still more note cards, chapter 4: some favorites!

post #265
       It may be a New Year, but I have not yet finished sharing some of my cards. I have been saving a few more favorites for this post, chapter 4, as a way to celebrate bringing good things forward into a new year. I am not necessarily a fan of clean slates and resolutions.
      Many of the images are chosen for their titles.  When I showed the first one to a friend and neighbor -- in the country sense -- he said "Oh, groundhogs boiling coffee." What? Where did that come from?? I loved the expression, and I trusted that he wasn't making it up on the spot, though he could have. Even so, I did ask around to find out if others knew that expession as well. Many did! I felt enriched by learning such an evocative phrase through one of my photos.

        This next image happens every spring. These steps are located halfway between my home and "town" so I never forget them. I even remember the house that used to sit on the top of the hill and watched it be left alone and then taken down a few years later.
       I talked over possible titles with my friend George Ella, and she came up with "legacy," one word that describes so much. Yes!

      The power of the words is somewhat different for the following photo of some other friends and neighbors. The title "stripping tobacco" can't really describe the poignancy of what is happening. This job was something they had been doing together every December for ages; this year (2010) was the last year. The end. No more tobacco. I have always been grateful to them for letting me know their plan -- and grateful the counter didn't collapse when I stood on it to take the photo!

Hard to explain, but this next image is one I imagine I love for personal reasons. It is our creek, it is spring, I got the greens and the water to look like they really do look, and it doesn't look like this every day. But I was there for this day. I call it, simply, our creek in spring, or sometimes just spring creek.  Since I handwrite my titles on each card, I don't always have to say the same thing. I can therefore forget and redo or simply revise as I go along, an advantage of the extra work hand writing the titles takes.  

field, fog, and fence

      These two mourning doves never fail to fascinate, even though I made this photo with a slide early in my career when I was the photo-illustrator for George Ella's Counting on the Woods (DK Ink, 1998).  For the card's title, I use the words from the page they are on in the book: two birds, daybreak's words. I took it out my bedroom window, on a cloudy day (of which there were many during that long, cool spring). Doves, bless their hearts, actually LIKE to hang out together; I needed birds that would do that. Again, thank you, George Ella.

       There is not time to show all my cards, but I can't neglect to show the next two, both requiring the cooperation of animals. In one, showing off helped, and, in the other, take a look at the ears.  The showing off image is one of my most well known. It also sells well as a card.

Big Wheel

ear-winking mule

      For those of you who like the photos from other places, my most popular one is this street scene in Chipping Campden, in the Cotswolds of England. I have used many variations in the title, since I am never sure how much information to give without detracting from the image itself. If anyone wants to give title making a try, please feel free to let me know one for this image. Click on Comment, and sign in as Anonymous. That usually works. Thanks! (Now that I think of it, maybe simply "hanging in England" will work?)

 

        As soon as possible, I will add some samples of my cards with their colored paper choice.  I meant to do it weeks ago, though I have not yet done so. But for now I need to take a break from this fun time I give myself every week and do some actual real-life stuff. "Busy Day."