diminutive new niece.  At 6 lbs, 3 oz, she manages to have beaten Catherine's birth weight by 5 ounces.  However, Communio, currently tipping the scales at over 20 lbs, weighs more than both his baby cousins combined.

Her name is Grace Calixta Bond.
Unfortunately, I have totally missed my chance to greet my sister saying "Hail Rachel, full of Grace!"  However, I have a new favorite corny joke.  It goes like this:

Q. What do you call Rachel in labor?
A. Grace under Pressure.

I crack myself up.
enough chatter.  I know you just clicked on the link to ogle pictures of Grace in all her tiny beauty.  Let the ogling begin.

dusk blooms

I almost invariably photograph flowers right before I lose the daylight.
It may be because that's when I water my bits of the garden. I'm too lazy to get up early and water my flowers before the hot sun can interfere with moisture absorption.  So I rush out to water the garden after dinner, while there's still enough time that the flowers can dry off a bit before the sun goes down.

The drought has cowed almost the entire garden.  The begonias are soldiering on, and the sedum is unfazed, but everything else is dry and despairing.  Except for my zinnias.  They are sunshiny, cheerful, abundant, and resilient. They are such a joy.

They are the only flower blooming in enough of a quantity to cut for arrangements.  Here, in no particular order is the highlights from recent arrangements.

See more beauty after the jump.

The Sweetest Thing...

It is a sweet thing, friendship, a dear balm,

A happy and auspicious bird of calm,

Which rides o'er life's ever tumultuous Ocean;

A God that broods o'er chaos in commotion;

A flower which fresh as Lapland roses are,

Lifts its bold head into the world's frore air,

And blooms most radiantly when others die,

Health, hope, and youth, and brief prosperity;

And with the light and odour of its bloom,

Shining within the dun eon and the tomb;

Whose coming is as light and music are 'Mid dissonance and gloom—a star

Which moves not 'mid the moving heavens alone— A smile

among dark frowns—a gentle tone

Among rude voices, a beloved light,

A solitude, a refuge, a delight.

                          -Percy Byshe Shelley

photo critique 2: graffiti

Dear Friends,

My excellent friend and I continue to exchange photos once a month, so that we can give each other feed back and encourage each other to improve.  We aim to exchange photos at the beginning of each month, but then, well, life happens. 

This month, I was very good, and sent off my email promptly on the 1st off August...and forgot to attach the photos.  So my friend still hasn't seen them to comment on them. C'est la vie.

I also couldn't for the life of me pair the series down to just 10 pictures.  I was lucky to get it under 15.  There were too many that intrigued me for too many reasons.

This month, I chose to explore some local graffiti.  It's very interesting to me, because it breaks so many social taboos, and discusses and or subverts ideas of ownership, propriety, beauty, and artistic cannons.  It can be at the same moment joyful and angry, and how it both harmonizes and clashes with its environment.  It also is very, very site specific.
I was surprised to realize how much the surrounding plants and weather change it physically, or obscure it.

 

So, what do you think?

I'd love, love, love your feedback!

vacation photography: family

It's a little silly, but most of my pictures from family vacation include one niece or the other, or sometimes both.



I thought about it afterwards, and here's my theory: It takes very little for children and babies to look cute.  Adults tend to want a little more prep time before they let you take their portrait.  And who wants to go through all that fuss and bother? It's vacation after all. Time to wear your most comfortable clothes, not worry about make-up, and generally let your hair down.

Hence, lots of pictures of neices, very few pictures of siblings.

vacation photography: photographing for myself

The mornings were so beautiful, so serene.

My family has outgrown our old vacationing spots the way a plant outgrows a pot.  So a family meeting was held, subcommittees were formed, and a new location was found.  We ended up renting out an entire retreat house in the southern part of the state.  The retreat house used to be a rich doctor's house, complete with lake, hiking paths, pool, indoor and outdoor game rooms, and at least 6 bathrooms. Heaven.

The only hitch was that within 5 minutes of my group's arrival, the power went out, and staid out for the rest of the long weekend.  It was part of that storm at the beginning of July that knocked out power in several states.  However, the stove was gas powered and so was the hot water heater.  So we staid on.
We turned the un-powered refrigerators into large coolers by adding bags of ice regularly.  We played games or talked by candle light in the evening.  To combat the heat, we took cold showers and went to the pool. A lot.
It was rather like luxury camping.

The only battery that didn't give out on me was my camera's battery.  I'm so glad it held through.  I took pictures of my family, mostly of my two Hutchinson neices because I rarely get to see them together for enough time to get a decent picture.  Also Catherine was frequently in a good mood, showing off her twinkly eyes and brand new smile.

However, I have a special love for the pictures I took for no one but myself.  These were the early morning pictures or early evening pictures, full of gently atmospheric greenery, and almost opaque early morning mist.

Critique Swap

My friend and I are doing an art-cooperative of sorts. 
We both love photography, and actually own the exact same camera body.  We also have been wanting both motivation and feedback about our photography.
So, we developed a Plan.

Over the course of each month, we create a collection of 5-10 photographs that are thematically linked in some way.  Then, at the end of the month, we email them to each other.  Then, we look at each other's pictures and send back a helpful, thoughtful critique email. 
Due to the power outages at the beginning of the month, we've already ran into some snags.  However, I have high hopes for this exchange.  I long for thoughtful, in-depth critique of photography.  Outside of art-school, it's kind of a foreign concept.
Eventually, we hope to turn our photo exchanges into a blog with picture and critique posts.

So here's my artist's statement for my June collection:
"I decided to explore a certain kind of still life that I've been setting up for some time.  They've always been interesting, but not quite interesting enough. I think of them as "isolations."

The "isolation" tends to be one or two objects against a textured background, usually a chunk of sidewalk. They also frequently involve something translucent, like a plastic bag or a glass. As I explored and examined the photos, both past ones, and new ones, I found that the background textured object is at least as important as the subject, if not more so.  I hadn't consciously realized this before. Also, the photos that most clearly fit (into the category and with each other) were all earth tones.

As I kept photographing, I found that there was a group of photos that almost fit the profile, but somehow defied it.  They had more color and more energy, while still isolating an object against a background and examining the textures of the objects.  Perhaps the shift from winter/spring to summer just makes the pictures naturally more juicy. I'm not sure. On the whole, these pictures were more interesting.  So I shifted my concentration, and shot for this series instead, to complete it most successfully."
So, that's what I set out to do.  I would love to know your thoughts about the collection.  Leave a comment or shoot me an email!

 

Life is sweet: John and Kristine

Sometimes life is more complicated than I would've dreamed possible, which is why I've been meaning to post these pictures for a month or more, and never have found the time.

However, it is also wonderfully sweet and rewarding.
Johnny and Kristine are like that, minus the complicated-ness.  I think it's because they are so unaffected, so very truly themselves.  They also really seem to see each other as they really are, and appreciate each other as-is.
Beautiful.