Chris Garris, photographer

    I'm fortunate to have a young friend, Chris, whose photography I have always admired so much.  He grew up close to where I have lived for the past 45 years. He currently teaches at Metropolitan State University of Denver (MSU Denver) but he has recently moved up into the mountain range west of Denver.  This year he made some fine images from his new home location. Thanks, Chris, for letting me share them on my blog today.  

    I should add that I was in Denver this past week for a great visit with my son and family. The weather was beautiful the day I wanted to drive out to see Chris. Starting the next day after that , however, he eventually had over a foot of snow! Close call for my being able to visit!  

    BTW, his dear dog is Coleslaw, and the cat is Peanut. These images are from earlier in the season.

 

from inside the house

I suspect this wonderful image must have required a lot of patience!

 THE VIEW:

MOMENTS:

  This last photo shows both playfulness and art --  all while making the best of a momentary hand injury:

    

      Next week it's back to spring in Appalalchia. I hope everyone is able to get the COVID vaccine. I wouldn't have wanted to go on my trip without both of mine.  Please, everyone.

    Chris - if you want to say anything about your photos, please let me know so I can add that to this post or to next week's post.  Thanks for that and for the usual working out of some of my camera questions..!    Ann

Thanksgiving, in Colorado!

post #364
        Last week's post was about alone time photos, from the last few months. This week it's Thanksgiving in Colorado with my son and family. Next week -- alone time photos, from this summer, just in time for Christmas.... 
          I want to note, however, that I am writing this from Morehead. The roads were too terrible last night for me to make it all the way home from a day in Lexington. Thank you, Tom and Molly!!!! 
          Now on to Denver and family and Thanksgiving:

welcoming lights the Monday night of my arrival

Denver's light rail system took the two kids and me downtown to meet up with Eric for lunch.
       

from the balcony, this is the view of "getting lunch" at the new Whole Foods near Eric's new office location

      Two views from their office, all on the 12th floor of the new office/hotel building -- see the stadium!

floor to ceiling windows!!

Then Thanksgiving, in the mountains near Denver:

LOTS OF TASTY TRADITIONS AND HOME-COOKED FOOD!

Special treat - fresh apple cider (despite what it looks like!!)

LOTS OF CARD PLAYING!

LOTS OF DOG LOVING! 

LOTS OF SPOUSE LOVING!
 

              NOT lots of snow, but all of us did get out for a walk and a session of "skipping snowballs over ice:"

Winter Park, CO

         I'm very thankful, as always, for my family and for having time together. This may sound obvious and trite, but it is monumentally true.

most any kind of artist needs alone time

post #363
          I realized this morning that this would be the first day in two weeks when I am entirely alone! For the "happy hermit" I often am, that's a big deal. In any case, I thought I would honor the thought and the reality by gathering up some photos I have taken BECAUSE I was alone. Today I found 10 from just the last 3 months. Since I never want to take all my readers' time, this for me is enough photos for one post. I've now decided to do the other 2017 months two by two, every two weeks, with my Thanksgiving trip and other such fun "out in the world" experiences in between. 
         That's the reality of my life, actually. I'm a very fortunate person to still be doing my photography, to be learning from it all the time, and to be grateful that I enjoy my own company, especially when I am working with my camera. As is often said, a certain amount of time alone is essential for most kinds of creative work.
        I can tell when I'm "in the zone." That's where I call it, anyway. It's esssential. It's not called loneliness; instead it's called working or creativity or pure dumb luck.

