a few more favorite photos from June

post #291
      I seem to have more photos I like from June than I have been able to include so far, so today will just be some random photos, but ones I don't want to wait any longer to share.

last summer's swing, waiting for cousin camp in July

 The pond is waiting, too. I made this photo last night, and the frogs were loudly croaking out Hi! Come!! Soon!!

This is a neighbor's self-confident rooster, and I promise it's hard to get a good rooster photo!

These eggs come from a different neighbor, but I am putting the photos together since they have a poultry connection.....  Many colors of eggs indicate many kinds of hens.....

Along the path by the creek, evidence of other visitors along the path during the winter!

 

butterfly weed, a kind of milkweed

Bugs yucking it up in a milkweed flower, seen from above because the flower is on a hillside and I am tall....

Crook neck garlic, planted by a friend in my garden last summer! I think it qualifies as a hardneck garlic.

bale jumping....  (just kidding)

 

After the baling, some bush hogging - thank you, thank you, Jamie!!

and thanks for leaving the big tractor for me to play on that evening....

day lilies - to remember to do like they do and enjoy one day at a time

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."
 

cards! like in Note Cards!

post #262
        Photographers make money -- or not -- in a multitude of ways. One of my efforts in the earning direction consists of making photo note cards and hand selling most of them. This has become a way both to share my work and to use new photos which I feel work as cards. I don't make much money this way, but I consider it a kind of advertising. It also makes my work accessible to many who are not up to buying even a single larger framed photo. 
       Some buyers use my cards to, get this, write NOTES for various occasions! I say bravo to them!!  While I appreciate the compliment that someone doesn't like to send off a card because he or she likes it so much, this approach obviously presents challenges to my bottom line. I am not complaining -- I am happy for them -- but I'm just saying.
        For now I am sticking with my Appalachian images, mostly those in eastern Kentucky.

iris

a swarm of tree hugging bees

There goes the sun.

         There are certain hazards in this line of work. For one thing, I have a hard time giving up a card I like. The consequence of that is I have too many different cards available at any one time. Yet I realized only yesterday that I have never put my cards in the blog! How did that happen?? So I instantly decided to feature random card images and titles for a few weeks. 
         I'd like to say I have an organized way to sell the cards on line, but at the moment I do not. (First I need someone who could work with me on a parttime basis; living where I do, at some distance from town, makes this tricky to pull off. I can dream, though.) The Kentucky Folk Art Center in Morehead, KY probably sells the most of any place I wholesale to. (Is wholesale really a verb?)
        

A Bee on the Zinnia

Ms. Bluebird

hay rows and shadows

female cardinal

         Part of the fun of the cards for me is choosing which color paper to use to accent each photo, which are 4x6 in size. I also get to decide on a title, sometimes with the help of friends. I LOVE GETTING A GOOD WORDS/IMAGE MATCH, especially if there is some humor involved. I attach the photo to the front of the folded paper with two strips of double sided tape, since as a former migraine person I have an adversion to the strong smells of glues and such. For today's card post, I am not showing the photo with its choice of paper color, but I will be preparing a few samples to show next week.
          Note: the hay rows and shadows photo was used for Wendell Berry's editor's reprint of the WB poetry collection Farming: a Hand Book, first printed in 1971 and reissued in 2011 by Counterpoint Press. Thank you, Wendell.
       

Golden Day

spring falls in our woods

two mourning dove buddies

 

in Donny's barn

truck shot

milkweed moment, summer frog

rooster pride

      This last photo (above) is one of my "best sellers." Of course there is a story to the photo, which I made while at my friend Peg Taylor's B&B "Farm House Inn" in southeast Kentucky (McCreary County).  She and I had gone for a walk in their woods, and, when we returned, he was still up on that fence, struttin' and crowin'! I figured he really wanted his photo made....  More stories next week ....

more about equality, and news from the late August 4H event in Elliott County (part 1)

post #247
       I did stop by the Rowan County Courthouse on Friday morning, on the way to Winchester and before picking up someone planning to ride with me.  The temperature was hot, the place was covered up with reporters, and there had already been that first wedding license granted, now that the County Clerk, Kim Davis, has chosen to be in jail (in the next county) rather than resign or change her opinion about the conflict between her religion and the law of the land. Since licenses are finally being granted, there is no more picketing for equality at the courthouse, but it may happen that the clerk's supporters will continue some form of witness. No one wants Davis to have to do jail time, but the judge felt there seemed no other way to communicate the seriousness of the issues involved.
        Anyway, here are two photos from my stop-by. Everyone knows there is still a lot of learning going on and will be for years, but a lot of brave couples put themselves out there to help bring about more understanding and less fear. It is not an easy change, but one definitely needed as our nation continues the on-going struggles for equality for all Americans.  In even simpler terms I do feel it is mostly about love. Here's a shout out to my friend, Jennifer, for her energy and her total and fearless committment to equality.

Now on to 4H, and the annual judging and sales of the animals these students have cared for and learned from.  I think it is so fascinating what they learn by doing.

I didn't arrive until the showing part was under way.  It was sheep time; the rabbits and poultry and goats had already been judged. I walked around to take some photos of what I had missed.

 

a cage with three roosters, when usually it is two hens and a rooster

Many kids and adults were wearing this t-shirt for the event.  I asked this boy to hold still a minute so I could get a photo of all the words on his back.  He is a twin of the other blonde boy wearing the same shirt.

             OK, now the sheep, starting with the youngest 4Hers. The winners then go to stand in front of the 4H logo sign to have their photos taken.

  There seemed to be lots of sheep wandering around with the students they belonged to.

MaKayla is now a senior in High School and very skilled with her animals.  I thank her for letting me ask her for a quick pose.  I think this is my favorite of all the photos I made that afternoon.

     Next week a bunch more 4H photos!  Today I want to end with the fleeting photo I made when Jamie was already headed home with the bales of hay from our place while I was finishing last week's blog.  Thanks again, Jamie!  I love where I have been living all these many years.