Remember Me

 

View from Hunt's Mesa into Monument Valley

We used to take all of our pictures of the family or the vacation and get them printed at the local drugstore to show off to friends. But then what did  you do with them? If you were like us, you started putting them in special albums, thinking you would keep them forever.

Then the magic wore off of putting them in the albums. The second kid came along, or the second trip to Disney wasn't as special as the first, or things just got to busy. The pictures ended up in a box. The box got full and hidden away in a closet. The pictures got forgotten about.

But they're still there. Someday our kids will be cleaning out our house and find them.

What do you do now? There isn't that box anymore. Now it's the cellphone picture put on Facebook or on a hard drive somewhere. Just pixels floating around to be forgotten about and lost forever when the old computer is replaced with the shiny new one.

I don't want that to happen with my images. I want my kids and grand kids to see what I worked on for all those years, and to share with their kids what old grandpa did. I don't know if it will ever be kept or passed on, but I have a new project in mind. I'm going to take all of my best images and put in a book; something tangible to touch, feel, and look at. Not a pile of pixels, but something on paper.

The image above will be in that book. I don't know what the book will be like yet, or what its name will be, but hopefully it will be around longer than me and someone will look at it and think about me once in a while.


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Trapped by the Rocks

Virgin River in Autumn, Zion National Park

Ever since Denise and I started going west about 20 years ago, I've been trapped.

Trapped with a feeling that I need to see the red rocks;  that I need to just be with them. That feeling gets stronger every year that I get older.

I sometimes think that I started this photography thing just to have an excuse to go to the rocks, because honestly, and I really mean it, I could leave the camera at home and be just as happy.

Denise has always made fun of me when I tell her I truly believe the rocks have feelings (not too get to weird about it) and souls. Somehow when I'm with them I feel them passing their peacefulness along to me.

Right now I could use some of that peacefulness.

The rocks, they are a calling.

Pretty to Look At

Sequoia in Mariposa Grove
Yosemite National Park

On a recent trip to Yosemite National Park, I learned the meaning of something an instructor said in a workshop I took last year. It didn't mean much at the time; it was just something he said in a passing conversation when we were alone walking through the woods.

Sometimes it takes a while for things to sink in. Sometimes you just file away the little things, and all of a sudden they come back to you.

These images were taken in the Mariposa Grove. A wonderful section of the park with the magnificent sequoia trees dominating the landscape.

They stand there among the other trees----no I take that back---they stand there above all the other trees, with a special glow about them. Even if they weren't the biggest thing in the forest, they would be special for that glow. I've never seen it before and tried to capture it in my images. No matter how I tried, I couldn't get it just right.

Now, back to that little lesson.......


Pretty to look at, just can't take a picture of it.




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The End and the Beginning

Rainbow over Balanced Rock,  Arches National Park

Rainbows come at the end of a storm. Something good out of bad.

Something took place this week that shouldn't have. It was a shame it had to come to an end, but like the storm that makes the rainbow, it's over. Now it's time to work on other things.

An end and a beginning.


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A Sad Place

Gary Methodist Church
Gary, Indiana

Not to far from where I work is this fantastic old historic church. It's a sad place.

Sad because it's there all alone falling down more and more each day. It doesn't look like anyone cares at all about the story of it; of the lives it touched; of the craftsmen who put their souls into building it.



Why do we just give up on things?

Old Feelings

I found this one while looking through old images a couple of days ago. It wasn't what I was looking for, and caught me by surprise a little.

I hadn't looked through this file for quite a while and I had forgot about this one. At the time I took it, I had high hopes for it, but after working with it didn't feel it was up to my expectations. It got put away and ignored.

Teton Valley
Grand Teton National Park

Now I like it. It's still not the best picture I've ever taken, but something about it has caught my attention. I'm not sure what changed. The picture didn't, so it must be me.

My goal has always been to show something in my images more than the scenery, to have the viewer feel the same way I felt when I was there. I try to take a picture and turn it into more than just a bunch of colors on a piece of paper. I try to share the light, the sunshine, the wind, the cold, the things that made that particular place what it was at that small slice of time. When it works like that and takes the viewer into the scene just a little, it turns that picture into something special.

Maybe that's why all of a sudden I like this one. It took me back to that special place in time. It made me feel something I had forgot about.

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And almost back again

I'm back. I gave up on this for a while. A long while. Almost a year. The title of the last post I did was "Fall is Just Ahead", and it is again.

Hyatt Lane
Great Smoky Mtn. National Park

A lot has changed this last year for me and my family. Things have been busy with two new grand-kids and one daughter finishing college and starting new. My Summer work is over leaving a little time for me. I think I want to start getting serious about my photography again. It's time to make time.

So I'll start putting images up here again once in a while. Some will be good, some will be average, but maybe just now and then, one might be something you'll like.

Like Autumn, I've come and gone and I'm almost back again.

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