Most artists and writers prefer to work alone so they can draw, paint, sculpt, or write from their heart, that place of flow where the unconscious plays freely.  (common statement)

on Martha's Vineyard's Lucy Vinson Beach, alone with the footprints of others and my friend Patty who knows how to leave me alone for a bit in such a place

my mailbox, looking north

 

a later fall day, getting the mail with my iPhone, facing south on Sideway Road

in the woods nearby

framing the fall while stopped on the driveway where I used to live

making art almost by accident with my 50mm lens and some Red Maple leaves

a lone duck on the homestead pond

obvious lone duck approaching the lone oblivious photographer who doesn't then need to risk slipping into the pond with her camera....

up close and personal, my following the foal as he grows and before he is taken as payment for his white mama

Such splendor zones me out even with a few other people around. I want to SEE it with my own eyes and heart, but I also want to share it with others. Therefore I concentrate on doing both experiences. I call this a kind of street photography, trying to capture the unexpected with honesty. I'll post more photos from Colorado next week.

     I even zone out when I do these posts on this blog. Sometimes I think I enjoy making my posts just because it invariably provides zone out time. Well, I also do enjoy just sharing my photos. All the same time, I'm appalled that the EPA and its minions can think we need less access to nature, and that they have no concern for preserving clear water, etc.  Even though I am an artist, I don't want to zone out so much that I forget my outrage and disappointment at the scams currently being hoisted on our nation by short-sighted greed  -- edging out goodness and common sense for the time being, like a stinky fog over the land.

discovering the worth of my own point and shoot camera

post #322
          I'm a student this semester in the beginning digital photography class at nearby Morehead State University. At last I am learning some of the basics and what they really mean. In my public personna as a recognized photographer, I'm often embarrassed by how hard it has been so far for me to explain how I do anything and why. I am now hopeful that the discomfort of feeling like a beginner will go away by the end of the semester. By then I might even learn to be a better photographer. 
         Here are two images that are part of my home work -- five of this same picture but at different f stops, then five with different "film" speeds (ISO) and so forth. Doing everything manually is excellent training that I have put off for years, and so I endure the slowness of it all as best I can.

one of five versions of this view, each one with a different F-stop

"Put the important object at the edge of the photo."

       Our homework is to present 55 of these prescribed photos by Tuesday evening, ready to put in a contact sheet, 20 to a page. I didn't even know colored photos could be printed out as a contact sheet. (I admit this as evidence that I have known too little for too long.)


         I have also taken up learning how my Canon PowerShot S110 works since it is so much easier to travel with than my regular camera.  Eureka! I finally used it in a happy way during the Denver trip. Today I'm sharing some of the photos from when I was there. They are similar to the iPhone images that I posted last week, yet they are better. Also, once I learn fully how to use the camera, I will even be able to mess with focus and depth of field and all that. I actually like that stuff, but it doesn't come naturally for me. I too often rely on having a good eye. I'm more often the dork instead of the qeek where my tools of the trade are concerned.

        So here are additional snow photos plus four grandchildren photos from the birthday gathering. Several readers let me know they really appreciated the happy faces. One of those readers was my roommate from freshman year at college -- who has been in the hospital. Thanks, Meg! So glad you are home now! Good riddance to that pesky appendix!
        While I am at it, I would like to say hello to whomever it is in Ukraine who has looked at my blog regularly for a couple of years. All I see is that at least 1 person looks from there every week, and sometimes others do as well. I'm not able to learn exactly where anyone lives -- just the country. I imagine you have more snow than these photos show from western Colorado. Here in Kentucky we've so far had hardly any snow at all.

upstairs window view, tracks on the far mountainside

living room window view of the same mountain

a sweet small tree, from above

Will's mom made "Panera" mac and cheese, per request!

Both kids enjoyed the "dart board" present, with magnets.

Audrey in the sunshine -- she turned 8 a month ago.

Immigration in Kentucky -- a response -- plus a birthday

post #321
To all my readers outside of the USA -- while I work on the putting the rest of my post together today, I am sharing the words I read yesterday about the current chaos in the USA.       
       First, I am so sorry this immigration crisis has occurred. This is not what most Americans believe could happen and not what we want to happen. Secondly, one of the two senators from my state of Kentucky occupies the most powerful position in the United States Senate. He is a Republican, and therefore in the same party as our new president whose alarming behavior has caused this senseless situation.
        The essay I share today was in the Louisville newspaper, The Courier-Journal. It is in the form of a letter addressed to this senator, Sen. Mitch McConnell. I think the letter is so well written and so on target. Thank you, Fedja Buric. (I had to "cut and paste" the article in order to be able share it here.)
         The rest of my post today now appears later in this post. I promised some photos.


