Day’s first light …
… breaks over the horizon and shines on the Midland College campus, in western Texas, just as I am arriving for work.
“For the mind disturbed, the still beauty of dawn is nature’s finest balm.”
Edwin Way Teale
Entries Tagged as 'photography'
Glimpses of Syria 2009
In the fall of 2009 I traveled to Jordan and Syria with a group organized by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Since the outbreak of Syria’s civil war, which to date has killed some 93,000 people, I’ve often thought back to the peaceful country I visited just a year and a half earlier. I found a landscape of green hills, desert and sea that in some ways resembles Oregon, cities full of friendly people and intriguing souks, and everywhere wonderful smells of fruit, spices, and flowers. I think back on those scents and they return to me as an emblem of Syria’s beauty and a prayer for peace. Here are a few photographs of my trip.
Coming Back
PLEASE NOTE that the following words are penned in a distant land, far to the south and west of that arctic-like realm that is home to so many of you.
It’s been cooler – even cold! – these last few months … and it’s been grayer, too, from clouds that block the sun, yet deliver no rain … and at times it’s been way too windy for me. Eh, winter!
But today, Spring is coming back. Today, I went out to the side yard of this place where we were staying, and was greeted not just with the head of the house’s septic tank system, and the assurance that all was well with said system … but by a bluebonnet, as well … my first bluebonnet of the new year!
Today, spring is coming back.
I’ve lived in West Texas long enough to appreciate that we seem to have only two seasons in our part of the Lone Star State … SUMMER, and NOT-QUITE-SUMMER.
But not today … for today, at least, SPRING is coming back … and I’m thinking that maybe there are ways I should be coming back, too. More on that later … but, for now, enjoy my bluebonnet.
Crazy Christmas Photo Competition 2012: Vote now!
For the past couple of Christmases, my wife and I have been taking ridiculous photographs to send out with our holiday cards. Two years ago we dressed our pets in Christmas attire and wore crazy sweaters. Last year we wore full hunting gear. This year, we decided to invite others to participate. See the submissions and vote here. Merry Christmas!
Opposite views from opposite sides of the pond
No matter where you turn in the media, there are a LOT of people offering up a 9/11-related post this week. Here’s mine …
“Beauty,” Margaret Hungerford once suggested, “is in the eyes of the beholder.” I suspect the same could be said for icons … which is how I feel about my disagreement with Britain’s Jonathan Jones over a photo taken that day by photographer Thomas Hoepker, an image that, according to Jones, “is becoming one of the iconic photos of 9/11.”
I disagree.
[Read more →]
A tale of the wild West — Boston Mark and the hunt for opals
I’ve always liked a good adventure, so it seems fitting that when choosing a honeymoon destination, a 2,000-mile drive through the desert would win over a week of sitting by a pool sipping neon-bright, over-garnished cocktails.
Of course, my husband and I didn’t have to take it the extreme, but naturally we did.
When we got the news that his friend was to be married in Scottsdale, AZ, my terrible sense of direction made me blurt, “Isn’t Arizona near Nevada?” Always willing to hear my schemes, my husband Joe answered, “Yes,” with intrigue and curiosity.
Picture This: Sharing a link and a laugh
I’ve always thought my yearbook photo looked a little dorky, with the haircut and the glasses that were on the cutting edge of fashion back then, twenty-million-or-so-years ago. But then, along comes this post from aceonlineschools.com … and I get to thinking, “maybe my photo isn’t so bad, after all” … well … at least not as bad as SOME of what they’ve labeled “30 Awesomely Bad School Portraits.”
Exaggeration nation: Cover girls
Race for the Cure
I have long been involved with a non-profit group called the Susan G. Komen Foundation. This group raises money, and awareness, for research on breast cancer. My involvement in past years was primarily my strong back. A co-worker and long time Board of Directors member, Barbara Hoffman, would conscript me to move boxes of shirts, pamphlets, equipment and other, manual labor type tasks.
This year, I volunteered to lend my photography skills to the cause and the Board was delighted to accept me as a staff photographer for the local chapter.
Over the last several months, I have been involved in documenting the volunteer effort that goes in to an organization of this type, and I focused on the activities leading up to their largest yearly event, the ‘Race for the Cure.’ This 5K race draws huge crowds of supporters and gives a lot of good media exposure to the foundation.
The race, for many, is just a side show. This event is much, much more than just sweaty people paying to pound the pavement! The event gathers cancer survivors together to celebrate life, to acknowledge the struggle they face and to show the world that they are winning the battle.
As a self-proclaimed curmudgeon and a card-carrying cynic [Read more →]
Everyone wants to be a model!
If you had asked me, a couple of months ago, what I thought of models and modeling, my response would have been to sneer.
Models were those vacuous, anorexic, self-absorbed girls whose only claim to fame was the ability to cake chemicals on their faces and strut down a runway, secure in the belief that the world revolved around them.
