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

there's always work to do to learn what's true..

post #526                                      The Hurtle Ahead of Us

 Everyone needs to acknowledge that Joe Biden clearly won the 2020 election,                             especially the people who work in government, who are supposed to work for all persons in our nation.

  

The time has come for all of us to face the consequences of how much Donald Trump relies on lies. 

  He lies everyday.  Often.  Regularly.  He must be desperate for attention.  It's sad seeing someone so damaged.

   

There's that video footage of Trump telling the crowd to be strong, and to fight.  It's plain to see that he's using the worked up crowd to cover his inability to accept that       he could have lost a "race" even though the other guy got millions more votes.                                                          

 Yet now so many choose to ignore the implications and the power of his lies.  People were killed. Denying it happened damages the soul. All people are wounded when so many of us choose not to value the facts.

                As I have said often on this blog, truth has ever been a guiding lantern in my life.  SO  I say all this simply because truth is important to me.  We don't have to agree about everything with each other, but we can value truth enough to seek it out. Honor it. Check it out. Use the brain and the heart together. It is not necessarily convenient, but it can be an anchor.   

            I realize that even my photography reflects my focus on the truth. Of course there's art involved, but I prefer seeing what I actually saw and sharing what reflects the reality before me.  Here are several photos from different years that reflect that inclination of mine to go for unexpected real happenings in front of me:

with Pat on Martha's Vineyard's Lucy Vincent Beach

ice from above and below

Sandy's, every Christmas

a good night's work in the shed

You are my SON shine....

beautiful in boots

Forrest and Allen

SF Art Museum wall, with Liz

It will be spring again. Only ten weeks until the Redbud Show.

I was fascinated by how the Golden Gate Bridge looked while in progress.

Violet Joy

Grayson Lake: our one world held together

Thanks for looking at these photos. There's beauty in the truth.

Let's be brave.  Much more brings us together than keeps us apart.  

 

'Twas the last blog post before Christmas

when all through the house,

clutter reigned, but luckily no mouse. 

 While at home, to herself, the writer asks,

 (therefore no need to wear any cloth masks)

will there soon be heard massive outrage and clatter?

We've wanted so much change that matters!

Yet four such difficult years are now ending.

Give us fortitude for the future that's pending.

On to equality, fairness, compassion!

On putting democracy back into fashion! 

Stay safe, stay brave and stay healthy, too.

Be grateful I can't sell this to get wealthy! Whew!

 

 post #522

not a Christmas photo, but I'll try for one this year

This was a trial Christmas photo one year, in Denver, but it happens to be a favorite of mine. Can't remember what in the world I was saying to them....

          We have had a single day this year with visible snow on the ground.  So far.

 

 

 This last photo is from a few days later, going for a walk across the road from my place, on the neighbor's hay field. My house is sort of visible through the trees.

All best wishes for the season to everyone, but please stay patient and believe that we will need to wear masks for many more months. More than a few people I know well have had to deal with the virus. I just found out yesterday that, sadly, my niece, in Los Angeles, is one of them.  I'm so sorry for the hardships this pandemic brings to people across the world. America has not done as well as it could have. Different leadership will have a big impact, and thank goodness, as I have said before, for the hard work of so many health provider teams everywhere. I hope they are getting their vaccine pronto.    

I also hope you enjoyed my poetic effort, with more emphasis on the effort part than on the poetic. Once I got started, I couldn't let it go. 

I'm not going to do a post next Sunday -- will take a week off, especially since no one will have time for it. But I'll be back in the new year! Again, all best wishes.

Getting closer to the big election

post #509

            I'm not a credentialed political pundit, but I have always cared about politics/ social change/ community support and such. (I was going to be a government major in college until I decided to go with a degree in French literature.  After I discovered photography, I began to wish I was young and hardy enough to be a photo journalist.)

        Our current national mess interests me. When it gets dangerously out of hand, like it currently is, I am always trying to figure out WHY something is happening, what can we each do to make it better, and why do so many people accept the difficult without thinking they can instead contribute to the search for change. Even the Appalachian area of Kentucky, where I live, has a long history of passionate political activity. It's like a glue that keeps our national heart beating and renewed.

     I'm also curious about a lot of things. I like figuring stuff out for myself. I'm fortunate to have discovered a love for photography in my fifties, so I continue to have a lot to learn. I wanted to share tonight just some pleasures I get from noticing the small and the lovely in my every day walking around.  And I found a cartoon from the The New Yorker in July that I recently realized speaks to what I do every day.

This is actually lavender, one of my few tended plants, and it has provided blooms almost all summer! The deer don't eat it.

Panicled Aster! Who knew! A weed is never just a weed....

 I totally missed seeing this poor squashed baby snake at first, but there it was on my return.  Then the next night, it was all gone. Was it eaten? if so, by what or whom? or totally smashed by a tire?

 

 

(See the cartoon ahead.)

a Golden rod variety -- this is the first year I've noticed it

        Yesterday I happened on this cartoon in a pile of New Yorker magazines, and this time it struck me as hilarious, my own little way of seeing the world.  No one is going to believe me all that much either. I don't arrange my photos. I just work with what I see, though that does require getting out in the world you're in. None of us needs to be spectacular every day, but we can still be both amazed and honored to be present.