Dear Sen. McConnell -- In 1992, when I was 13 years old, democratically elected nationalist leaders blew up my life.  The country I had known, Yugoslavia, was torn to shreds in a brutal ethnic conflict none of us had either expected or wanted.
          In less than two years, these leaders would proceed to murder over 100,000 people and displace over 2 million more.
         With two suitcases in hand, my parents, my brother and I left behind the life we had known for something that no longer even resembled a life.
         We roamed the Balkans searching for a haven. We slept in an out-of-service train car. The train car was near a major battlefield so the UNHCR relocated us to Turkey. In Turkey, we lived in a refugee camp. We shared a couple of bathrooms with over three thousand other unfortunate Bosnians.
We wrote over thirty letters, begging for asylum: New Zealand, Australia, France, Switzerland, UNHCR, among others. They all said no. Only one country said yes — the United States of America.
         In June 1995, we came to Kentucky. We came bewildered by what had happened to us.  But, a few weeks after our arrival, our depression began to lift.  It wasn’t hard to figure out what was happening to us—we were being shaken out of our stupor by the decency, generosity, and hospitality of the people of the Commonwealth.
        From a parent of a high school friend who offered to co-sign our first car loan, to my ESL teacher who listened to my sappy war stories and encouraged me to write about them, to your own office in Louisville, where your aides expedited my father’s travel papers so he could visit his ailing mother in France, the people of the Commonwealth moved us to tears with their generosity.
        Not once, did my foreign heritage, or my refugee status, hinder me in Kentucky.  On the contrary, Kentuckians from all walks of life, and of all generations, urged me to keep telling my story.  I did.  And as a result, I became a historian.  And a proud American.
        I am writing this open letter to you because I am dismayed, angry, and despairing over the direction our country is taking under the leadership of President Donald Trump.
        But even more so, I have been utterly demoralized by your silence in the face of the ugliness coming from the White House.
       When candidate Trump berated Muslims, you remained silent.
       When he promised to ban them from entering our country, you remained silent.
       When President Trump is putting these words of hate into executive action, you remain silent.      Yet again.
       Dear Senator, as a leader of one of our most cherished institutions, the Senate, you have a constitutional, but more importantly, a moral, obligation to speak up.
        It is up to you to stand up to President Trump’s bigotry and xenophobia and block the parts of his agenda that reflect the ugly echoes of the past.
        Senator McConnell, you are well aware that this not a partisan issue.  This is about our democratic institutions, common human decency, and the respect that the United States of America has earned around the world by embracing those unfortunate, desperate, hungry, and poor.
        I plead with you, sir, to heed the words of Abraham Lincoln and reach out for those better angels of your nature.

Fedja Buric is an assistant professor of history at Bellarmine University in Louisville, KY.

       Now for some photos!
       I was in Colorado last weekend with my son's family, to help out. I didn't have my good camera with me so I used my iPhone 6s. I also didn't have time to get out in the wilderness there, but I did capture some snow near Denver in the mountains where we were on Saturday. Then there are some birthday photos -- thanks to my now 6 year old grandson.

good early morning!!

driving over the pass on the way back to Denver

looking out the side window of the car

note: I wasn't the one driving.....

 

 

back home, ice cream cake, per Will's request, and more grandparents

The Kentucky Wildcats shirt was a birthday present I was lucky to find and bring with me....

And of course there was a birthday event at school as well:

Will with one of his teachers and his sister, Audrey

Audrey built this in school, and I was fascinated by its possibilities. First I made this photo by putting it on my lap, and I was wearing a black coat.... Then I wondered if it was a model for a flow chart for use in the current Oval Office. Surely there is some other explanation for what's coming out of there besides meanness and short-sightedness.