         Now it's fair to remark that some day no one is going to believe the close call we are currently having concerning our precious democracy.  We are letting our President get away with doing anything he pleases with no concern for the well being of others or of the world. Right now the main thing I ask is for EVERYONE, including Republicans in the Senate, to be clear-eyed about our tomorrows. Let's be kind and be attentive to the world we are forging for our kids and grand kids. Greed or fear have never provided a true key to happiness or made our lives better. 

 

on the way, neither denying nor accepting

post #507
          I am so thrown by our nation's turmoil. I recently had a very cordial catching-up conversation with a neighbor who, when I asked, calmly stated that she wasn't so sure the coronavirus was any different than the flu. She was willing to wear her masks at work, but she didn't think they made any real difference.  Yet the family that lives almost at the end of my road has several members in quarantine because some are sick. And who knows how many Americans will defy the science and not be careful this Labor Day weekend.  They won't all get sick, but some will and some of those will die or they might pass the virus on. It's happening all over the world, it's confusing, it's hard on our kids, and it definitely collides with what some would call the American myth that our right to do anything we want is more important than looking out for each other.  
          I'm not complaining so much as disbelieving, but it means I am compelled to bring it up, because anything about anything else doesn't work without bringing up these concerns. It's just hard to accept that we aren't all --- every one of us --- speaking to the current fragile balancing of the personal and the political that faces us as citizens of our shared world.  (And, no surprise, I am sick that our president is going out of his way -- purely for his own selfish purposes -- to undermine the voting procedures the constitution guarantees and requires for the health of our democracy.) 

          OK, enough words. I'm glad Blogger, for this week again, at least, has returned to a saner blog posting operation. Since I'm not sure it will last, however, I remain basic in how I try to present a few photos. 

stopping on Sideway Road to take 2 photos..

My mini-bumper stickers, which -- LUCKILY -- mainly serve to stand out in the Kroger parking lot so that I can find my car after grocery shopping! Well, it is true that several times I have seen people taking photos like this one I made. There don't seem to be a lot of other stickers this year. These are at least non-partisan sentiments.

A BRIEF BRAGG: I have never been the one to be the fixer of anything, but this time, after early consults with J., I managed to get this bottom freezer to stop acting like a toddler.  So far, no more leaks!.

It's meadow time around here, soon to be mowed, so goodbye iron weed...

   The following photo is by my daughter, Rebecca, this weekend.  I think it's a really good photo, but it also shows the location for where the downy woodpecker family feeding photos happened -- in front of the upper window on the left.  I have added one of those earlier photos as a point of photography interest. I was inside that window, looking out, and the light was OK for being able to make it work. Nothing was planned. Thank you, Curiosity. That discovery moment went on for at least a half dozen feeding sessions.

Downy Dad dinner prep, while I'm looking out the window to the limb that's part of a trellis (see previous photo)

           Did I mention to please be kind, please be safe, please envision why and how we could -- with bravery -- restore democracy, and please VOTE? 

caught in the act, with birds

post #479
          I started preparing this post around noon, but it turns out there's more to it than I realized.  So I took a break to work on my tax prep since I'm meeting with my great preparer at noon tomorrow, in Grayson (near the favorite lake surrounded by cliffs that have often been in my photo stories.) Now it is the evening, and neither task is completed. BUT I just happen, at least, to have some photos to share.
         Last week's thoughts about seeing lead me to this week's thoughts about the dynamics of relying on seeing things in order to realize the opportunity that comes my way.  In my former house, I often felt like I was in a nest, looking out, seeing what ever came to visit.  Birds were usually willing to alight outside. They were particularly drawn to the black walnut tree whose branches hang over the deck. The bark is great for holding a seed, but also there must be something safe about the spacing between the branches?
         As today I gathered together photos of various bird visits, I was amazed all over again. What a privilege. I don't have a reason to be a bird photographer, and I don't have any special lenses or expertise, but the birds appear anyway. I drop everything to make a photo, if it happens that the light is right. It has to be, or I can't take photos through a window.    
         I start out being disbelieving, and then turn grateful, and throughout feel darn lucky.

bedroom window, with a tripod, trying for "two birds, daylight's words" for Counting on the Woods, thank you mourning doves for being able to hang together long enough for me to make this photo!!

I believe this is a fledgling red-bellied woodpecker, in the walnut tree.

Mama cardinal, from the kitchen window

a molting goldfinch on the artwork on the deck, through the sliding door

Fledgling behavior is a good time to record since there is coming and going from the same spot.  Next week I will show the whole series of photos I made from this dad's efforts to feed two offspring.

         

In my experience, this fledgling feeding behavior doesn't last long. Quick learners.

           I want to end this week's post with two photos I made at a friend's farm nearby. The bird is not particularly Appalachian, but he does add a lively dimension to the farm yard! They are just as noisy here as they were when we visited India many years ago. 
         These photo stories of my bird encounters will take up the next two weeks! I'm not just "winging" it. 

I believe the real action and showing off is behind....

but the way he gets his head to stay still with all that shaking going on behind is far beyond my skill set!!

        Now back to finishing my tax prep, can't wait to do more of this next week.